October 3, 2016 Mile 2432.1-2453.4 (+3) 24.3 Miles It’s only six miles to Cascading Creek, a distance I cover easily before breakfast. It’s a drizzly morning, somewhat of a regularity in Washington, it appears. Roadside woke at the same time as me, but I outpaced him within a few minutes and I’m left with my thoughts. This morning I’m back to thinking about ego. Well, first I start with my morning meditation routine as I walk. A hundred breaths, counted with as much awareness and focus as I can muster, then metta for all the important people in my life, extending outward to encompass all beings, then Thich Nhat Hanh’s mantra from Every Step is Peace: “Breathing in I calm my mind, breathing out I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know that this is a wonderful moment.” My mind wanders like a child during all of this, but when I reach the mantra, I stop trying to lead it back to focus so often. And that’s how I find my way to thinking about ego, via concerns about career and status and money. It is different to think this way, removed from the constant inputs of society, freed from the constant inputs of a busy mind. It allows me to see the repetition of my thoughts, the obsessiveness with which I revisit the same subjects again and again. Almost out of sheer boredom, I find myself digging deeper, looking for the root causes behind what I feel and believe. And this is what gets me to ego, that gushing oil well that both motivates and stains everything I do. I’ve seen it in each of the areas of my life. In my relationships, a fear of looking or feeling powerless; in my career, the need for esteem; in society, a need to show certain markers of class—a house, stylish clothing, a haircut that others feel is appropriate; a need to look productive; a need to fit in; a need to feel attractive. Four months free of showers, haircuts, and even most relationships has stripped me of the most basic delusions around ego. It’s not that they’ve disappeared, it’s just that I’ve learned what life is like when I don’t feed it. And I’ve discovered that life is a little better with less. What, I wonder, would a life free of ego look like? I doubt that I could master it entirely, but maybe if I can imagine a life without ego, I can live a little closer to that ideal and live a more genuine life. What if I could keep my ego appropriately tamed and channeled in directions that are meaningful to me? What do I value, not for the status it gives me, but intrinsically? What would still be important? I am surprised to find that mastery is still important. I thoroughly enjoy the learning process, regardless of whether it leads to status or not. Studying a musical score and unearthing its secrets and interconnections is a source of great joy, even if I never have the opportunity to conduct the piece with an ensemble, and no one ever hears what I have discovered. I play with the idea of mastery for a while and it slowly dawns on me that it doesn’t seem to matter what I am learning and mastering, it’s the process itself that gives me joy. Next I turn my attention to relationships. I perceive all the ways we play with power in relationships: fearing to give too much and lose status, seeking out people who increase our status, avoiding others who deplete our status. People who only associate with beautiful people are odious; people who make a point to love everyone are beautiful. I think of a friend in Flagstaff who had an easy rapport with the homeless in that town, who greeted them by name as they came by his front yard, invited them in and held long conversations, not as an act of charity, but in honest friendship. How much more I held him in esteem for that. I think of the ways I have been unwilling to give up power in my relationships, to be vulnerable. What if I dropped my need for any power at all? Would I be subsumed? Would I still be respected? It’s a more difficult question, and perhaps it’s one that can’t be answered without making the attempt. Perhaps the results would be different with each friend and family member. I look closely at my marriage through this new lens, and I am glad to see that it is not based in ego but in love and mutual growth. I look at the trappings of civilized life and wonder about alternatives. Could I forego a job and live the live of a hobo? Perhaps if I were on my own, found challenges worthy of mastery, and relationships to pursue. But I care about the relationships I have now, I enjoy challenges of an intellectual type, and I doubt that my wife or my friends would be willing to join me on such a journey. No, that’s not for me. Other ideas seem more attractive: perhaps we could work remotely, live out of a camper van, keep our expenses low and spend more time outside; maybe we could get a tiny house, simplify, get rid of the TV and spend more time reading. One thing is clear: I’m sick of working myself to death in order to keep up with the Joneses, running faster and faster just to stay in the same place, like Alice and the Red Queen. That game is rigged, and I can never win. I have crossed a couple more creeks by now, but it’s been chilly and wet and I didn’t want to sit in the drizzle so I kept hiking, back up a long climb. I’m starving now, it’s after nine, and I haven’t had breakfast yet, so I need to stop soon. At the top of the hill is a wide trail junction with some tree cover. I lean against a tree while I make my breakfast. The cold seeps up through my insulated pad and I burn my mouth on the oatmeal in my impatience to get something warm into me. After breakfast, no Roadside. I wander off to use the restroom, come back, no Roadside. I make a cup of coffee. No Roadside. I’m shivering. Time to go. He’ll catch up later, I assure myself. He always catches up. I plug into an audiobook and try not to give the cold more than its due. I focus on the strange beauty around me—rocks that glow with bright lichen; dark trees, ghostlike in the mist; the feeling of being outside of time and space, directionless and preternatural. If there are other worlds close to this one, surely this is a place and time where the veil between them is thinnest. Perhaps I need only step off the trail and wander off into the woods to find myself in an entirely new land. Perhaps, perhaps. The momentum of my feet carries me along the thin line, and the moment passes. In the late morning I am descending switchbacks in a valley of rockslides, zoned out on an audiobook, when I’m startled by a shout. I pull out my earbud. “Zigzag!” It’s Roadside’s voice, but I can’t see him. It sounds like he’s way off to the side. “Roadside? Where are you?” “Down here!” I’m able to make him out, a small dark figure in a sea of wheelbarrow-sized rocks. It looks like he’s climbing straight down a rockslide with no trail. “I’ll meet you at the bottom.” I reach the bottom first, though he has the head start and the direct route. My switchbacks are easy compared to his boulder hopping. “How did you get over there?” I ask when he gets to the bottom. “How did you get ahead of me?” “I took a wrong turn on some other trail,” he says. “I thought you’d be way ahead by now.” It was pure luck that the other trail was shorter and came close to the PCT right here in this valley. We stop for a late lunch an hour later in the day’s first patch of sun. A small creek forms a tarnlike pond next to the trail, and we rest on warm, glacially-smoothed granite. The lulling waters and sunshine have me feeling lethargic. While we eat, we check the maps. We have about ten miles left until the road. By then, it will probably be too dark to hitch into town. Or, we could cut off about 8 miles by taking a side trail out to the road. I’m not thrilled about cutting off miles of the trail, but Roadside says he’s pretty miserable in all this rain and really wants to sleep in a bed tonight. It hasn’t rained in a couple hours, but I understand what he means. I’m not a footpath purist, and I’d kind of like a good meal, so I agree. “I’m packing up my rain gear now,” I tell Roadside, “I bet it’ll start raining in a second.” It’s mostly away when he laughs “Look at the pond.” Small circles spread on the surface from the new raindrops. I take off at speed, try to keep my feet on the muddy trail, open up my breath and my awareness to the cool, rain-scented air, and watch the world stream by. This part of Washington is like a garden, filled with small ponds, putting-green-sized meadows, low bushes and tall trees. This part of Washington is like a labyrinth that creates distance and protection from troubles and worries with each twist and turn of the narrow and singular path. This part of Washington is like an island, isolated and surrounded by a sea of wilderness, cut off from civilization and all of the concerns of society. The Southbound hikers seem to have disappeared, and I am all alone in this garden, this labyrinth, this island, until I’m not. A large group emerges from the garden ahead and each member carries large tools and implements to move earth. A trail crew. This trail is in bad need. Again and again it forms muddy chutes, dangerously slick, and the surrounding vegetation is trampled down with the impact of all the hikers who have sought the safety of a sure footstep. I greet the trail workers as we pass each other. I pass their camp after a mile or two. It’s a collection of small teepees and lightweight backpacking tents collected into a small city between the trees. A part of me aches for the sense of community that I see in this collection. Another mile and I encounter another platoon of trail workers. They are digging out one of the mud chutes and I have to step around them on the vegetation to climb up the hill. A guy in his forties—who must be a supervisor since everyone else is in their twenties—says “We’re fixing that.” I pass a junction and don’t think much about it until a couple hundred yards later when I remember that I’m supposed to be looking for a junction. I head back to see if it’s the right one, and it turns out I’m lucky that I stopped. The sign reads “tunnel creek trail”. It is a steep downhill into a side valley held together by exposed roots and faith. I descend a couple hundred more yards before I think “What if Roadside misses the junction?” The climb back up is far more difficult and my lungs burn to the top. “What if he already passed by?” I think as I sit on a wet log and wait. But no, he’s only a few minutes behind and he’s thankful that I waited—he says he probably would have missed it. We both fall more than once on the muddy, rooty descent. When Roadside emerges onto the dirt road at the bottom, he tells me he hurt his shoulder on one of those falls.
It’s another mile or more to the main road, where we try to hitch. It’ll be dark in another hour or so. The road is highway 2, a 4-lane freeway with a center divider and railings to keep cars from plunging into the canyon of the Skykomish River below. The highway comes down a steep hill and makes a big turn, both before and after us. This is a terrible place to hitch a ride. After a half hour of waiting, I get the idea to duct tape “Hikers to Town” onto a spare trash compactor bag that I have on hand to replace the one I’m using as a pack liner. It takes about ten minutes to complete, and only about ten minutes after that to get a ride. In town the hotel is locked up, but there’s a phone number. Thirty minutes later someone shows up to check us in and gives us keys. We unload our stuff and head next door to the bar for some food and beer. The townsfolk glance our direction, but they are used to hikers here and they quickly ignore us. While we eat our food and drink our beer, another hiker named Squatch shows up and joins us, followed by his friend Saltlick, who offers us a ride back to trail tomorrow. Back in the hotel, I talk to Lindsey and my friend Brian before I go to bed. Brian is supposed to join us in Stehekin in a few days and hike the last eighty miles. I’m concerned that he won’t be able to keep up, but he assures me he has been training. I guess we’ll see.
