Portrait 4: Grinding out miles
The PCT is astonishingly beautiful. Sometimes. But what about that day in Oregon that’s just 40 miles of burn scar? Or that week in NorCal that’s just oppressive heat through overgrown hills?
I felt more giddy excitement on the PCT than the sum of the rest of my life. There’s a lot of hype around that from bloggers and YouTubers. I’m a huge advocate of taking side trips and sightseeing, but that doesn’t properly demonstrate day to day life on a thru. Some days you just have to crush miles. Maybe you’re racing to hit the post office before it closes on a Friday. Maybe the previous post office inexplicably sent your resupply box to a different town that’s 20 miles away, you grab whatever food you can find in town, then you only have 800 calories left for the last two days to Walker Pass, and you need to put down an extra twelve miles after the rest of your group sets up camp, and you just hope that locals are camping at a cabin you found on the map, and hope that they will sell you any leftover hot dogs they might have. But more on that situation another time. What about the tedium of long days? Where does your brain go?
My wife had been sick for a few years. I watched her quit taking her meds and quit therapy. She did a lot of hurtful things. Sometimes by accident, sometimes with the express purpose of finding creative ways to hurt me more. I know that she was hurting too, in ways I’ll never understand. I frequently say that I started hiking to deal with depression. I also needed to let go of a lot of hatred. I spent a lot of time in the desert thinking about every terrible thing she’d done to me and all the terrible things I felt about the world. I went to a lot of dark places. I finished my PCT thru as a better, stronger, more positive person, and I will have endless gratitude for what the trail has given me. The best way that I can answer the question of “what do you think about all day” is by asking: What do you avoid thinking about all day? What do you have buried? Because that’s what you’re going to think about. And you’ll be better for it.