PCT Day 137 – Reflections on Oregon

Ramona Falls (2107) to Cascade Locks (mile 2246) via Lolo Pass Road

Southern Oregon felt like a dream after the relentless climbs of Northern California. After all of California, more than three months of walking across such an absurdly tall state came to an end driving into Ashland in the back of a Nissan. The world outside the car a blackened husk of formerly green trees and rolling yellow grass, while inside our hermetically sealed bubble of automobile Starman and I sat in air conditioned comfort. That burning waste was in the process of being replicated a few dozen miles east, hence why the trail was closed and we were entering this new state not on foot, but on butt and four wheels. For the best. But I still wanted that arbitrary crossing and little wooden sign, even a whole state later I still envy people with their picture next to the tree with the California/Oregon sign. Smiling, pretending that one side of that tree was really any different than the other—though of course it is, because we’ve all decided that is what state borders mean.

And the land told me it was different, not just on that sign but in the wild flatness of the land. Here it was easier to carry on what I had been doing for so many weeks; walking through a forest without end, through a land without sky or depth, only trees and smoke and myself and this man besides me. We walked through days of this flat hot relentless frustrating anguished nothingness of forest, right until the day we saw the sisters. For three days things were different. Soft pine needle footing gave way to sharp pumice, hemmed in horizons let go their choke hold and above us stood three volcanic goddesses. South, Middle and North we called them and they built this land, and they made it known in their scale and their endurance of time that I was ever so small, and I thanked them each day for the reminder. Thank you, Sisters. For helping your human siblings learn.

Soon the forest grew back up to reclaim the land and Starman and I walked on towards Hood. On the way we crossed the 2,000 mile marker, just some rocks in the dirt but I hung onto Starman for a long minute and tried not to cry for everything that we’d accomplished and everything we had left to do. Left to do, left to do, 650 miles seemed like so much left to do, so we hiked. Because there was nothing else to do.

And in the flatness I grew a little mad. And in the smoke I raged against Mama Nature, in only the prideful way a thru hiker can, to be so supercilious as to wonder why the land should burn when I am hiking. And in the forest I tried to be my best self, and I thought about my future and who I would be. In Oregon I was sometimes strong, and other times I hated every minute of it. Just like during any other part of life, and I came to recognize that the trail was not sperate from the real world, but part of it. And could be a larger part of it, if I could only be brave and seek it out.

Then one day we popped out onto a road, before us a grand river. There was Washington, just on the other side and I suppose we’d done it, Oregon that is. And just like before there was no fanfare, which was for the best, I suppose. In that moment I remembered the lesson that the mountains try to teach us, what the sisters told me; that I am small upon this earth, that we all are, but not without grandeur because of it.