Journal Entries

The crowd of Scout and Frodo people waiting for pictures at the monument.

April 22nd- Day 1- 15 miles from Mexico to Hauser Creek

I wake up to people with headlamps on packing in the dark. I get up, too, and pack up my things. My sleeping bag is damp with condensation. I go to the bathroom and then join everyone else for breakfast; French toast, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and fruit. I don't eat the French Toast.

Then we get into the cars and drive to the terminus, the sun just rising and glaring into my eyes so I have to block it with my hands. I am over with the psycho analysis of last night. I am still not excited or anxious. I think it only bothered me because I deeply want to need this trail, to want it with my whole being. But I think I'm fine. I'm ready.

We park and I join the steady trickle of hikers making their way to the monument. Everything is chaparral. The monument is bigger and glossier than I thought it would be. We take pictures and then we head off. I join a train of people that slowly disperses. It's hot, but green, very green, and flowers everywhere. Tropical. I don't know most of the names or faces of the plants around me.

It feels just like a normal backpacking trip, except this time I happen to be going a bit further. It's hilly and the trail winds around ridges and through a burn. There is water everywhere. Around 11 it starts getting hotter and I start hopping from shade spot to spot. I can't walk at a good speed for more than 20 feet without stopping to cool down. I find several shade spots and spend a while at each of them, cooling down and then getting impatient and moving on. It's 90 degrees. The trail goes through a maze of manzanita as big as juniper trees. The rocks are granite like in the Sierra.

I leap frog with everyone. I sit for a while with Rachel, who I met yesterday, and who's sitting it out for an hour or two, which is what ideally we should all be doing. But I'm impatient and it's the first day and I don't want to sit for too long! She cuts me a star out of Leukotape and I put it on my leg so Ill get a tan tattoo.

Everyone is going to Hauser Creek and we begin the long descent down. My feet start to ache. I see my first tick after going pee in some tall grass and stop to check there aren't any on me. Everyone is cooking their dinners in a big circle, talking, and I join them and make curry lentil soup. Rachel and Jono decide to hike up the huge ridge to Lake Morena tonight. Rob, a section hiker, makes a ramen bomb and is hilarious. I cowboy camp next to Alex and Bridget and there are MOSQUITOS LET THEM ALL DIE.

Walking up the hill to the monument. It's a real thing! It actually exists, guys!

April 21st- Day 0

I get off the train and make it onto the last bus. I'm wide awake, the mixture of the strong coffee I brought with me and whatever hormones my sympathetic nervous system is pumping into my bloodstream is quite potent. The LA Union station proper, Santa Ana, Irvine, Oceanside, and finally San Diego. It takes 5 hours to go through all of them and get to San Diego. I sit listening to my music, my leg pumping up and down, my hat covering my face as I try to sleep. Or not even try. There's a taco place called "Taco Llama," which I think is amusing, and a place called Doc's Inn, which is neither an inn or a doctor's office, but a cocktail bar.

My tailbone aches against the bus seat, my stomach feels bloated and gross. Finally as the sky is starting to lighten we reach San Diego and pull off the freeway. The bus hisses to a halt in front of the Amtrak station. I get my pack from the stow, and look for the Starbucks which I'd heard from Scout and Frodo's email was across the street. The bathroom is locked so I order some mint tea and get the passcode.

Washing my hands and face in the sink instantly makes me feel better. I settle down at a table with my pack and open my Uber app. I enter Scout and Frodo's address, and send out the call for a ride. Suddenly there is a black dot on the map somewhere by the intersection, so I decide to go wait by it. But where is it? A little car symbol zooms around and I try to find where I'm supposed to wait. I'm about to cross back to where I think it was when the driver calls me, and eventually finds me. I had no idea Uber was so fast. I get in, checking my maps app to make sure he's actually taking me the right way.

Here San Diego is hilly, slopes bushy with exotic and bright plants none of which I know. The driver drops me off in front of Scout and Frodo's house with its big PCT banner, and I spill my Trader Joe's bag contents out in order to find my wallet to tip him.

Then I nervously walk up to the front door, where someone sees me through the window and lets me in. A volunteering veteran thru-hiker named Peppa gives me the tour. The long night is finally catching up to me and I'm exhausted. The ground sways back and forth under my feet; I have train legs. After I'm done with the tour I eat some of the remaining jalapeño frittata and a piece of banana. Then I claim my spot in one of the big white shade-tents out back and unpack. I hide under my sleeping bag for a while and get an hour's rest before getting back up and talking to some of the other people. Many of them are foreign, from Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Taiwan.

