PCT Day 127 – The Sisters

Dumbbell Lake (mile 1947) to campsite at mile 1970

The alarm goes off at 5:30am and I do not want to get up. Starman, it would seem, is also reluctant. We snooze and snooze again, our secluded campsite next to the lake insulating us from the clacking clomping footsteps of other hikers. I know we have a 24 mile day planned, plus a two mile detour into Elk Lake to pick up stove fuel, but I cannot get worked up about getting on the trail late today. I’m tired of feeling like I’m always rushing towards something, always looking one step down the line when truly I have nothing to do but be here. There is a pervasive sense of false urgency in thru hiking and I’ve decided I just don’t care to participate in it anymore. Not when I could be eating breakfast next to a perfectly calm blue green lake.

It’s almost 9am by the time we’re walking, and I observe my utter lack of caring as though I’m watching someone else. Who is this new person who is wearing my body and doesn’t particularly care if we’ll have to night hike. Around me the forest is quite. The trail rolling and undulating below us as it ferries us up and over a ridge into Elk Lake. We eat nachos and ice cream in the cool darkness of the resorts dining room, weekend tourists in swimsuits and cover-ups take shots of vodka and thoroughly ignore us until after 1pm when we finally drag ourselves outside and down the trail. We’re still supposed to hike 18 miles or some such malarkey. I guess we’ll see, maybe.

On the climb out of Elk Lake we can see the three sisters along the horizon. We climb up up up onto their shoulders, the trees shrinking back into the ground while volcanic rock begins to pepper the landscape, the sky a perfect blue expands above us and I can finally see the forest and the mountains without the hindrance of the trees. South Sister stands alone and red, her dark face pockmarked with small grey bowls, as though someone giant has eaten into her sides, taking great ice cream scoops out of her. We walk before her along the Wickiup Plane, heading north towards Middle Sister. Middle Sister looms large over the rest of the day, grey and dominating the skyline. Her darkness is shot through with the white of snowfields, drawing the eye along her smooth sides. The grey fading to brown and red as the sun angles towards the western horizon, she has a thousand faces in the shifting light. While North Sister hides behind the skirts of her sibling, neither so prominent nor brave as Middle or South, we only catch the occasional glimpse of her face as she peeks at us like a small nervous child.

Our path wraps us north below the Sisters and in the warm slanting light of evening the world feels both grand and small. Above us mountains loom while to the west an enormous maw of a valley opens up as though we might slide right off the shoulders of the Sisters and down into the waiting pine teeth of the forest below. Even as the sky near the horizon burns yellow and orange, above us the air is a deep unending blue. The iridescent middle of an enormous donut of smoke that surrounds us on the horizon and makes for a dazzling sunset. We eat dinner ensconced in our warm tent, watching the world go dark around us.

Is it possible to feel nostalgic for something that you’re still living through? Maybe. But I know that I’ll miss these moments so much. The knowledge that our trip will soon come to an end settles inside my chest like a dark, heavy stone and I try my very best to hold onto the moment as the sun burns red and disappears from view.