The Giant Sand Dunes south of Cape Reinga are a monumental wonder. Blown high by roaring winds whipping off the Tasman Sea they march inland like the shoulders of so many hulking soldiers in formation. As I watch Keith scurry towards the top of the tallest dune all I can think is: I really don’t give a fuck. To which I then immediately feel guilty because shouldn’t I like, give a fuck? To be here, in this moment, near this geographic anomaly. Isn’t this worthy of fuck giving? But the guilt fails to overpower my detached boredom and so I turn my back on the dunes and return to the car. Forgoing a sandy scramble for a snack and a nap.
I’m burning out. And the speed at which we’ve been moving across the North Island has become unsustainable.
We’ve been staying in more places for less time and packing in more social engagements so we can be sure to visit with everybody we want to see. And while it has been amazing, it’s hard to maintain the #stoke when you’re not getting enough rest. The small things, once easy to laugh off become an annoyance. It’s no longer cute finding a stranger’s hair in your underwear after using yet another poorly-maintained hostel dryer. Or having to carry around one muddy sock because it somehow didn’t make it into the wash. Or being confusingly misgendered for the thousandth time by a stranger with a lilting accent. As a result, the things that I really would like to give a fuck about lose some of their sparkle when viewed through tired eyes. Not only am I tried, I worry that I’m failing to travel the at the impeccable standard of constant engagement I feel I owe myself.
And here is where another lesson from my thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail comes in. When you’re burning out on something, especially long-term travel, you have to acknowledge your desires even if they feel lame or embarrassing. And then you have to change what you’re doing in the sake of self and trip preservation. On the PCT that meant changing when we started hiking each morning, taking more rest days, and spending more time hiking alone so we could really decompress. And it worked, we finished the trail by finding ways to make wading through the bullshit and exhaustion more enjoyable so that we’d have more energy to enjoy the reasons we were on that trip in the first place.
Our time in New Zealand is almost over, and as we drive south to Auckland the plan is not to finish the trip with a bang but rather a bed in a nice hotel. We’re hitting the reset and reset button to avoid burnout after so much time on the road. Because while our time in New Zealand is over, the trip isn’t yet at an end. Next up: Australia.
The sun never really rises. Never really arcs across the sky. Never really sets under the leaden grey clouds. The first tendrils of fall are working their way across New Zealand as we make the leap to the North Island.
The whole thing feels, honestly, improbable. Not necessarily that time has passed, but more so that we are here at all. This trip started with a declaration which had no intention behind it other than escape and desperation: I cannot spend another winter in Seattle. It had nothing to do with New Zealand or the southern hemisphere or traveling internationally. I just knew that the winters in Seattle were dangerously bad for my mental health and that I wasn’t willing to put myself in that situation again. I was looking for an exit and I didn’t much care what was on the other side of that door other than sun shine and someplace that wasn’t Seattle.
And now, as the world turns and pitches I can feel the passage of time in my mammalian skin as entirely as I can feel the forest around me as Keith and I follow the sinuous path of the Queen Charlotte track from ridge to ridge above the bays below shining in every shade of blue. It’s quiet today, another sign that the summer is coming to a close. We see barely a handful of hikers all day and will share our campground with only one other couple. And though I have more than a month left before I fly home I cannot help but wonder if I have accomplished what I set out to do here. It feels pretentious to talk about living in the moment, a coifed nod to the ever-popular yet never defined mindfulness trend. After all, one’s follies and insecurities don’t evaporate just because you’re in a different timezone. I’ve been on stunning hikes where I wished I could be anywhere else and lazy days in bed grateful that I had nowhere to be. I’ve felt guilt over my privilege that allows me to go on such a trip while simultaneously grateful to be living in a trans body in this country and not the pulverizing hellscape that is the United States at this moment. Maybe it all comes out in the wash, or maybe there is no wash. Maybe hiking through the trees on this early fall day is all there ever is or will be, maybe I have sprung into being just now and that is the only thing that really matters.
That night, at camp, there is a rainbow that bursts into fleeting life just as the sun begins to set. Keith and I stand next to our little tent in dirty clothes and sweaty hair and watch the show unfold. And all I can think is that I am so blindingly lucky to have whatever it is I have right now.
“You’ll want to move your foot off that first hold as quickly as possible,” I say down to Keith from my perch atop the muddy chimney, “it’s going to want to collapse from underneath you.”
