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SDTCT – Day 0

This February I am attempting a 9 day thru hike of the 160 mile San Diego Trans County Trail with a group of 10 rad queers. During this hike we are raising funds for Boarder Angles, a non-profit that does important humanitarian work along our southern border. If you have the means I would encourage you to donate to the fundraiser that we are hosting. All money raised will go directly to border angels. You can find the fundraiser here: https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/sdtct-hike-for-border-angels

Since this is a shorter hike I’ll plan to write on the trail and then publish after. So watch this space for blog posts coming up.

I always look out the window during takeoff; I love the feeling of flying. The rising whine of the engines, the sprint down the runway followed by the first tenuous rise of the front wheel and the sudden leap into the sky. As we climb up and above the undulating cotton candy clouds I look south as though from this height I might be able to see all the way to our destination.

Bookworm, Beau, Audrey, and myself are flying to San Diego on this typically wet m Seattle day. We are the four person Seattle contingent on what is to be a 10 person group of queer hikers setting off on a nine day hike of the San Diego Trans County Trail. The SDTCT is a little-known thru hike that runs 160 miles across San Diego county. Starting at the Salton Sea and terminating at the Pacific Ocean the SDTCT is part desert bushwhack part urban walk. To me, a largely unknown entity having been no more than a silent observer in the group chat. As others discussed food planning, water caches, daily mileage and more I feigned enthusiasm while my mental health wained. I was feigning enthusiasm for my entire life.

The two months prior to the departure of this hike I began what I have come to recognize as my yearly descent into depression. This time, mitigated by a nightly cocktail of medication the depression lacked it’s usual potency. It casually chugged along making getting out of bed in the morning a burdensome chore, sucking the excitement from the world while filling my brain with anxious thought spirals and gruesome images. It was not until a sudden change in medication that the wheels really came off. Rapidly and violently I was pitched headlong into a vacuous mixed episode. My once depressed brain took on a frenetic anxiety the likes of which I am becoming intimately familiar with. Now the bone-deep exhaustion was paired with a restless, directionless energy that wanted nothing but out. Mornings took on an arduous quality as I struggled, and often failed, to get myself out of bed. When I did manage to leave the house it was to find a world of endless noise and light, like a thousand needles trying to work their way under my skin. Simply existing in a city became painful, my body was gripped with the agony of it, like a full body sensation of bsomeone driving splinters under your finger nails. Meanwhile my brain spun out narratives of fictional characters, cute stories that consumed my entire mind before turning dark, brutal and violent. My brain was inventing characters only to show me how violently it could maim and dismember them.

And it was against this backdrop that the final weeks before the SDTCT passed. I felt nothing. As though I stood on an eldless grey plain. I felt desperate to be away from the grating noise of Seattle, to let myself vanish into the desert, to grind my body down across the sandy earth. I felt that even on the other end of the country I would be haunted by the endless, spiraling echo chamber of my mind. Such is the reality of a prison you carry with you wherever you go. And in the way that anxiety can warp even the simplest interaction I began to worry that I would be the weakest link of the hike, that I wouldn’t be able to cope with the planned 20 mile days, that the escape of the desert would be nothing more than a case study in my own failing. In going into this hike I am acutely aware that I am unfit and under trained. After all, when you are struggling to make it to work, working out becomes something of a tertiary concern.

And then, and then dear reader the most wonderful thing happened! Two days before I was to board this flight to San Diego hypomania arrived in all her chattering, creative, ebouliant energy. The world flooded back into color, my chest was an expanding balloon of light and wonder and I found myself laughing not at anything in particular but with the simple joy of being alive. And oh music, music and the power of being bouyed along on the soaring emotions of another. For this hike I didn’t download a single podcast. Instead, goodr vibes only music. (Insert link to Jump in the Line) My excitement crescendoed just in time for takeoff and for the first time in more than a month I was looking into the near future with something resembling hope.

And I know, I do. I know that stability comes only when the up and down give way to a middle ground of average. But please, please let me live in this space just a little longer. Just a little longer before the lack of sleep and mile-a-minute brain burn out my core and reduce me to ash. Let me marvel at the desert and feeling the sun on my face in the winter. Let me have deep, roaming conversations with this ragtag band of strangers with whom I feel I already have so much in common. As I wing my way south down the coast I find myself pleading with my jumbled brain not for 10 days of normalcy, I know that would be too much to ask given the circumstances, but simply 10 more days of anything before the inevitable crash.