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October 2, 2016 Miles 9.2-26.4 of alternate, 2425.2-2432.1 of PCT 24.1 Miles “Hey Blackout, wake up!” … “Blackout, you awake?” “grmmm…” he mumbles, “yeah.” Roadside and I pack up noisily, but Blackout is silent and his tent stays dark. Just before we leave I try one more time, but he doesn’t even stir, so we start to hike. We encounter big deadfall less than 50 feet from camp. It requires some tricky climbing, so I turn and wait in case Roadside needs a hand, and I see Blackout’s headlamp back at camp. He’s awake, and quick as he is I expect he’ll catch up in no time. But I won’t see him again until almost a year later when we meet in Zion National Park for a couple of hikes. We come to a rushing creek. I can’t see it in the dark, but it sounds like a big volume of water rushing quickly downhill over a rocky bed. There’s a log across it, so I balance-beam my way across. I’m about a third of the way when my headlamp glints on the rapids below—it’s a twenty-foot drop! There’s nothing to do but keep going. I make it to the other side without incident, and so does Roadside. “Did you see the drop?” he asks. “Yeah. I’m sorta glad it was dark, I’m not sure I would have had the nerve if I had seen it in advance.” Our next obstacle is a tangle of deadfall that throws us off the trail. It takes us a minute to realize that we’re on a game trail that is rapidly disappearing. We check the map and backtrack. It’s light enough to see now, and there is a river beside us, the Snoqualmie, with a rocky bed that is much wider than the water. The banks are eroded with a ten-foot drop to the rocks below. I can’t see any place for the trail between here and the river. I check the map, and it looks like we’re supposed to cross. I look in disbelief at a huge log. It’s obviously not the intended crossing point, but I can’t see any other options. Honestly, there’s not even a good place to descend to the riverbed. The log appears to be our only hope. The problem is, there’s a large gap and a drop between the bank and the roots of the log. We’ll have to jump across the gap, land on the knot of roots, and keep our balance so we don’t fall another 8 feet onto uneven rocks that would surely break a leg. Then, one we cross the log, we’ll have to jump down onto another log. That junction is directly above the river, which could have worse consequences if we miss. We search back and forth for another option for ten minutes, but eventually we come back and stare at the gap some more. The second jump doesn’t look so bad. Nerve-racking, sure, but I feel confident that I can make that. It’s the first jump that worries me. I go first. I get a running start and then leap, backpack and all, into the air. How did I get here, I wonder? How did my walk in the woods turn into such a risky obstacle course? And just as quickly I know the answer: I love this shit. I’m never more alive than when I’m facing a challenge right at the edge of my abilities. It puts me in a flow state, lets me lose myself. An adventurous hike mixes beauty, freedom, and challenge, and reminds me that life is for living. In civilization I ping-pong back and forth between making other people happy and running from boredom. Out here, I’m not concerned with either. Whether I make this jump or not, I’m as happy as I have ever been right now. My right foot hits the bottom of the trunk, right in the gap in the roots. It is polished smooth, probably from the soles of other shoes, but it is dry and the traction holds. I hit hard, and the next few steps are fraught as I pull my speed under control and wobble on the hard wood. I catch my balance, then move down the log to make room for Roadside. His leap is about the same as mine, except that his pack threatens to throw him off balance for a minute. He wobbles, steadies, and then we look at each other. “Made it.” I grin. He looks shell-shocked. “Yeah.” The next log is a simple hop down in comparison, but the fact that it’s above a fast-moving river and there’s nothing to balance against or hold on to makes it perilous. I focus with all of my attention and hop down onto the smooth log. There is more traction than first appeared, and I’m able to land and cross without incident. Roadside follows. We pass the turnoff to Goldmyer Hot Springs. A sign tells us that it’s private property and costs $20. As much as I’d love to soak in a hot tub, we need to make miles, and I get the feeling that a couple of hours in the tubs would slow us down for the rest of the day. We continue on. A sprinkler sprays hot water over a small tub, accompanied by the heavy smell of hydrogen sulfide. A short ways up from there, a showerhead is installed on a tree, eternally showering water onto a stump below. I stick my hand under and feel the tepid warmth run over it. It will smell like boiled eggs for the rest of the day. The trail climbs uphill for a long way, then joins a dirt road and climbs up some more. We’re headed toward Dutch Miller gap, and we can see it for a long time. The trail breaks away from the road again and follows a brook running through silver granite. Ferns, flowers, and the occasional fall foliage adorn the brook. It is peaceful. We haven’t seen another soul all day. Over the gap, we descend toward a small lake in a hanging valley. Another brook begins and the trail follows it. A pool forms in the depression between two humps of granite, the far one with a trickling waterfall, the near one embellished with red leaves, and in the bottom of the crystalline pool, a collection of silver stones cast with a blue tint from the clear water. It strikes me as the most beautiful scene I have ever seen. I snap a picture, but a picture can’t capture the tinkle of the falling water or the loamy scent of the muddy earth. There’s no substitute for the present moment; we can’t take anything with us without giving up something in return. I put my phone away and just stand there to take it all in. After the lake, the descent into this new valley is muddy and steep, and I slip several times, once falling hard on my side. Eventually I find my way down the switchbacks and emerge back onto the PCT.
Roadside catches up just as I finish lunch next to a bridge. While he finishes his, I watch a chipmunk run back and forth across the bridge collecting nuts and seeds. It’s a good reminder that winter is close. The afternoon is a long climb—3000ft over 10 miles. We only do seven of the miles before we stop to camp. At the end of dinner, some deer visit and we watch them quietly munch on leaves. Even now, after all the deer I’ve seen, there is still magic in the appearance of these peaceful creatures. October 1, 2016 Mile 2390.6-?? (alternate trail) 13.2 Miles It’s three forty-five in the morning. I have been awake for close to an hour. I can’t open the window more than a crack and I am being slowly suffocated. I finally decide to sit up and watch TED talks on my phone. My eyes hurt and I feel like I have a hangover, but I only drank two beers last night with dinner. I wasn’t feeling that great at dinner, either. Roadside and I each did our own thing, and I ended up reading 1984 in a busy restaurant while I nursed my beers, slurped a tomato bisque and nibbled at a grilled cheese. I could barely finish the sandwich. I hope I’m not getting sick. Please don’t let me get sick. After an hour of TED talks I finally feel tired enough to get back to sleep. I wake again at 7:30, send Roadside a text—breakfast?—and he knocks on my door a minute later. On our way to the Pancake house next door, we encounter Blackout. He’s stuffing things into his pack in the lobby. He’s on his way out, he says, wants to get an early start. After breakfast we see him again, doing the same thing in another part of the lobby. So much for an early start. I need to find some hiking poles. Again. Two days ago one of them broke and I had to borrow one of Roadside’s so I could pitch my tent. Yesterday, the other one broke. What is this, my fourth pair of poles? The closest thing to an outdoor store doesn’t have any. We walk together to the far end of town, but the only shops seem to be restaurants, real estate offices, and a couple of convenience stores. The ski shops are all shuttered for the summer. Walking across town takes time, and by the time we’ve checked three shops and returned it’s already eleven. We decide to pack up and get lunch. We go to the Aardvark cafe, a little outdoor restaurant operated out of a trailer in front of the Chevron where we collected our resupply boxes. The owner is a trail angel, and we ask her if there’s anywhere to get hiking poles. “Oh, I’ve got plenty of hiking poles. Hikers leave them here all the time. They’re all at home, though. Can you wait for a bit? I’ll call my boyfriend and tell him to pick them up before he comes over. He gets off work in an hour.” We’re happy to wait. We eat our lunch in the little courtyard and look out at the ski slopes and dramatic mountains around us. On and off a light rain falls, but we’re under a canopy. I have a couple more cups of coffee while we wait. It’s funny, the mountains didn’t seem this dramatic while we were hiking in them. The poles arrive around 1pm. I am so grateful. “It’s nothing,” the trail angel says, “have a good hike.” We set out on our road walk. There’s a popular alternate trail that goes by some hot springs and cuts a few miles off the main route. We plan to take it. Once we get past town, I notice another hiker behind, slowly closing the distance. “Is that Blackout?” He catches up a little before the trailhead. “I thought you were leaving hours ago,” I say. “Yeah, I was planning to, but I wasn’t feeling well this morning. I think I ate something bad last night.” The trailhead is swarming with people. We make one last stop at the restrooms. People are eyeing us like we’re wild animals. I see one father point us out to his kids. I imagine their conversation. “See those guys? They hiked here all the way from the bottom of California.” “Wow really? That must have taken them forever. How far is that?” “I don’t know. Probably at least five hundred miles.” It makes me feel good to be an object of attention, even though the conversation was probably more like this: “Daddy, something smells.” “See those men over there? They’re hippies. Hippies don’t take showers. Don’t ever become a hippie, son.” We start up the trail, which resembles an airport escalator: steep, constant, and full of people. I take the lead and charge up the rocky trail. As I start to get going, the caffeine begins to surge. Before I know it I’m nearly running up the slope. I pass day-hikers one after another. One lady says “nice pace!” and even though I’m starting to flag, I push through—I don’t want to let her down. It starts to rain. I stop to take out my raincoat and Blackout flies by at much the same pace. He’s gone before I can hoist my pack. I catch up to him again at the pass above Snow Lake, where he looks at his phone. The rain is light. “What does your map say?” he asks. “Mine says the trail is supposed to cut down here, but there’s no trail.” “Your GPS is probably just off a little. I’m sure you’re not supposed to cut down that.” My map is no help. We’re looking down a steep, rocky slope toward the lake. He looks uncertain. I tend to trust the trail on the ground more than any map, so I continue on. To be honest, I rarely even check my maps at junctions anymore, the PCT is usually so obvious. I’m sure he’ll figure it out. He follows. A minute later the the trail cuts downhill as expected. Now that we’re at the lake, the people are gone. It’s quite a dramatic change. We cut around the eastern side. The rain picks up to a steady shower. At a junction above a deep valley view, I take a break to snack a little and wait. Blackout arrives quickly, then Roadside a minute later. We rest for a minute, then continue around the lake. The surface changes from pale blue to dark grey and back, depending on the rain and the angle. Sharp, craggy