PCT 2014 Memoir

Hey friends! If you're interested in reading the epic blog series chronicling our PCT hike, here are the links on one page. Enjoy!

FAQ about the PCT (after all has been told)

(Check out other FAQ about the PCT here.)

I know, I know. It’s been another long silence. Every time I think about posting to my blog, I always feel like there needs to be an eloquent lead-in, some sort of transition. But if I keep waiting for that to happen, it never will.

So, without any more prelude, here are some answers to questions I’ve gotten since I finished posting my memoir.

Q: Did you ever figure out what Zach's persistent stomach issues were all about? 

A: We never figured it out for sure, so we’re just chalking it up to a stressed digestive system. And although my stomach held up fine on trail, about three months after we finished, my body had a complete system failure. Zach finally convinced me to go to the doctor, and after a horrible two-month sugar cleanse, I was restored to health. Zach and I did a shorter sugar cleanse recently, and his stomach appears to be doing better. But I still can’t fathom why Zach could eat two cups of mashed potatoes, topped with half a summer sausage and a literal half cup of olive oil, without any stomach issues, but get sick on a soda and half a bag of chips.

Q: What would you do differently?

A: How much time do you have? (I kid, I kid.) There are a ton of small things (there will be a whole entry on this later), but here are some general things:

The number one change I’d make, hands down, no contest: I would’ve spent more money. I have always been adamant that you should never go into debt for a trip, but our lives would’ve been soooo much easier if we had just been willing to spend more cash. We paid off what little debt we had in short order, with very little stress, and I’ve been kicking myself ever since.

On a similar note, I would’ve relaxed more about our mileage. Near the end of the trail, we told ourselves, “Morale is more important than mileage,” and it’s true. If you’re happy and well-fed, you’ll sail through the miles much more easily.

I would’ve carried more snacks and fewer meals. Meals are great, but they take a long time to prepare, and often require water. Snacks are golden. Especially peanut-butter-chocolate-honey tortilla wraps.

I would’ve asked friends and family for more help. In Washington, we finally wrote a group letter asking if anyone wanted to give us some cash, and the response was overwhelming. People were wanting to help, but we had to give them the chance. This was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and I don’t think I fully realized how eager people were to help us out.

Q: How did the trip change you?

A: It seems odd to say this, but this is a difficult question to answer. You’d think that the hardest and most incredible trip of your life would affect you in some dramatic, singular way. But as far as I can tell, it didn’t.

Crazy, right?

I wish I could say that I appreciated nature more, or that I embraced minimalism, or that I felt more connected to my husband, or that I had learned not to sweat the small stuff. But if I did, it’s so subtle that it’s escaped my notice.

That’s not to say that the trip didn’t change me. It affected me in a million little ways.

It taught me to trust my husband’s judgement. 

I appreciate civilization and convenience and my possessions a lot more.

It gave me a small sense of just how much it would suck to be homeless; I’ve given a lot more money to panhandlers since my return.

It gave me a much more physical sense of the size of the world— I know how far a thousand miles is. I know what it takes to walk that distance. Twice. And whenever we sing a song in church about God being “higher than the mountains that we face,” or with us “in the desert” or with us “every step of the way,” I tear up, because I know, on a visceral, sensory level, what a mountain and a desert and a never-ending journey of steps feels like.

It gave me memories and stories that seem to come up in every conversation, no matter how hard I try to avoid always bringing up, “When we were on trail…”

It gave me new perspective on patiently dealing with something. I used to say, “Life is a marathon, not a sprint.” Now I say, “Life is a thru-hike, not a marathon.”

It showed me I had more strength than I realized.