“Gotcha,” comes his ever-stoic response as he begins to climb the near-vertical mud wall. Hauling himself up hand over hand, moving from root to rock before each perilous hold can slide from beneath him. I scoot aside so we can both share the small rocky bench above the first 10 foot pitch. With more than 700 feet left to climb to our hut I feel suddenly overwhelmed at how long this is going to take. The rest of the day had been on well groomed and even better maintained trail, courtesy of New Zealand’s Department of Conservation. The first 2000 feet of climbing passing in, if not easy, at least manageable grades. But this, a slippery, muddy, barely consolidated mess that could only be approached in a bear crawl of sorts, fingers reaching for every sturdy rock or well-planted rock, this too felt like something DOC would call a trail. In fact, over the course of this trip Keith and I had spent several days on designated trails that were only slightly less ridiculous than this.
I turn my face to the next pitch, huck my trekking poles up and into a bush so they won’t get in the way and begin to climb. Another 15 feet up on hands and feet gets me to another flat spot to rest, Keith coming up shortly behind me. This new perch reveals something else, another hiker walking, no, strolling along in jeans and a cheap school backpack. At first my brain has trouble comprehending what I am seeing. But Keith gets it, letting out a low “I am so sorry” before I bark a cackling laugh of absurdity and amusement. Our mud-covered micro expedition has been on the old trail, on the barely-there trail, on the this is a muddy disaster so let’s reroute trail. Our casual fellow hikers glance confusedly at us as I retrieve my poles from the bush. I might feel like an idiot were I not so relieved that we wouldn’t be scrambling up a vertical mud wall the rest of the way to the hut. Bemused and a little abashed we make our way the last mile, tired legs forgotten and grateful for the trail beneath our feet.
Angelus Hut day 1 Mt Robers car park to Bushline Hut
The trail descends away from the car park for a long while before beginning a gradual, almost gentle climb towards bush line. In the late afternoon sun I can move slowly without the agony of screaming muscles. It’s something I’ve almost forgotten I can do.
The last few years have been more painful than not. Certainly, in the shared global trauma that has beset us all, but more deeply in my personal life, my health, and all the little ways those pains worked their way into the things I loved. My chronically fluctuating thyroid made exercise feel impossible, fatigue constant or else the exertion made me feel like ripping my skin off, a vibrating tangle of loose wires. My mental health made everything else feel an insurmountable chore of drudgery, a darkened tunnel of medications and appointments and days spent inert on the couch, unable to even sleep away the torment and stupor.
I learned that in the midst of crisis no stone is left unturned as pain stole the light from everything I was and wanted. Why did my legs sear on every uphill, why did my ski boots cause my feet to cramp and go numb before my weakened muscles could even have their say. Why did my knees hurt when I ran. Why did my body collect side effects like medals. Why was nothing helping, why wasn’t it getting any easier. A thousand unanswerable questions so often invisible and churning to rancid fear in my gut. For all the times someone said I sounded better I died a little inside, felt a little further away from the rest of the world though all I could ever say was “thank you.” I feared I would fracture apart so completely that I would lose everything, person, and joy I had ever known, every desire I ever cherished.
And now comes the part where I offer a lesson, serve a platitude. Tell you that on this late summer’s day I have turned my face to resounding optimism and hope, liberated, as it were, from darkness by the brilliant New Zealand sun. But that would be a lie—a nasty habit I’m trying to do less of. Because the truth is this: the scar on my neck from where they cut out my thyroid still aches when I work too hard, my medications are still a ham-fisted juggernaut keeping the darkness at bay, yes, but bringing with it a slew of side effects as well—all this piled into a body that has never felt more and less like my own. But I can say this, on this late summer day under the brilliant New Zealand sun, that today is a good day, that the sun is warm and long in the way only early fall can do. And that is not enough, because I want so much more for myself than good enough; but it’s good enough, if only for today.
Angelus Hut day 2 – Bushline Hut to Angelus Hut
The morning comes on slowly, doused in thin clouds wrapped softly around the hut. We play out our morning chores with little haste, waiting until the clouds and our lethargy burn away revealing a brilliant blue sky shining gleefully upon golden grasses.
The climb, though moderate, feels unfairly difficult in the wake of yesterday’s relative ease. My previously piano wire calves feel okay so long as I tread carefully, but my low back burns with exertion and strain and I wondered how long I can keep going, if I’ll be forced to turn around and retreat to the car. But I have grown so entirely sick of my body’s many betrayals that I simply force my way forward, hoping that with time the pressure will ease.
Across grey rock speckled through with sun-tanned grass the trail rises and falls, an ungainly dragon’s spine. And then, almost without me noticing, my back eases and my body begins to churn slowly through the literal steps I have taken so many times before. A treasure wrapped in a mystery. Maybe it only takes me two hours and a snack break to finally warm up. Maybe, it simply takes me this long for the sedation from the meds that keep my brain in order to release me from their hold. I wish to know as much as I don’t care to think about it now because the best part of this entire route is below my feet, right now.
