September 6, 2016 Mile 1787.0-1818.4 (+1.2) 32.6 Miles Roadside and I talked last night about the closing window before winter hits. I told him I need to start getting up early every day in order to have a chance of making it. He’s on board. From here on out, unless we’re in a town and need to wait for breakfast or a resupply, we’re waking at 5:30am. The morning hike is an obstacle course. In the first hour alone, I count over a hundred fallen trees that we have to climb over, hike around, or duck under. In many cases we have to climb up on one tree, then walk across it to climb over another, then find another place to hop down. It’s a tangled mess, and a couple times we lose the trail altogether. After the first hour we start to climb, so the forest thins a little and the fallen trees get farther apart. It’s still a mess, but at least we’re making a little more progress. Judging by the use trails around some of these trees, they’ve been down awhile. Or perhaps it’s a function of the high usage along the PCT. As I think about it, I realize that it wouldn’t take long to make a use trail with close to a hundred people passing by every day. I feel some solidarity with the hundreds of hikers who have come before me and have had to deal with the same trees. After the biggest uphill since we started Oregon, we find ourselves on a ridge. The sun is barely up. There’s not much color in the sky, but the trees are dyed copper and I’m grateful for the warmth of the direct sunlight. We seem to be in a jumble of mountains that cut a general line to the north, with low farmland and lakes just past a ridge to the east. The trail cuts that way—I can make out the next few miles of it, bobbing up and down between ridges and drainages, first working its way to the eastern ridge, then turning north again. I can even see a couple other hikers on the trail, working their way towards us. It’s a cold morning, and as we work our way toward and then along the eastern ridge, the sky thickens imperceptibly with clouds. By the time we stop for breakfast, the sky is so overcast that I start to doubt my memory of a sunny morning. We’re on the east side of the eastern ridge, looking down on a few foothills and enormous lakes far below. The hot oatmeal warms my belly, but the heat doesn’t extend far from there. I make a mocha—Carnation instant breakfast with a Starbucks Via packet—in the hope that I can get a little more warmth. While I’m waiting for the water to boil again, I’m raiding my snack foods. I’ve been devouring them much faster the past few days. I finish my formerly giant bag of peanut M&Ms—the rest of the day is going to suck without those—and then polish off my dried fruit and tear into a kind bar. Sitting here atop this ridge, I’m freezing my ass off, but the cold doesn’t take anything away from the beauty of this view. It might even add to it, as it helps me be present in the moment in a way that warm comfort might not. And yet, even though it makes me happier to be outside, if I had the opportunity to be warm and indoors, looking out at this view through a window, I would probably take it. We humans are poor custodians of our own happiness. I wonder whether it’s something innate, or if it’s simply a habit developed in us by our culture. I don’t have an answer. My mocha is ready, and it’s every bit as warming as I hoped it would be. I call Lindsey while I drink it. We talk for about 15 minutes, but then the service drops and I can’t get through again. I really miss her. We continue on along the ridge for a couple hours, hiking near enough to talk, although our conversation is sparse and widely spaced. The trail dips down, and the deadfall starts up again. We make a stop for water at Honeymoon creek. Dead yellow wood is everywhere, cut up and crushed. Except for the absence of sawdust, the detritus looks like a sawmill floor. The creek is small, but with clear, sweet water, and we fill up our bottles. The next section is supposed to be devoid of water, although that seems hard to believe for how lush and thick the forest has been. We descend farther, to what seems like the floor of Oregon, and pump out long, easy miles. Or at least they would be easy, if not for the fact that every few hundred yards, we’re clambering over and around more fallen trees. We pass mile 1800. Only 850 miles to go! It does seem that the miles are going faster now, though I’m not sure whether I’m hiking faster, or if it’s just my perception telescoping the days together. These months on trail have been some of the richest days of my life, but now that I’ve been out here for so long and seen so much of nature, are the days starting to run together? Is it only variety that allows us to fully appreciate the time we spend on this earth, or do we have other options to wring more life out of our life? It’s not just philosophizing; it goes to the heart of what we do with our time. If repetition leads us to be mindless, then it is a form of death. We may only have a limited number of minutes to live, but some of those minutes are fuller than others. Choices like careers, who we spend our time with, what we do in the evening on a random Wednesday when we’re exhausted, how we engage with the people around us—these are the basic material of life. A certain amount of repetition is to be expected, but I can’t be sure whether that’s something to be eschewed or embraced. Mindful attention helps me suck more juice out of life, but I can’t sustain it indefinitely. Thoughtful rituals help me to move through time deliberately. Journaling helps me hold on to time that has already passed through my fingers. Strangely, slowing down seems to give me more time. Why does that work? My guess is that the little pauses between activities helps me encode experience into awareness. Even when I pack up my gear, I enjoy myself more when I work with one piece at a time. Trying to grab two or three things at a time leaves me stressed out and confused, and even seems to take up more time. It’s like I can see my thoughts rapidly switching attention between the different objects and tasks, expending energy wastefully and making little progress. Back to the matter at hand, though. How can I squeeze the most out of these last 850 miles? I’m not ready to be done with this trail, not by a long shot. I vow to practice mindful awareness with even more fervor than before, trying to take in every leaf, rock, and tree trunk. Taking in the forest is easy for me, but taking in the individual trees, that’s where the real challenge lies. It’s become overcast and stayed cold, and the only way to keep warmer is to hike faster. We cross a small stream that’s not listed on the maps or the water report. It’s sort of a puddle in the trail, but it’s a picturesque puddle. There are stepping stones across a glassy surface, and some of the plants around it are getting a little autumn coloring.
We’re flying now; there’s no time for talking, just hiking to beat the cold. It feels like winter is literally chasing us. The terrain changes rapidly, from low bushes with scattered trees to burned forest, to thick forest, then to open forest as we climb. At the top of a mountain, the trail then loops back on itself so closely that I have to wonder why the trail designer didn’t just cut off the last loop. Strange. It starts to mist and sprinkle on us, and I hike even faster, as if I can outrun the weather. I stop for lunch around 2. It’s still cold and wet, but I have to eat. Roadside is nowhere to be seen. In fact, I haven’t seen him in a couple hours and I’m not sure when I lost him. I’m sure he’ll catch up soon. At least I think he will. I remember back to Hoot and Chocolate Milk, who were much faster than me but who never caught up. By the time I have my lunch unpacked, I’m shivering. Exercise heats the body, heat leads to sweat, sweat cools the body. It was fine while I continued to exercise, but now my sweat has gone clammy, sucking away vital bodyheat, and I have no fat reserves left to help keep me warm. I’ve been in calorie deficit for months but it never mattered much in the warm California sunshine. Borders are mostly man-made legal fictions, but whoever chose the California-Oregon border hit on something. Lunch is a miserable affair. Alone, my focus goes to my hands, which have been cold for hours and are starting to ache. The sparker on my stove doesn’t work, so I have to use a lighter, which is painful on my thumb and takes several tries to light. The only hot lunch food I have left is instant mashed potatoes, which I tend to avoid for as long as I can. Sometimes I think that I get more miles done because if I can get to the next town in time, I won’t have to eat my mashed potatoes. Roadside arrives just as my potatoes are getting cold. I scrape the bottom and clean the pot while he wolfs down a cold lunch, then we set off again. It looks like we might be able to get to Mazama Village before the restaurant closes. If we hurry.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
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