I keep typing 16 instead of 17. Perhaps because yesterday was my brother Bob's birthday and I wished I had sent him a card before I left. Listening to Chariots of Fire (one of the musical pieces he recommended to me for the trail) I thought of him. I often think on the trail how blessed I am to love. To love the trail, to love friends and family.
Last night at camp some of the people got to discussing politics. I realized I had not thought of Donald Trump once in the days since hitting the trail. That's what our whole nation needs. To take a long beautiful hike.
Photos 6 and 7 and 8 show different views of the big mountains that helped remind me how little I am. Each time at more distance. Through trees. It's interesting, no, astonishing, how one's perspective and sense of emotional relationship with mountains changes slowly and subtly as one walks.
I wish photos could convey the sense of space. How vast the world seems - north, south, east, west when I can see so much distance in each direction and I am all alone (no human companion or even any visible human). And I especially wish I had a camera that could convey how deep up and down seem. The long long steep inclines of the mountains. Looking down so far it feels like falling just to look. And looking up especially at night where there is so little light other than the moon to dim the stars and the sense of vast distances.
So enough about mountains. I met a woman coming south who told me the next 30 miles to Rainy Pass were mostly shady. She said she had found all that shade a little boring. I was really really hot from hiking uphill on a hot day. "I don't find shade boring," I said. But I understand some people want to get up into those vast horizons. I love them too. But I also love the forests and streams. In a way I love the trail even when I find it boring or when I am suffering. Because it keeps reminding me how lucky I am to love something enough to willingly walk through boredom and suffering.
Photo 9 shows a broken bridge. There were a lot of those in my dreams in my 20s when I was seeing a Jungian oriented therapist and discovering I had a world - a vast world, a wilderness - inside me. Both the Jungiam dream work (and "active imagination," and the Freudian free association help one to discover and explore that vast inner wilderness. But for me the Jungian way was dangerous. I ended up lost in my own inner wilderness. The emphasis on the verbal in the Freudisn analytical traditions, hence the cultural and the collective, for me have been an anchor. Of course I had a fabulous analyst (Freud himself) and that helped too.
But back to broken bridges. In my Jungian dreams they seemed to represent dead ends, irreparably broken connections. Between my parents, in the larger world, within myself. And the broken journey from childhood to adulthood.
Now - in this final section of this PCT pilgrimage I find myself walking across broken bridges.
Photo 10 is my second rest stop of the day and my "I don't find shade boring" photo.
And last but not least the photo (wish I knew how to upload videos and give you sound effects) of the view out the front of my tent as I write.
Happy trails in your dreams tonight and I will see you tomorrow morning. Thank you for walking with me.
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