Day 22, Friday, July 17. From PCT mi 1689.56, elev. 6237, walked 10.54 mi to PCT mi 1700.10. - total up/down: +1587/-1809ft. (plus backtracking and rehiking from mile 1698.17 to PCT mi 1694.65, 3.51 mi in each direction for combined total 7 mi, - total up/down: +/-849 ft. for a grand total, including the excursion to recover my lost foam mat and the actual hike, of 17.54 mi, +2536/-2658. )
Dear Trail-mates,
I am sitting at my first rest stop, only slightly more than 2 miles into my hike. Today would appear to be an easy day: the weather seems perfect --blue skies and a few delicate clouds, neither too hot not too cold; the mileage is very low; there are no major climbs.
But this will be a major challenge for me. I am recalling Chris' statement in my dream last week "They need to do BOTH more AND less." The doing more I am fairly good at, even when exhausted. My adrenaline and sheer stubbornness get mobilized,the effort is a salve to my guilty conscious for all the unfinished projects, dreams, loves of my life, all the unkept promises, all the failed enterprise. I can invent or discover a thousand rational excuses for why it makes sense to do more,but beneath it I go suspect is a powerful drive that is indifferent to rationality.
But ask me to do less and I must encounter the demons of restlessness and boredom--and all the demons that lurk beneath the surface of those seemingly (relatively) innocuous states.
So today may be a challenge (and I may in the end fail, I may come up, as I did yesterday, with a perfectly reasonable excuse to do more) and I want to share with you my celebration of this first baby step.
Here I sit resting and sipping coffee at my first "extra" rest stop. I am not getting water (that's almost 2 miles up the trail) not eating a meal. I am simply stopping to sit and be. I am watching the slant morning sun slide up and down the diagonals of spider webs; watching birds flit from tree to tree while the morning sun shines through and lights up their wings (in a way that suggests the luminescent wings of moths circling a light, and also what the wings of angels might look like: wings and feathers of light); noticing flowers that seem to grow out of rock, hearing a cow moo in the valley below me and a bird chatter nearby, the occasional him or buzz of an insect or fly, the wonderful heart-strumming whir of a passing hummingbird. I am also diligently drinking not than my usual early morning share of the day's coffee so I can make more at the next rest stop and not have to carry the extra water to make it later. (It just occurred to me--duh--that my reasoning is faulty. I will carry that 12 oz. in either case, whether as water or coffee. But I am going to pretend I didn't figure that out, because at this moment the caffeine high-- which is usually an ally of adrenaline and the surge to do more--is sharpening my senses and helping me to sit here and be quiet and still and do nothing and simply take in what is happening around me. Ah the warm morning sun. The cool breeze. The buzz of a fly. The cow mooing. The morning sun on for boughs. How good it is to be alive. This is one of those times when less really is more (a hummingbird whirs just a foot or two from my right ear. I not only hear but feel the rapid pulse of her wings in my ear. )
Photo 1. This perfectly ordinary scene of my first rest stop which comes alive with the magic of presence when I pause and open myself to the moment. (I am thinking of the guidelines of the Insight Dialogue practice -- a form of interpersonal Buddhist-inspired meditation that I have found moving and rich --pause, relax, open, trust emergence, listen deeply, speak the truth. Good guidelines for the trail, perhaps? At least on the days when I am trying to learn the practice of doing less. )
An aside (as if all my writing weren't digressive): I woke at 4 this morning and though I encouraged myself to go back to sleep until 6 or 7 or even 8, I was ready to go. (Partly because I would need soon to poop and I didn't like the idea of getting into shoes, getting out of the tent, and coming back to bed. For some reason it was much more appealing to pack up, put on shoes, collapse the tent, then dog my cathole and do my pooping and get on with my morning. This seems a bit odd it is how I usually feel early in the morning if I need to pee or poop.) so I started walking at 5:15am with my headlamps ( I have two ultralight and ultra-tiny headlamps, one as a backup should the other fail. One suffices for packing gear but the two together -- one pointing down toward the trail just in front of my feet, one aimed 8-10 feet, or further, ahead -- much better for hiking in the dark.
I felt wonderful. The ascents were invigorating. Nothing like the last two days with the elevation symptoms. The difference is amazing and suggests adaptation is the issue. I like to think this means iron supplements will significantly decrease the problem. At one point I had very faint whiff of the symptoms and noticed I was hiking at 7000 ft -- a higher elevation than I had yet had the opportunity to adapt to. Bodies are very interesting. This business of grabbing oxygen up into hemoglobin inside red blood cells and pumping it off to wherever it's needed -- what a miracle it really is. When I have the elevation symptoms I feel my heart pounding in my chest like the tired motor of an over-heated car engine banging around in its -- what word would you use for what it bangs around in: casing? Trunk? I'm not so good with mechanical metaphors. Still it is fun to stretch a little.