granite surrounds the opposite shore, and mists hang over all. We cross a log bridge over the lake’s outlet, and I can see the rocky bottom as through glass, a story or more below. Climbing, winding. Each turn in the trail feels like a discovery, another small kingdom with tree-trunk colonnades and granite crenellations. A few backpackers are camped here and there near cliffs overlooking the lake, and the way one of them looks at me—like he’s surprised to see me way out here—makes me doubt myself. If we’re still going the right way, PCT hikers should be coming through here several times an hour. I’ve been avoiding it, but I wrestle with zippers and pull my phone from an inside pocket, taking care to keep it out of the rain. It takes a second for the GPS to find me, and then… “Fuck.” I’m going the wrong way. For close to an hour now. Over muddy, rocky terrain. Remember that junction where I stopped to wait for Blackout and Roadside? We were supposed to take the other path. I turn back and tell Roadside and Blackout. They take it in stride, but I feel like an ass. Another hour and we’re back at the junction, looking at the same deep valley that greeted us before, but this time with new eyes now that we know we have to descend into it. The rain lightens to a pitter-patter. We start a brutal downhill of switchbacks, deadfall logs whose diameter comes up to my shoulders, and rock-filled slopes. One of the fallen trees is on a steep slope; a fall here would be a major injury. Someone has tried to cut two footholds into it, but all they’ve really done is remove the bark. The wood underneath is smooth and slick from the rain, as I learn when I fall hard against the trunk. I make an awkward, painful climb over to the other side and then wait for Blackout and Roadside to pass their packs over and make the treacherous climb. We have two more trees like this to cross, then a couple more switchbacks bring us to a steep rockfall. The trail has been constructed out of its boulders, but a section is simply gone, replaced with an empty scar that slices down the slope. I am glad that I was not here for this landslide filled with heavy boulders. I find the trail on the other side and trace it with my eyes to where it switches back and crosses the empty space again. While I’ve paused, Roadside and Blackout have caught up. It’s steep, but the rocks are rough and have plenty of traction, so I’m not all that worried about falling. What concerns me more is the potential for a loose boulder to come unstuck and crush a leg or a ribcage. “What do you think?” I ask. “Climb down?” They survey the trail. “Better than twice across,” Blackout says. “Yeah,” says Roadside. Difficult terrain, especially on long hikes, has a momentum of its own. Each obstacle you cross commits you a little bit more to your present course, since turning back would require you to negotiate every obstacle again. Since you don’t know what’s around the next corner, this obstacle could very well be the last one, and it could be smooth and easy the rest of the way. Or, things could get worse, one obstacle at a time. If we continue, this could be the last obstacle. Or it could continue to get worse. If we turn back, we know for a fact that we’ll have to cross the same obstacles again, cover all the miles back to Snoqualmie pass, then face an unknown number of obstacles when we take the other trail. It makes more sense to keep going, even if each obstacle is a little more dangerous than the last. Adventurers of all stripes are advised against goal-fixation (the blind pursuit of the goal despite dangers), but I think it’s often a more rational avoidance of the known dangers of turning back that leads people into the unknown challenges that turn out to be beyond their skills. This fear is with me as I start my descent—if the trail ahead continues to get worse, will I have to climb back up this later? And then climb those giant logs again?
I get down to the next switchback without incident, then watch as Blackout and Roadside negotiate the risky scramble. I take a deep breath and unclench my buttocks. I’m pleased with myself, with all of us. I just hope that’s the last of it. The trail plunges back into the trees. We cross a few more giant logs, but the slope is less extreme now and instant death is less of a danger. Eventually we make it to the valley floor, a dark forest covered with smaller deadfall. It’s getting dark and we’re completely exhausted. The mental challenges of the obstacles have been every bit as great as the physical. We find a clearing to set up camp. We cook dinner and talk easily. Blackout adds a lot to our group, and I’m glad he’s here. I hope he continues to hike with us. Halfway through dinner, apropos of nothing, he says “I think we’re in Grizzly country now.” Roadside looks up from his dinner, eyes widened. I’m sure mine are, too, because I feel instantly more aware of our surroundings. As if he’s sensed our anxiety, Blackout hedges. “But I’ve heard there are only like eight in the entire state, and this is right on the South edge of their range.” That might be more comforting if we weren’t headed North. After dinner, I learn that Blackout was a behavioral interventionist before the trail. My sister works the same job, helping kids with Autism to learn the skills they need to function in society. Her son, my nephew, has an autism diagnosis. My wife is an administrator for a behavior health care company, and I’ve taught plenty of kids with autism, so we have plenty to talk about. Roadside goes to bed while Blackout and I work our way through that and other subjects. Eventually we turn in, too. “We usually get up at 5:30,” I tell him. “Want me to wake you up?” “Yeah, I’ll get up with you guys.” September 30, 2016 Mile 2370.4-2390.6 20.2 Miles Town day. Cold weather. A good night’s sleep. All things that conspire to speed my steps. I hit the trail at full speed, flying up hills like a dirtbike. Roadside is left in the dust. At first light I come up on Blackout packing his groundcloth. “I couldn’t find a spot until after dark,” he says. “I just cowboy camped in the first flat spot I found.” He’s apologizing, I think, for the fact that he camped on vegetation. The flattened grass already shows signs of springing back, though, so I think it counts as a durable surface. He’s far enough away from the trail, too. Leave No Trace principles haven’t been violated here. Still, the fact that he’s concerned makes me appreciate him all the more. In a world of give-no-fucks arrogance, it’s nice to know that someone still has a few to give. A little while later I take a break to eat breakfast and give Roadside a chance to show up. I stir boiling water into my oatmeal and contemplate how I can bring a piece of the wilderness back into civilization with me. It’s not all black and white, I think. I don’t have to choose between subsistence farming and a corporate job. I’ll have to find some sort of job, it’s true, but maybe I can do something more on my terms. Teaching high school marching band left time for almost nothing else. Particularly in the fall, that prime hiking season, my evenings and weekends were so full I barely had time to reflect on how much I was missing. I chose high school in part because I could make better music, but also partly because it was flashy and public. It was a reflection of ego. What if I let go of that? Could I teach middle school instead? Done by the afternoon, no evenings or weekends. Time to spend with Lindsey, time to take weekend trips. I once observed a teacher whose middle school bands sounded better than my high school bands. Maybe, if I wasn’t always focused on the next football game or competition, I could build that type of program. I have two more packets of oatmeal and Roadside hasn’t shown up yet, so I decide to make them. I take in the scene—a couple of sharp but low peaks nearby, and forest that has all the same trees as any other forest that I’ve seen so far in Washington, except that it’s this forest, in this unique arrangement, in this unique place, and I am here right now. That gives it a beauty and immediacy that is hard to beat. It occurs to me that I’ve found something else of the wilderness to bring back with me. Not the forest, but the experience of uniqueness and immediacy. Walking near my house, I can gaze at the trees sashaying in the wind, feel my smallness under the cloud-speckled sky, notice the subtle slope of the land, pay attention to the bird calls. It will take more effort, certainly. It will lack the interconnected ecology and the overawing grandness of the forests and mountains, but civilization is not entirely lacking in natural magic, as long as I take the time to pay attention. Where the hell is Roadside? I’ve eaten two cups of oatmeal, and two cups of granola. I decide to make that rare treat, a cup of coffee. The culture seems designed to keep us from paying attention. Much of television is a Roman Circus, your job and everyone else’s is trending toward bureaucracy and repetition, you better fill up your commute with radio and podcasts, and don’t miss out on social media! You’re allowed politics, but only if you focus on the horse race and not what the government is actually doing. Just enough to make you think you have some control. God forbid you look at the underlying systems or question the economy. Growth, growth, growth! Or else you’re a goddamn commie bastard. There’s no one orchestrating this, of course. It’s a natural outgrowth of the systems themselves. The reason it’s easier to focus on national politics than on local politics is because the TV can reach more viewers that way. The reason they want more viewers is so they can make more money. Even if they decided they didn’t want more money, it doesn’t matter—if another station can make more money, they can buy them out or outspend them on marketing. In the economy, survival of the fittest will always mean the company that makes more money. A business with any other focus will always lose. It might be a little better with the rise of the internet, but attention is still scarce and the big internet companies are entrenched in the same basic system. The biggest difference now is that instead of trying to reach the greatest number of people with the same content, now the media platforms try to reach each person with the content most likely to grab attention. The memes that create fear or anger or excitement spread fastest. Those tend to be the ideas that are black and white, and the subtle complexities that help us understand the world are lost in the clamor. I realize that I’ve stumbled on something else that I need to bring back from the wilderness: quiet and mental space. I will need to eschew the loud, simplifying voices and reject incitements to outrage and disbelief, to seek out the thoughtful voices that appreciate the complexity in the world. It will take eternal vigilance, but I have a feeling that my time in the wilderness has ingrained a love of quiet that will help me keep my wits in the information feeding frenzy of civilization. Roadside still hasn’t appeared. That’s worrying. I doubt he’s injured, but he could have taken a wrong turn. I’m comforted by the fact that there are many others on the trail, both thru-hikers and, increasingly, day-hikers. It’s also not the first time we’ve lost each other for a few hours at a time. I decide to push on toward town. Dayhikers appear in droves. Dogs, too. The dogs make me smile. They are so happy here in all the open space. It reminds me how lucky I am to be free of walls and responsibilities. They make me miss my dog, Deuce. I’m glad he and Lindsey have each other’s company. Cars line a dirt road. It must be a weekend, there are so many of them. The trail cuts across and continues its long descent toward Snoqualmie pass. I can see the highway first, then the small town, tucked away in a deep valley between the mountains. I cut across a broad, treeless slope. A ski lift gives a hint to why the trees have disappeared.
