I've always loved being outside. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I was spoiled with beautiful combinations of tall mountains and blue bays, dark forests dotted with alpine lakes, and the charm of each season's unique personality. Living in San Diego for the past 6 years or so, I’ve enjoyed the beach scene and perfect weather, but I’ve never stopped missing the places and people where I grew up.
So, I graduated with a degree in Theology a couple of years ago. Ironically, for me, that particular degree came with thousands of dollars in student loans along with a distaste and apprehension for any sort of career. In any event, I thought I’d get away for a while before I made my next move. I needed something that would take a while. I’ve got considerable time to kill. Its not that I’m waiting for anything in particular, I just needed something to do in the meantime. I guess I wanted to do something unique, challenging and even a little frightening. After little deliberation I decided on a solo hike from Mexico to Canada through Americas western-most mountain ranges.
The Pacific Crest Trail is a 2600-mile trail that begins in the southern Californian deserts and the Mexican boarder. It winds through the Sierra and Cascade mountain ranges, ending in the evergreen forests of Washington at the Canadian boarder. It will take 5 months, a couple pairs of hiking boots, and a little determination and luck. It sounded perfect.
I’ve been preparing for the hike like anything else I’ve ended up doing. Not knowing quite how to go about accomplishing my goal, I’ve studied my objective insufficiently but enough to appease my excitement and keep interest high. Now that the trip is less than a month away, I delight in not knowing what may happen and grow nervous to leave.
When I say that I’m excited, it is not because I am leaving. I’m eager to begin but not to go. I’ve grown very close to my friends here in San Diego, and not knowing where and when I will see them again is a very uncomfortable feeling. They will be missed dearly, and I’m afraid of the loneliness that waits for me in their absence. At the same time this trip is, in a sense, a journey home. I look forward to being close to family and the friends of my childhood when I finish. The trail ends only a few hours drive from the house in which I grew up. I think I’ll stick around for a time after that, though I can’t say for sure how long that will be.
In between my two homes I will walk, and walk a lot. I’ll have to average around 20 miles a day. That is 8 to sometimes 14 hours of hiking a day and tens of thousands of steps taken each day for five months. If my body doesn’t breakdown and the pain of blistered feet doesn’t break my morale, it should be a pretty good time. I’ll have considerable time to myself with few distractions and plenty of fresh air (except above 3000 meters) to do some thinking. Although I’m not given naturally to deep thought and I’ve not made a goal of self-realization or anything like that, I hope that it may simply be a convenient byproduct of the environment I slowly pass through. What is the goal? It’s only to make it to Canada and enjoy whatever is encountered along the way.
P. S. Reading over my first entry, I’ll agree with you that it’s a little sappy. It’s ignorant of the difficulty of such a trip. It’s dramatic. There are important details that were left out like quitting jobs and financial mumble jumble. To my own impending dread, it even has a kind of hopeful romanticism that I find slightly nauseating, but I guess that might be why people are able to go and take a trip like this one. I hope it works out.