Alright then. I have managed to rest a full hour. I call that a major accomplishment. Now on to the water stop where I hope to find cell coverage and rest quite a bit longer, if it is pleasant. ( if not I will get water and look for a pleasant spot to rest. )
Photo 2. View from 2nd test and water stop -- that magical mobile Mt Shasta again -- where I did not have cell coverage but did rinse out my socks, shirt, pants, underpants, bandana and towel in the beautifully clear cold spring water. I felt clean again and restored. And it was great to do all that in the presence of such a great mountain. I think I have told you before that in my late 20s when, after dropping out of MIT and various adventures, I moved back "home" to San Diego and lived with my father, I had a dream of living in the mountains outside San Diego, where we first lived when I was 5 and we moved from Milwaukee and where, together with my first dog, I first fell in love with a landscape. At that time I made up this song: you've got to listen to the music of the mountains. It's calling and you know it's calling you. Calling 'River, River, River, how we miss you. We have your heart but we miss the rest of you.' I kept thinking that song and walking through these beautiful mountains and brimming over with tears and gratitude. I offer Shasta again as Bonnie's Wave.
Photo 3. Sage from Omak Wa ( Eastern Wa) stopped to visit at my third test stop, barely a mile past the second stop, because I found cell coverage. We had a very interesting conversation about pushing to finish versus being in the moment and how you can't really choose between them, they are both important, but they are also in conflict. We talked a bit about personal stuff-- family, relationships, responsibility to others balanced with/against being faithful to oneself and ones own dreams. It is amazing to me the contact one sometimes makes with people on this trail. And yet you may never see each other again. Although Sage I think I will see. He told me he has been to every single county in the state of Washington except San Juan. So I gave him my card and told him to come see me on Orcas. He got his name when someone had asked him about where in Washington he came from and he said "the sagebrush side of the state." The other guy suggested "Brushy" as a trail name, which he disliked. And then suggested "Sage" because he was always saying smart things do it had two meanings.
Photo 3. After awhile Daniel (who Sage had already met at the previous water stop, along with a community of folks Daniel used to live with) came along and stopped to visit. Turns out Daniel is a zen monk (it was a Buddhist community) who now lives in Ashland and works in garden and yard care, and he was two hours into his very first backpacking trip, which was planned to be four days. He made me remember my first trip, starting at the Mexican border in March 2013. Looking back, I seemed so innocent then -- sort of a trail virgin. I felt a real desire to help and support Daniel and when he said he planned to camp at the very spot I had picked out, I decided to leave it for him and go further. (We knew I would figure out a way, didn't we? As my feet, who refer to themselves as the "foot soldiers" say: "we know our general.")
But as it turned out, my "other" gps app (I mostly use the Halfmike app, but the Guthook lists more water sources and tentsites) suggested there were multiple sites just a tenth of a mile further. When I realized that I stopped pushing and settled down for a lunch and rest break. That was when I discovered my missing foam pad and had to hike 3 1/2 miles back to get it. Not sure this is exactly what people mean when they say "less is more" but my day of doing less managed to transform itself into a day of doing more.
I really did enjoy the slow pace, the slipping into pause and simple being, and I don't think it's an accident it led to meaningful encounters with other hikers. (Nor that those encounters led me to get distracted about my gear and leave some behind, turning less into more).
But I do know how tempted I am tomorrow to hike the 16 miles to Callahan's. I think it's like a horse rushing home to the barn. Civilization and its comforts beckon. But. I also hope I decide to experiment with another day of going more slowly and doing less. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Photo 4. When I finally hiked back to where I'd left my foam mat, it wasn't there. Luckily I spotted it some distance awAy where it was blown by the wind.
Photo 5. This pass, 6833 ft, I climbed to three times. I realized during today's walk how much I love Oregon. I know political boundaries are arbitrary but I feel as if I've moved into a different state (energy, way of being, way of feeling) since crossing the border. The landscape feels softer and gentler. (with Mostly that's a good thing though tonight when I set up my tent for the first time ever the ground was so soft the stakes would not hold. )
Photo 6. A rock formation I did not notice the first two times but only the third return. I imagined the top two rocks were lions heads back to back and it made me think of the lions head gate at the Ancient Greek ruins at Mycenae.
I did get a lot of wonderful supportive responses (which I hope to respond to personally during my TWO zero days at Callahans). There seem to be problems with posting comments at the website for many (although one person succeeded, Thank you so much, Moriah, others weren't able to post. I also hope to troubleshoot this while I'm at Callahans. But it doesn't really matter that much. I love getting your emails. Just thought you might really enjoy seeing each other's comments.
Much love and gratitude AND EXHAUSTION. See you tomorrow.
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