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October

Suddenly it was October. It felt like I woke from a fever dream and suddenly it was October. Somehow. But how? Somehow the spanning months between February and October had slipped past me like a fast flowing river, depositing me on the far side of a lake. Filled with torrential grappling, struggling against my flailing mental health the months dragged and bounded past me. Psychiatry and therapy appointments, medication changes, dark days, brief spiraling highs. Somehow it was already October and I wondered where the year had gone.

July 13th. Happy Birthday to me. The dour, tumultuous moods that had followed me since February persisted and now I was 31. My gift to myself was a solo backpacking trip to the Enchanted Valley in Olympic National Park. Following a long, river-cut valley, the trail meanders along until finally the valley widens below glacial ridges. The hike is dotted with little idyllic river-side campsites, each one called my name, entreating me to stop. My energy levels were failing, a physical manifestation of the illness in my brain, I desperately wanted to stop.

When things fall apart I cling to normalcy. Convinced as I was that faking it until I made it was the only way through I pushed on my hike. Eventually, eventually I made it to my valley floor campsite with a view of the river where I sat under a tree and tried to draw the darkness in my brain. It helped. Drawing almost always helped. It became central to how I understood my mental illness and I never left home without a sketchbook. 

The next day I hiked out, I drove home. Driving into Seattle I pulled into a tattoo shop. A spontaneous birthday present to myself. A simple, short phrase but the pain of the tattoo needle along my ribs was exquisite. Maybe that’s why I chose the spot, chose the phrase: never too late. That night, in the darkness of my bedroom I ran my fingers across the raised skin on my side. As though touch they would give me strength. As though by inking the words onto my body I would remember what they said and I would make it through this ceaseless storm. Never too late.

August. The Loowit trail runs a low, bobbing loop around the base of soaring Mt Saint Hellens. But on this trip the decapitated peak was hidden from view by low drizzling clouds. As I hiked the 32 mile circumnavigation I struggled to dredge up the elation I used to feel at these weekend trips. The clouds, like my mood, hung heavy and damp. Unenthusiastic emptiness, grey and bland.

Underneath my apathy roared spikes of outrage. Though quickly tampered they demanded to know why I could no longer connect to the joyous child within me. The part of me that rushes headlong into the natural world eager to look, to see, to breathe in the scenery through my very skin and be made whole by it’s embrace. I was out here but I was trapped within the cage of my skull. I was miserable. But the joy of hiking is that you can’t quit until you are back at your car. So I walked and waited for the trip to be over. The well I was trapped in was dark and deep and at times I felt certain I would never make my way back to the surface.

September. The rumbling plane swept me eastward towards the European continent. Starman sat beside me. We were on our way to hike the Tour du Mont Blanc. A 108 mile circumnavigation of the Mt Blanc Massif running through France, Italy, and Switzerland. In the weeks approaching the trip I knew something was wrong. I knew that despite new medications that something had never been made right and it was getting worse by the day. But I wasn’t on this trip for myself, I was on it for Starman. Normalcy. Just pretend to be normal I told myself. I wanted nothing more than for Starman to have a good time, after all his planning, after months of worrying after me I needed this for him more than I wanted health for myself.

And I did make it through the trip. There were minimal tears and no fights. I saw Starman snap photos and drink beer. We stayed at refuges, met chatty Brits, ate fondue. It was good, but inside I was struggling to hold on. From one hour to the next my mood would surge and the drop out below me. For half a day I would be in tears only to be laughing and joking with strangers over dinner. It may come to be one of my greatest regrets that when I looked upon the Alps for the first time I felt a hollow, buzzing nothing. My head was a fluorescent bulb, at once too bright and sickeningly empty.

Then it was mid October and one more wonder drug in my cocktail and I was stable. I did everything and nothing and somehow things got better. I was elated. I was enraged. How could everything simply get better with one drug. I felt impotent in my health, I could take no credit other than having lived through the ordeal. Though perhaps that is credit enough.

The episode was over. The summer was over and with it came the rains. The clouds closed in around Seattle like silence, and I marveled over this glorious blue dot. The indecisive weather left me in the hinterland of seasons. I felt I had missed spring and summer, I had missed so much of 2019 it felt like a personal loss. In October I walked through the city and waited for winter to come. In October I began to look forward to the coming snow. In October I was glad that I could look forward to anything at all.

