Month: August 2018

Bumping River (mile 2309) to Bear Gap Trail Junction (2329)

By mid day we have climbed away from the trees, rolling five deep with Cribbage, Hot Lips, and Caveman. The trail flops from ridge to ridge, cruising around the inside of one shallow bowl after another. Using a series of small notches to wind it’s way north. Ripe blueberry bushes line the trail at lower elevations, filling the air with their delicious scent and dragging our feet to a stop. We munch our way along the plants until someone decides we’ve probably dawdled enough and we pick up the pace again. In this way Starman and myself arrive at Sheep Lake for an early dinner, while the other three plan to hike another five miles past our intended campsite in order to avoid dry camping; they depart leaving us to our meal along the smokey bank of a shallow lake.

I barely know these hikers and yet it occurs to me that we will likely never see them again. There are fires burning near the Canadian border which are currently closing the trail and many hikers are opting to end their hikes early. For those who have lost their lust for the trail, the fact that there will very likely be no proverbial carrot at the end of this very long stick, no walking into Canada after all these months of working towards that singular goal, it is too much. It has broken something inside those hikers who just needed to make it to Canada. You can see it in their eyes, something like frustration and desperation mixed with relief. If there is no border to be crossed, no terminus to tag then maybe they can just go home, finally.

After dinner we climb another three miles to a campsite on a ridge. The sun is angling low towards the jagged black ridge, while the trail climbs in long gentle side hills through green vegetation which waves at us as we pass. A cool breeze blows in from the west; dry yet tinged with the cool promise of fall. As the crow flies are only a hundred or so miles north of Cascade Locks but already the very air feels different, darker and colder, wind that hails from a land of snow and dusky winter months. And the land here a reflection of the prehistoric cold which shaped it. Deep bowls filled with shallow lakes, formed by the gouging of snow and ice. Sharp jutting rocks formed by volcanic activity and smoothed by eons of wind and rain. All of this smothered in a thick blanketing smoke, pouring in from the sky, seeping up between trees to fill the valleys, obscuring the land and falsifying small distances as grand.

With each ridge we clamber over a small ache of thrill shoots through my chest. Rounding a bend to where the earth drops away, in the moment before the path is revealed something chants what’s next, what’s next, what’s next. I love the moment of not knowing as much as I want to see what comes next. Always my eyes linger on the trails that I’m not following, branching off towards places unknown, leaving me wondering what is just beyond what I can see. What wonders might be hiding just out of sight.

White Pass (mile 2295) to Bumping River (mile 2309)

Iceman’s rattling pick up truck pulls to a stop at White Pass and I struggle to extract myself from the tiny back seat.

As Starman drags our bags from the truck bed I try and count the tents across the street, bunched up like an impromptu city they are the accomodations for the fire crews working on the fires burning just south of us in Goat Rocks Wilderness. Gear assembled we wave goodbye to Iceman as he eases his car onto the road. Almost immediately the truck is out of sight, consumed by the thick fire smoke, we turn and walk into the Kracker Barrel–a combination gas station and convenience store, not to be confused with the Midwestern diner, a fact that has been disappointing thru hikers for years. Despite their lack of diner food, they will hold a hikers resupply package and have free WiFi. Which really, is all I need at this point.

We while away a few hours in the Kracker Barrel before finally deciding that it really is time to get hiking and force ourselves out the door. Outside the world is colored the terrible orange grey I’ve come to associate with fires. I can feel the smoke snaking into my lungs with each breath and I marvel at how close tenacity and stupidity lie to each other on the spectrum of adventure travel. While expectation and reality can seem as disparate as day and night. Before getting on trail my biggest concern about Washington was that it would be rainy, cold, and miserable the entire time, with nothing to look at but clouds and trees. I never foresaw that we’d be dealing with one of the driest and hottest summers on record with endless forest fires and smoke. Though I guess I was right about not being able to see anything, I was just wrong about the cause.

As we turn from the road to the trail the sound of cars zipping by is replaced by the cool dark of the forest, I resolve to let my expectations go. What else can I do? Mama Nature doesn’t care about my hike, or my desires; it feels unconscionably self absorbed to be upset about the fires when I think about all those dozens of tents set up for the fire crews, about the lives and homes lost in the Karr fire near Redding. Let it go. Let it go. I can’t always change what is.

We hike 14 relaxed miles through a dark and cool forest. The sky is white with smoke, the trees fencing us in on all sides as they have since Oregon. In the most obvious ways the scenery today is the same as the preceding 500 miles, but my mood is elevated after our days off trail, that makes all the difference on this gloomy afternoon. As we hike, Starman and I discuss everybody we’ve met on trail, who has been injured or quit for other reasons, and if it’s an advantage to hike with your romantic partner, or if hiking as a couple makes it more likely that both of you will go home if one partner does. It certainly seems that way from what we’ve observed. When I think back on everybody we met in the desert and all those who have left the trail, it seems irrationally incredible that made it this far. I’m not sure I would believe it had I not spent all those months hiking it.

Just before we reach our campsite we cross the 2,300 mile mark, drawn out in sticks and rocks on the ground. I don’t even notice it until Starman points it out and we exchange a quick high five, like it’s nothing, but of course it is something. This hike is maybe the most rediculous thing I’ve ever done, or maybe it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Or maybe it’s both. The trip having become so normal for us, even on the hard days there is a certain familiarity to the act of walking all day, thinking and worrying about so little—it can be easy to forget to celebrate the small accomplishments. What a joy, to get to live such a life for a time. Even in moments of discomfort I am still deeply content in the outdoors. As the winds blowing in smoke carry that first cool tinge of fall, all I can think about is how I want to spend my fall and winter outside, maybe ski touring some of Oregon PCT in spring. I’ve always loved being outside, and maybe this hike is getting me closer to how I always wanted to live.