In the end, I think I’m still processing how the trip changed me. It was incredible. It was exhausting. It probably had more of an impact on me than I realize. But it was less like a trip and more like a very strange, very short, very intense phase of life, one that may take years to fully understand.

~~~

PCT 2014: Epilogue

Our medals! They have our names and trail names engraved on the back.

After our night at Manning Park, we drove with Aunt Rose and Jon back to Vancouver, where we stayed for a few days. We walked around in cultivated gardens and saw sites and went Canadian bowling and flew kites and ate lots of delicious vegan food. As much as we loved it, we were eager to get back to Portland to see Zach’s dad, sister, and grandma.

Aunt Rose and Zach

Vancouver skyline

Delicious vegetarian tacos

Canadian bowling! 

We hopped a bus to Portland. Zach’s sister Ivy picked us up from the bus stop and drove us to Grandma Diane’s house. Grandma Diane cried when she saw how emaciated we looked. Gary took us out to dinner. I wondered if I’d ever get used to sleeping in a bed, under a roof.

All our dreams came true: the pizza, the video game marathons, the time with family, but I remember it vaguely, like there’s a veil of fog over it. We ate every two hours, constantly fighting a survival instinct that urged us to chuck every edible thing in sight into our mouths. Grandma Diane fed us a lot of ice cream sundaes and lunchmeat sandwiches. We tried to stop eating so much, but it was hard. Zach, despite how much he ate, hated food. After five months of cramming calories down our throats, he was done. It was several months before he actually enjoyed eating again.

We didn’t walk at all for a long time. We felt heavy and strange and full of food. I had to re-learn all my social skills— the strange disjointed pattern of conversation on trail seemed odd in real life. For months I felt like my body was too big, that I took up too much space. I kept on running into things because I wasn’t used to being in a small space (indoors) for more than a few hours at a time.

Flowers in Vancouver

At the end of October, we ended up getting a van, and driving from Portland back to St. Louis, taking Ivy with us for a visit. We drove along breathtaking cliffs in Oregon and Washington, saw larch-covered mountains and massive plains in Montana, couch-surfed all the way home, got our tire slashed in Bozeman, didn’t visit Yellowstone because we wanted to see family more than we wanted to see nature things, drove through South Dakota’s beautiful barren hills, passed through my dad’s childhood haunts in Sioux City, Iowa, and at last found ourselves pulling up alongside my parents’ home in St. Charles, Missouri. This would be our home, too, for the next several months. 

We got medals sent to us in the mail, engraved with our names and trail names. They were completely worth it.

At this point, I began writing the memoir. I looked through my sparse journal entries, and cross-referenced them with our maps, my photos, and our memories. I pieced together the story, bit by bit.

We lived in my parents’ spare room, saving our money. We paid off our trail debt by Christmas, and had saved up enough to buy our own house in June. We bought a two-bedroom house in St. Charles and settled down, with a garden and a mortgage and steady jobs. 

Our house! Isn't it cute?

Hiking in Kentucky last March

And through all the life changes, I continued working on my memoir. I continued posting to my blog. Through some of the tough months I’ve had this year, battling sickness and discouragement, these entries have been my lifeline to sanity. They have been the only way I can process the enormity of the trail.

Back in October, on the last page of my PCT journal, I had written, “We tried to wrap our minds around things. It did not work. Maybe someday I’ll be able to process it…”

Now, a year after we finished the trail, I think I can say that, through the writing of my journal, I have. We thru-hiked the PCT. We started at Mexico and hiked to Canada, a feat that I had hardly dared to believe we could accomplish. We did it. We won.

From the moment we left the Mexican border, I kept waiting for myself to realize, all of a sudden, that we were really doing it, that we were really hiking the PCT. I kept waiting for it to hit me.

Seventeen months, 2,600 miles, and 220,000 words later, it finally did.

~~~

PCT 2014, Day 158: The End

DAY 158

September 29th, 2014, Monday

2653.8 to 2668.8 (Manning Park, B.C.)

I drifted to the surface of consciousness, feeling damp polyester against my nose and frosty air against my ear. Something had woken me, but what? Still half asleep, I burrowed deeper into the sleeping bag, snuggling closer to Zachary. Then, half in the dream world, I heard what had woken me.

It was a man’s voice, singing in an ethereal falsetto, that floated down from the trail far above our campsite, echoing across the lake.

A whole new world!

A dazzling place I never knew

No one to tell us no

Or where to go

Or say we’re only dreaming.

A whole new world…

These guys were just ahead of us.

With that, I drifted back to sleep, slipping into pleasant dreams. I never knew who that hiker was, but his voice was the perfect beginning for our final day.

Soon after, I woke up for real, and Zach and I ate cold oatmeal one last time, then got out into the chilly morning and packed up our tent one last time. We moved with deliberateness but not with hurry. We were determined to get to the border, but not that excited. This day, anticipated for so long, seemed utterly surreal.

Now we headed out, leaving Hopkins Lake behind and rejoining the PCT. The trail wound through a close pine forest, sometimes threaded with little trickling streams. We were playing tag with Me Too, but otherwise the trail was deserted. Low gray clouds hung overhead and the air was chilly, but no rain fell yet.

It was one of the longest 6.3 miles of my life, and we only took one short break to eat a snack. We kept checking the map, trying to figure out where we were. At last we knew to look for a long straight stretch, and then a series of switchbacks down the side of the mountain. The border would be soon after that.