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Choose

I fantasize about running through a red desert. The breeze is cool and tinged with coming night, the red of the sand seems to reverberate with the last vestiges of the fading day. In the distance, a monolith mesa rises from the creosote-dotted earth to block the eastern horizon.

In this fantasy, I shuffle slowly along. I have never been a fast runner and there is no need to pretend otherwise for the purpose of this fantasy. Besides, in the soft, silty sand it is hard to run quickly and I am more than content to lope along. Footsteps kicking up clouds. Breathing in control. Sweat sticking my short hair to my head. In this fantasy my body is familiar, capable, powerful.

But I am not in a nameless red desert. But sitting alone on my couch in my small Seattle apartment. The last of the day’s fall sunlight leaks through the window in watery rays. Dust motes stir on the desk. I watch the world grow dark around me, marveling at the stupefying effects of oxycodone.

Even through the drug, my chest feels like it is bound in searing ropes. Not painful exactly, but uncomfortable enough to warrant constant notice. A reminder, as it were, of what I have done. What I have chosen. A surgery to shave down my body into one I hope be more comfortable living in. Top surgery, yet not a full mastectomy. I did not wish to remove my breasts entirely, but to move myself from visibly feminine toward a different place altogether. As a nonbinary person I am no more a man or a woman than I am a combination of the two. Instead, I am something different, less a middle ground than a third option entirely.

In choosing to have reduction top surgery I wanted to give myself a body that I could tolerate inhabiting. One that didn’t project unwanted femininity at every opportunity. One that I didn’t have to bind and conceal and endure every single morning as I desperately tried to find something, anything in my closet that covered my chest and made me feel normal. Invisible. Unneeding of attention. A human blip on the radar of society soundlessly gliding by without a protruding prow out ahead of me.

For days after my surgery I wore the same oversized red flannel. Even with the bandages around my chest the shirt fell nearly flat. It was perfect. Comfort like a deep sigh of relief. 

Rather than feeling strange or shocking my new chest felt normal, expected. Like this was how I was always supposed to look. And it was this sense of rightness that would carry me through the coming months of healing. As the last of the beautiful fall days passed I sat on my couch, I fantasized about running across a red desert. I dreamt of a strong, capable body as weeks passed and my muscles atrophied.

Physical exertion and strain seem to be the only ways I can understand this body that I inhabit. Being forced to abandon those tools quickly left me feeling lost within my own skin. Weak and without recourse to manage the sickly, vibrating energy that seems to fill my very bones. The price of making my body my own is to be forced to sit and handle my discontent. Energy within me that bubbles and strains, looking for a way out. This new chest is one part freedom, one part test of patience. Wholey a lesson in coming home.

Through healing from top surgery I came to see my body as an old house. A thing that I inhabit but do not love. A thing that requires maintenance and understanding, that is both imperfect and impermanent. A thing that I can shape to a degree, but short of total destruction I will never be able to transform it fully into my own. I can paint the bathroom, knock down a wall, but the structure is the same.

I am coming to accept that this old house contains the very core of who I am, a constant energy seeking a way out as though my very being is discontent to be trapped under skin. Yet through effort and ink and knife this body of mine is starting to become familiar. And if I sit here long enough it will heal and I will be allowed to return to physical exertion, to wild places, to the brutal joy of endurance. I fantasize about running across a wild, red desert. I wait.

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How to Afford Nature

Learning from the Pros

It’s Friday morning and there is a pile of gear strewn around the living room. Which honestly, is how most weekends start; gathering of all the required equipment from the garage and depositing it haphazardly into the apartment until it can be packed into bags and cars.

This afternoon we will load all of this gear into Starman’s comically small Mini Cooper and, with skis on the roof, drive north to Vancouver, BC, Canada where we’re taking our level one avalanche safety course from Avalanche Canada–the national non-profit dedicated to educating the public about avalanche safety. This weekend represents the start of a journey into ski touring. Something that I have been eager to dive into for a very long time. The ability to replace snowshoes with skis on winter backpacking, mountain climbing, and day trips will give us greater access to the astonishing number of natural spaces near Seattle. Plus, it’s more fun.

Of course, it is not necessary for us to drive to Canada to take this kind of class. America has avalanches too and the resultant courses for learning to navigating them safely. The American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education (AIARE) is the primary educational resource in the states and offers avalanche safety courses multiple times each winter in the mountains around Seattle.