The sun is setting earlier these days, the wind a little colder, the leaves tinted with yellow. Fall is coming. Winter is coming. The end of everything and nothing is coming faster than I know and with that realization I’ve begun to think towards life after the trail. A life changing revelation about my career never materialized during this hike, I have never yet been able to think myself into what I wanted to do post trail. But I have thought a great deal about how I want to live my life, the places I want to see and how I want to spend my short precious life, what I don’t want to waste my days doing. This reminds me of the quote by an anonymous author which says “what you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind. Let it be something good.”

Day two started much the same as day one. Except in the evening we got a ride across the river to Stephenson, so we could support fellow hiker Gently Used in his marimba band. Because when else do you get a chance to do that?

Zero in Cascade Locks (2147), no hiking.

If you’re the observant reader, you’ll have cleverly noticed that the miles in this last section have been counting down. That is because when we told people we weren’t going to Trail Days they basically shamed us into changing our minds. Trail Days is an annual festival that brings together three days of thru hiking goodness. Many a hiker plans to arrive at the Oregon/Washington border in time for the event. And some, like ourselves, change their schedule to attend.

Mostly photos in this post, folks! I’m real tired so it’s going to be a little more quick and dirty with the posts until we’re back on trail the day after tomorrow.

Rock Creek (mile 2166) to Cascade Locks (2147)

Starman wants to know if I’m down to take this random alternate he’s found. We’re resting at the last water source of the day, watching a small frog go about it’s froggy business along the rocks of the creek. Starman elaborates that the alternate is the same length as the PCT, but follows a ridge down to the road, instead of winding through the trees. I am easily persuaded. The forest is a damp humid tree scape and while this alternate doesn’t guarantee anything better, at least it’s novel. I know exactly what I’m going to get following the PCT, so even if this alternate is a dud, it’s no worse than the official route. I am so bored and frustrated from 80 miles of trees and fire smoke that I think even if this is a disaster I’ll at least get an interesting story out of it. And disaster is a real possibility, as we veer down a small use trail which is overgrown and covered in forest litter.

The new trail oscillates between nearly overgrown and well worn dirt road before breaking into a power line clear cut. We are thrust from the dark forest into the bright sun, hedged in on both sides by tall bushes. Tall bushes covered in perfectly ripe blackberries! Warm from the sun and eager to plop into your hand at the lightest tug. All urgency to get to town is forgotten. I’m going to fill my small bottle with berries. Starman says he’s going to fill an entire liter bottle.

We meander down the hill until we can neither carry nor eat another berry. The berry bushes flank the long dirt lane well after merging into a neighborhood road. Along the way we find wild growing apple and pear trees. Entertaining ourselves by dreaming up elaborate blackberry recipes.

Campsite at mile 2190 to Rock Creek (mile 2166)

In the last miles of the day we have a 2,000 foot climb. Straight up and over a ridge, through forest so thick you cannot see approaching hikers until they’re right on top of you. The trees hang limp with humidity, positively dripping with it, no breeze to stir the air. A passing hiker jokes “if I wanted humidity like this, I would have hiked the AT.” My smile turns grimace as sweat rolls into my eyes, the trees aren’t the only things dripping and drooping in this heat. I need music, I need something capable of rousing my tired bones up the trail. It takes an eternity to operate my phone with my damp hands, the only thing I can dry my fingers on is my damp shirt, and the only thing Spotify has managed to download is half a playlist; Happy Folk.

So be it.

Folk music has a way of embodying the west. The first reedy twang of guitar and the world contracts and expands all at once, a Hitchcockian camera trick of the mind. The songs could have been written just for you. The way the west feels both endless and intimate, warm light through gently swaying trees. A world of possibly and yet the concrete now.

Well if you could reinvent my name,

Well if you could redirect my day,

Folk is the music of long car rides and vast horizons, of contemplative looks towards the sunset. The great wide west is where young folks go to make themselves, the land of opportunity as told to you by the mandolin.

‘Cause I was lost in comparison

Always pretending I knew

The familiar ache of poignant nostalgia swells in my chest, threatening to overwhelm me with the sheer luck of it all. This body and mind, to be alive in this country at this point in time. Maybe I should play the lottery, clearly I am the luckiest person alive.

I’ve read the script

And the costume fits,

So I play my part

Campsite at mile 2214 to campsite at mile 2190

I wake to the now familiar smell of forest fire smoke drifting in on the morning breeze. The sky is an endless flat white stretching overhead, and in the trees the soft shadows blend the various hues of green together forming shapeless backdrop to our morning. The forest slides past, indistinguishable, unknowable, lulling my waking mind down into a low gentle hum of nothingness. Occasionally there are punctuations of beauty, warm light dancing across ripping leaves, blueberries bobbing heaving with juice, but overwhelmingly there are trees and trees and trees.

In early morning we reach the top of a ridge and there we can look out onto the world. Beyond 100 feet the dark green of the forest begins to fade and blur into the smoke. A half mile out and lines become soft shapes and shadows; beyond that there is only white, vast shapeless white. On the maps someone has commented “a great view of Mount Hood from here!” Oh invisible commenter, I wonder what you have seen, for I am blinded. We have been set adrift in a sea of white, with nothing but a sameness of green to anchor us to this world our eyes are as good as useless.

The afternoon passes in much the same way as the morning, a sort of walking purgatory. We climb up into the sky where there is nothing and less to train your eyes on, then down into the wallpapered hallway of the forest. And so passes one full day on the PCT, not with a leaping joy but with a frustrated sigh.