Campsite at mile 1030 to Sonora Pass (mile 1017)
Total PCT miles hiked: 1221
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.
Keith wakes me at 5:30am. He seems eager to go and ushers me to start eating breakfast. This is an irony that is not lost on my sleep-foggy brain; every time I try and wake us up at 5:30am Keith complains until I change it to 6am. Today however, Keith wants to get up early and into Kennedy Meadows North, so of course we’re doing it. This is one of those arguments that’s not worth having – I begin to get ready. Except here is the thing, I just don’t feel like it today. I don’t want to deal with an unknown snowy climb over a pass that’s been described to us as both no big deal, and kind of a scary mess. I don’t want to hike uphill on tired legs, or put on gross sunscreen, or don the same dirty shirt I’ve been wearing all week. But here is the other thing, the trail doesn’t care about how I feel or what I might want to do. The climb won’t be shorter or easier because I’m not in the mood, mother nature didn’t really consider my fragile human emotions when she ruptured the Sierra Nevada into the sky. So we hike out, there is nothing else for it.
Hours later we are sitting on top of the world. The climb being closer to no big deal than scary – not that I didn’t post hole up to my hip several times. From our spot on the ridge we can see the Eastern edge of the mountains as they slowly unfold into green foothills that give way to rolling valleys. Keith points out that we can see into Nevada from here. What to do with that information.
I stare towards the horizon, as though I might see a line marking this geographic border, as though by looking hard enough I’ll be able to read California and Nevada written across the land. But of course there is nothing to see besides an endless tract of land expanding down and away from me into what feels like forever. I suppose compared to my tiny human form and brief mammalian life it might as well be forever. Behind me, circling on three sides are a vast reaching mountain range. Dark brown soil that smells of water and life breaks apart at the edge of snow fields which smooth the sharp peaks into gargantuan bowls of white.
All at once it strikes me that I will never be able to see all of these mountains. Even if I made it my life’s mission I could never witness every skyward peak, every brook rumbling with winter melt, every meadow thrumming with life. A permission of sorts, that I need not try. That no matter how hard I strive I will always be so small in this great wide world. A feeling that is at once liberating and terrifying, to know your true place in the world. There is a deep chasm of smallness into which I’ve been tossed, and I don’t know if I really want to climb out.
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