White Pass (mile 2295) to Bumping River (mile 2309)
Iceman’s rattling pick up truck pulls to a stop at White Pass and I struggle to extract myself from the tiny back seat.
As Starman drags our bags from the truck bed I try and count the tents across the street, bunched up like an impromptu city they are the accomodations for the fire crews working on the fires burning just south of us in Goat Rocks Wilderness. Gear assembled we wave goodbye to Iceman as he eases his car onto the road. Almost immediately the truck is out of sight, consumed by the thick fire smoke, we turn and walk into the Kracker Barrel–a combination gas station and convenience store, not to be confused with the Midwestern diner, a fact that has been disappointing thru hikers for years. Despite their lack of diner food, they will hold a hikers resupply package and have free WiFi. Which really, is all I need at this point.
We while away a few hours in the Kracker Barrel before finally deciding that it really is time to get hiking and force ourselves out the door. Outside the world is colored the terrible orange grey I’ve come to associate with fires. I can feel the smoke snaking into my lungs with each breath and I marvel at how close tenacity and stupidity lie to each other on the spectrum of adventure travel. While expectation and reality can seem as disparate as day and night. Before getting on trail my biggest concern about Washington was that it would be rainy, cold, and miserable the entire time, with nothing to look at but clouds and trees. I never foresaw that we’d be dealing with one of the driest and hottest summers on record with endless forest fires and smoke. Though I guess I was right about not being able to see anything, I was just wrong about the cause.
As we turn from the road to the trail the sound of cars zipping by is replaced by the cool dark of the forest, I resolve to let my expectations go. What else can I do? Mama Nature doesn’t care about my hike, or my desires; it feels unconscionably self absorbed to be upset about the fires when I think about all those dozens of tents set up for the fire crews, about the lives and homes lost in the Karr fire near Redding. Let it go. Let it go. I can’t always change what is.
We hike 14 relaxed miles through a dark and cool forest. The sky is white with smoke, the trees fencing us in on all sides as they have since Oregon. In the most obvious ways the scenery today is the same as the preceding 500 miles, but my mood is elevated after our days off trail, that makes all the difference on this gloomy afternoon. As we hike, Starman and I discuss everybody we’ve met on trail, who has been injured or quit for other reasons, and if it’s an advantage to hike with your romantic partner, or if hiking as a couple makes it more likely that both of you will go home if one partner does. It certainly seems that way from what we’ve observed. When I think back on everybody we met in the desert and all those who have left the trail, it seems irrationally incredible that made it this far. I’m not sure I would believe it had I not spent all those months hiking it.
Just before we reach our campsite we cross the 2,300 mile mark, drawn out in sticks and rocks on the ground. I don’t even notice it until Starman points it out and we exchange a quick high five, like it’s nothing, but of course it is something. This hike is maybe the most rediculous thing I’ve ever done, or maybe it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Or maybe it’s both. The trip having become so normal for us, even on the hard days there is a certain familiarity to the act of walking all day, thinking and worrying about so little—it can be easy to forget to celebrate the small accomplishments. What a joy, to get to live such a life for a time. Even in moments of discomfort I am still deeply content in the outdoors. As the winds blowing in smoke carry that first cool tinge of fall, all I can think about is how I want to spend my fall and winter outside, maybe ski touring some of Oregon PCT in spring. I’ve always loved being outside, and maybe this hike is getting me closer to how I always wanted to live.
The sun is setting earlier these days, the wind a little colder, the leaves tinted with yellow. Fall is coming. Winter is coming. The end of everything and nothing is coming faster than I know and with that realization I’ve begun to think towards life after the trail. A life changing revelation about my career never materialized during this hike, I have never yet been able to think myself into what I wanted to do post trail. But I have thought a great deal about how I want to live my life, the places I want to see and how I want to spend my short precious life, what I don’t want to waste my days doing. This reminds me of the quote by an anonymous author which says “what you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind. Let it be something good.”
Your quote reminds me of an even older one (I’ve been re-reading my Laura Ingalls Wilder) “Lost – one golden hour, set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for it is gone forever.”
That’s a good one! I’ve never read any of her books, maybe that’s a good post-trail to do list!