Finally, we reached the straight section. We barreled along, walking faster and faster. We glimpsed the border: a stone’s-throw-wide clear cut that runs along the entire US/Canada border. The trail turned and switchbacked. We were almost there. I tried to feel emotion. I desperately tried. It didn’t work.

And then, in a clearing up ahead, we saw the Northern Terminus. A metal border marker, shaped like the Washington Monument, stood with its top askew. A cluster of square poles, just like the ones at the Southern Terminus, stood next to it, topped with a little American flag on the left and a little Canadian flag on the right. I took a video of us walking up, but the only vague emotion I could conjure was disbelief.

We stood at the monument, and stared at it. I giggled and crossed to the other side, saying, “I’m in Canada!” (The first time I’ve ever been to Canada, incidentally.) 

We were alone; the woods were silent. I had been half-hoping to find a party here, but it was just the two of us. Again, I tried to feel emotion. I touched the monument, feeling the damp wood against my hand. I couldn’t find any emotion inside.

If this had been any place other than the Northern Terminus, we would’ve hiked on then and there. But we couldn’t just do a flyby. Besides, we had to get pictures. Me Too wasn’t far behind us, so we sat down on a damp log to wait for him. 

We ate a Clif bar, but decided to save the boxed wine for after the pictures. We also found the trail register (hidden in the metal monument) and spent a long time looking through it, seeing all the people we knew. Chéte and Brunch. Side Show and Balance. Smokey. Anchor. Banjo. Sad Fish. Goosebumps. Shutter. Happy Feet. Thistle and Ouzel. Angry Bird. Godzilla. Pesky. Catdog. Lobby and Trinket. Landfill. Zen Dawg. The whole group of people we had camped with at Hart’s Pass. Each of the names brought a face vividly before me.

Me Too came trekking up, and we all congratulated each other. We offered to take his picture, and as he took off his pack, a wrist-sized chunk of log fell out from under his hip belt. He saw our curious looks and said, “I’ve got a hernia there, so I’ve been hiking with the stick lodged between my hip belt and my hernia so it doesn’t explode.” We stared at him, realizing that this accomplishment for him was far greater than it was for us.

We took each other’s photos in front of the monument. 

We chatted with Me Too for a while, and then he hiked on, limping a little. “You’ll probably pass me,” he said. “When you get to the road, tell my girlfriend that I’m right behind you.”

Now Zach and I were alone again, and the gray clouds were lowering overhead. I took a picture of Zach sneaking booze and drugs (boxed wine and Ibuprofen) over the border, a picture I’d been dying to take since a year ago. 

We also took a short video. Later, when I showed it to family and friends, they all remarked that I was crying. But I wasn’t, not even close. It looks like I am, but I was just talking weird. My ability to process this life event completely failed.

We uncapped the boxed wine and poured half of it into one of our camp bowls. We had meant the wine to serve as a celebratory beverage, but as Zach poured it out, I felt like this was a solemn moment. We faced each other and cupped our hands around the single bowl, and bowed our heads over it, foreheads touching. Zach said a prayer, thanking God for getting us through the trail. Sand and snow, fire and mountains, exhaustion, hunger, discouragement, fear. God had seen us safely through. He had been with us every literal step of the way.

I drank from the bowl, and then Zach did. It didn’t feel like a celebration— it felt like communion. I believe that it was. This was a sacred moment, and even though neither of us could experience emotion, we shared a Christian sacrament, in silence and reverence.

With barely a word, we packed up our stuff. We hoisted our packs, tightened the straps, and stepped forward into Canada. We still had eight miles to walk to get to the highway, where we would hitch to Manning Park and try to track down Zach’s Aunt Rose. We had agreed to meet her anytime within this three-day span, so we were right on time.

Those last eight miles were very surreal. We were finished with the trail, but still out in the middle of the wilderness. We had one last big climb to tackle (about 2,000 feet), which we sped along amid huffing and puffing, passing Me Too. 

Now the trail leveled out, and we wound through a pleasant coniferous wood, passing trail camps and crossing log bridges over little streams. We were on top of a mountain, and soon the PCT turned into a trail wide enough for a jeep, headed down the mountainside. We flew down the trail, eager to get to see family. We were planning to stay in Vancouver, B.C. for a few days with Aunt Rose and her partner Jon, and then we’d hop a bus to Portland and stay there for a few weeks before heading home to St. Louis. It was so strange to think that these plans were immediate. For so many months, everything was, “When we finish the trail…” 

But now we were finished.

The trail leveled out and grew narrower, winding through a bottomland near a river. I glimpsed the deciduous trees along the bank off to our right, turning yellow with the chill of autumn.