Which begs the question: why are we driving four hours to Canada to take a nearly identical class to the one that is offered in our home city? It’s actually quite simple, really: because it’s substantially cheaper for the same education. Even after we throw in the cost of gas, and an AirBnB for the two of us, it’s cheaper. And sometimes the only way to afford your passions in the outdoors is to look for a bargain.

Accessing the Outdoors

There is a common refrain in the outdoors community that nature is for everyone. That trails, mountains, and rivers don’t care about your gender, sexuality, race, or religion. And while that sentiment may be objectively true, it ignores the very real barriers that keep many folks from accessing the wild places that belong to us all. A huge one  of these barriers is cost.

My parents taught me to ski around the time I was entering kindergarten. At that age I never wondered at the monumental effort and cost that is required to get a small child to the ski hill. Now that I have grown to the age of undeniable adulthood I am astonished that my parents ever took me and my sister skiing.

Of course, I learned to ski more than 25 years ago. Before skiing started to transform into something that only the wealthy can afford.

During the death of the Mom & Pop ski area as mega resorts grew to prominence I was sliding around on plastic skis in red nylon pants. This was before Vail Resort in Colorado began charging $200 for a single day lift ticket at the window. Before a lesson, rental, and day pass at Breckenridge Ski Area ( a Vail Resports property where I personally taught for five years) could run you $450 for a single child. To me, these are literally unconscionable amounts for a ski area to charge. And it is one of the primary reasons Starman and I have begun aggressively pursuing backcountry ski touring.

Yes, two white, middle class professionals have decided that we cannot afford to ski in-bounds anything but infrequently. By all rights we are a marketers wet dream, we should be the ideal people they are selling vacation packages to. And yet, we’re opting to leave the area behind in favor of affording things outside of skiing. As ski areas continue to increase prices they are dividing their consumer base into two groups while driving out anyone who might have a passing interest in the sport.

A Numbers Game

Visit any ski area this winter and you will notice two distinct groups. The first are the tourist–often called gapers for their tendency to stand in the middle of the sidewalk and gape open-mouthed at the mountains. Aside from the open mouths, the tourists are easy to spot because by and large they are the ones queued at the day pass window, eating in the fancy restaurants at the base area, and staying in the mega-rise condos that crowd the bottom of so many ski areas. They are the people that ski areas are looking to retain as customers.

It is not uncommon for families, who typically take one or two ski vacations annually, often drop $15,000 for a family of four to vacation for a week.This money generates thousands of jobs, and the management of every company knows it. When I worked as a snowboard instructor at Breck I was repeatedly told by managers that a ski vacation should be seen as akin to a trip to Disneyland, and bearing an equally high price tag. Ski areas understand that skiing and snowboarding are expensive sports and have decided to cater their offerings to clientele who can afford the high prices and demand a premium experience in return. And the marketing of ski area as premium vacation is working. Last year saw a 6% increase in skiers and snowboarders from households earning more than 100,000 annually.

If your local ski hill has a large luxury hotel, a spa, and has recently started offering kale salads in the lodge on addition to the standard burger. Well friend, your area is looking to attract the affluent.

However, it’s unlikely that locals are using these amenities. These are people who live within a two hour drive of the ski areas and have managed to afford their skiing through the economy of scale. You see, skiing only becomes affordable when done in bulk. Buying a $700 season pass is an absurd amount to spend unless you’re going to be skiing 20 or more days a year. Of course, the cost doesn’t stop there.

If you’re skiing 20 times a year you’ll have to mortgage your kidney in order to afford rental fees. So now instead of renting, you buy your gear. Programs like season rentals, end-of-season discount sales, and used stores have all risen to the needs of your weekend warrior. But it’s unlikely you’ll get a slope-worthy kit for less than $500. Still, people are willing to pay the cost for access to something they love and they’ll carpool and pack their lunch to be able to afford that annual pass.

How I Make it Work

In 2018 as I prepared to thru hike the Pacific Crest Trail I applied and was accepted to be part of the PCTA’s P3 Hiker Program. A group of aspiring thru hikers who would serve as volunteer journalists and photographers documenting their time on the PCT through the lens of preservation, promotion, and protection of the trail. Through this program I was put in contact with the employees at Salomon who manage athlete and ambassador relations. After the trail I very nicely asked for a pro deal and they gave me one. These deals are often what you see when you look on someone’s Instagram account (like mine) and they say they are a brand ambassador. In exchange for rights to images, tags in social media posts, and a body bedecked in logos I am given a steep discount on Salomon gear.

