PCT Day 67 – SoBo Flip – Doing It and 26 Miles

Chester (mile 1331) to Cold Spring (mile 1305)

Total PCT miles hiked: 933

**NOTE: I think there is a reroute south of us and is throwing off the milage between the two apps that I use (Halfmile and Guthooks) so until the our flip is over I’ll be using Guthooks miles exclusively in an effort to keep things straight, and likely it will still be off when we come back north. Ah whale, what can ya do.

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

The forests around us stretches into infinity. Tall pines smattered with neon green moss marching away from the trail in near uniformity in every direction. The trail winding serenely through the understory, deeply shaded and quiet. It’s the sort of northern California forest that can lull your mind into absolute presence. I am thinking about nothing, listening only partially to the sounds of wildlife, we don’t talk as we make our way down the trail. Keith is but a vague presence behind me, inactivity comforting. It’s five in the evening and we’re still six miles out from camp. 26 today, our longest day on the trail – something that felt exciting in the planning, epic in the early morning, and now in the evening with tired feet and slowing pace it’s mostly about getting it done. But within it all I cannot imagine where I’d rather be.

We crest a small ridge. In the span of 100 feet the scenery transforms from dark pine forest to volcanic moonscape, dark brown conglomerate rock juts from the earth like spines along a dragons back. But less elegant and unform than dragon spines, so maybe more like leftover dragon poops. Below the dense forest stretches to the horizon, lit just so by the warming sun of late afternoon; hills marching into the distance, distinguished only by height. The view coupled with the knowledge that we’ll be walking across those hills for another 10 days trips something in my mind and all at once I realize that this is my life. It’s a moment of breathing in the cooling evening air in which I can recognize that I am actually hiking the PCT, living the two year dream of getting on the trail, that this experience right here and now is one of the many that will make up my time on this incredible blue planet. It feels like zooming in and out on a picture, experiencing this moment as a single instance and as part of a whole. It’s like seeing the powerful within the mundane.

I want more of these moments.

Prior to the trail I often felt that my life was rushing past me in great leaps. Caught in the cult of busy I feared downtime, seeking to cram every minute of the day with activity lest I become devalued by laziness. I sought to pull importance towards myself simply by overachieving, overscheduled, often overworked and overwhelmed. I thought a simple life would be one of mind numbing boredom. Who am I if I’m not being productive? What is the point if I’m not always making building doing something? I had so fully bought into the idea that a busy person is a fulfilled person that I could barely see that there was another way of existing. That maybe, just maybe, going into the woods to wander without interruption was it’s own form of living, and that the all stirring idea of productivity and business should not be my only aim.

Tee hee, butt mountain.