I looked up, and we saw our first people of the day other than Me Too: a couple of day hikers strolling down the trail. “Oh cool,” I thought. “Our first Canadians.” 

But Zach let out a cry of recognition and sprinted down the trail toward them. The woman, calling his name, ran toward him as well. I was stunned— it was Aunt Rose and Jon! She and Zach hugged while I hurried up behind. We stuttered through introductions and asked how in the world they knew we were coming today. 

“We didn’t!” Rose said. “We knew to expect you yesterday, today, or tomorrow, but we thought we’d just hike this trail and see if we got lucky. We didn’t even know for sure that this was the PCT.” She laughed. “I feel like you’re huge ships coming in from a long journey, and we’re the tugboats come to help you get into the harbor.”

It really did feel like that. We strolled down the last bit of trail, crossing a bridge fringed with yellow trees, chatting with Aunt Rose and Jon. We came to the parking lot, said hi to the woman waiting there and passed on the message that Me Too was close behind, then piled into Aunt Rose’s car. 

They drove down the road to Manning Park, a little resort, and announced that Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Ray had given money for us to stay in the hotel. Rose had brought loaner clothes for both of us, including swimsuits, and had bowls of homemade soup for pre-dinner snack. We stared at her, uncomprehending, through this. We walked into the lobby, decorated with wooden creatures. The lady at the front desk congratulated us and gave Rose the PCT discount on the room. We were numb.

We took showers. We changed into clothes (mine was a pretty dress) and ate some black-eyed-pea-and-collard soup, which was surprisingly delicious and felt nourishing down to my bones. We got into our borrowed swimsuits and hit the pool. I floated in the cool water, clean and well-scrubbed and knowing that, if I didn’t want to, I’d never have to sleep in a tent again.

We did laundry. They took us to the restaurant for dinner and I ordered a chicken burger. I ate mechanically, but I wasn’t starving. In exactly two hours, I had assimilated back into civilization. The trail must have been years ago. Decades.

We saw the Hart’s Pass group and went over to congratulate them. Tomorrow we’d be leaving Manning Park, going back to Vancouver. Everyone was going their separate ways. The trail community was parting and scattering to the four corners of the earth.

Zach and I laid down on our bed in our hotel room that night (on a bed big enough that we could both lie on our backs without touching each other, which I couldn’t quite wrap my head around yet), completely unable to comprehend what had happened. The trail seemed like a dream. 

It felt like it never happened.