The manager at the one motel in town allows me to hold an additional room for Roadside on my credit card. I unpack, start some laundry in a broom closet at the end of the hall. I sit on a chair in my rain gear and read 1984 until my phone rings. It’s Roadside. “Hey Zigzag, where are you? I just got to town.” We meet at the motel desk. While we wait for the manager, he tells me he took a wrong turn down a dirt road. “I ended up at a creepy building and had to turn around.” “I bet that was the abandoned radio tower those guys were going to camp at!” September 29, 2016 Mile 2344.5-2370.4 25.9 Miles The white tule fog has invaded the forest; everything is damp. Our headlamps brighten only the fog, a couple of tree trunks, and the ground. It is impossible to see more than a yard or two beyond my feet. We cannot seem to find the trail. We stop, check the GPS on our phones. We’ve passed it. Backtrack, try again. It is made more difficult by the fact that the ground here is disturbed everywhere. Everything and nothing seems like trail. On our way back, we pass something that seems like a dirt road, slightly depressed into the dirt lot. The GPS says we’re on the trail now, but who knows. GPS isn’t perfect. We try to follow it and check again. Still on the trail. We come across a half-circle of railroad ties that stand vertically in the dirt, a sort of forest road cul-de-sac to keep cars from entering the “camping area”. There’s a sign on the other side, and there it is: our beloved single-track line of dirt. Confidence gained, we pick up speed. Each morning stays darker longer, and this fog doesn’t help. It takes nearly an hour before there is any light at all, and another half hour before the first glimpses of color in the sky. There’s a big climb in the early dawn. I stop briefly to talk to three thruhikers climbing out of their tents. It seems like there have been many more hikers about the past few days. Have we caught up with the crowd? At the top of the climb I stop at a dirt road for breakfast. Below me, a fjord of fog fills lush green forest. A few ridges over, I can see the craggy peaks of the Washington Cascades, the final mountain range of my hike. My mind wheels ahead to the Canadian border, less than two weeks ahead. I am excited to return home, to sit on a couch again, watch a movie, see my wife and my dog. To have plenty of food nearby, and even more just a phone call away. I can’t wait to rest. Then what? A job search, I guess. Back into the culture. Back to the rules and the expectations of my various tribes. Back to the civilized pace of life, so frantic and harried, so noisy and meaningless. Just to think about it overwhelms me, makes me want to dull it all with a drink or a television show. I refuse. I refuse to let myself be browbeaten into mindlessness. When I return to civilization, I will take a piece of the wilderness with me. It will be a fight. The memes of civilization are nearly all attached to a piece of code that says “proselytize.” It’s how the memes spread, and how we gain safety in our tribes—If the others aren’t like you, make them change. If they won’t change, cut them out. Millions of memes, all fighting for dominance, all giving instructions for homogeneity within the tribe, all creating the monoculture. Live in a house. Watch TV. Get a job. Drive a car. There is variety, but only within a small range. If I decided to live in a tent for the rest of my life, or walk everywhere, what jobs would be open to me? If I spend my time reading books instead of watching TV, my memes will be different, and I won’t fit in with the culture. If I choose slow, careful regard over speed and productivity, will people think I’m thoughtful or just lazy? It’s a nice trap society has built for us: conform or face scorn. Roadside catches up while I eat my oatmeal. I realize that I’m lucky in comparison. As constrained as I feel, Roadside has it worse. There’s a reason why van life culture and full-timing (making an RV your permanent home) are primarily white middle-class phenomena. If I fear being seen as a lazy bum or an outcast, how much more scorn would he feel due to his dark skin and all of society’s memes that come along with that? Still, the fact that he has it worse doesn’t make mindless civilization any less of a trap. The three hikers we just passed join us at the dirt road. One of them tries to check his map to see if the road reconnects with the trail ahead. It looks like a flatter, more scenic route. The road doesn’t appear on his map, but they decide to try it anyway. We never see them again. After breakfast, we parallel a ridge through open forest with little undergrowth that reminds me of the higher parts of Oregon. I am left with my own thoughts again. Thinking about the return to civilization depresses me, so I plug into a podcast instead. A couple hours later, I stop at a sunny glade with a view to the east to snack and wait for Roadside. I unplug from the podcast and hear some rustling nearby. I look over and see another hiker, about fifty yards away, stuffing things into his backpack. He sees me and walks over. He’s young, maybe only nineteen or twenty, skinny, with sandy blonde hair.
“Hey, do you know what kind of mushroom this is?” He’s holding a bright red mushroom with spots. It looks like the archetype of the poisonous mushroom. “No idea, sorry.” I pause for a beat. “I’m Zigzag.” “Oh, I’m Blackout. I’m pretty sure this is the mushroom that was the first recorded use of hallucinogens, but I’m not sure. It’s supposed to make you feel pretty ill, though. I was considering taking a small bite.” If he’s asking me to give him permission, I am completely the wrong person. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I know nothing about mushrooms. It looks like straight poison to me.” “I think I’ll wait until the next water source.” Maybe what he’s really looking for is recognition of his bravado. I chuckle and express my disbelief, kindly tell him I think he’s crazy, and this seems to be enough. We chat a little more about the trail, and he heads on before Roadside arrives. An hour later I find Blackout’s backpack lying at the end of a switchback. A side trail cuts a ways across the mountainside to a brook. I expect to find him there, but no. I fill my bottles and worry a little. This kid was thinking about trying a wild, poisonous-looking mushroom and now he has disappeared and left his pack behind. He’s probably just using the restroom somewhere, but maybe he’s on a wild hallucinogenic trip, lost in the woods. The last time I came into contact with someone on psilocybin mushrooms, it was a bad scene. My friend Jay was going into the woods near Flagstaff to do them with a friend. I was dating his sister at the time, but I considered him a good friend, too. On his way out of town, I told him to give me a call if anything came up. A couple hours later, he called to tell me his friend was freaking out. When I arrived, Jay’s mouth was all bloody. We found his friend up on a hill, walking barefoot over lava rocks, his jeans around his ankles and torn to shreds, penis hanging out of his boxer shorts. He was completely incoherent, and stared at me with confusion and malice. He moved like a stork over uneven shallows, bobbing and stumbling, arms wildly akimbo. He got in my face and squawked at me, then took a wild swing. I stepped back out of reach as he tripped over his pants and opened his knees on the sharp rocks. Jay and I weren’t able to get him into the car, so we had to get two of his friends to help us. “Man, that kid can’t handle his drugs,” one of them said after a massive bong hit. By the time we got back out, all that was left of the stork-man was his tattered jeans. Eventually someone saw him walking at the other end of a lava field, at the edge of the trees. He was beginning to come down, and as we walked him back to the car, he kept muttering “I hate you guys.” On the way into town, all five of us crammed into a little Toyota Corolla, we were followed by a police officer for several miles. I still remember the tangible release I felt when he turned off down a side road. Before that day, I had always thought of psilocybin as a fairly harmless drug. The mushroom Blackout took might be much worse than that, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. I finish pumping my water and carry the bottles back to my pack. Blackout is there, talking to Roadside. He must have just stepped into the woods to use the bathroom. Roadside doesn’t need water right now, so we continue on. A few minutes later, Blackout flies by in a downhill run. Another couple hours, and we run into him again at the top of a hill, eating lunch. We join him. “Hey Blackout, did you end up trying that mushroom?” I ask. “Yeah. I took a little nibble. I feel a little queasy, and all the colors seem a little brighter, but that’s about it.” I just hope it doesn’t get any worse. The afternoon is an endless forest and blurs by. We see Blackout one more time, at a spring in the evening, and then he is gone, another temporary friend in this temporary world. We find a wooded site between two steep hills. A couple hikers come by while we’re eating dinner, looking for a campsite. They explore near us for a bit, then tell us they’re going to head on to an abandoned power station a few miles ahead and see if they can camp inside. It sounds horribly uncomfortable to me—a hard floor, stale air, the likelihood of mice or insects. Probably beer cans and broken glass, too. No thanks. Give me the interconnected, efficient forest, the naked night sky. Give me flowing rivers of cleansing air, living walls of wood and leaf. Let the soft earth hold me in her bosom. Let me sleep under the billion billion worlds, and know that I am alive. September 28, 2016 Mile 2314.6-2344.5 29.9 Miles The days have crept their steady crawl, and winter may pounce at any moment. Only luck has kept our hike alive; in previous years, hiking season has ended as early as September 1st, when an early storm has made the Washington Cascades impassable without specialized equipment. No accounts have recommended planning a hike lasting past the fifteenth, and now we are creeping toward October. If the weather holds and we can hold our 25-mile-per-day pace, we should finish in 14 days. I don’t doubt the pace, but the weather worries me. This morning it is cold, colder than it has been until now. The anaerobic chemistry repairing my muscles overnight has kept me warm enough in my sleeping bag, but when I pack up, not enough blood can flow into my fingers to keep them nimble. I operate like a backhoe, a stiff claw scooping and stuffing items into the open pit of my backpack. The land is leopard-print with tiny lakes this morning. I wonder what geologic process has speckled the earth this way. In the early dark, they reflect starlight and fairy dust. As daylight encroaches, the sky blushes and the ponds fill with rosé. Birds call quietly, perhaps in warning of our rough footsteps. This morning we mount an ascent toward Chinook pass. I remember my father’s sturdy white kayak, called a Chinook. Both are named for the native tribe that helped the Lewis and Clark party survive the winters of 1805 and 1806. It would be nice to have some of that magic right now. The pass has pit toilets, and they look new, and like they have been cleaned recently. It seems silly to be this