12.23.18
Do I drop everything, sell everything, head into the woods and state parks of Arizona and save save save until the next adventure is procured? Could I be that free of 'things'. I had the same sort of thoughts before the PCT. "Could I actually do without a phone?" Yes. Easily. Toward the end of a thru-hike the phone is only there for Guthook and occasional texts once a week that may or may not go through depending on how many other hikers are sharing the bandwidth next to the front office of the pack station, campground, resort. I didn't care that I couldn't update my life every five minutes and more than that I saw other posts from ages ago and realized how irrelevant social media was. We are glued to these platforms in the modern age that essentially function as lymbic stimulants. Dopamine hits. Could I walk over Muir Pass and stare back into the valley and capture that on any format, size, filter? Of course not. Those moments were so surreal that they took my breath away, brought tears to my eyes, and filled my heart in a way that remains only as subjective moments of memory. There's a great democratization occurring with real-time shared content which is great on the one hand. On the other hand...none of it is real in any sense. Not a single video I watched before the trail prepared me to confront the actual reality of hiking 20 miles per day with 40 lbs on my back. Let me emphasize: Not a SINGLE one. No tutorial, no "#What's in my Pack #PCT 2018 #UL ", and honestly no amount of research or personal hand-wringing made any difference at the end of the day. The only video I watched regarding the trail that made any sort of difference had more to do with post-trail reality than anything on it. It was simple comfort to know I wasn't the only one going through the awkward doldrums of returning to civilization.
I tried to explain to some friends how funny squirrels actually are. How wildlife is more goofy and entertaining and real than anything I'd ever seen on a little box in the corner of a room. How we made up songs about them and gave them names and occasionally lured them with trail-mix despite warnings about "The Plague" posted at trailheads. But very little of that world translates back into a society so encumbered by media that people seem to literally mimic the people in the boxes themselves. Of course we model others. When I was a kid I thought I was Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Batman on rotating days throughout the week. I wonder about that now. This fantasy world that kids live in. Now I have friends in their late 30's who still live in that fantasy. Who still worship Star Wars and television characters. Is there anything inherently wrong with that? I don't know. I just had my own realization that the mind adapts given its environment and we're perfectly capable of entertaining ourselves for long stretches of time better than any box can do. Perhaps whereas we used to look inward for self-reference we've been trained to assume all the answers are 'out there' somewhere. The PCT is decidedly Out There as far as remote locations and life styles...but that perception flips around the halfway point. You are certainly 'out there' but hiking for 10 hours with nothing but the sounds of birds, wind, and your own footsteps turns your perception inward. When you see how effortlessly nature gives and takes without contracts and deceit and games, how it cycles according much larger systems in direct contact with the sun and moon and stars...it's no wonder you leave it feeling very much like nature is "The Real World" and civilization and social media and all those lymbic system stimulants are much more akin to simple spell-craft. They're all agreed-upon whether they function or not and the assumption is that, at the end of the day, humans are in control because we communicate our ideas via satellite and fiber optics and there's warm food and water in the warm box at the end of the day...but the hubris with which we now go about our days while taking these things for granted is astounding.
About five months in I became so intimately aware of my own biology that I knew how I would react to almost any situation. The result was that I adjusted my behavior or approach. Anything that didn't work out there was discarded in favor of efficiency whether clothes or attitudes.
This is a long way to say that I still consider these paradigms off the trail especially as hindsight slowly kicks in. I really do wonder how I would fare in a situation where I held a regular job but lived outdoors and eschewed much of the distractions that fill my post-hike days.
My uncle Kim passed away just days before my mother. I remember dedicating the day's hike to him when we came up to a hill by Sierra Buttes. The views were unreal. Sloping green hills layered a hundred miles into the distance while the midday sun kept the snow melt flowing around great vertical switchbacks of sharp grey slate. Kim had lived virtually off the grid outside Port Townsend, Washington and commuted all the way into Seattle to work and sleep for half the week, returning to what we called "The Wizard Shack" in the woods for the rest of the week. There was no denying that he was very wizardly in his appearance and demeanor. Often thoughtful beyond words, his book collections climbed the walls in every room but I only knew him from afar my whole life. He was a mystery to most of us and that's how I gather he liked it.