To me, this is a totally fair exchange. I would be taking and posting these images anyway, so throwing on an @SalomonFreeski tag isn’t a huge ask, and I genuinely like their gear. And if I’m going to be truly candid, I would not be skiing this year were it not for this partnership. Why? Because ski gear is outrageously expensive. My current touring set up would run upwards of $4,000 retail. I don’t have that much money. Especially after my thru hike as I desperately attempt to rebuild my savings account.

The rest of the equation in affording my outdoor habit comes from a near disregard for everything else. Sexy, no? I drive a used car and do as much maintenance as I can myself, I take public transit, I don’t eat out much or go to happy hours, and I’m pretty sure Starman and I are still mooching off his parents Netflix account (hi, Carol!). In some ways it’s simple, I prioritize going outside over almost everything else. In other ways it’s a much more complicated daily calculation where I am constantly assessing what I value. It takes a lot of savings and effort to get outside as much as I want to.

While my financial priorities work for me, I think this points to a larger issue within the outdoors community as a consumerist society. Can we really say that the outdoors is for everyone where there is such a high price tag on getting in the front door.

Who is Welcome

I can hear the inner workings of an argument prone mind saying “But Kara, skiing and snowboarding are outliers, they don’t represent the cost of the outdoors at large!” And I hear your point irate reader, I do. Certainly skiing and snowboarding are substantially less expensive than motorized outdoor sports such riding snowmobiles or ATVs, paragliding, SCUBA diving, any sort of sailing, and trad climbing. And skiing is certainly far less expensive than day hiking—unless you don’t have access to a car in which case you can’t get to the trailhead, but that’s a post for another day.

However, unlike all of the activities listed above, skiing and snowboarding require the average user to pay for access to the means for skiing in the form of lift passes. This distinction is what ski areas are now exploiting with exorbitant lift ticket prices. And what I, and an increasingly large numbers of skiers and riders, are attempting to avoid by pushing into the backcountry.

Needed Change

So what? So ski areas want to charge $200 for a lift ticket. So some people won’t pay that and the ski areas are contented with the affluent few who will. This is how capitalism works, the suppliers can raise prices in response to demand and people will adapt. Is this really a problem?

Yes, yes it is; if you want there to be a future of skiing.

From a purely economic standpoint, ski areas literally cannot afford to follow their current business model. In the last decade the average age of people on the slopes has increased from 34 to 38. Meaning that the skiing population is aging and not being replaced by new, young people. Furthermore, as Baby Boomers reach geriatric age skiing may experience a massive drop in participation. The model of catering to the wealthy is certainly not new, but that doesn’t mean it’s a sound, or even moral, long term strategy. If ski areas want to survive they will need to adapt, embrace new people, and lower the bar for entry.

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Calm Between the Storms

Through the dark a warm, red glow begins to blossom, prying me from sleep. Slowly the glow blooms into a persistent light and I am dragged into wakefulness. Before I can fully wake, before I can choose to engage with the day, I roll over and turn my alarm clock off. I am not going to the gym today.

In fact, I didn’t go to the gym once this week. Not once. Each morning when my fancy daylight alarm clock began to brighten the room I would turn it off and go back to sleep for another hour.

For the first time in what feels like a long time I have completely fallen out of the habit of exercising before work. Foregoing my normal practice in favor of extra hours spent between the sheets. When the darkness of morning comes calling I ignore it. The difference is, that this week I elected to stop feeling bad about it.

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Years ago I was introduced to the concept of the Big Why. The Big Why is the concept of drilling way down deep through the desire behind any goal in an effort to figure out what is motivating our actions. Once we understand our Big Why it becomes easier to follow through with the necessary steps to to accomplish our goals. For more than two years my Big Why was attempting a thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.

When I didn’t want to do squats (my very least favorite strength training activity) I motivated myself with the knowledge that squats lead to strong legs and strong legs lead to a higher likelihood of completing my hike. The same was true with money. When I wanted a fancy coffee, or to splurge on a last minute trip I would weight that immediate desire against the much bigger desire to save money for the PCT. Suddenly every dollar I spent became potential PCT money and as a result it was easier to skip the fancy coffee and put that money into my savings account instead. My why was big enough to consistently influence my daily decisions. A touchstone of sorts which I could return to when the desire to be comfortable or entertained in the moment threatened to derail the dream of thru hiking.