The dragon’s spine narrows in on itself until we are sliding sinuously across steep scree fields that required my entire attention to avoid slipping and falling. Hand over hand climbing along mellow holds just perilous enough to make it fun and which drag my mind away from anything more than that exact moment and the handhold that comes next. The endorphin rush, to be in the sun and the wind on high, my body working as I demand of it. Burning from exertion and only little bits of pain sparkling to life here and there. This mellow class 2 climbing has become my favorite way to travel through the mountains, slow and methodical as it is. Through exposure and panic attacks and learning how to breathe while crying at altitude I have transformed a terror into a delight. This space between trail and cliff no longer frightens me but instead fills me with the sort of quiet exultation that I have only ever found in the mountains.
Eventually, after hours of careful footwork the trail decides it is time to go down towards the sparkling blue lakes of Angelus Hut. Nestled in a protective bowl the hut greets us with just a few other hikers, a sign as good as any that summer is coming to an end in the southern hemisphere.
Day 3 — Angelus Hut to Mt Roberts car park
The morning starts with the crinkle of synthetic fabrics wrapped around warm beverages as our fellow hikers and us postpone venturing out into the cold rainy morning. Modern though Angelus Hut is, it creaks under the strain of the pulverizing wind which seemingly emanates from everywhere and nowhere at once, protected as we are inside our snow globe inside a cloud inside the storm. Eventually, finally, reluctantly it’s time to go.
The morning starts with a quick scramble up to the ridge, fog dense and wind ripping. My gloved hands are soaked through before we reach the trail junction but at least they’re warm. A theme for the day: soaked but at least I’m warm.
We make our way down the valley which will lead us back to the car park. A stream springs to life out of nowhere, a collection of drops of water slid from blades of grass all coming together to create a bubbling little torrent slicing through the base of an ever-widening valley. At first we can simply step over the stream, but soon the waters have grown until we are wading through knee-deep waters that require careful planning before each crossing.
Progress feels slow, progress is slow as we navigate through shoe-sucking mud and only barely there trail. The rain puts on its many faces and we begin to know each one intimately as we walk. Misting rain. Barely there rain. Torrential rain. Soaking rain. Rain that might actually be heavy fog or the other way round. A cloud of rain inside the storm inside my wet but warm bubble of clothing. And so it goes: across the river, into the trees, navigating up over rocks and tree roots and mud slides only to come back down again. Again. Again and again and walking until finally there is no more up and down only the firm grip of the road and the last few meters to our car.
Just as we reach the car the snow begins and I do a little dance in celebration, cheering: snow! Snow! I adore the snow, the magic and light upon the sky. Through, in this moment I am more than grateful to be off the trail as the flakes begin to thicken and the heat in the car merrily whirls around my chilled hands.
The bubble of our car slides out of the bubble of clouds within the storm and soon we are whisking across dry roads on our way to Nelson. The sun cracks the sky and slips across the land in warm, late-summer’s glow. Rolling green hills like something out of a fairy tale remind me of the best parts of rural Colorado where the mountains give way to the plains and forests give way to pastures give way to cities and then all at once we’re in Nelson, unloading our damp things in the car park of our hostel.
At the front desk Keith pays for the room in wet bills that he has to wipe dry before handing them to the cheerful attendant. Once inside our room our bags explode and wet clothes and coats and sleeping bags are hung over every available surface. A ritual we are only too familiar with after winter and fall camping trips in Washington. It strikes me that this is what fall looks like off the trail, that our endless summer may in fact be approaching an end.
It’s a damp, greying kind of day, all low clouds and drizzle. It’s a bickering over nothing, irritated at everything kinda day. It’s the kind of day, in truth, that I am always tempted to omit from travelogs and stories told. Filled not so much with painful sweeping truths as grimy little realities of life on the road.
The first hours of the morning are full of Fine. Sure. Whatever you want. Fine.
And then we’re on the road, driving north from little Franz Josef, not so much a town as a dot on the map serving one thing: helicopter tours of the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. When we stopped there the night before not even the two restaurants in town were open. This morning the streets are empty, as an impending rain storm has shuttered any chance of a helicopter ride. The same storm has also forced us to cancel two additional backpacking trips because of the danger of flooding and becoming trapped in the backcountry; grinding our trip to a halt and leaving both of us frustrated.
But when you’re on the road things don’t stop, they only change direction. So we putter our tiny car into the oncoming rain and begin our drive up the coast. The forecast calls for near-biblical amounts of rain along the West Coast but the storm is late in its arrival and we drive through a landscape ever-changing. One minute windshield wipers flailing against the torrent the next minute the roads are nearly dry and one could be forgiven for describing the sky as just the littlest bit blue. A familiar refrain presses against my lips against the obvious unreality: “what a beautiful day.” But it is, it is a remarkably beautiful day even with the mountains hidden by clouds, the sea blockaded by shrubby green-brown trees. Because bad days happen wherever you are and I’d rather be in a small car on the road than in my small apartment back in Seattle. The joy of being somewhere new, even on the bad days, so entirely eclipses the mundanity of the familiar that I cannot help but say it: “what a beautiful day.”