Most of us entertain the big "What if I just..." and "What would happen if..." thoughts here and there. The PCT was remote. It courses through some of the most remote forests in the US, but it also came with simple logistics that allowed us to pre-plan resupply points about a week in advance. There was never an issue with food or water save once in southern California when we relied on a water cache instead of packing it out like good hikers. Even then, the next source was just a few miles away. That is...the idea that you're truly roughing it...well the 'rough' part is due to complete physical exhaustion which includes mental exhaustion, but it's not exhaustion in the way you'd think. It's beyond "I'm tired" and more like "I'm having an out of the body experience pretending I'm doing a stand-up routine at the National Press Club and laughing out loud at myself" for the last 3 miles today."
The 'what if' I have lately is how sustainable I could make myself out there. Not in a Chris McCandless way. I don't hate society. I've always been more in it but not of it in my approach. I've held dozens of jobs requiring completely different skill sets and that's been good, but it's largely been a means of funding my other life, investing in equipment and experiences etc. What's that joke they have about Colorado? "You know who the hardcore cyclists are? The ones with $5,000.00 bikes on the top of $1,000 Subarus."
Sigh...such is life. Maybe it's the wild west I was raised in. People never bragged about money but they sure ragged on about the summits, routes, and suspension systems all day. It just seemed like these experiences were valued above this thing called stability...stability was the easy route in a sense. Anyone can put on foot in front of the other, buckle down, and get a job. At least you could in the 90s, but what were the jobs for? We started asking this in great droves when I was a young man and I see a resurgence of this mindset now. Rock climbing has become huge again. More people took on the PCT this year than ever before. People are craving authentic experience and rejecting the laptops no matter how sexy Steve Jobs made them. It's just not satisfying is it? For the first time since I've lived in Albuquerque ever, I looked down at a copy of UNM's Daily Lobo and its feature was all about the outdoors and how students are engaging with local hikes. Amazing. For me I feel a real resurgence in this spirit. Of course you attract what you're into, but I also think young people are rejecting pre-fab safe reality again because adventure and fresh air are hard-wired into us and the satisfaction quotient of staring a screens is resulting in a broad host of bizarre and unsatisfactory social anomalies that we aren't necessarily prepared to address. It's time to step away. I never felt it so apparent as when I behaved in a 'primitive' way...migrating from water source to camping-spot, able to look up on any given night into a cloud of stars. Yeah...this is where we come from. This is what we still belong to.
I tried to explain to some friends how funny squirrels actually are. How wildlife is more goofy and entertaining and real than anything I'd ever seen on a little box in the corner of a room. How we made up songs about them and gave them names and occasionally lured them with trail-mix despite warnings about "The Plague" posted at trailheads. But very little of that world translates back into a society so encumbered by media that people seem to literally mimic the people in the boxes themselves. Of course we model others. When I was a kid I thought I was Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Batman on rotating days throughout the week. I wonder about that now. This fantasy world that kids live in. Now I have friends in their late 30's who still live in that fantasy. Who still worship Star Wars and television characters. Is there anything inherently wrong with that? I don't know. I just had my own realization that the mind adapts given its environment and we're perfectly capable of entertaining ourselves for long stretches of time better than any box can do. Perhaps whereas we used to look inward for self-reference we've been trained to assume all the answers are 'out there' somewhere. The PCT is decidedly Out There as far as remote locations and life styles...but that perception flips around the halfway point. You are certainly 'out there' but hiking for 10 hours with nothing but the sounds of birds, wind, and your own footsteps turns your perception inward. When you see how effortlessly nature gives and takes without contracts and deceit and games, how it cycles according much larger systems in direct contact with the sun and moon and stars...it's no wonder you leave it feeling very much like nature is "The Real World" and civilization and social media and all those lymbic system stimulants are much more akin to simple spell-craft. They're all agreed-upon whether they function or not and the assumption is that, at the end of the day, humans are in control because we communicate our ideas via satellite and fiber optics and there's warm food and water in the warm box at the end of the day...but the hubris with which we now go about our days while taking these things for granted is astounding.