However, when I completed my thru hike of the PCT on September 11, 2018 my big why vanished. Poof. It was gone. I had a few plans on the horizon, but nothing that required long term dedication in the way that preparing for the trail did. And that lack of motivating force impacted how lived my life. Even though it would be weeks before I could begin to recognize it.

In the weeks immediately following the trail I began running around the lake in my neighborhood. I signed up for a nearby gym. Told myself that I wasn’t going to lose all of the fitness I had gained over the previous months of backpacking. I thought I could roll this experience into another epic adventure, something big and sexy. I was riding a high of accomplishment and in doing so ignoring how my body was feeling.

Barbell weight training, something I genuinely enjoy, became a chore to be dealt with. Running began to feel about as enjoyable as filing taxes. On more than one occasion I would choose hiking destinations based on the quality of story they would produce, not how happy they would make me. I had become someone with two thru hikes under my belt. Someone who gets outside every weekend, hits the climbing gym at night, and does epic shit. But I was also tired and unmotivated. Misdiagnosing the cause of my malaise I plowed forward.

Maybe, I thought. Just maybe what I just needed was another big project to throw myself at. If I could just cultivate the right level of stoke then all my desire to train and get outside would come rushing back. But in the way that mother nature holds us and allows her foolish human children to find their own paths across this planet, she is also capable of stepping in our way when we are in danger of doing ourselves harm.


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This winter in the northwest has been characterized by alternating warm rain and snow storms. Resulting in a highly unstable snowpack and high-risk avalanche conditions which have forced me to stay at lower elevations and closer to home. My personal life has been characterized by stretched finances as I looked for a job and rebuilt my savings account after taking nearly eight months away from the workforce.

In the way in which I pursued the PCT with an unbalanced fervor, the pendulum is has since swung the other way and I find myself craving rest. Yet, having this swing coincide with the new year has left me feeling distinctly at odds with a society that fetishizes productivity and busyness. During the early weeks of January while the internet screams about 10 habits of highly productive people, declaring that this will be the year of the new you. I feel like I am constantly walking through a blaring motivational Nike ad when all I really want is a nap.


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The proverbial Greek choir dubbed ‘they’ says that there is calm before the storm. I have always found that there is a calm after the storm as well. Living our lives in endless circles as we do, means that these are perhaps the same calm. A season of effort followed by one of rest. Around and around we go.

At the center of an experience it is hard to see the edges. When I am living in the calm I worry that I will be tied to this bed forever. That my stillness will stretch to the horizon and I will be lost. And while I am amid the flurry of excitement that is the storm I pretend that this too, is sustainable. But here on the edge it is possible to see that change will come in time and that I need not cause myself undue strife in attempting to accelerate it’s approach.

During the last few weeks, as I have waded through the morass of unmotivation I have slowly felt my desire for adventure returning. The months long break is slowly lifting and I can feel my drive to explore returning. The other day as I took a walk at lunch I felt that familiar tug to grab my running shoes. This week when thrilling boxes of new ski gear arrived at my door I once again began browsing weather reports and drive times to my local ski hill. While the tendrils of my burning desire to explore outside are beginning to rekindle I have not yet regained the urge to labor outdoors.

The new gear sitting unassembled on my living room floor speaks to the promise of new, softer adventures. I am not ready to push myself, lungs burning, down 20 miles of alpine trail. But skiing feels like pure play in the way that hiking does not. And that is what I am ready for, play.

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Return

Hello my beautiful star fruits!

It has been a little while since I’ve posted on Wild Country Found. Truth be told I needed some down time after the PCT, time to travel to other places without the expectation to write about my daily activities.  I needed time to let my body heal after the rigors of a thru hike, to embrace being still, eating good food, and moving without an end goal of the Canadian border. More than anything I needed time to just relax without the pressure to live my life online. I In my absence I discovered that writing has become a means for me to process my emotions and as much as the break felt nice, it also felt like something was missing.

Here is what you can expect. Going forward there is going to be a single weekly blog post that will come out each Friday with topics ranging from trip reports to more honest reflections of what is going on in my life. The general theme will still revolve around a life outdoors but with less of the structure you’ve come to expect from my daily PCT writings. I’ve come to really appreciate the community that’s sprung up here and I hope you’ll stick around for the next chapter.

