… hates hikers and wants us all to die
We entered Washington after milkshakes (of course) and walked up a big hill (obviously) in the heat (trifecta!). You’d think by now we would know better, and really we do know better, we just don’t care. The pure elation of a mouthful of milkshake is worth all the sweaty burps and stomach pain. Once we leave town (aka the source of all ice cream and ice cream related treats) we each know it will be awhile before we can enjoy such luxuries again. The physical distress will abate, but our memories of the sweet cold heaven melting on our tongues will abide.
I think back to how accomplished I felt walking into Kennedy Meadows at mile 702. I felt like a real hiker, like I might actually be able to accomplish this. Over 1400 miles later and I can’t even put a name to how I feel. It was something I was doing, but it became something I am. Journal entries by this point are dreary and depressing. I don’t care about scenery. I repeatedly mention how I’m always tired/hungry/in pain. I am losing patience with non-thruhikers. My backpack is falling apart and I just shrug. At this point if I had to carry everything in a trash bag slung over my shoulder I would, I just don’t care enough to mend anything. Once we crossed the Bridge of the Gods it’s only about 500 miles to the monument, in theory, and walking 500 miles is something I can wrap my mind around. My only reason for finishing it is to finish it, and I am beyond ready to finish it.
I try not to bring it up, the trail, really I do. But in the ritual of any small talk that goes past half a minute, what do you do comes up. I drive a car for Uber, so I have lots of these conversations. Usually they ask if Uber is my sole work and I admit to it and then quickly apologize and rationalize my barely-employed status by explaining about reintegrating into society, easing back to work, etc. Also, in these conversations I find myself telling strangers what they want to hear: it was amazing, life-changing, beautiful, etc. These things are true, it is amazing, and it did change my life, just not necessarily in a good way. It was beautiful, even when beauty lost it’s ability to stun me I could still recognize it for what it was. It was also other things. It was brutally hard and it was heart breakingly sad and it it was everything else too. But people don’t want to hear that, so I’ve stopped telling them.
Washington is lush and green and the many Sisyphuses (Sisyphi?) at the WTA (Washington Trail Association) are constantly fighting a battle to keep the forest from absorbing the trail. Ferns and moss abound and giant deadfalls put the lie to the idea of the PCT as an equestrian trail. If a couple years went by with no human intervention, the trail would quietly and completely disappear without a trace.
Remember how I said I was vista’d out (completely burnt out on beautiful scenery)? Well the Goat Rocks made a liar of me. It’s a knife-edge ridgewalk of unparalleled beauty, probably my favorite on the entire trail. At one point we could look south to see Mt. Adams, west to see Mt. St. Helens, and north to see Mt. Rainer. Hot Mess and I took a half mile detour to summit Old Snowy Mountain and there, on top of a spire of boulders we sat while the wind blew through us and felt at home. We were children who’d snuck up onto the roof to view our neighborhood. We belonged here, we’d earned our places in this world. Coming down to where we’d left our packs we found granola bars stuffed into the socks that we’d pinned to our packs to dry, treats in our stockings like Christmas morning.
Six days after leaving Cascade Locks we walked into White Pass to find out twelve miles of trail south of Stehekin was closed due to forest fire. Stehekin is maybe the most popular destination on the trail. The only way into or out of town is either a four hour ferry ride, a chartered floatplane, or on foot. The only road connecting it to the rest of the world washed out years ago. It was the only place on the entire trail I had planned a definite zero day before beginning my walk.
It’s 79 miles from the end, arriving here a hiker can begin trying to understand what they’ve done, make preparations to get home, relax in the knowledge that all they have to do is coast on in to the finish line. Instead, we’d have to find a way around the fire while maintaining our unbroken footpath. The best alternative the PCTA could come up with was hitchhiking around the closure, an option that was never even on the table for us.
It was four days before we had access to all the maps we’d need to find a way around the closure. We got to Snoqualmie Pass and after binging on Thai food brought from Seattle by Jeff B. (Hot Mess’s dad), we spread out maps and guidebooks to figure out our reroute. Jeff had made a valiant attempt to scout out a better way around but his attempt ended after hours of hacking through thick underbrush on an unmaintained trail and being swarmed by hornets. He did, however, succeed in seriously impressing us both with his efforts, I don’t know that I’d have done the same. The reroutes we came up with were trade-offs between overall miles, roadwalking, and getting to see Stehekin. We had to finish in time for GBH to get back to work while also not compromising the things the rest of us wanted. We narrowed it down to two options and presented them to the rest of the hiker family, debated them, and decided on a route that involved 85 miles of pavement. In the end the decision became a moot point.