— We shut off the car in the small town of Greymouth, a former mining town stuck somewhere in the middle of reinventing itself into a tourist town. Too bad there’s nothing to do here.
That night Keith and I lay in bed and watch as the lightning illuminates the sky, bright as a cosmic spotlight but without the accompanying thunder; the melodramatics without the danger. The storm is here but we are safe in our little rented bed for two. A nest of home within each other, not so much us against the world, more like us within the world, a center, a home from which the road doesn’t feel so chaotic.
A crack splits the air and everybody’s head turns, eyes scouring the face of stone and ice looming high across the valley. But there is nothing to be seen. A false stillness beneath gliding clouds. Finally and only by training my eyes on the cliffs do I see an avalanche let loose, sending a shower of car-sized ice hunks and cascading loose snow free from the glacier. By the time the sound reaches the ears of the hikers milling around the Mueller hut and heads once again turn to face the noise the sudden, violent burst of icy activity has subsided. For now.
The Mueller hut is a basic backcountry cabin offering bunk beds, a cooking space, and water that you need to boil or filter before you can drink. This cabin’s claim to fame is the view it offers of Aoraki/Mt Cook and the fact that it was founded by Sir Edmund Hilary – climbing partner of Tenzing Norgay and co-first-summiter of Chomolungma/Mount Everest. The spartan interior is all but irrelevant because what lays outside, what all of us are here for, is the chance to see Aoraki. And in this, we are extremely lucky.
In this part of New Zealand rain, clouds, and general mountain-obscuring weather is the rule, not the exception to it. Sitting at 12,218ft (3,724 meters) the peak plummets dramatically 10,000ft straight down to the valley floor. Its shoulders a parade of razor-sharp ridges bedecked in flowing glaciers which transform in detail and color as the sun and clouds play across the sky. Closer to the hut sits Maukatua/Mount Sefton, and it is this peak which continues to roll great plumes of snow off its shoulders, like thunder boiling up from the rock itself.
As the sun arcs towards the horizon and begins to tuck itself neatly behind Maukatua’s jagged ridges the day hikers filter away from the cabin until there are only 20 or so of us overnighters left. The view towards Aoraki lays obscured by clouds so I turn my full attention to the ever-cascading face of Maukatua as it rumbles its way into darkness. Stillness. Then a cascade. Stillness. Then a cascade. Finally, the cold chases me inside while my little mammalian heart beats in time with a world so much larger than myself. And Maukutua rumbles and roars alone in the darkness, a restless giant, a fracturing cacophony of one.
Before I get started I want to note that the members of the Purdue Outing Club often refer to their club as the POC. However, in America POC is more commonly used to refer to People of Color. And since it is important to listen to and respect our POC siblings, I will be referring to the Purdue Outing Club simply as the Outing Club. Also, if you are a member of the Purdue Outing Club and are reading this you may want to consider dropping the POC acronym.
Last weekend was my fourth time attending the 2019 Annual Purdue Outing Club ski reunion. Held over President’s day weekend the event consists variously of: miscellaneous outdoor activities, drinking, reveling in the delicious nostalgia of playing Never Have I Ever, drinking while in a hot tub, and watching old Outing Club videos on YouTube.
Imagine a frat reunion and a Scouts of America weekend mashed together and you have some idea of the general atmosphere. Though as folks age, the weekend has become substantially less alcohol infused. There are fewer naked laps around the rental cabin. And more reasonable bedtimes as members of the Outing Club slide into their 30’s. This laissez-faire attitude is how I found myself seated on a messy, shedding IKEA rug at 10pm watching teen-aged versions of the people seated around me throw themselves down waterfalls, clamber through muddy caves, and whip on iconic Red Rock sandstone.
The videos, which are little more than carnage reels set against the bucolic Midwest and accompanied by a 90’s indie rock song are to me, quintessential to what it means to be a young adult. Before video it was film, and before film it was photography and written word. Regardless of the media these efforts are a distillation of what teens have been doing for generations. Expressing themselves through one of the only ways they know how–showing the world the stupid shit they get up to with their friends.