 

 

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PCT Day 74 – SoBo Flip – What in the Actual

Zero in Sierra City (mile 1195) – no hiking

Total PCT miles hiked: 1043

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. 

I haven’t slept inside a building in twelve days. It’s a strange thought that pushes it’s way to the fore of my mind as we walk into what may be the last open hotel room in all of Sierra City. Within five minutes of being inside I’ve scurried back to the front desk and booked us for a second night. Over the course of our time on the trail I’ve become increasingly comfortable with living outside, and our zero days spent inside have correspondingly decreased. At first I wanted to spend my zero day inside every time I went into town, but slowly it’s increased and now we haven’t slept inside since Burney. But tonight, oh god tonight I want to be inside. I want to go to the bathroom without shoes on, to enjoy the benefits of indoor plumbing and electricity, to lay in a bed and read without the worry of running down my phone. And beyond this, I want to lay in a bed in a room with plumbing and electricity for a whole day – so I will. 

Keith however, wants to watch garbage TV. It’s a past time that I would go so far to say he loves. This penchant for bad TV is a trait that more succinctly marks him as Midwestern than anything else.  Though he will mostly just scroll through his phone while the television whines on in the background, he’s still amped. 

Prior to the trail I so rarely watched television with commercials that I nearly felt comfortable using the word never. Which isn’t to say I lived in a media vacuum, but that I only ever watched the commericals I was helping to make at my ad agency. Netflix, yes. Real TV with actual channels, no. Needless to say this recent uptick in commercial content is alarming. I find my eyes drawn from my book to the flashing box in the corner of the room. A luxury car drives through an indoor cloud while a cool British woman speaks in husky, nearly inaudible, tones in the background. A generically handsome white man in a sleeveless shirt sells a drink called Keto-Punch or something. His visible biceps seems to promise health benefits of some sort, though the ad ends without ever saying what the product does. For one whole commercial break the ads seem to vacillate between diet products and food. Then some delightfully terrible local advertisements, used coffin salesmen or some such thing. Following this all of course is the alcohol ad which are all variations on the theme “drink this, be hot, make friends.”

It’s all a barrage of 30 second mini narratives hell bent on convincing you that if only you bought this product, you too could be sexy and tan, and rich, yeah you’ll be rich too. I can see behind the matrix and yet I understand nothing. Is this what television is? 22 minutes of content paid for by minutes of your life spent watching ads? I feel old. I feel like an old man yelling for kids to get off my lawn. I feel like a judgemental hipster, but geezy creezy I absolutely cannot tolerate watching TV anymore. It’s like my garbage meter has been turned up to 11 and now I’m drowning in a sea of false promises. I feel like a cliche, leave the ad world and then become a negative harpy of disconnection and nay saying. I worry for neither the first or the last time what I’m going to do with my life after the trail. After my tolerance for advertising has sunk so low could I ever go back to that industry? An industry, mind you, that I stumbled into and out of. But one that none the less employed me for four years. 

See, this is why you read books, books don’t cause you to question your entire career path while also selling you a hamburger. Zero days are the best worst thing ever. 

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PCT Day 63 – SoBo Flip – Imaginary Hot Tubs and Cold Showers

Burney CA the town (mile 1411) to Communication Facility on Hat Creek Rim (mile 1391)

Total PCT miles hiked: 849

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.

Even in May it’s hot on Hat Creek Rim. The sun shining down unimpeded by tree or cloud. Free to bake and stagnante without even a breath of wind to jostle the humid air through which we are currently wading. And it does feel like wading. The air is positively thick with moisture and heat; the vast sloping flatness of the rim seems to collect and focus the heat so that it is all around me and within me. The right side of my body is disproportionately hot as though by being marginally closer to the sun it’s receiving a noticably higher dose of radiation. What a place, I think, what a relief to be here in May and not July when the rest of the hikers come thru. Thank you thank you thank you to the gods of luck. As with many of small discomforts on the trail, it could always be worse.

The trail along the rim, and below in the valley we crossed beforehand, is flat. Over the course of our 20 mile day we’ll only climb 2,000 feet. 2,000 feet diced into dozens of micro climbs, 200 feet here, 30 there, up and over innumerable small rises and dips as the trail navigates this volcanic landscape. The black rock of ancient lava flows burst to the surface, forcing us to go around and over. Sharp pumice stone under our feet, scattered across the trail, slows progress that prematurely tires our feet. Toe stubbers, ankle breakers, knee strainers – every kind of rock on the trail; they say variety is the spice of life. It’s a long day, filled with small observations one doesn’t normally have the opportunity to make.

