Casa de Luna (mile 478) to campsite at mile 493
Have you ever been so sore and tired that it’s actually hard to sleep? I have, more often than seems reasonable, like I ought to know better by now. But I don’t, and I’m wrecked and so I toss all night. My left knee zings pain down my whole body when I try and straighten it fully, meaning my midnight pee run is done in a stooped hobble. I’m cold and then hot, the wind blows and my over worked body cannot get comfortable. Does a wrung dish rag ever look comfortable?
I wake hungry to a 7am sun, already late by hiker standards but it feels indecently early to me. Who told the sun it could wake me up after such a sub standard night of sleep. Around me other hikers mumble about free coffee and so I extract myself from the tent and hobble forward on tender feet to investigate. It’s not so bad as I’d feared, my body that is. The coffee is terrible – though that doesn’t keep me from drinking four cups of the weak brown liquid. I’m grateful for the warmth, the caffeine, and the fact that I didn’t have to make it. In the daylight Casa de Luna is even more bizarre, like a grandmothers attic exploded over a front lawn, with disheveled hikers milling about in their over priced gear, eating pancakes and drinking coffee from titanium mugs.
Hours later we’re finally on the trail and as I watch folks pull away from us up the first climb I wonder why I’m doing this. Why I do any of this. In high school it was early morning drives into the mountains and spring breaks spent sleeping in a friend’s car all in the name of snowboarding. In college it was 5am pool sessions where I self-consciously taught myself to swim away from onlookers, with the plan to turn a second knee surgery into a half Ironman finish. Then as a young professional it was 4am alarms on the weekends, marathon and longer days of hiking and running outside before returning Monday morning to slumpel over my desk. It’s easy to be flippant. A dismissive declaration that I’m just wired this way. But I think it’s more than that.
The uniformity of the terrain lends itself to introspection. We hike past a town called Green Valley and that more or less tells you everything you need to know about the scenery. Well, less because from the top of an innumerable ridge I can see down into the Mojave desert. All baked flatness and waving wind mills. The PCT is taking us west, towards the narrowest crossing of this real desert. Thank the heavens for that. I’m more of a dessert person than a desert person. But as with all travel on foot, our approach is glacial and indirect, allowing me to turn my mind from the future and point it inwards. Or rather, away from the imposing natural world and towards the wild and often wonderful human animal.
Because while it’s appealing to disect ones inner workings and motives, the truth is I’m far from the only person out here hiking the PCT. Or thru hiking this year. Farther still from being the only person who has undertaken a journey that has their friends and family impressed and, honestly, probably just a tad worried about my sanity. Why am I doing this? Or why are we doing this? What is it about humans that sets us in motion towards the unknown and often painful process of adventure and learning. We’re questing curious dissatisfied little creatures, humans. We like to believe in impossible seeming things and hair brained ideas and then head out and put them to the test. It’s one of my favorite things about us.
Think about the first person who decided to ride a horse, that’s a rediculous choice. And then once everybody saw that one person do it, we wanted to try it too. Or walk on the moon. Or jump out of a plane with a parachute. Whose bright idea was it to take animals who wanted to eat us and turn them into our best friends? Eat a banana? Run a four minute mile? Humans are such funny, creative creatures who want to see what happens when we push an idea a little further and a little further. Until what? I suppose that’s a lot of gravitas to put on a thru hike, when framed against the human desire to explore. I’m just waking to Canada, after all hundreds of people do it every year. But viewed in a larger context, it makes me wonder to what extent we believe something to be possible. And what could happen if we, if I, could think something possible without needing to see it done first. What could I accomplish then?