PCT Day 85 – SoBo Flip – “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Campsite at mile 1072 to campsite at mile 1051

Total PCT miles hiked: 1187

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.

Today we marched relentlessly towards a skyline like broken, blackened teeth that looked ready to snap shut and swallow the sky. Massive turrets of dark brown and grey volcanic rock towering over the landscape before crumbling apart into the valley floor, a burst of sunny green. Such an astonishingly novel section of trail, standing in stark contrast to the towering white granite laviathins which lurk south of Yosemite, as unlike the endless ridgelines of pine trees to the north. This is a land distinctly marked by it’s volcanic past. A complete, yet delightful, surprise from the trail; both Keith and myself unaware of what lay here. It’s one of the things I treasure about the trail, these delightful surprises, and something I think I’ll miss most when it’s over.

It’s baffling to think that this trip is nearing it’s half way mark. That this endless romping summer camp will one day come to an end. I’m not looking forward to the day when I turn away from this life of exquisite simplicity and return to the world of office furniture and morning commutes. Though it seems inevitable that I will, as the majority of people on the trail will. Few and far between are the hikers who spend a season multiple years in a row attempting long distance hikes. They do exist, and their disproportionate volume of time spent hiking and the corresponding social media they create can give a false sense that everyone who hikes the trail uses it as a means to flee society at large. Yet, the vast majority of hikers will complete their hike and then return to their lives, communities, and jobs.

Personally, the idea of returning to work at the end of this hike would not be terribly alarming were it not for the fact that I am almost entirely clueless as to what I will do. After leaving a less than coherent career path in LA, I’ve been set adrift in the vast world and have rather lost sight of shore in the intervening months. Beginning to think about how I want to live my life after this hike feels a bit like trying to row to shore, only to realize that you don’t know which way to go. This makes answering the question “what are you going to do for work,” which, is still a common question on trail, rather daunting. My whole life I’ve observed that people are a tad unsettled whenever you respond with: I don’t know. In the same way people are confused by children who don’t have a canned reply to being asked what they want to be when they grow up. I have often felt, and continue to feel that I am totally lost when it comes to a career path. It’s not something people want to hear. Humans very much like categories and boxes and when you’re not sure which box you want to go in, you tend to get a hollow reply of “I’m sure you’ll be fine.” After which the topic is changed. Beyond that, these people are relative strangers who I in no way expect to help me figure out the central pillar that Americans build our lives around: work.

However, this is part of a larger issue, one which quitting my job, leaving my life, and living on savings is forcing me to contemplate. It’s as though stepping away from the norm ever so slightly has allowed a little objective distance to creep in. It is very easy, or at least it was for me, to live life when there are clear expectations placed on you. A support structure and the privilege of adults who care of what comes of you. School, good grades, college, job. Between six and twenty-something there was a roadmap to which I could navigate my life without the need to spend a lot of time reflecting on what I wanted l from my life.

I once told an elementary school friend that maybe I’d drive a car with ads on the side, because every other job that I knew of at that age seemed like crap. She wanted to be an actress and a writer. In middle school graduation we did these skits where the teachers did a “where will they be in 20 years” sort of thing. Some of them were so accurate it was uncanny and I marveled at the way these adults had so perfectly assessed the talents and predispositions of my friends and classmates. When my turn came they predicted that I would be a veterinarian. I had never expressed the slightest interest in being a veterinarian; I was far too pragmatic a child and understood that being a vet would be sad and gross most of the time. I remember realizing that these people I’d spent three years with didn’t know me at all.

Hiking today I was thinking about how the very things we struggle with in our everyday lives are the same things we struggle with on the trail. Another truth in cliche; wherever you go, there you are. And beyond that, how this amazing section we walked through today feels reminiscent of my understanding of the world. Yes, I have a map, broadly detailed. But there are so many sections that are blank via the very nature of being a human with limitations. Those unavoidable, sometimes cruel feeling limitations that bind everything. Even thru hikes.

Hiking, climbing peaks, exploration, these things are not inherently life changing. They are nothing more or less than what we bring to them, the meaning we inscribe on them. It is a falacy to believe that taking a five month walking vacation will change your life without considerable effort on your part. That simply walking through the mountains will imbue you with some grand life knowledge. No, it is the time to think and ask the big scary questions that, in the absence of infinite distraction, might allow one to focus on all the unhatched dreams. Maybe what I really I need is to start really rowing towards something.