I don’t feel any sort of accomplishment, any sort of elation at what I've done. I don’t actually believe I've done it, not in a deep instrinsic way. It feels tainted, it shouldn’t feel that way. I kept an unbroken footpath when others found detours and closures as opportunity to walk less. I did side trips, extra miles, extra mountains, yet something feels wrong about it. Or maybe something just feels wrong about me remaining me. Like what I experienced on the trail was potent and true and should’ve been a springboard for something new, some new me but here I sit wrapped in the same skin, plagued by the same self-doubt, crushed under my own inertia.
Ashley (Hot Mess’s best friend and roommate), aka Overshare and/or Ambot (Ashley Monster Bringer Of Treats) joined us at Stevens Pass. Ashley had been preparing to join us for a longer stretch of trail but the fires threw a wrench into her plans (as forest fires are wont to do). She didn't get off easy though, she ended up doing 83 miles of trail with more elevation gain per mile than the Sierra. She had done training hikes and was as ready as a person can be, but jumping on trail with hikers who have been walking for months is not easy nor is it recommended. The first day the weather was great, Iron Chef and I made our miles quickly and were set up by 1pm. We washed clothes and swam and then laid around all afternoon passing a bottle of single malt Scotch back and forth while trying to figure out why we didn’t do this more often. The next three days, however, were the perfect hypothermic combination of cold and wet. I kept my normal pace to allow Ambot and Hot Mess time to chat but really I needed to move quick to stave off the uncontrollable shivering that seemed to emanate from my bones whenever I stopped. The trail was overgrown so even when the rain paused we were still walking through what amounted to an automatic car wash. Iron Chef and I took turns screaming to the heavens, “Oh yeah, that’s fuckin great, gimme more of that, is that all ya got?!”
On the third day of cold and wet the clouds were undecided about what to do. They’d begin to open and then just as quickly, close and mist at us. Finally, after hours of teasing, the sun came out and I can’t express the feeling. Off trail the weather can be an annoyance, but mostly it doesn’t matter. Maybe we get wet walking to our cars and the roads get slick, maybe we end up driving into a bright sun without sunglasses or cutting a jog short due to rain. But on trail the weather is the building we live in. When it’s cold and wet, we are cold and wet, when it’s hot and dry, well, you get the idea. So when the clouds did open and the sun poured down on us it was like being born again into a world that didn’t hate us. We were, like the times before, minimally geared and if the sun hadn’t come out the day it did, we might (would) have been forced to find a side trail out to town to dry gear and warm up.
True to our plan we hiked out on Suiattle River Trail and began the roadwalking. The first day it was a novelty, we joked about it, we brightsided it. The second day was harder and by the morning of the third day our feet had begun to swell like balloons. We walked 17 miles before stopping for lunch at the Newhalem Visitor’s Center and found out the fire had jumped the highway in the minutes before we arrived and we had to evacuate. Ask any thruhiker about pavement and you’re likely to get a visceral reaction; a wince, a grimace, maybe a groan. We walked 73 miles of road and were informed it had been pointless. We could have been sleeping for those three days or getting drunk or laying in a hot tub and it would have made no difference to our progress. We hitched back to the last town, watching miles we’d limped through for hours vanish in the rearview mirror in minutes.
In Marblemount we sat drinking milkshakes in stunned silence and tried to understand what had happened. We felt cheated and betrayed. We were thruhikers trying to maintain an unbroken footpath and no matter what we did it seemed like the trail gods were blocking our way. Many of our extended trail family had skipped around the closure and were already finished. Even Little Feet had gone on, deciding he was ready to finish and who could blame him? Yet here we were, the four of us, shut down by the worst wildfire season in Washington’s history. We’d spent hours creating our reroute and it was made superfluous by the capricious whim of mother nature.
I don’t know how long it took to make our respective decisions, my memory of it is a blur of awkward discussion followed by a flurry of movement. When the dust settled GBH had decided she didn’t have time to continue her hike with her work schedule looming. Hot Mess and I decided to get back on the PCT where we’d gotten off at the Suiattle Trail and risk walking through the fire closure, and Iron Chef decided he couldn’t afford the possibility of getting caught walking through the closure, instead getting off trail and waiting for it to reopen.
