PCT Day 14 – I Can See the Future

Idyllwild (5 mile side trail to PCT mile 183) to campsite at mile 197

A lizard skitters right under my foot as I’m walking. In the span of a moment my little scaly friend shoots out from a bush, runs under my foot, between my trekking pole, and is off down the trail before I’ve completed my step. So much speed in such a little body. How they must perceive time differently than us. To our little lizard friends we must appear as giants lumbering through their world.

I certainly feel like I’m lumbering today. Six days of food and as many liters of water weigh down my pack, pressing me into the earth. But oh is it beautiful today. High in an alpine forest, jaguar spots of shade covering the ground, the familiar crunch of granite gravel and fallen pine needles under foot. Edward Abby said there are three kinds of people, desert people, mountain people, and river rats. I’ve always been a mountain person. Always will be I bet. Spending the last two weeks crossing the desert has given me a new appreciation for the it’s unique beauty. And still, the mountains, how can anything compare to the mountains. They draw me towards their hidden places unrelentingly, unwaveringly.

Today we emerge from the mountains onto a long ridge, the ground dropping steeply away from us. Behind us the giant San Jacinto with it’s sharp angles and jutting faces of granite. Ahead of us lies San Gorgonio with it’s bald pate and sloping shoulders. And in our present we will walk down from one giant and cross the gulf of a desert valley before climbing onto the shoulders of the next. Onward, always onward. It’s not until I realize we’ve walked off the edge of the first water report that I stop and appreciate how far we’ve already come. From Mexico, we’ve walked nearly two hundred miles from Mexico. It’s worth noting.

From where we’re perched at this little campground above the valley floor I can see the past, present, and future of our hike. Though there is so much further that I cannot see, I cannot imagine, and I try not to let my mind wander there lest I become totally overwhelmed. In planning for the PCT one can skip down the trail in a minute: the desert, the Sierra, then northern California, Oregon, and finally Washington and done. Or reduce the thousands of miles into simple resupply points, Warner Springs, Kennedy Meadows, Sierra City, Belden and on and on to the border. It all seems so neat, simple even.

But on the trail I do not even think beyond the next town, more commonly my mind barely strays beyond the next rest stop. Like Mad Eye Moody’s foe glass, I don’t worry about what’s out there until I can see the whites of their eyes.

Looking across the valley is like staring into the future. I know I will go there, just not yet. For now there is only the stars

and the gentle calls of owls.