PCT Day 112 – Peak PCT Moment

Sawyer’s Bar Road to Etna (mile 1600) to campsite at mile 1614

We left Etna under the noon day sun, cramped with four other hikers and the two year old daughter of the motel owner, who was driving back us back to the trail in her SUV. Abbey, the babbling two year old seated next to me, was especially interested in the squishy foam sit pad on the outside of my pack and the Velcro on my trekking poles. Her incoherent musings filled the car while the rest of us stayed resolutely silent—apparently none of us skilled conversationalist. Upon arriving at the trail our ride compatriots all, surprisingly, headed south. Leaving us to meander north into a pine forest that vacillated between various states of recent burn. Sometimes the forest was full of living trees and a crowded understory, then we’d round a corner and come into a barren black hillside with the remains of trees like spiders legs. Other times the trees remained healthy while the understory burned out, as these forests are meant to grow and thrive through fire and it is only our human intervening that seeks to control this natural process.

While I walked I thought of the ways humans impact the land in such visible ways as well as in ways that we can’t really see. I thought about how some people are calling for a new epic to begin, the Anthropocene – to mark a time on the earth that will be noticably altered by humans. I thought about how we are so unwilling to do anything about the alarming amount of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere. The amount of CO2 in the air right now is about 40% of what history tells us is the amount needed for there to be no ice fields left on earth. And that number is creeping up year after year. I thought very seriously about the ways in which I could change as an individual to reduce my carbon footprint. Which, as a westerner is so very high.

But I also thought about how this part of Northern California has a unique kind of beauty, how even the stands of burned trees hold a kind of stately charm. It’s becoming obvious that we’re drifting towards the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. There are funny little salamanders in the lake we’ve camped next to, something you don’t see in drier or higher environments. Keith spends 20 minutes taking pictures of the real life Pokemon while I eat dinner in the fading light. There are no mosquitos here, only chubby bumblebees bumping around the flowers near camp. It’s a peak PCT moment, a night like this.

Later, I’ll lie in the tent next to Keith, both of us watching the bats swooping over the tent. The sky a slowly fading blue as the sun sinks down below the ridges and mountains and finally down into the ocean so far to the west. Life can be extraordinarily kind.