excited about clean pit toilets, but this is our life now. We use the cinder-block walls of the toilets as backrests while we make our breakfast and gaze out over the valley below. People drive up a road in cars look at us askance, but who cares? There are no other backrests around, and there’s nothing unclean about our choice of breakfast spots, despite the associations people carry around. We can see the road wind down the mountain for four or five miles. I wonder what towns this pass connects. It’s strange to be on the edge of civilization and yet so disconnected from it. A couple hikers come through while we’re eating. They are tall, strong young men who look like they should be on the Yale rowing team, not like dirty nomads who have been starving themselves for months. They speak confidently about the pass ahead, with perhaps a touch of arrogance. They are friendly, but I feel inadequate in comparison. Where does that feeling come from? If I had their physical stature, it would give me nothing more that I don’t already have. I might gain additional respect from people who care about such things, but are those the people whose esteem I crave? A half hour later, Roadside and I catch up to them on the way up the mountain. They are pausing every few steps, huffing and sweating. We stroll past easily and wish them a good hike. I wonder, too, about this other feeling, not entirely kind, that puffs out my chest as we stop at the top of the pass and look back to see them far below. What is it that makes us feel the need to compare ourselves to others? I have no need to compete for territory or a mate, there is no survival or replication advantage that I gain by hiking faster than these two men who I have never met before and will probably never meet again. Nor did I stand to lose something if they had outhiked me. Is it hardwired into us? It seems to be a primarily masculine affliction, this drive to competition, although I see women engage in different versions of the same. Whether hardwired or learned, it does seem to ease when I recognize it for what it is: ego. It’s a story I tell myself about myself, a meme that I can release by telling myself a different story, creating a different meme. Hike your own hike. It means many things, but first and foremost, it means to release the stories about status or glory and hike in a way that makes me fundamentally happy. It makes me realize that genuine happiness and concerns about status seem to be fundamentally opposed. Strangely, as I recognize my own ego and choose this new story, I notice another layer of pride emerge—pride that I am able to recognize my own ego, and that I am somehow better than other people for my ‘enlightenment’. I release that, and then notice another layer of the exact same. Perhaps it is hardwired. I turn my attention out, toward the landscape. I am hiking through a series of lake basins framed by pastel cliffs. Greens and golds paint the rock walls and spill into the reflected surfaces of the lakes. They are unexpected hues, august and regal. The autumn air has a dignified quietude that softens my knotted pride. I am humbled before the earth. We stop for lunch, then continue through a long section of easy climbs and descents. Roadside falls back a ways. I continue to examine and try to escape my ego and status roles for most of the afternoon, but each time ends in failure unless I turn my attention to the landscape. Ego always sneaks back in, but I get a temporary reprieve each time I look outward, and it seems like I am able to do so a little longer each time. In the early evening I wind down to arrive at the Mike Ulrich cabin. It is a wooden cabin open to all, situated in the trees on the edge of a meadow. Unnaturally white tule fog blankets the meadow and creeps slowly downhill, but dissipates as soon as it reaches the clearing. On the front porch of the cabin, two fifty-gallon trash bags overflow with garbage. A few beer cans and other scraps of paper are scattered about in the dirt. Under the trees, the vegetation has been cleared and the ground crushed by heavy equipment as far back as I can see. It is a truly ugly place in the middle of a vast sea of beauty. Roadside and I plan to camp here tonight.
I climb the stairs and open the wide heavy door. A fire is blazing in a deep-set fireplace in the back wall and I can barely make out the silhouettes of people in the dark. Voices greet me, both male and female. They seem familiar to each other, engaging in the sort of easy ribbing and playful insults of long-standing friends. As my eyes adjust, I can make out six of them around a thick wood table and benches, four male, two female. Some backpacks are leaned against the walls, and I set mine there too. On the other wall is a ladder leading up to a sleeping platform above. The room is warm and stuffy. “Hey, I’m Zigzag. You guys northbound?” “Hey Zigzag,” one of the guys says. Yeah, we’re all northbound.” He introduces himself, then they go around the table, but the names come too fast for me to remember and I’m struggling to make out faces. “My hiking partner Roadside should be here any minute.” “Cool, man. Pull up a seat. You want a hit?” Roadside shows up a couple minutes later and we go through the same ritual of introductions. A couple of guys get up and go outside. Every time the door opens, the light is blinding. For dinner, each of us cooks something different on our individual camp stoves. The conversation is noisy and filled with laughter, but Roadside and I are mostly left out their conversation. I try to ask them questions, but each time it seems like an interruption and I feel like an outsider. The loudness is jarring to me and makes me feel even more isolated. It is clear that this group has been hiking together for a long time. Roadside and I aren’t unwelcome, we’re just extraneous. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the way things are. The guy who first welcomed me is coming around with a pot and offering a little to each person. He asks if I want some. “What is it?” “Wild mushrooms.” and then he offers the scientific name. It’s dangerous to eat wild mushrooms. Some of them can permanently destroy your liver with a single bite. Some of them can kill you in a matter of hours. Lots of others can make you so sick you want to die. “Sure! Thanks.” He knows the scientific name. That sounds to me like he knows what he’s talking about. I’m not especially afraid of death, but I’m definitely afraid of not living. The mushrooms are tasty, but they aren’t the wild flavor I was expecting. Honestly, they don’t taste all that different from the white mushrooms at the supermarket. I sure hope they don’t kill us all. After dinner, Roadside and I convene briefly about sleeping. We had planned to stay in the cabin, but it’s so hot in here, and so noisy, and the group seems so far away from sleep, that we decide to find a place to camp outside. We wish them a good night and find a place close to the meadow, under the trees. The nearby tule fog creeps down toward us and reaches out tendrils between the trees. It looks like something out of a horror movie, and yet I feel nothing but relief in the cold dark quiet. September 27, 2016 Mile 2292.4-2314.6 22.2 Miles Resupply is the same old story: I can’t make decisions and it takes ten times as long as it needs to. I finally finish, take a shower, check out, and head down to the store to have some breakfast and coffee and wait for Roadside. On the walk down, someone pokes me from behind. I jump a little. I didn’t realize anyone was there. “Oh, hi Rainbow!” “Hi, did you stay in the motel last night?” “Yeah.” “Can I use your shower?” “Oh crap, I just checked out. I think Roadside is still up there, though. He’s in room 7. I’m sure he’d let you use his.” Now that I think about it, it was a pretty dumb move to check out so early. There will probably be more hikers at the store who are eager to take a shower. As it turns out, there’s no one else at the store except for a couple of old local guys. Roadside shows up as I drink my third cup of coffee, and by the time we are done eating, I’ve had four. We walk the road together, but once we get to the trail we go at our own pace, which means that he disappears behind almost immediately. I am hopped up on caffeine and donuts. My legs are moving at breakneck speed, and so is my mind. When someone reads this far in the future, they might think that I have been saying that memes can are conscious. I’m not. Of course, I’m not saying that they aren’t conscious, either. There’s just no way of being able to tell, given the limits of our own consciousness. What I can say is this: structures that replicate, replicate. Structures that don’t replicate, don’t replicate. It’s a tautology. Which means that over a long period of time, we’re left mostly with the structures that replicate. Once there are enough replicating structures, any one that requires resources will have to compete for those resources, assuming they are limited. Resources, at their essence, are the means of longevity, replication, and copying fidelity. In the case of genes, they require energy and raw materials for cell division, as well as the inherent fidelity of the structures themselves—for example, the shorter a gene sequence is, the more likely it is to be copied with fidelity. In the case of memes, the resources can be anything with the capability to transmit information. Computers, books, mathematics. And of course, human beings. What makes memes so interesting is that, much like genes, or lines of code, they contain instructions that lead to real-world actions. Imagine a book with instructions to replace another book with a copy of itself. As long as the librarian faithfully executes the instructions, that book is more likely to proliferate than a book that doesn’t hold those instructions, even if the library starts with only one copy. In the world of genes, the self-replicating codes gradually emerged over long spans of time, but in the world of memes, there was already a framework with the capability to follow out, alter, or create new memes: the human mind. The interesting thing is that the memes aren’t just held by the mind, in many ways they are part of it. Memes about identity and beliefs. As an imperfect metaphor, think of the brain as the hardware, memes about identity and beliefs as software, and other memes as programs. Some of the programs can rewrite the software, and some can make changes to the hardware itself. Someone who grows up in a conservative religious household can later become a liberal atheist if exposed to the right memes. That’s not always easy, though: some of the memes have defensive measures, such as distrust of people from outside the tribe. Religions that promise damnation for people who leave the church, for example, are large meme structures practicing inoculation from opposing ideas. Memes can explain some of our ideas about status, too. As a music teacher, much of my status came from memes within the music teacher tribe: ensembles that played in tune and knew how to decode rhythms were important to the tribe. My status was based in some part around the community itself. In wealthier communities, schools had more money for instruments and parents were more involved in setting up practice routines with their students, so the ensembles were better and it made me look