01.27.19
The uphill: A confident approach. Heart in the chest. Lungs fill. Drops of sweat begin to fall in the dirt. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Half an hour. One more switchback. Then one more. Then just one more. A slow crest over the pass; the earth begins to level out. A ridge line…a rest. A view. An entirely different eco-strata. Looking toward the next pass. The downhill: Faster but more painful. Careful not to jam the knees. Letting the pack hang back. The weight wants to carry everything forward. It’s a balancing act. Gating and guiding inertia. This is where the joints call out and tendons go counter to their typical function, flexing taught against bone, pulling upward, holding the knees straight, supporting you and the thing on your back. One false step and it’s a rolled ankle. One slip and you go down. Thankfully, you’ll probably fall on your pack. One second you’re glad to finally take a rest on a log and the next your feet are pointed at the sky. That pack doesn’t really act like a part of the body. It just adds 40 lbs of force toward your current inclination.
The canyon: Maybe it’s time for lunch. Creeks and snowmelt build in the shadowy canyons and animals like being close to water sources as well. Deer, squirrel, snake, cougar, bear and birds all depend on the same sources. The trail is their trail too. Mornings often begin following hoof prints a good mile down the side of a mountain. Scare a feeding marmot and more often than not they go barreling away straight down the path; their homes built directly adjacent to the trail. In the valley a song is heard every day. The lilting dee-doo-doo of the mountain Chickadee or the cacophonic demands of the jay, waiting for you to pick a lunch spot. Ravens are particularly good scavengers that can desecrate any bag of snacks left unattended in minutes, but mice are the true bandits of trail. I believe entire colonies have been set up according to the seasonal patterns of hikers that leave crumbs wherever they rest. If you’ve got a decent light during dinnertime you’ll catch them bravely hopping into your perimeter and back into the darkness. They gnaw through virtually any type of fabric including tents and the only way to keep them out of your pack is by hanging it and crossing your fingers.
Hanne scowls into the flickering shadows on the side of San Jacinto:
“I do not like such a creature as this.”
Neither do I. But it’s fun to watch them hop and I prefer them to bears.
The canyons make good camping due to their water, but they also make for cold currents of air drifting down the mountain at night and frost might accompany them. If you sleep in a canyon, the first thing you do in the morning is climb, but it matters little. After a few weeks there’s little preference for climbing over descending, and flats are so infrequent that they’re basically negligible. It all evens out. On the high mountain crests, one downhill only means a corresponding uphill and so on. We learn quickly…hope is futile. There’s no secret strategy for the trail. No assumptions or grand declarations you offered before Campo that are going to amount to much. You walk. You get there when you get there and predictions become unnecessary, even cumbersome in leu of the very basics. That is, the challenge isn’t the trail…the challenge is you.
Some days will feel like a discombobulated stumbling mess. The next day you’re a lithe hunter, sprinting up a rocky pass to survey your lands. Others will feel like processing a million memories from a million angles. Some days a single song will take over your soul for 10 hours. Some days you’ll feel sick and you won’t want to leave the tent. Some days you’ll feel so thankful that you hold back tears. Some days you’ll wish you could share it with everyone you’ve ever known. Some days you’re ready for it to end. And some days you wish you could keep walking like this…forever.
“How is it that we do the same thing every day…wake up, make coffee, pack it up, and walk for ten hours…but it never feels repetitive? Every day out here is like ten days back home.”
“I know…I haven’t felt bored once. There’s no distractions out here. Nothing takes time away from what you’ve got to do.”
“Every day the journey is so clearly defined.”
“And nature has no copies. Every single step is something new. Back in society you see the same things and shapes and ideas a hundred times a day.”
“It’s funny…when you connect to what you really are…suddenly nothing’s missing.”
“Do you think we really used to live like this?”
“I don’t know if it was exactly like this…but I feel it. It’s like my body knows; like it’s being used the right way for the first time.”
“We just didn’t get to hide in air-conditioned boxes under artificial light, staring at screens for most of human history.”
“Pretty simple…”
“How do people complain about feeling disconnected when we’re supposed to be more connected than ever?”
“…it’s just the way we do it now. It doesn’t engage the whole Self.”
“We are creatures of the earth. Strong and sensitive at the same time. Lifted from the trials of hunting, of darkness, and existential threats, but we still belong to her. Maybe this has been our fatal mistake in the 20th Century…the one that might undo it all, accidentally eclipsing the very reasons to be here. We’ve sided with technological prowess and there’s no going back. We demand it. We rail and gnash the moment the router blinks orange and this generation will fight for the right to be monitored, governed, and controlled at every turn. It will be their solemn duty to plug in, scroll, copy, paste, code, consume, and sleep; and their freedom will come from the ‘right’ to sort and evaluate personalized content. Truth will be seen as an infringement on one’s right to conjecture. A liability. This ‘cultured’ human won’t know how biological systems work in unison with a sun on one end and a wobbling watery planet on the other. Stars will be nothing but glowing white dots and our moon; the lyrical fluff of another pop song. This human not only won’t care why they’re here, they won’t even have the ability to ask.”
That’s dark, man…
Out there on the trail it seems so evident: we’re already living in an age of mass distraction on an industrialized scale.
Out there on the trail I quickly forget what day of the week it is. Standard timekeeping is useless, 99% of everything is useless…but we’re told emphatically: "people had it rough". How relative is that idea?
My grandparents came from farms and made it through the Great Depression and WWll. I believe it.
