PCT Day 22 – What am Adulting?

Big Bear city (mile 266) to campsite at mile 287

Car after car rolls into the pull out at mile 266 of the PCT, where the trail crosses the road heading out of Big Bear. The bad weather from the day previous has resulted in a balloon of hikers getting back on the trail today. We follow the ranging group around a small fire closure alternate, bunching up again at lunch, nine miles into the day and our first water source.

But after lunch it’s just Keith and I again. The terrain gently rolling and largely wooded, pine needles littering the ground in that soft crunchy way. Big Bear lake strewn out below us bright blue as it reflects the clear cool sky, the whitecaps from the day before smoothed and soothed. It’s the kind of hiking that’s perfect for a wandering mind and I let mine off leash to meander where it will.

I think of the trail name I’ve recently adopted and still occasionally feel bashful about. Not when I’m with fellow hikers, where comical or bizarre trail names are not only accepted but vehimently encouraged. I think about having written about this trail name on my blog, where anybody can read about it. The whole thing feels suddenly childish, laced with impropriety.

But, why?

Where did I get the idea that adulthood was supposed to be droll, responsible, leached of fun and immodesty and spackled back over with closely guarded emotions, sterilized under florescent office lights? When did I embrace these ideas and make them my own? What else could there be; where does one buy an alternative blueprint for the intervening years between adolescence and the grave?

I think back to a woman I used to work with; raucaus, laughing, ineffably cheerful. Incomprehensible in her ballooning good humor. Silly. Is that what adulthood is? Could be? She was unlike anyone I’d ever met; in and out of my life in a flash that left me standing like the lone witness of a brief summer squal – all wind tousled, and yet bathed in sunlight.

What part of my life is this, I think, right now, will I remember this day when I’m 90? Perhaps looking back on the worries of youth from the safely of old age and laughing at myself for thinking I could daydream my life into something remarkable. In that way I’m hesitant to place too much gravitas on this hike. I don’t want to frame the PCT as some means of change. Going out into nature to find oneself – barely on and already the cliche feels worn to thread. But this trip, the simmering down of life into relatively simple tasks provides a contrast of sorts to how I’ve seen other adults managing their lives. Those self same people who told me “hike the PCT now, when else will you have the chance.” A phrase that feels both warning and trap.

We arrive at camp, a gentle flat within a stand of trees that’s nestled in a crook of the trail. My mind whirring back into the here and now, drawn into the immediate by the few tasks that I’m responsible for: feed self, set up tent, water, bathroom. Easy enough. But without any questions answered. But maybe that’s being an adult too; accepting that you don’t know, might never know, will spend the rest of your life being thrown from the nest again and again until you learn to find happiness in the falling. Or maybe it’s nothing like that, but rather finding enjoyment in the here and now. A syrupy yellow sunset, splashed through old trees. A kind man with a playful mind. A meal, a warm place to sleep, comfort. A solomn owl in the distance, and a tomorrow that promises something new.