Two new people arrive and I get to talking to them. Their names are Jono and Rachel, and it turns out they're unschoolers too, from Seattle, although they're in college-ish stages of life right now. We talk for a while and then volunteer to go help Scout go shopping for food at Costco. We fill two huge dollies/flat carts with food for all of the hikers. Then we head back and I wander around talking to people and watching people get pack shake-downs from the veteran thruhikers. I talk to Jellebel from Belgium, Adam from England, Alex from Oregon, and others.

Then we have dinner. There are some pasta and chicken dishes, so I get fruit and some broccoli salad and I pick the bacon out. Scout and Frodo give their talk about LNT and trail advice.

It starts to get cold outside and everyone starts slowly dispersing to get ready for bed. Everyone seems excited to start, but I'm just super tired and miss home a bit. Is there something wrong with me for not really being excited at this moment? Does this mean I won't enjoy the trail, I don't actually want this, what? Why can't I just feel excited, or anxious, or anything? I'm confused and I hope everything, including my emotions, will get sorted out tomorrow.

Scout and Jono (soon to be Nirvana) posing in front of the food we just stacked inside of Scout's car at Costco.

The tents at Scout and Frodo's. Six people sleep on the floor of each tent. It gets quite hot during the day without ventilation. While here, everyone is spreading out their gear and comparing it with everyone else's, doing gear shake downs inside, and talking with other hikers.

April 20th, Day -1

Zephyr dog slept on my pillow next to me last night. I don't think I got much sleep, not because I was anxious, but because I was procrastinating about going to bed. Zephyr woke up at around 6 and scratched on my bedroom door to be let out, and then Wren, our puppy, came in to say hello.

Puttering to get the last of my electronics charged and set up, packing my backpack. Solomon made me heart pancakes with the last of my favorite pancake mix. We all went for a walk. It all felt okay until after lunch, when I was sitting on the couch with Wren on my lap. She's going to be so big when I come back! I hug her beautiful hairy floppy body close to me and cry for the first time today. Zephyr doesn't like crying and looks like he wants to hide but I hug him anyway.

We pick up some food at Whole Foods for the ride and then head downtown to the train station. We take pictures in the old brick station house, heavily intoxicated or drugged-out people loitering outside, and then walk across the street to the bus.

Ahh.

I hug everyone twice, managing not to fall apart completely. They stow my pack and I take a seat near the front and I wait. I watch my family through the window. What is happening? I'm not sure they can see me, but they wave. I get out once to say goodbye to my mom again, and then the driver comes back. The door closes with a hiss and the bus lurches to a start. I sit in my seat, in a bus that smells strongly like a port-a-potty, my throat burning and tight.

This moment honestly doesn't feel as horrible as I thought it would. The road to Sacramento is familiar, the tightness in my throat slowly eases, and I'm ear-worming "Love Will Tear Us Apart Again," singing it under my breath the entire way. Luckily the bus is creaky and the wind against it is loud, and the bus is mostly empty.

We get to the Sacramento station. I get in the bus behind a woman who promptly leans the seat back and starts playing an incomprehensible candy-swiping game on her phone. "Sodalicious!" and "Tasty!" pop up on the screen. The bus gets to Stockton just as my train is rushing towards the platform. I have just enough time to grab my pack and run up to one of the Amtrak employees to ask if it's my train. She says it is, so I get on and in another minute we're off.

The next transfer is at midnight. Rouge and turquoise streak the muddy dark horizon. I'll be going through LA in the dark, and getting an Uber to Scout and Frodo's early in the morning. I probably won't be able to sleep at all. Stale, cold air being blown from the air conditioners, weak light, the guy next to me watching bad monster movies on his laptop. Good thing I brought some coffee.

Desert Peach!

A week and half is just as wonderfully abstract as 4 months. What even is a week and a half, anyways? It's probably a lot of time.

Can you tell that I'm a habitual procrastinator?

I'm waiting on the last of my gear to arrive in the mail. I'm getting together for the last couple of times with my friends. On Friday my work is going to order pizza for my last day and I'm going to get my hair cut short. I have one last test to finish for Geometry, which I could have finished weeks ago but I haven't. I need to empty out my car and clean my room, turn off my computer and make sure my headlamp and external battery are charged. I need to figure out how much effort I'm going to put into sending any resupply boxes. I need to download a movie from Netflix for the long bus ride down to San Diego. I need to write a bio for a photography print that someone is buying from me. I need to go for more walks. I need to delete all of the old JMT pictures from my phone.

