11.13.18

Today I received a package from Zurich from Hanne. I'd sent one to her almost three weeks ago as well but customs hangs everything up for a bit. It was a little Bianchi cycling cap and some long cycling socks for the winter plus a card she'd actually bought back in Seattle with a little diagram of the Big Dipper on it. These are the little triggers I endure since mid-October...how many times did we sit under cloudy blankets of stars with the Big Dipper in its eternal prominence? We talk every day as we slowly both transition back in our little corners of the world but here and there it's rough...there’s the fabled 'post-hike depression' which is an idea you sort of laugh off when you're on the trail but once home presents itself in ways you didn't foresee. Of course I didn't want it end. You meet some people on the trail who were truly ready to get back to society to friends and family, who longed for a big warm bed and a sense of regularity. You meet others who tried to 'quit' thru-hiking after their first voyage and kept coming back year after year to try different trails least of all because of the glaring contrast between trail life and all that follows. When I was young I forewent the occasional opportunity simply to invest in a mobile life. I wanted fluidity and a true sense of this concept called 'affluence', which isn't necessarily how much money you have, but what your true work-to-play-to-learning  ratio is. This was at least 50% of my reason for being in bands at the beginning. Of course: If you're in a band, you get to tour. If you get to tour you get to drive through the night reading Bob Dylan biographies to your band mates. You sleep on couches and floors. You're always looking for new routes, venues, and possibilities. When one of my friends first found out I was doing the PCT he simply said "Yeah, I can see that." I suppose a thru-hike was the most logical next step in my life. There were layers of reasons; some more obvious than others. Of course, I'm loathe to complain...to stomp my feet at society and all the right angles and arbitrary rules that humans have invented but...on the other hand I'm pretty well insulated with general apathy regarding the rules. The trail imbues you with everything from freedom to changes in your endocrine system and the end result is that now, if the day lacks a defined purpose or momentum I feel the clouds creeping in. I have to move. Or at least keep editing photos from the trail. On the flip-side a thru-hike is so simple a concept that I now often feel overwhelmed by everyday data and conversations leave me winded, wondering what the hell I just did with the last ten minutes. Even though in three short weeks I've moved twice, edited mountains of photos, finished a short documentary, gone on scores of epic bike rides, set up peripheral business ideas, updated sites, links, metadata blah blah blah and spent pretty much all my free time looking for gainful employment...it still feels very hamster-on-the-wheelish. I try to wind down in the evening. If it's a movie it's Never Cry Wolf on repeat because the Mark Isham soundtrack just reminds me of somewhere...or it's reading the actual book "Never Cry Wolf" by Farley Mowat because it reminds me of...somewhere. Otherwise, it's complete media overload in the Real World, which isn't real at all, as much as a collective agreement which, as far as I can tell is a strange echo chamber of  negligible occurrences. I don't blame the nihilists and chaos theorists for imagining things the way they do. What other conclusion would you come to after a life-time lifted above the dirt, spoon-fed and connected by proxy? Where would you find direct connection to source? I am not one of these modern nihilists and I think chaos theory is childish. Consciousness itself is what tends to fascinate me so I've been observing myself going through the day, fighting these feelings of encroachment that can result from silly things like stop-lights (which make perfect sense in a city) and wanting sell literally everything and drive...somewhere, but I also know there's work to do, frameworks to be laid and more stories to have. Days are up and down but I generally feel ok as long as I'm moving. As long as my attention is occupied. There are plans. Multitudinous one moment and nebulous the next. Schemes floating in my pockets. But right now...I miss my hiking buddy. I miss the magic. I miss being able to talk to other hikers or trail angels...people that could either directly relate or wanted to hear the latest information coming off the trail, just people who got "The Spirit" of it all. I suppose the fun part is being able to go around to old haunts incognito and watch people stare until they go "Will?" I aim to keep it like this.

              

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