And perhaps I came to love these Outing Club videos so dearly because I too have a series of poorly produced videos of my friends launching themselves off DIY ski jumps or being towed behind cars down snowy city streets.These videos were some of the first attempts I made at visual storytelling. A Coldplay song worth of awkwardly edited clips was the best way I had of expressing what was important to me. And I think more than that, it was a way of drawing like-minded people to me. Because that’s what those ridiculous videos were. Beyond the capturing of adventures undertaken between friends, they were an effort to show the world what really captured my heart.
Being reintroduced to these videos has shifted my thoughts around outdoor exploits being a creative pursuit. People who play outside the way I do, the way the members of the Outing Club do, place the freedom of the outdoors next to their very souls, families, friends. And in making these videos and image we are attempting to show the world this fierce kind of love that comes from the outdoor places we inhabit. Truly, my efforts in photography, video creation, and even this very blog are all born out of those early clips of my friends. And as widespread as my interest have become, capturing the life outdoors boils down to the singular desire to help the world love these places as much as I do.
An Announcement!
Hello lovely readers! How are you today?
I want to let you know that from here forward Wild Country Found will be publishing once every two weeks instead of once every week. The exceptions being when I have a special announcement to make or am on a long hike, in which case you can expect posts more frequently.
The reason being that I have taken on some extra commitments this year (and some exciting news I can’t announce just yet) which has resulted in a decrease in my free time. I was starting to feel like I was bouncing from activity to obligation with no down time for myself. I enjoy writing this blog, and I want to be able to give appropriate time to each post instead of just firing them off. When I looked for things to cut, this blog came up first. But don’t worry, WCF isn’t going away! Starman and I have some amazing adventures in the works and you can look forward to reading about them here.
Hello my beautiful readers! Thank you for coming to this site today and every Friday to read my posts. This week I’m reposting an old favorite titled Things I’ve Learned From the Trees. I’ve never reposted a blog before, so I’ll be transparent as to why I’m doing it now.
This week I traveled to Colorado to visit friends and family and ski until my legs fell off. And during this week I gave myself permission to fully break from all the obligations I manage on a weekly basis and just rest. This break meant that when 10pm Thursday night rolled around my ski bags were packed and my blog had been left unattended. In placing family over productivity something had to get cut and this week it was the blog. But more than that, I have come to value my writing practice, and the small community we are growing here, too much to fire off a lazy post. So for now I’ll leave you with a repost that I love and an image that I took while skiing with my parents this week. Next week I’ll be back with a new post and I hope you’ll be here to read it.
Things I’ve Learned From the Trees
When the world seems a dismal place, I like to think about what we can learn from the trees. The value of silently observing the world as it changes around you. The deep quiet of solitude, loneliness, the simple act of standing witness to the passage of time. Being committed to just one thing: growth. Living in a way that does good for the world; and knowing that even the sentinels of the forest are not without their flaws. For even the most resplendent tree casts a shadow upon the ground that keeps the ferns from growing.That it is impossible to live a life that is devoid of harming others, but, tandemly, simply because something is impossible doesn’t preclude it from being worthy of our attention, our efforts.
After all, it was impossible for man to reach beyond our little blue dot and sail to the mood. It was impossible right up to the moment that we decided to test our hypothesis of impossibility. In doing so we move the bar just that much further, set a new impossible, a vast horizon on which we can build and destroy dreams so grand, that from here, their greatness makes them all but invisible.
When I look at the world and see all the greed and indifference, the shame and confusion, I think of the trees. The old giants.
I like to imagine a stand of soaring pine trees which no man has ever seen. Trees that took root before this great democratic experiment, before you, before me, before anyone you’ve ever had the slightest possibility of knowing came into being. When I look at the trees, not the tame, domesticated blooms that adorn our city street and front lawns, but the wild ineffable misers who live out their lives – which are so inexpressibly different from our own – away from the prying eyes of humans. When I think of these trees – it feels like the greatest form of hubris that we should endeavor to write our stories on their skin.
These trees don’t strive to have their names written in the pages of our history books. Instead, they are the pages of our history books, the pages of nearly every human story, the true and the tabloid, the sweeping epic and the stereo installation manual. And if tomorrow, we are called upon by some desire within ourselves to cut these giants down; to bring their soaring-ever-reaching limbs crashing down to earth, they will not complain, but simply acquiesce to our desires and we will have lost something grand and powerful, and very nearly the closest thing we have on this planet to the divine. We will have lost a teacher.
For the trees know we are small confused mammals with minds that are smaller still. They accept us and our hubris, our carelessness, our ceaseless errors, knowing that these flaws are simply part of our DNA, and they forgive us. And in their silence they hold space for us to learn. To grow not as they do, but in our own way.
The trees teach us that there is an awesome power in growth, in being huge, fat, bursting in our liveliness, and that it does not do to make oneself small. Conversely, they also show us that the notions of who is better and best does nothing but divide us, and that living only to take is not only cruel, but so beyond pointless that only a silly little animal like a human would spend their one fleeting, glorious life in pursuit of this pyrrhic victory.