like a better teacher. In a poorer community, the opposite was true: old, shoddy instruments and students that didn’t practice as much. My status was less, despite the fact that I was the same teacher. Out in the wild, none of that status matters anymore. The only tribe is other hikers, and they are so loosely aligned that it really depends on who you are hiking with. Some hikers base status on how many miles you can hike each day, others on how light your base weight is. There’s even a saying that “he who stays on trail longest, wins.” It’s these varying, often conflicting memes that have led to the saying “hike your own hike.” In other words, choose your own definition of status. Don’t be infected by the memes that other people try to impose on you. Hours have passed. I find myself hungry and at a river. I take my time with lunch, but Roadside never shows up. I continue on, sad that I may have lost him. A ranger stops me to see my permit. He tells me I need to start filling out local permits for each of the special use areas ahead. It seems silly that I need another permit on top of this one, but I agree. I’m startled nearly out of my skin by a giant Elk hiding among the trees right beside the trail. He just stands there, so I try to take a picture, but when I stop it spooks him and he runs off. Uphill. Another stop for water. I fumble the filter bag and spill water all over my right foot. I almost succumb to frustration, but it’s not worth it. Just accept reality as it is. A connection is made, and I realize that anicca (pali: as it is) is also a meme. It has had utility in managing my emotions, and that utility has led me to adopt it and replicate it again and again in my own mind. Anger and frustration have some utility, too, but anicca has superceded them in my mind. Is it a meme I have chosen, or has its utility given it an advantage in the tangled web of my mind? Is there another meme within me that decides whether something is useful? Is it in my hardware, or is there actually free choice here? I finish the climb, come over a ridge, and Rainier dominates the view. It is a massive white mound trying to shove its way through the blue ceiling. I stop for a snack break. Elk are calling to one another, a tumbling alien sound that I recognize as the out-of-tune upper tones of the overtone series. Something else catches my ear, and I look back up the trail to see Roadside emerge from the forest.
“There he is!” I say. He grins at me. “I thought you were long gone.” “I waited for a long while at lunch. I was afraid you had passed me when I went to the bathroom.” We stick together the rest of the evening, tromping over ridge and through thick trees, then stopping early for dinner. We speak softly and sparsely during dinner, not wanting to disturb the strange magic of the elk as they call to each other, near and far. September 26, 2016 Mile 2271.0-2292.4 21.4 Miles At 5:30 we begin the noisy, thrashing ritual of packing up. When I emerge from my tent into the dark, I am struck again by how free the darkness makes me feel. While the rest of the world wards off darkness with artificial light and retreats into their stale homes, I get to smell the fresh air and feel the expanse of thousands of miles of atmosphere around me. I get to stand alone in the world, facing it as it is. There is nothing that makes darkness inherently less safe, unless it is our own tendency to panic in the face of the unknown. The means with which we seek safety and security are prisons of our own devising. We trade a little more time for a little less life. Sometimes the tradeoff is worth it, but if we’re not careful, we may spend our entire lives in a cage, free from danger but cut off from the richness of the world. Rainbow is still asleep, or at least not stirring. I am sorry to leave her behind. Her cheery disposition warmed up our camp and added life to our conversation. How many people have I left behind this way, now? I’ve lost count. Only Roadside remains. Faithful, quiet Roadside. I wonder what he gains from our partnership. He remains a black box. We set out in the dark, traversing a narrow catwalk along a steep slope by the dim light of our headlamps. The trail turns around the side of the mountain, the slope becomes less precipitous, we enter a dark forest and begin to climb. The air is cool but still this morning, and I begin to work up a sweat. The forest falls away and I find myself climbing a wide barren bench, Roadside trailing somewhere behind. A purple twilight fills the sky slowly and I switch off my headlamp as soon as I can muster it. Adams and Rainier glow like bright gold above the horizon, two dots in a volcanic chain that encircles the Pacific Ocean. Up here, it’s easy to forget the hard, local existence that we try to scratch for ourselves in the dirt; up here, one can almost see the turning of the planet on its tracks, sense the galactic order as it floats noiselessly through space in great circles of time. I can see Roadside’s headlamp climbing below, a pinprick of light in a dark expanse. It reminds me how empty this landscape is, how much space we truly have to move about without bumping up against anyone else. I turn and look back uphill, at the tall slope I still have before me. I climb. The first glow of light appears to the east of Mt. Adams, already distant in the south. It flows in slowly like water and pools at the edge of the volcano, as if filling in behind a dam. I check again from time to time as I continue to climb up a steep rocky slope. Pink and orange gradually fill in the other side of Adams and reflect off the glaciers. It rises far above anything else on the horizon, monolithic and kingly in stature. Off to the southwest, Mt. St. Helena protrudes only slightly above the horizon. It appears to have been lopped off at the base, an unfair illusion that belies the powerful eruption that stole its cap. A junction leads either north or up. Both ways will reconnect shortly, but I choose up. The steeper, more difficult climb will afford better views. It also avoids an ice patch along a very steep slope that often forms in the shadows of the mountain. There’s not enough light yet to see whether the ice is there, but I want to take the higher path anyway. I begin. Steep, tight switchbacks on loose talus fight me on every step. I’m still wearing my down jacket, and now it fills with sweat. When I finally near the top, it’s full light. I look back to see Roadside at the junction. Will he take the shorter, easier, and potentially more dangerous route? He starts up after me. At the top, a wind whips from the west. Strange, since the mountain has been on my eastern side all this time and I never felt a wind below. I sit in the lee of a rock pile and get stuff ready for breakfast. Then I record a video for friends back home. The microphone catches more of the wind than me. “We’re at the top of the knife’s edge. [wind sounds] hiking up. Mt. Adams…” I pan across. “Mt. St. Helens…Rainier… there’s Roadside,” I sweep back over to the ridgeline extending miles in front of us. “And here’s what we’re about to hike down. Goody goody.” When Roadside arrives, we stop and look around for a bit and fawn over the view, but it’s so windy that we quickly huddle down behind the rocks to cook breakfast. Still, not a bad place to eat a meal, I think. We check the maps during breakfast, wondering what time we’ll get into White Pass. After breakfast we start down the knife’s edge. The trail is built on large chunks of talus with tricky footing and sharp dropoffs on both sides. Strangely, I find that it’s not nerve-racking at all. I have become so used to these heights and narrow paths that I even feel comfortable enough to take out my phone and record part of my walk down the path. It’s a stunning walk. The slopes extend all the way down to the valley floors, thousands of feet below. The ridgeline is strung out before us for miles, like a skyway that leads all the way to Rainier. Snow patches dot either side of the path. Across the valley to the left, the mountains are purple with striated rock above, and green with patches of forest below. The valley itself leads out to a shimmering blue lake at its north end. It takes us a couple hours to cross the whole ridge, during which I want nothing so much as to stay fully present and engaged. This is a peak moment, I think. Something I will remember forever. Even as I’m hiking it, I imagine how I will remember it. On the northern end of the ridge walk, we turn off to the right and cross a broad tundra. There’s a small rill where we get water, then we wind down, back into the forest. And just like that, I’m back in my wandering thoughts. I’m trying to puzzle out how one of those large meme structures, like the economy or government, self-replicates and gains resources. There seems to be some sort of symbiosis between the two. I think it comes back to measurement. Measurements are a form of information that are clear and easy to spread. Before money, an object’s worth or someone’s wealth were largely a matter of personal values. If you thought your ten cows were worth more to you than my twelve sheep, who was I to tell you any different? Our status in the community would depend on other things, like what relationships we built. Monetization gave us a way to say specifically how much something costs, and to compare different types of wealth and value. It led to a direct comparison between different objects, and now we could measure wealth with a sort of certainty. Relationships were still important, but it was much more difficult to talk about the quality of relationships than it was to talk about how much money someone had. If our culture is propagated by the ideas we spread, easily measurable ideas have an unfair advantage. They spread more quickly and easily, and they are bound to take up more and more of our psyche as we see examples proliferate around us. As money became more universal, it also led to greater optionality. The more people who were willing to trade goods for money, the more options you had to spend your money. Eventually money could buy just about anything, including power. Our governments today are filled with millionaires and billionaires, who use their power to protect and grow their wealth. They reinforce the power of the “measured wealth” meme, because it benefits them. Well, it’s a start. I can tell there are a lot of other memes that reinforce money and help it spread as an idea, but they are all tangled in my head and I’m not ready to pick them apart yet. Besides, I’m back out of the trees and this climb is about to kill me. A couple day-hikers are trying to bushwhack up to the ridge to get a view of Rainier, just a little ways from the trail. I tell them that there’s a good view that we just passed five minutes ago. Then Roadside and I finish our climb and stop at a pass right above Shoe lake, which is shaped like a horseshoe. A lone mountain goat crosses back and forth over the pass while we eat our lunch. A couple of friendly dogs and their owner come up the trail and greet us. Roadside finishes lunch first and starts down the hill while I pack up. It’s a long, fast downhill that starts to hurt my knees by the end, and I can’t seem to catch up to Roadside. I start the road walk to White Pass, stick out my thumb, and get picked up almost immediately by a guy in a white honda.