But all these symbolic rituals...what are they for? What do they mean when so much comes down to food, shelter, and water?
I can’t be that much of a luddite.
Maybe our story just keeps unfolding and it’s neither here nor there.
After all, I’m covered in high-tech gear. I love this Patagonia windbreaker.
Maybe I’m the primitive. Maybe I’m the one hooting at shadows in the cave.
But I suddenly don’t care. At all.
It’s nothing compared to the taste of hot food after 140 miles…
The canyon: Maybe it’s time for lunch. Creeks and snowmelt build in the shadowy canyons and animals like being close to water sources as well. Deer, squirrel, snake, cougar, bear and birds all depend on the same sources. The trail is their trail too. Mornings often begin following hoof prints a good mile down the side of a mountain. Scare a feeding marmot and more often than not they go barreling away straight down the path; their homes built directly adjacent to the trail. In the valley a song is heard every day. The lilting dee-doo-doo of the mountain Chickadee or the cacophonic demands of the jay, waiting for you to pick a lunch spot. Ravens are particularly good scavengers that can desecrate any bag of snacks left unattended in minutes, but mice are the true bandits of trail. I believe entire colonies have been set up according to the seasonal patterns of hikers that leave crumbs wherever they rest. If you’ve got a decent light during dinnertime you’ll catch them bravely hopping into your perimeter and back into the darkness. They gnaw through virtually any type of fabric including tents and the only way to keep them out of your pack is by hanging it and crossing your fingers.
Hanne scowls into the flickering shadows on the side of San Jacinto:
“I do not like such a creature as this.”
Neither do I. But it’s fun to watch them hop and I prefer them to bears.
The canyons make good camping due to their water, but they also make for cold currents of air drifting down the mountain at night and frost might accompany them. If you sleep in a canyon, the first thing you do in the morning is climb, but it matters little. After a few weeks there’s little preference for climbing over descending, and flats are so infrequent that they’re basically negligible. It all evens out. On the high mountain crests, one downhill only means a corresponding uphill and so on. We learn quickly…hope is futile. There’s no secret strategy for the trail. No assumptions or grand declarations you offered before Campo that are going to amount to much. You walk. You get there when you get there and predictions become unnecessary, even cumbersome in leu of the very basics. That is, the challenge isn’t the trail…the challenge is you.
Some days will feel like a discombobulated stumbling mess. The next day you’re a lithe hunter, sprinting up a rocky pass to survey your lands. Others will feel like processing a million memories from a million angles. Some days a single song will take over your soul for 10 hours. Some days you’ll feel sick and you won’t want to leave the tent. Some days you’ll feel so thankful that you hold back tears. Some days you’ll wish you could share it with everyone you’ve ever known. Some days you’re ready for it to end. And some days you wish you could keep walking like this…forever.
“How is it that we do the same thing every day…wake up, make coffee, pack it up, and walk for ten hours…but it never feels repetitive? Every day out here is like ten days back home.”
“I know…I haven’t felt bored once. There’s no distractions out here. Nothing takes time away from what you’ve got to do.”
“Every day the journey is so clearly defined.”
“And nature has no copies. Every single step is something new. Back in society you see the same things and shapes and ideas a hundred times a day.”
“It’s funny…when you connect to what you really are…suddenly nothing’s missing.”
“Do you think we really used to live like this?”
“I don’t know if it was exactly like this…but I feel it. It’s like my body knows; like it’s being used the right way for the first time.”
“We just didn’t get to hide in air-conditioned boxes under artificial light, staring at screens for most of human history.”
“Pretty simple…”
“How do people complain about feeling disconnected when we’re supposed to be more connected than ever?”
“…it’s just the way we do it now. It doesn’t engage the whole Self.”
“We are creatures of the earth. Strong and sensitive at the same time. Lifted from the trials of hunting, of darkness, and existential threats, but we still belong to her. Maybe this has been our fatal mistake in the 20th Century…the one that might undo it all, accidentally eclipsing the very reasons to be here. We’ve sided with technological prowess and there’s no going back. We demand it. We rail and gnash the moment the router blinks orange and this generation will fight for the right to be monitored, governed, and controlled at every turn. It will be their solemn duty to plug in, scroll, copy, paste, code, consume, and sleep; and their freedom will come from the ‘right’ to sort and evaluate personalized content. Truth will be seen as an infringement on one’s right to conjecture. A liability. This ‘cultured’ human won’t know how biological systems work in unison with a sun on one end and a wobbling watery planet on the other. Stars will be nothing but glowing white dots and our moon; the lyrical fluff of another pop song. This human not only won’t care why they’re here, they won’t even have the ability to ask.”
That’s dark, man…
Out there on the trail it seems so evident: we’re already living in an age of mass distraction on an industrialized scale.
Out there on the trail I quickly forget what day of the week it is. Standard timekeeping is useless, 99% of everything is useless…but we’re told emphatically: "people had it rough". How relative is that idea?
My grandparents came from farms and made it through the Great Depression and WWll. I believe it.
But all these symbolic rituals...what are they for? What do they mean when so much comes down to food, shelter, and water?
I can’t be that much of a luddite.
Maybe our story just keeps unfolding and it’s neither here nor there.
After all, I’m covered in high-tech gear. I love this Patagonia windbreaker.
Maybe I’m the primitive. Maybe I’m the one hooting at shadows in the cave.
But I suddenly don’t care. At all.
It’s nothing compared to the taste of hot food after 140 miles…
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