Yikes. I just wrote a short post from the computer only to have it vanish when I tried to delete a photo. I guess I am better at posting from my iphone.
As usual I want to thank you for walking with me. It always seems like a small miracle that so many of you want to do so, and your companionship adds immeasurably to the quality of my walk. I get to walk solo, and share my walk too. There is always in life (for me) a tension between the desire to discover my own unique solitary experience and the desire to engage and share with others. This solo hike with blog has been as good as it gets.
Some of you were kind enough to send emails during my last hike and I was too exhausted to get back to you. I totally loved receiving your emails and really wanted to respond, but the minute I completed my blog and slipped into my sleeping bag, I was done for. Please know I love to hear from you, whether I am able to respond or not.
Next Friday Chris will drive me to Stevens Pass WA where I will hike my final 190-mile segment. If and when I complete that section, I will have hiked all 2660 miles between the Mexican border at Campo and the Canadian border near Manning Park, since retiring in Feb. 2013. Yes, I will have hiked the sections out of order, and even hiked several sections backwards (North to South); nevertheless I will have hiked the entire trail. Its true when I am on the trail watching hundreds of hikers zoom by me (who will thru-hike in a single year) that my accomplishment seems modest. But when I look at it in relation to my personal abilities and background, my accomplishment seems huge.
I am amazed and terrified at the idea of completion. It doesn't seem quite real, and with my lack of memory I probably would not believe it without the evidence of photos and emails/blogs, and witnesses (like you). I keep picturing the photo of a bear (opening his mouth and letting a salmon leap in), which I posted during my July hike, and remembering the line "I can't believe I ate that whole thing." (If any of you, like me, recall the line but not its source, I googled it and discovered it is from an early 1970s alka seltzer ad.)
I can't believe I set out on this journey and will soon (health and weather gods willing) have hiked the whole thing. This is especially dramatic in my life, a life strewn with unfinished projects -- I have the dubious distinction of having dropped out of four graduate programs (PhDs in math and microbiology, MAs in creative writing and electrical engineering), and of having very earnestly begun, but never completed, any number of novels, memoirs, and nonfiction books. Yes, I have managed to stay in an almost 32-year-old marriage (we will celebrate our 32nd anniversary just days after I return from the trail, as we drive down to Santa Barbara for Chris's fall quarter teaching at Pacifica) but because that is a "til death do us part" journey, there isn't exactly a completion point (not for a good while yet, I hope). And yes, it is also true that I persisted and completed my MS in counseling, persisted in getting licensed (despite failing the first oral exam, quite a shock for a person whose sole glory in life had come from her excellence in taking tests and making grades), persisted in my therapy practice despite some staggering early setbacks, and brought that chapter to a clear close when I decided to retire in order to hike the PCT. So this is not my first experience of staying with something, or of bringing something to completion.
Nonetheless, it is a first. My therapy career was conceived in disappointment. I was unable to become pregnant. I had faced the reality that I would never fulfill my generativity needs through my writing (it just was not good enough, and I was not a good enough networker, to allow it to reach other people and touch their lives in meaningful live-serving ways). So I decided to change from tech writing (which was just a day job to support my real writing) to a therapy career. Therapy was always mixed up with grief and with impossibly high expectations for myself. The PCT has been powered from the start by pure joy and desire, and a willingness to accept and embrace my own limitations. It has been a walk of self-acceptance and self-love, as well as acceptance and love for the world around me (winds, fires, difficult stream crossings, hot days, rainy days, snow and ice, along with all the beauty and pleasure).
It is hard to see it come to an end. In fact, I needed to create a new dream -- to try a one-year thru-hike next year, or at least to get out there and discover how far I can hike and what I experience if I allow myself 6 1/2 months on the trail next year. With that dream out in front, giving me a vast horizon to walk toward, I can bear to finish and say goodbye to this glorious multi-year thru-hike.
My bodyworker/healer Rick Doty asked me if I was going to hike the PCT again because I was afraid of the challenges of a new trail. (Rick more than anyone has helped me to face the challenges of both this hike and walking the Camino, and to work with my body so that I could actually meet those challenges successfully.) I teased him by asking if he stayed with his wife because he was afraid of the challenges of a new woman. For me it is an apt analogy. I am deeply in love with this particular trail. When I try to imagine hiking another trail, no fireworks go off, no magic happens in my heart. It is very very challenging for me to even entertain the possibility of a one-year thru-hike, which I had never imagined I could possibly do until now. When I think about a new hike on this trail, fireworks go off everywhere. The whole sky is lit up like the desert in blossom (which I hope to walk through next spring).
Photo 1 shows the trail I will soon be walking, beginning August 12 at Stevens Pass and hopefully finishing by August 28 at Manning Park in Canada.
Yay. For the first time I managed to post a larger picture. On my computer it is true, but still: success! As you can see, I have already hiked about 3/5 of Washington's 500 miles of PCT trail, from the Oregon border to Stevens Pass.
Chris will drive me on route 2 from Everett to Stevens Pass next Friday morning, then she will head back to the ferry and I will head north. My only resupply will be at Stehekin, which sounds like a very interesting "trail town" (for some hikers, their favorite of the entire trail.) When I reach Manning Park in Canada, I will catch a bus to Coquitlam and from there to Bellingham, and then a shuttle or hitch to the ferry landing and home.
Just for fun, here's a picture of the dawn sky over the mountains as I hiked north to Stevens Pass last year (the morning of August 26). So it gives us an idea of the world I will be stepping into next week.
And hey once again I managed to add a larger photo. Way to go, River.
Happy trails to you in your life. And I look forward to "seeing" you next week in the mountains as we begin the final section of our hike.
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