“Where are you headed?” he asks. “Just to the store up the road,” I say. “You PCT hikers are getting lazy,” he says with a smirk. I don’t understand, but I smile and chuckle as if I do. There’s Roadside walking along the side of the road. I’m about to ask if the driver would mind picking him up, but then I see the store just beyond. We’ve driven less than a half mile. “Oh, I didn’t realize we were so close,” I tell him. I grab my pack from the back, thank him for the ride, and turn to wait for Roadside to close the last few steps. The store is a gas station convenience store. They have some fried foods that look like they’ve been in the glass cases for a while. The only thing vegetarian is a fried bean burrito, so I get that and a beer. The cashier tells me he feels bad charging me full price for the burrito because it’s getting old, and gives it to me for a dollar. He tells us there are picnic tables in the back of the store for hikers. The businesses along the PCT do this so they don’t have to say “you guys smell bad, please don’t stay in here and drive off our other customers.” I don’t blame them. I’m happier outside anyway. The burrito is overcooked and stale, and I can only make it about a third of the way before I give up. I go back in for something else, but convenience store food never offers much. I settle on some Oreos and a bag of Doritos. Convenience stores all offer the same foods, because those are the foods that people buy. People buy those things because it’s what they know. The culture is shaped by us, but it also shapes us. I call my parents to check in. We buy a couple more beers, then head over to the lodge nearby to see if we can get rooms. We can. Shower, call Lindsey, text with friends. Boredom. We got into town too quickly, and now I need to fill the time. I turn on the TV. There’s a presidential debate going on, between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. I have trouble believing this is even reality. Is this even reality? Everything seems so detached from the life I used to know. The wilderness is clearly real, the principles that govern it are clear, easy to read. But this world of politics and television and talking heads, it all seems constructed, artifice upon artifice until we can’t even recognize the principles that the house was built on. That’s not to say it’s not important. Just like the convenience store aisles, the culture is shaped by us, but it also shapes us. Sometimes I think we are too passive about it all. After the debate is over and I am sick from the talking heads, I knock on Roadside’s door. “Hey man, what are you up to?” “Nothing. Just watching TV.” “I’m bored as hell by my TV. You wanna sit on the patio and drink some beer?” “Yeah, sounds good. I’m bored too.” And it’s better, doing nothing. We don’t talk much, mostly just look out and sip our beers from time to time, but at least here I have my thoughts, and a little camaraderie, and a whole lot less nonsense. I ask Roadside questions about himself. I’ve been hiking with this guy for over a month, and I still barely know him. Born on Christmas, never knew his dad, mom died when he was nineteen. What do you do with your free time at home? I just work a lot, usually come home and drink some beer and watch TV. Where do you go for vacations? This is the first vacation I’ve had in years. He talks about Vegas again. He wants to take a week there after we’re done with the trail, just lay by the pool and eat and drink. I know there has to be more to him than this, but I can’t figure out what it is. I tell him as much, but he chuckles it off. I give up trying to pry information out of him. If he wants to stay private, he can stay private. He doesn’t seem mad about the attempt, though. If anything, he seems flattered, like no one has asked him about himself before. Eventually we head back to our rooms to go to sleep. Mine is stuffy and hot, and I toss and turn for a couple hours. Finally I open the sliding door and let the cool air in, and then I quickly drift off. September 25, 2016 Mile 2241.8-2271.0 29.2 Miles Sometimes you have to indulge with a little extra sleep. It’s not much, just an hour, but it makes all the difference in the world. When we leave, Rainbow is packing up. It’s not until we’re a half mile along that it occurs to me that we could have waited for her. Our first stop is at Lava Spring. It gushes out of the bottom of a large pile of lava rocks, where we pull water for breakfast. No matter how often I see water emerge directly from the earth, it never ceases to amaze me. We’re close to the end of breakfast when Rainbow passes by. The sky is crystal clear, with the exception of a few wisps to sketch out its enormity, a pillow over the crown of Mt. Adams, and a trail of clouds leading away from Mt. Rainier. The slopes are filled with huckleberry bushes, many of them turning the slopes crimson, and we graze as we go. The trail stays high on the slopes, giving us wide views for most of the morning. It’s a truly spectacular day. Why does an experience like this give me so much joy? Red bushes, white glaciers, blue skies, feel and taste of berries, cool air, warm sun. Each of these alone would be enjoyable, but there’s no doubt that the sum is more than the parts. I have no idea how Roadside is feeling, but he seems more talkative today. We walk and talk away the morning, seemingly unhurried but covering miles quickly nonetheless. It’s a thru-hiker conversation, filled with long pauses for contemplation between each slow, languid dialogue. Eventually I break away from Roadside and plunge back into my thoughts about society and culture. Society is a strange thing to pin down. It’s made up of all these individuals, and yet there’s a sort of ebb and flow to it, as if it were water, except that the individual droplets appear to have free will. Culture describes the waves, but society is something different, containing both the water droplets and the forces between them. When I think about those forces, and the waves, I begin to see the importance of the ideas we pass between us. We have ideas about morality, ideas about status, ideas about money, education, freedom. We have ideas about identity, too, both our individual identity and our group identity. Some of them change our behaviors, and some of them don’t, but all of them are contagious, and they help make up the culture and society we live in. Contagious. What an interesting idea. It makes me think of a parasite, with a mind of its own, using us to spread and replicate. How many of our ideas are we unwilling hosts to? Richard Dawkins brought this idea up in “The Selfish Gene,” where he calls them ‘memes’ and defines them as a packet of information. He points out that genes are also packets of information, and from their natural selection and replication we have created amazingly complex “replication machines” that have even produced consciousness. He was talking about us. If information can create conscious humans, could it create a complex, self-replicating meme structure? What would that look like? I come up with answers almost before I ask the question: the economy; religion; governments; human rights; the arts. And how would those structures interrelate and compete for resources? Oh shit. Resources. Human resources. Something about that gives me the chills. Almost before I know it it’s lunchtime, and then afternoon. We enter the Goat Rocks wilderness, which we’ve been told many times is the most spectacular part of Washington. I can’t disagree. Long, wide open slopes; sweeping hills; deep canyons; craggy mountains. We start a long ramp over a pass. A young woman coming the other direction tells me that there are mountain goats on the other side, just above the trail. We cross the pass and there they are, a tribe of the white, demonic-looking animals. They have moved further away from the trail, up close to a knot of hexagonal basalt columns that form the peak of this particular slope. The trail traces a wide sweep along the western slope of this valley and continues to climb toward another pass. As we make our way north, the goats parallel us, then flow downhill around us. Up close, they look powerful and fearsome. I feel a buzz of excitement and danger. They seem indifferent to us, but leave a berth as they pass to the grazing slope below. We cross over Cispus pass into another wide amphitheater on steep slopes, nearly barren of trees. The evening light casts everything in a golden sheen. A creek plummets down through broken white granite that resembles the marble chunks of greek ruins. A side trail cuts up near the creek to a campsite perched near the top of the amphitheater with wide open views. It’s one of those perfect, once-in-a-thousand-miles campsites. Sadly, it has already been claimed by three tents and their campers. We continue around the amphitheater, looking for sites, but they are few and mostly claimed. A waterfall sprays down over green moss, and we stop to refill our bottles. Rainbow shows up, and we’re both happy to see her. We talk about finding camping together again. Maybe the three of us will continue hiking together tomorrow. A half mile later, we find another site with a gorgeous view on a chunk of dirt that seems to be barely hanging on to the mountain. There are already people setting up camp, though, and it looks like there’s only room for one more tent. A little farther along, we find another camping area. This has campers too, and it’s surrounded by trees, but there is space for all three of us. We quickly set up and get started on dinner, then spend close to an hour talking about life, beauty, and the famous section we’re going to hike tomorrow—the knife’s edge—before we finally turn in. I feel well-spent. So well-spent, in fact, that when I get into the tent I struggle to make simple decisions about what goes where and what order things need to happen. It takes me about twenty minutes, but I finally lie down and try to get to sleep. My head spins with ideas about complex meme structures, and it takes me forever to get to sleep.