So that was it. We quickly swapped food and gear around and found a nice couple who ended up giving Hot Mess and I a ride all the way back to the trailhead. The four of us had been walking and camping near each other for over 1500 miles at this point and in the span of minutes circumstance ripped us apart with barely time for hugs.
It’s January now, I’m looking out my window at a skiff of dry snow. It’s 5 degrees today, bright sun, a little wind. I try to imagine walking in it and I can’t. I’ve been off the trail now longer than I was on the trail but I’m still tired. I need to find a doctor, see what’s going on. The numb rectangle on my left thigh hasn’t changed, my left foot still gets sharp pains in the same spot and I wish I could at least get on a treadmill for half an hour but don’t want to injure it further. It was probably there on the trail and I just couldn’t discern it among the rest of the pain. I’m making CDT plans now, mostly to distract myself from my post-trail life. I don’t know if I’ll do it, but I know that I could, but even that doesn’t matter, only the distraction matters.
We decided on a plan before we got to the closed section of trail, we’d walk quiet and steady from the moment we crossed that line until the other side of the closure. If we saw anyone official looking we’d duck off the trail and wait them out. We even went so far as to work out a few hand signals (thank you USMC combat training) to communicate in case we saw someone.
Caution cost us a bit of speed but the miles crept by nonetheless. I’m not sure how far in we were when we both heard a strange noise and I signaled her to wait while I investigated. Through the trees I saw a flash of orange and hoped maybe it was some piece of equipment the firefighters had left but worried it was rangers waiting for us. The rumor was that the fine for entering a fire closure could be as much as $10k. That’s more than my first three cars combined, it’s enough for two more thruhikes, and it’s much more than I wanted to pay for a twelve mile walk. But, of course, it wasn’t rangers of firefighters or fire equipment, it was fire.
It was a cluster of trees maybe 40 feet tall and about 200 yards away from where we stood. The trees stood on the other side of Agnes Creek, but Agnes Creek is far less than 40 feet across. There wasn’t any wind but our priorities immediately shifted from not getting caught to not getting burned alive. For the next hour or so we walked about as fast as we could short of breaking into a jog and put as many miles as we could between us and those trees. Before we knew it we were on the other side of the closure, giddy with the realization that we hadn’t been caught by fire or the authorities.
I find myself trying not to finish this. It’s February now (yes, it took a month to write those last three paragraphs), when I decided to write all of this I figured it might take me 6 weeks and it’s gonna end up being 6 months. Once this is all done and polished up I’ll have to post it and once it’s posted it will be done. I’m not the sort of person who likes to be defined by, well, anything. Thruhiking the PCT isn’t who I am, it’s just something I've done. I’ve done a lot of things, but the PCT has had a more profound impact on me than anything short of Marine boot camp and maybe even more than that. I know I need to finish this, and I will finish this, if for no other reason than to assuage the guilt I feel when I’m not working on it.
It was August 19th when Hot Mess and I separated from GBH and Iron Chef and it was August 24th when I walked into the clearing where Monument 78 stood. In those five days we fell into a very comfortable partnership. She had been to the monument before and offered to let me walk ahead and see it for my first time alone. As far as the scenery went it was anticlimactic, just a clear-cut through the trees marking the end of one country and the beginning of the other. I don’t remember dropping my pack but I must have. I found myself standing with my forehead pressed against the wooden posts I’d seen in pictures a hundred times trying to understand what it all meant. I was crying and bewildered, the tears coming apart from any definable emotion. I wasn’t sad or happy or proud, but probably I was all of those things. Also, I was probably angry and contented and confused and a thousand other things but regardless, the tears kept coming. They seemed to be their own cause and effect and by the time Hot Mess walked up they had returned to the dark recesses from whence they came leaving only thin tracks through the dirt on my cheeks.
I stepped out of her way when she arrived and I have a clear mental image of her standing in front of those posts, arms at her side, completely still. I don’t know what was going through her mind, I doubt if she even knows. She had and has a different history with this trail and her story is not mine to tell.
Other Washington moments:
· In the fire closure, the air thick with the smell of smoke Hot Mess presses her forehead against an ancient and massive tree, says, “I hope you get to live.”
· The day of silence, 29 miles without speech, just each our own thoughts
· Drunk hiking with Hot Mess and a pint of the worst Scotch I’ve ever choked down
· Hiking in a full fox costume complete with ears and tail.
· Meeting John the Peace Wizard during our roadwalk and drinking blueberry shakes
· Hot Mess and Iron Chef throwing me a raccoon kit baby shower (buy me a drink and I’ll tell you that story)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Eek, a comment!