PCT Day 37 – Get in the Zone, the Comfort Zone!

Hiker Town (mile 518) to campsite at mile 537

Today we’re walking across the Los Angeles aqueduct. 15 miles of walking straight on top of, or directly next to an underground river that pipes water from the eastern side of central and northern California right into the heart of LA. It’s very flat, it’s very bright and most of the time it’s very hot. However, our sojourn over a rain soaked peak yesterday has bought us a relatively cool crossing in the tail end of that same storm. Still, the sun out here is oppressive. It feels like it’s roasting you even though the air temperature never climbs above 70 all day. The entire walk is done across a flat plane that drops gently away towards the horizon before rising up again as hills that conceal gentle mountains to the south and granite behimoths to the north. As such, there is no shade and one feels as though they’re walking both on top of the world and simultaneously at the bottom of a bowl. That lack of shade is even more apparent given our late start. Seriously, everybody else on the trail thinks we’re crazy for starting most days at 8-9am, but we cannot manage to get up earlier consistently. But this morning especially I slowed us down.

After our freezing day yesterday I woke up with wildly swollen hands and feet. My rewards for so many hours spent soaking wet and without any food or drink. Sort of an interesting endurance event, but not one that leaves you feeling perky the next day. By the time I’m done mincing and moaning, putting my legs up the wall to try and reduce the swelling in my feet, and doing my normal morning routine it’s well after 9am and finally enough is enough and it’s time to hike.

Dottling along the dusty road that will comport the majority of our trail today I think back on something a fellow hiker said last night while folks sat around complaining about the various body parts that hurt – a favorite hiker activity. They said, “you’ve got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” It’s a phrase I’ve always hated. It’s contradicting waffle that doesn’t mean anything. Getting comfortable being uncomfortable is just returning to your prior stage of comfort, you’ve missed the point. The phrase should be: discomfort is part of every growth experience, it’s not something that can be avoided. But that’s not quippy enough for a coffee mug so we’re stuck with people babbling out three old cliche.

Anyway, I’m thinking about this as I stare at the ground in front of me – my head lolling in response to the monotony of the day – because I am very uncomfortable. Mostly my feet, which waver between almost painful pins and needles and something kinda like numbness. It’s not great. And I’m just sort of trying to decide if this experience is what people mean by getting comfortable with discomfort. It’s not an experience that I’m overly familiar with, which leaves me questioning many of the more challenging moments of this trip. Am I growing? World I even know it if I was? After all, I grew up in a world in which the first 22 years of my life we’re relatively scripted. Go from school to school getting good enough grades to get into a nice respectable college, from college the goal is basically the same except now those good grades get you a nice job which you can use to buy the rest of the American dream. It’s not that hard, or at least it wasn’t for me. What’s hard is knowing what you really want in life. What’s harder is not knowing what you really want in life and the possibility that it’s all passing you by.

Vladimir Nabokov described life as “a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Mary Oliver asks us “are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”

I have no idea if I’m willing to get uncomfortable enough to turn my brief crack of light into a life.