I like to look to the trees, and know that one day, all of it, all of you, will be gone, as surely and completely as the silence that stood in your place before you arrived. And then what? Just the trees and the dirt will remain, until one day, they too are swallowed up by the gaping maw of space. And we are, all of us, returned to the star dust from which we came.
Through the dark a warm, red glow begins to blossom, prying me from sleep. Slowly the glow blooms into a persistent light and I am dragged into wakefulness. Before I can fully wake, before I can choose to engage with the day, I roll over and turn my alarm clock off. I am not going to the gym today.
In fact, I didn’t go to the gym once this week. Not once. Each morning when my fancy daylight alarm clock began to brighten the room I would turn it off and go back to sleep for another hour.
For the first time in what feels like a long time I have completely fallen out of the habit of exercising before work. Foregoing my normal practice in favor of extra hours spent between the sheets. When the darkness of morning comes calling I ignore it. The difference is, that this week I elected to stop feeling bad about it.
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Years ago I was introduced to the concept of the Big Why. The Big Why is the concept of drilling way down deep through the desire behind any goal in an effort to figure out what is motivating our actions. Once we understand our Big Why it becomes easier to follow through with the necessary steps to to accomplish our goals. For more than two years my Big Why was attempting a thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.
When I didn’t want to do squats (my very least favorite strength training activity) I motivated myself with the knowledge that squats lead to strong legs and strong legs lead to a higher likelihood of completing my hike. The same was true with money. When I wanted a fancy coffee, or to splurge on a last minute trip I would weight that immediate desire against the much bigger desire to save money for the PCT. Suddenly every dollar I spent became potential PCT money and as a result it was easier to skip the fancy coffee and put that money into my savings account instead. My why was big enough to consistently influence my daily decisions. A touchstone of sorts which I could return to when the desire to be comfortable or entertained in the moment threatened to derail the dream of thru hiking.
However, when I completed my thru hike of the PCT on September 11, 2018 my big why vanished. Poof. It was gone. I had a few plans on the horizon, but nothing that required long term dedication in the way that preparing for the trail did. And that lack of motivating force impacted how lived my life. Even though it would be weeks before I could begin to recognize it.
In the weeks immediately following the trail I began running around the lake in my neighborhood. I signed up for a nearby gym. Told myself that I wasn’t going to lose all of the fitness I had gained over the previous months of backpacking. I thought I could roll this experience into another epic adventure, something big and sexy. I was riding a high of accomplishment and in doing so ignoring how my body was feeling.
Barbell weight training, something I genuinely enjoy, became a chore to be dealt with. Running began to feel about as enjoyable as filing taxes. On more than one occasion I would choose hiking destinations based on the quality of story they would produce, not how happy they would make me. I had become someone with two thru hikes under my belt. Someone who gets outside every weekend, hits the climbing gym at night, and does epic shit. But I was also tired and unmotivated. Misdiagnosing the cause of my malaise I plowed forward.
Maybe, I thought. Just maybe what I just needed was another big project to throw myself at. If I could just cultivate the right level of stoke then all my desire to train and get outside would come rushing back. But in the way that mother nature holds us and allows her foolish human children to find their own paths across this planet, she is also capable of stepping in our way when we are in danger of doing ourselves harm.
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This winter in the northwest has been characterized by alternating warm rain and snow storms. Resulting in a highly unstable snowpack and high-risk avalanche conditions which have forced me to stay at lower elevations and closer to home. My personal life has been characterized by stretched finances as I looked for a job and rebuilt my savings account after taking nearly eight months away from the workforce.
In the way in which I pursued the PCT with an unbalanced fervor, the pendulum is has since swung the other way and I find myself craving rest. Yet, having this swing coincide with the new year has left me feeling distinctly at odds with a society that fetishizes productivity and busyness. During the early weeks of January while the internet screams about 10 habits of highly productive people, declaring that this will be the year of the new you. I feel like I am constantly walking through a blaring motivational Nike ad when all I really want is a nap.
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The proverbial Greek choir dubbed ‘they’ says that there is calm before the storm. I have always found that there is a calm after the storm as well. Living our lives in endless circles as we do, means that these are perhaps the same calm. A season of effort followed by one of rest. Around and around we go.
At the center of an experience it is hard to see the edges. When I am living in the calm I worry that I will be tied to this bed forever. That my stillness will stretch to the horizon and I will be lost. And while I am amid the flurry of excitement that is the storm I pretend that this too, is sustainable. But here on the edge it is possible to see that change will come in time and that I need not cause myself undue strife in attempting to accelerate it’s approach.