Encased in a car, train, or plane the air around you is stationary. The air outside the cabin is without concern, whipping along past the window like so many invisible torrents. Irrelevant. But when walking the air is no longer a constant, no longer uniform but instead a collection of small pools through which we’re walking. Some are cool, causing our pace to slow eliciting a sigh of relief like stepping into a cold shower after a hot day; you can almost but not quite pretend to be washing away the heat of summer. Other air pools are baking hot; where were you while I was freezing in the rain, when I was so desperate for warmth? Of course this hot tub of air was here, where the black rocks reflect the sun just right. As we crest the highest point on the rim a breeze kicks up, blending the pools together until the uniformity of an evening wind merges everything together. The sun is falling from the sky and taking with it the special air pools. And will they be rebuilt tomorrow? Or are they transitory like us? I guess we’ll never know.

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PCT Day 51 – The Planner and The Doer

Campsite at mile 709 to campsite below Olancha Peak (mile 725)

Hiking today seems relatively pointless. After six weeks of hiking through the desert, six weeks of the Sierra looming on the horizon, six weeks of looking forward to something and then deciding not to hike in those astonishing mountains for another six weeks. It feels like accomplishing a goal only to find that someone has moved the finish line, except that someone is you. So the frustration you feel is pointed inwards, clashing with the knowledge that you made the right choice. Frick.

We’re slow to get on the trail this morning, slow to hike, and then take a slow leisurely break along the Kern river, where it cuts a lazy path through a green meadow that gives way to rolling hills of pine forests which climb up and up into snow covered granite beasts errupting into the sky. The beauty of the area seems to taunt me, as though it’s saying “look at everything you don’t get right now.” I wish I could throw a stone at those peaks and knock them down out of the sky so I wouldn’t have to look at them. I didn’t even know how much I missed the mountains until we made the choice to flip around them. It feels childish and true. The reality that we can feel multiple things at once.

I flop onto the grass like a disconsolate child and lose myself in my book, in another person’s life, in another time. When I pull myself back to the present Keith is ready to hike again and so we trundle up the trail. As we hike Keith lists the names of places where we could hitch to, or we could take a bus/train/bus combo, or maybe rent a car, or maybe a ride with a friend, or maybe it’s better to go to this different city. He lists things he wants to research once we’re in town; snow levels, which national parks to call. I want to scream.

This level of assessment, planning, and reassessment is a trait of Keith’s that is both incredibly valuable and totally maddening. He is an engineer through and through. Not only calculating and comparing our options for getting to northern California to each other, but also to the plan we just decided not to do. Why? I’ll probably never know. Once a choice is made I much prefer to fling myself forward and scramble to figure out details on the way. I have no inclination for slow, methodical precision, making it almost painful for me to listen to Keith work through this. Luckily the scenery is outstanding, and without the internet any planning is quickly stymied allowing us to fall into a comfortable silence as we make our way towards the saddle below Olancha Peak.

The lengthening days are giving way to the endless golden hours that seem to color everything about summer with yellowed nostalgia. Everything is extra beautiful, imbued with a radiant glow. Away and away the mountains roll down below us until they are nothing but hills and then less. Fading from green into the blue of distance, valleys shot through with grassy meadows.

I’ll come back, I think. It’s only for a little while, and then I’ll come back to you, my special mountains.

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PCT Day 47 – Tomorrow

Campsite at mile 662 to Chimney Creek Campground (mile 681)

Today was one of those brutally hard days, where you find yourself pushed past your limit again and again. A thousand tiny little almost insignificant cuts of discomfort that somehow build into a crashing tidal wave. Where all you want to do is stop and sit forever. Let you coiled muscles relax into the earth and just stop. But you can’t. With hiking there is no way out but through. No skipped reps in the gym. No miles cut short on a jog. Not out here. Limited food and water means you have to keep moving. There is no choice.

And, tomorrow we’ll do it all again. Hopefully with greater grace, but still, again. Despite everything I cannot help but be excited for tomorrow When we reach Kennedy Meadows. When we finally step across the arbitrary maker that says we’ve walked across the desert. Finally finally finally. I can barely believe we’ve done it.