September 24, 2016 Mile 2216.1-2241.8 25.7 Miles Strange howls and laughter wake me in the night. They don’t sound like the desert coyotes I’m used to, but the style is similar. There’s a richer timbre, a wider range of pitch. It takes me a minute to wake up enough to realize what I’m hearing. Wolves! Are there wolves in Washington? I wonder. There must be. They seem to be away down the mountain somewhere, no threat to us. Their music reminds me of a gypsy camp, tumbling and feasting and singing. It lasts for most of an hour, an exuberant party. I am delighted. I wake again at 5:30, well rested and ready to move. My sleeping bag has collected dew in the night, like the rest of my belongings, and puts a chill into my hands almost immediately when I begin to pack. Roadside takes a few minutes to wake up, but he’s still ready by the time I finish. Pushup sleeps on. I’ve spent a lot of time on this trip thinking about why I don’t make friends easily, and I think it’s this tendency more than any other that creates barriers: I don’t change plans for others. How many people have I left behind because I’ve chosen to wake early every day? How many times have I hiked too fast to keep up with? I avoid inviting people along because it might mean changing my plans. Roadside has stayed with me since Northern California because he’s been willing to stick with my early mornings and long miles. If he had asked to slow down a little, or to do a few extra miles each day, would I be willing? How much more (or less) would I have enjoyed my hike if I had been more willing to concede some ground to others? Perhaps I’d be headed southbound with Ed and Altitude right now. Or maybe I would have skipped the Mojave desert so I could keep hiking with Sprinkler. Should I have slept in and continued with Hoot and Chocolate Milk? We make our first stop at Trout Creek for breakfast. There’s an arch bridge over the water, and all the fallen logs and rocks are covered with green moss. The sun is out, and it falls in spotty patches on ferns and other leafy plants. I’d like to dry off some of my gear, but the patches of sun aren’t large enough. I notice a tent nearby, but it’s still early in the morning and no one comes out to greet us. I wonder if its another thru-hiker. On the way out, I decide to try one of the dark blue berries from a nearby bush. I’m not sure what they are, but I know there are supposed to be blueberries and huckleberries in Washington. Hopefully it is one of those. When I was a teenager reading about the PCT, one of the books talked about picking blueberries off the bushes as the two men hiked through Washington. It sounded so wild and free, and I’ve been looking forward to doing the same for decades. Roadside doesn’t know what the berries are, either. If I wait until I meet someone who knows, I could be waiting most of the state and end up missing out on days of living the life I want to live. On the other hand, I could end up sick. I hesitantly start with one. If that goes well, I can try a few more this evening. It is a little sour, but sweet too. “Good thing we’re close to a hospital,” I joke. I’m not even sure where the closest road is. We start a steep uphill, one of the steepest yet, where I pull away from Roadside. I’m surrounded by thick forest again, cedars and firs and spruces that block out the sun and remind me how cold it is. On the downhill, I come to a dirt road with a big trashcan. It’s a bear-proof can, and someone has taped a piece of paper to it that says “PCT Hikers”. Inside there are packs of goldfish crackers, applesauce, and lollipops. I have one of each. The applesauce is especially welcome, since all the fruit I carry with me is dried. There’s not a ton left, though, and I want to leave some for other hikers, so I supplement with several of my own snacks. It takes Roadside a little while to arrive, and I am clammy cold by the time he gets there. Then a young woman named hikes up to us. She must have been the tent we saw earlier, I think. Or not. Who knows how many tents we passed by and didn’t notice. She tells us her name is Sunshine. Pushup had asked if we had seen her yesterday, because he wasn’t sure if she was ahead or behind. Her trail name fits her—she is full of smiles and enthusiasm. She offers us a ride into town, and almost before she finishes talking her brother and sister show up in a van. They have an enthusiastic, noisy dog with them, and I pet him and find myself missing my own dog, Deuce. Sunshine introduces us all, though we’ve barely just met her, and I have an awkward moment with her sister where I can tell she’s expecting me to offer a hand to shake, but my hands are dirty and feel like they’re two degrees, so I don’t offer and just stare dumbly and say “nice to meet you. We continue on, leaving the excitement and trail magic behind us. Another big climb into sunnier, more open forest. The map tells us there is a spring, and we both need to get water, but the spring, though we can hear it, seems to be hidden down a dangerous and seriously overgrown slope. We beat our way through the bushes, trying to find a way to the water. This can’t be right, I think. There’s no longer any trail at all. I check my phone map again, and now the GPS has changed my location. I’m about a hundred yards too far to the west. I cut up the hill and over, and I’ve found it, a little creek buried under fallen logs and rocks. I call back up to Roadside, and tell him we turned off too soon, and he goes back up to the trail and comes around. When he gets to me he says “There’s hikers up there.” So I fill up the bucket and carry it back up to join them. The other hikers are Rainbow and Squarepants. Rainbow is a blond woman with an accent I can’t place. Squarepants is younger, with short-cut brown hair. They have their gear spread out all over the place, drying in the sun. I notice that the bushes that their tents and sleeping bags are on have the berries I’ve seen. “Hey, do you know what these berries are?” I ask. “Huckleberries!” Squarepants answers. “I’ve been eating them by the handful and putting them in my breakfast!” “Thanks, I’ve been wondering for days. Glad to know they’re safe.” I grab a handful and start chomping while I filter water. Roadside takes a few berries, too. I ask Rainbow and Squarepants all the regular questions: where they’re from, what they used to do for work, whether they’re worried about making it before winter hits. In the sun today, winter doesn’t seem like as much of a concern. It’s not warm, exactly, but it’s pleasant. Roadside and I press on. A little ways up the hill, someone has written 420 in sticks, and in the center of the ‘0’ is a bag of weed. Did someone leave this way out here as trail magic? Or maybe a hiker decided they didn’t want to carry it anymore? Roadside picks it up. “Leave no trace, right?” I joke. “Right.” Southbounders are coming through steadily. It seems like we see another one every twenty minutes or so. We’re climbing up toward Mt. Adams, a beautiful snow-capped volcano. The forest has been burned, but there are new trees growing between the husks of the old. After a while, I zone out and listen to a podcast. I make room on the trail for a couple of southbounders to pass when I hear “Zigzag!” cut through the podcast. I look up and pull out my headphones. It’s Whistler and Paramount! I camped with them way back at Donner Pass, and didn’t figure I would see them again. They were getting ready to flip up to Washington with Poundah. We stop to talk. “How’s it going?” I ask. “Are you still hiking with Poundah?” I glance up the trail, half expecting her to come around the turn. “No, she had to go home,” Whistler says. “Ran out of money.” “Oh, bummer.” I can’t imagine how hard it would be to give up on a dream because of money. It seems perverse the way that money controls our lives. I hope she is able to find her way back someday to finish the trail. Roadside catches up, and I introduce everyone. We try to have a conversation, but we all need to keep moving, so we can’t dive into a real conversation. Before we leave, Whistler offers us a piece of useful information. “Hey, there’s an amazing view just ahead. Adams, Rainier, and St. Helens are all spread out before you.” “Thanks! We’ll stop there for lunch.” Just ahead turns out to be a long ways. I can’t blame him, I lose track of how long I’ve been hiking all the time. Plus, he was headed downhill and I’m headed up. Thinking it’s just around the corner, I keep putting off lunch, corner after corner. I’m getting hungry. It’s pretty here, though. Wildflowers, views of imposing Mt. Adams and distant, anvil-like Mt. St. Helens, the husks of burned-out trees, huckleberry bushes, and blue skies. It’s after 2PM when we finally find the spot. I’m starving, but first I need to dry out my gear. I hang my tent on some bushes and lay out my sleeping bag in the grasses beside the trail. There’s a breeze here, so my longjohns and spare socks have to be held down with heavier objects like my hiking poles. Roadside makes a similar yard-sale presentation. About halfway through lunch, Squarepants comes by and asks if either of us lost our water filter when we last filled up. I check, and I’m surprised to find that I did! I didn’t even realize it was missing. That could have been a disaster. I thank her profusely for bringing it back to me. She joins us for a snack and the view, then leaves before us. Rainbow arrives right before we’re packed up, and the three of us continue hiking around Mt. Adams. Adams stands at 12,281ft, the second highest mountain in Washington (after Rainier). The western slope is covered in a massive glacier, and it is this glacier that we get to see as we pass around the western side of the mountain. It looks so distant, yet so overwhelmingly large. Every time I look at it, it seems like it’s a different color of blue. Something about it calls to me. I want to go explore it and climb its face. I add it to my list: this is a place to which I will return. The section hikers and overnight backpackers are starting to appear everywhere and many of them have already set up their tents in the campsites that are around.
“Should we try to camp early tonight?” I ask. “It might be tough to find a site if we wait to late.” “Yeah, that sounds good to me,” Roadside says. “Yes, that’s good.” Rainbow says. We find a place near a small waterfall running into a little creek. There are several impacted sites around, most of them with tents already set up. At first we try to find something a little apart from the others, but there’s nothing we can find, so we end up adding our three tents to the five or six others. It’s a chilly evening with a cold breeze, but the sound of running water and the nearness of people is relaxing and we have a nice dinner sitting in the dirt and talking. |
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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