During the last few weeks, as I have waded through the morass of unmotivation I have slowly felt my desire for adventure returning. The months long break is slowly lifting and I can feel my drive to explore returning. The other day as I took a walk at lunch I felt that familiar tug to grab my running shoes. This week when thrilling boxes of new ski gear arrived at my door I once again began browsing weather reports and drive times to my local ski hill. While the tendrils of my burning desire to explore outside are beginning to rekindle I have not yet regained the urge to labor outdoors.
The new gear sitting unassembled on my living room floor speaks to the promise of new, softer adventures. I am not ready to push myself, lungs burning, down 20 miles of alpine trail. But skiing feels like pure play in the way that hiking does not. And that is what I am ready for, play.
“…this, dear reader, is what I want to tell you about the Pacific Crest Trail. That it is not the romance you expect it to be. Nor is it the suffering which one can imagine it to be, nor the constant elation that many wish it to be. But as with every dream turned accomplishment it lies somewhere in the middle.”
Outside the window the North Cascades roll past as the bus travels south towards Seattle. A verdant green valley stretches away towards craggy cliffs which jut skyward to be capped with low grey clouds. As viewed from the enclosed glass bubble of a Greyhound bus this otherwise expansive view feels distinctly minimized, small, removed—as though I am being sealed off from the natural world. With every traffic-laden mile I roll back hours of walking and this, more than anything, makes me realize that my PCT thru hike is well and truly over.
On March 27, 2018 I stood at the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail outside the minuscule town of Campo, California. Hemmed in on all sides by rolling desert hills and nervously laughing strangers I took my start day pictures. I remember thinking that if it were not for the PCT no one would visit this particular stretch of border wall, this particular stretch of chaparral and sand and sky. But there we stood, 35 pale, squinting strangers assembled under a flat blue sky looking north and pretending we could see all the way to Canada. All the way along this wild stretching journey laid out in front of us. The plan: to walk the land between Mexico and Canada, the height of a country. An act which on that day in late March felt more feasible than it does now, some 168 days later. Bizarrely it is only upon completion of the PCT that I have come to realize how absurdly improbable the task of thru hiking is.
At its most basic level a Pacific Crest Trail thru hike is an exceedingly long logistical and physical challenge set against the backdrop of some of America’s greatest natural spaces. Which, when compared to the romantic notion of what people believe a thru hike to be, may sound overly reductive. But the most basic elements of thru hiking are precisely what drew me towards it. Like a thread tied deep within my chest tugging me forward through the months of preparation, it was the thrill of the challenge that sustained me. I have long been drawn to being physically challenged beyond what is expected, or assumed that I am capable of. Furthermore, this hike was an opportunity to spend an extended period of time backpacking in remote places—something which is central to who I am as a person and seek to do as often as possible. I didn’t want to hike the PCT as a means of suffering my way towards a life realization, but because I believed I would genuinely enjoy it—the sleeping in the dirt, the hours spent walking through wild places far away from the next human animal, the self reliance and accompanying logistical planning.
“I remember thinking I wasn’t sure if the PCT would be a life altering experience, or simply another experience in a life.”
And this, dear reader, is what I want to tell you about the Pacific Crest Trail. That it is not the romance you expect it to be. Nor is it the suffering which one can imagine it to be, nor the constant elation that many wish it to be. But as with every dream turned accomplishment it lies somewhere in the middle. More indescribable, more nuanced in the ways it will affect you. More prone to leaving you staring at your keyboard in frustration as you attempt to express an entire world of roiling emotions into the cumbersome, imperfect things we call words. Early on in my hike, as I stood panting atop Mount Laguna and looking down onto the vast beige desert below me, I remember thinking I wasn’t sure if the PCT would be a life altering experience, or simply another experience in a life. Now that it has come and gone and I am left standing along the shores of the aftermath I can say it feels more like the later.
Looking out at the great forward expanse that will be the rest of my life, the PCT stands behind me as part of who I am, not the entirety of who I am. An experience that has left me changed, but was not life changing—a sentiment that I tend to feel a little guilty about. As though I should have produced a deeper moral to this story. That I should want to leave my life in the city, throw everything in my backpack, and wander into the wilderness where I would be my deepest and truest self. I know this is the story that many people want to read. But for me it is simply not true, and I have never been a person capable of dishonesty simply to placate others.
