PCT Day 59 – SoBo Flip – So, So Small

McCloud River (mile 1471) to campsite at mile 1450

Total PCT miles hiked: 790

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level. We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion.

You know that old phrase: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? It’s a silly idea, because of course the falling of a tree makes a sound; human observation is not required for something to have happened, to have gravitas, to exists. The world is so much more grand than what we can see and hear. So much more wild and untamed than we could ever imagine.

Today we climb a ridge so massive and wild that our human form and motions are dwarfed by the scale. All day we climb through a forest so dense that one could easily be forgiven for losing their sense of direction. A forest that stretches to the horizon and beyond, far beyond what our limited human eyes can see. Past trees that reach so far into the sky that I nearly lose my balance trying to see the tops of them. Trees that seem to say “I have stood in this exact same spot, reaching my branches into the never-ending sky since before your great great great grandmother was born.” The trees tell us that we know nothing of time, nothing of what it is to endure. To the north, towering above it all is Mount Shasta, breaking the hazy skyline and dominating the entire scene. A being so old as to appear immortal when taken in contrast of a human life, a decaying tree, a curious deer. Shasta exists, as all the old sentinels do, on a timeline that is incomprehensible to anything alive today. The mountains, the land, they are beyond time. And what are we in comparison to a being such as that mountain?

Small.

Small in a way that hurts to accept. Perhaps insignificant would be a better word. But oh my stars do we like to believe otherwise. All around us are the marks humans have left in this forest, from the very trail we’re walking on, to the overhead power lines marching into the distance. But already the forest is growing back below the metal forms. Life moves on, growing back over our footprints.

This endless forest, this enduring mountain, they force a sort of inward refection. A sort of search for meaning within what Mary Oliver so eloquently called “your one wild and precious life.” A life that will be my absolute everything, and yet will be less than nothing when compared to the giant mountain looming over my shoulder. Mary who asks us “are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?” But pray tell, Mary, how can I tell if I’m breathing just a little? How do I know if I’m living?

To go out, then. To lie in the grass as though we are the grass, to jump into the ocean an marvel at how it parts to let us in, to leap into the air, that is how Mary tells us we are to live a life. To venture forth, to observe, to cherish all that is around us. To look without, not within. And isn’t that what I’m doing here? With my limited time, for I know it won’t be forever.

Well, there is time left —

fields everywhere invite you into them.