I need, I need. I need to start walking.

"Much after a beginning is difficult, as anybody knows who has crossed the sea, and as for the first step a man never so much as remembers it; if there is difficulty it is in the whole launching of a thing... The first step is undertaken lightly, pleasantly, and with your soul in the sky; it is the five-hundredth that counts." -Hilaire Belloc

23 days until I stop working. 28 days until I say goodbye to my family and step onto a bus for San Diego. 30 days until I start walking north.

It's all slowly settling into place.

Paperwork and starting logistics are done. My long-distance hiking permit, my California fire permit, passport, Amtrak tickets, San Diego plans, and Canada entrance permit are all finished.

My gear is almost there. I now have my food bag, Spot (GPS tracker and emergency beacon), and my micro-spikes for crossing snow. I tried on some Altra Superiors at REI to get my shoe size, so I can order a lighter color online for hot desert days ("Can I try a Men's 13, yes I have big feet, yes, these shoes make my feet look small"). Now all I need are an ice axe, my shoes, and some fresh toe socks and water bladders. It's looking like my base weight will be just above 13 pounds (not including water, food, fuel, and map weight). I'm happy with it, and it will probably drop some more once I start getting rid of things when I'm hiking. Or increase as I decide to carry dog treats in my hipbelt for chance opportunities. I'm not switching anything big out at this point, and will just wait until I start hiking to decide what I want to change; there really isn't any point to mulling over at-this-point theoretical decisions.

I'll begin constructing my resupply boxes the week or two before I start, although I have a lot already collected and sitting in a Trader Joe's bag next to my gear pile/mountain.

I haven't gotten any negative reactions so far when I tell people that I'm hiking the trail (my mom has). Everyone from friends, to friends' parents, to co-workers, to the woman on the phone when trying to figure out insurance have been positive and excited. I attribute this to the fact that I'm shy/introverted and don't strike up too many deep conversations with strangers who won't understand who I am or let alone why anyone would do this, and that because of Wild most people have at least a cursory exposure to the trail and so the goal of thru-hiking a long trail has become legitimized.

I'm excited. But I'm also nervous, a bottle of subdued nerves, and in denial that this is an actual concrete thing that I am attempting to do. This is all just fun planning, and the assertion that there is actually a trail that goes from Mexico to Canada is some elaborate ruse thru-hikers play on the rest of us; very funny, guys.

But seriously, there isn't much time to be actually excited. There is too much to think about, too many anxieties humming in the background, too many piecemeal aspects of preparation to complete. At the same time that I'm solidifying my commitment to a goal, Canada, I'm processing the reality that a traditional thru-hike of walking every section of the trail may not be as feasible this year with all of the snow. It's possible, but will involve significant snow travel and possibly additional mountaineering gear (I'm strongly averse to wearing boots, especially if they have ankle corsets) and hiking Washington into late September with rain, cold, and the threat of snow.

All I know is that I will just have to wait and see and remain flexible; it's still more than two months until I'll hike into Kennedy Meadows, the gateway to the Sierra. It's all speculation, which I'm sure will get intense once I hit the trail and enter the grapevine.

I go over all of the passes that I hiked last summer in my mind; Forester, Glen, Pinchot and Mather, Muir. This time, their steep scree and boulder pitches covered in feet of slippery snow. Passes which, in summer, are traversed with tight switchbacks that make them no more dangerous than the valleys below. I can't say that I'm not a little bit terrified when I imagine hiking up through the granite-bathtub valley south of Forester, searching for the little notch in the battlements that is the pass.

My hike last summer makes these visions much more vivid and concrete. It's easy to descend into this mental fear-mongering, and the best way to stay sane is to keep thoughts and emotions about the PCT on the back burner, on simmer to keep them on a constant verge of boiling over, and focus on tasks that I can complete with my hands.

So, am I excited? Of course I am. But it's tempered, kept to a buzzing in my stomach, an automatic internal focus on things PCT. I know this won't be easy, and moments of pure excitement are rare. I'm hunkering down and fervently getting ready, while also very-slowly winding down my normal life.

Can I really only be starting in 4 weeks?