You see, there is a prescribed narrative splashed across the pages of books and the screens of social media, a story that says thru hiking will radically change your life or else thru hiking will become your life. For there are a small but highly vocal minority of hikers for whom long distance thru hiking has become the central pillar of their lives. They post YouTube videos about gear and food in the winter. While during hiking season they fill our Instagram feeds with stunning images of wild places and wax rhapsodical about the purity of life on the trail, how the simplicity of living from a backpack and wandering through the woods will lead you onto a higher plane of being. This narrative is so pervasive, that to the uninitiated it feels preordained. In the days after I finished the PCT I was subjected to the constant refrain: what’s next? Strangers who had followed my hike inquired about my next big hike. Would it be the AT? CDT? Something abroad? The online peanut gallery has read the script and in witnessing my success looks to cast me in the roll of thru hiker for life.
Yet, thru hiking is not something I wish to build my life around. I believe the act is simply too unsustainable for that—you can’t thru hike forever, no matter what social media portrays. And beyond that, neither my body nor mind have the desire to do so. To thru hike repeatedly at the exclusion of all other activities would be to trim oneself into a mere shadow of the multitudes we contain. I am a thru hiker as much as I am a writer, a skier, an adventurer, a traveler. And substantially less than I am a daughter, a sister, a partner, and a individual with myriad desires and flaws.
Please don’t be disappointed dear reader. For while my months long walking vacation has not rent me into a new person for which unabated hiking is the only path to happiness, it has gifted me a great deal.
Thru hiking taught me that there is a great joy in unbalanced, unrelenting forward progress towards a singular goal. The very nature of thru hiking gives us that. Something with which we can focus all our energy towards, an unambiguous pursuit to which we can commit fully and in doing so strip away the banalities and distractions of a more complex life. To realize that balance is rarely at the center of great achievements, but conversely is required for us to be full and complete humans. That balance should be sought in the long game, not the cause for strife in the minute workings of a day.
In the unbalanced volume of time spent walking I was afforded a chance to think, to wander and wonder about my life, to leave space for realizations about what is important. In the broadest sense I came to realize that I do not want to spend my life working towards things to which I only feel the most obligatory passions. Namely, dedicating my life to a career. I have struggled most of my life against the highly American notion that our work lives should be placed at the center of our whole lives. I believe this is most obviously seen in the question we all deem most important to ask new acquaintances–“what do you do.” To which it is implied “for work.” Not what do you do for joy, or to relax, or to challenge yourself. But what do you do to earn money, who are you in relation to the way you feed your ever hungry bank account. And in the drive for transparency I must admit that it scares me to write this.
You see, upon leaving the trail I am also unemployed and will need to seek work, and what if some future employer reads this and in doing so discovers that a my career has never found a home in my heart? It is subversive in the most basic way to not want to work. America believes itself a country of hard workers and capitalists. But thru hiking gave me the time to fully step outside that narrative and see how artificial that idea is. To re-frame my life’s long struggle to figure out what I want to do with my one wild and precious life, and begin to frame that question outside of a career. What do I want to do with the rest of my life if my job is not the most central part of it, but instead a facet of who I am?
Maybe in some ways thru hiking the PCT simply gave me the space to recognize the full measure of myself. It gave me time to see what I thought was important, and most invaluably, why those things were important to me. To have the time and space to fully observe why I choose to do things, even the somewhat silly things like thru hiking was a tremendous privilege.
In truth my beautiful reader, I didn’t hike the PCT for any real reason other than I wanted to. There was no burning desire to memorialize a loved one, nor did I expect the trail to somehow solve all of my life’s problems. In the most literal sense there was no point to it, no purpose other than that I thought I would like it. In so many ways the whole PCT is a pointless, deeply absurd endeavor. To walk the land between Mexico and Canada along a set line between two arbitrarily decided borders–and to what end? To live a life of social conformity–and to what end? If I don’t have my own own reasons for doing something, then why am I doing it? If I am not finding joy in the process or working towards a goal, then what am I doing and why? Why, I was given the time to ask, does one choose to anything in life?
Ultimately, I chose to thru hike the PCT because the challenge appealed to me and gave me the time to shed the gaze of the world and play freely in the outdoors. And that, maybe more than anything, is what the PCT was to me. A chance to honor myself by doing something that was so purely selfish and joyful. Yes, maybe that is the real truth of it—to me, the PCT was an act of joy.
For joy is not something that is without pain, or suffering, or strife. Joy is electing to go through that pain because what is waiting on the other side is so much grander and more beautiful than comfort and conformity could ever be. To bleed, to ache, to hurt in pursuit of something that you want–that is joy. To peel back the layers of your skin like a wild, feral, inhuman beast, to dig deep within yourself for no other reason than the thrill of adventure–that is joy. To choose how you suffer, to look far into the distance and recognize that this ridiculous idea of walking to Canada is nothing but an expression of want–that is joy. It is a privilege to be given the body, time, and world in which that is a possibility.
So no, the PCT did not change my life so much as it was an opportunity to step away from how we are told to live and open up to the ways in which I would prefer to live.