About five months in I became so intimately aware of my own biology that I knew how I would react to almost any situation. The result was that I adjusted my behavior or approach. Anything that didn't work out there was discarded in favor of efficiency whether clothes or attitudes.
This is a long way to say that I still consider these paradigms off the trail especially as hindsight slowly kicks in. I really do wonder how I would fare in a situation where I held a regular job but lived outdoors and eschewed much of the distractions that fill my post-hike days.
My uncle Kim passed away just days before my mother. I remember dedicating the day's hike to him when we came up to a hill by Sierra Buttes. The views were unreal. Sloping green hills layered a hundred miles into the distance while the midday sun kept the snow melt flowing around great vertical switchbacks of sharp grey slate. Kim had lived virtually off the grid outside Port Townsend, Washington and commuted all the way into Seattle to work and sleep for half the week, returning to what we called "The Wizard Shack" in the woods for the rest of the week. There was no denying that he was very wizardly in his appearance and demeanor. Often thoughtful beyond words, his book collections climbed the walls in every room but I only knew him from afar my whole life. He was a mystery to most of us and that's how I gather he liked it.
Most of us entertain the big "What if I just..." and "What would happen if..." thoughts here and there. The PCT was remote. It courses through some of the most remote forests in the US, but it also came with simple logistics that allowed us to pre-plan resupply points about a week in advance. There was never an issue with food or water save once in southern California when we relied on a water cache instead of packing it out like good hikers. Even then, the next source was just a few miles away. That is...the idea that you're truly roughing it...well the 'rough' part is due to complete physical exhaustion which includes mental exhaustion, but it's not exhaustion in the way you'd think. It's beyond "I'm tired" and more like "I'm having an out of the body experience pretending I'm doing a stand-up routine at the National Press Club and laughing out loud at myself" for the last 3 miles today."
The 'what if' I have lately is how sustainable I could make myself out there. Not in a Chris McCandless way. I don't hate society. I've always been more in it but not of it in my approach. I've held dozens of jobs requiring completely different skill sets and that's been good, but it's largely been a means of funding my other life, investing in equipment and experiences etc. What's that joke they have about Colorado? "You know who the hardcore cyclists are? The ones with $5,000.00 bikes on the top of $1,000 Subarus."
Sigh...such is life. Maybe it's the wild west I was raised in. People never bragged about money but they sure ragged on about the summits, routes, and suspension systems all day. It just seemed like these experiences were valued above this thing called stability...stability was the easy route in a sense. Anyone can put on foot in front of the other, buckle down, and get a job. At least you could in the 90s, but what were the jobs for? We started asking this in great droves when I was a young man and I see a resurgence of this mindset now. Rock climbing has become huge again. More people took on the PCT this year than ever before. People are craving authentic experience and rejecting the laptops no matter how sexy Steve Jobs made them. It's just not satisfying is it? For the first time since I've lived in Albuquerque ever, I looked down at a copy of UNM's Daily Lobo and its feature was all about the outdoors and how students are engaging with local hikes. Amazing. For me I feel a real resurgence in this spirit. Of course you attract what you're into, but I also think young people are rejecting pre-fab safe reality again because adventure and fresh air are hard-wired into us and the satisfaction quotient of staring a screens is resulting in a broad host of bizarre and unsatisfactory social anomalies that we aren't necessarily prepared to address. It's time to step away. I never felt it so apparent as when I behaved in a 'primitive' way...migrating from water source to camping-spot, able to look up on any given night into a cloud of stars. Yeah...this is where we come from. This is what we still belong to.
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