The last few words in my diary entry read: “Strange, soft, luxurious sleep.”

~~~

PCT 2014, Day 157: Autumn

DAY 157

September 28th, Sunday

2630.1 to 2653.8

We had agreed the night before that we wanted to get within easy striking distance of the border tomorrow (what a bizarre thought!), so we were hoping to make 24 miles today. This was the farthest we’d hiked in a while, so we were determined to get an early start. Early that morning I threw my stuff in my backpack and hurtled down the trail toward the nearest water, a spring about half a mile down the trail. Zach stayed behind to pack up the tent, while I filtered a day’s worth of water at the spring. Water was scarce in these desert-like mountaintops, and we wanted to be prepared.

Despite our early start, most of our camping mates were up and at ‘em at the same time or before us. We all bottlenecked at the stream, and chatted with each other. By the time Zach rejoined me, I had finished filtering the water, and we set off together into a wild open alpine landscape.

There was a maze of trails in this section, little brown lines zigzagging through the alpine turf, but the PCT was always well-marked with the little icons that we had come to know so well. Most everyone passed us, hiking furiously. We were all simultaneously eager to get to the border and wanting to savor every minute.

We paused at a spring seeping out of the side of the mountain, taking a break in the shade of some pine trees. We couldn’t believe that Washington’s weather had been so nice for us. It was another blue-skied day that revealed all the awesome glory around us: the jagged arid mountains, the groves of trees, the wooded slopes and wide curved valleys. We glimpsed glacier-peaked mountains and autumn-colored meadows in the distance.

When we resumed walking, rolling over the elevation loss and gain without breaking a sweat, I felt in awe of my body. I was certainly not healthy— I knew that eating mashed potatoes and Snickers for five months made sure of that— but I was strong. My legs seemed like iron, and when I touched the flexing muscles, they felt like it too. My back was straight and strong, my lean arms could hoist my pack with no trouble, and my feet pushed off the terrain as if weight didn’t matter anymore. I had rarely been this aware of my body (except when I was in pain) all trail, and I marveled at it, trying to savor this moment forever. 

I was so strong. I don’t think I’ll ever feel that strong again.

The mountains in this section were so steep and crumbly that they often couldn’t support a trail— I can’t imagine how difficult it must’ve been to blaze a trail through this section. Late afternoon we crossed over a little pass and saw, about a quarter mile away, the trail going over the other shoulder of the same peak. However, a sheer field of scree stood in our way, so we had to switchback all the way down the mountainside, walk across a little valley, and then switchback all the way back up to the other side.

We were headed toward a feature called “Devil’s Stairway,” which sounded scary, but we were hoping to cross it and camp by Hopkins Lake on the other side. That would put us only 6.3 miles from the Canadian border, and only 15 miles from our final destination, Manning Park. This goal kept us moving forward, without taking any breaks. We barreled along a high ridge as the sun sank lower in the sky.

We looked at our maps, and soon saw that we’d be leaving the ridge and plunging into a valley. We agreed that we should take a rest, since this would be our last big scenic vista of the United States.

We plopped down on the trail, since there wasn’t any good place to sit otherwise, and sat with our faces south, the way we’d come. The setting sun had turned the sky to a flaxen yellow, and the only sounds in this silence were our breath and the breeze rattling dry flower stalks in front of me.

I gazed out on this vista: green valley, rows of jagged blue mountains. Beyond that, in my memory, I saw the huckleberry-clad fields, the glaciers of Rainier, the volcanic ridge of the Cascades, the forests, the alpine meadows, the trail angels, the tiny towns, the burned areas, the crags and shelves of Northern California, the black-and-white landscapes of the High Sierra, the rocks and sand and crowds of the desert. I saw in my mind the Southern Terminus, where over five months ago— eons ago, it seemed— Zach and I had stood at the beginning of this trail, completely inexperienced, dreaming an impossible dream to get to Canada.

My eyes focused on the flower stalks in front of me. The flowers had gone to seed, leaving thistledown and dry stems to wave in front of the distant blue crags.

I stared at the seed pods. “It’s autumn,” I said, and it really hit me for the first time. “It was spring when we left, and now it’s autumn.”

Zach just made a noise of acknowledgement. I thought he must still be feeling apathetic— we’d both struggled with it lately. The trail had worn us down. But as I stared at the thistledown and listened to the dry stalks scratching the vast silence, I felt the weight of what we had accomplished pressing on me. 

I looked at Zach. When we left Mexico, he was clean-shaven and full-faced, ready to tackle the trail. Now he had a gnarly beard and sunken cheeks and brown skin. 

And he was crying.

I lost it. I collapsed on his shoulder and he clutched me in his arms and we looked south at the last real view of the United States, and we both cried. It was the good, clean, overwhelming sort of crying that makes your whole body ache, but your mind feels strangely calm. 

We cried for a minute or two, baptizing the moment. Then we sniffed, and wiped our noses on our grimy sleeves, and helped each other to our feet.

We stretched, shouldered our packs, and tightened the straps. Hip belt, shoulder straps, chest strap, load lifters. Just as we’d done a thousand times before. Then we plunged down into the shadow on the other side of the ridge. We left the view behind us, burned into our memories forever.

When we reached the border the next day, we couldn’t conjure any emotion at all— we had used it up. 

So, in my memory, that moment on the ridge was, in a powerful way, the actual end of the trail.

We followed the path down the plunging curve of the ridge, and saw behind us to the right a jagged edge of the ridge, marked with layers of arching strata. We realized that this was Devil’s Staircase, nothing to worry about. It was dark in the shadow of the ridge, but Hopkins Lake wasn’t far away. 

Devil's Staircase

The trail descended sharply, leading us into a pine wood, and then we took a little spur trail toward the lake, doubling back so that the trail was high above our heads. The lake was placid and silver in the shadow of late day. We found a camp spot near a middle-aged hiker who introduced himself as Me Too. Other than a few lonely tents along the shore, we were alone. We chatted a bit with Me Too: this was his third attempt to hike the trail— he’d had to get off for health reasons twice. “But this is it!” he said. 

Zach pointed out, “Even if we break a leg now, the quickest way to rescue is through Canada.”

That was an awesome thought.

Now we were down to the last cooked meal on trail: what should we choose? We at last decided on one of our most decadent meals: mac n’ cheese with chunks of summer sausage. “After all,” I said, “we’ll probably never want to eat camp food ever again.”

We devoured the huge meal, savoring the flavor of our newly-acquired butter, then set up camp with a leisurely air. Probably for the last time. Good thing, too— our zippers were almost completely shot. You can’t blame the brand, though: we had put more wear on this tent in five months than most people do in ten years.

It was a cold night, so we rigged up the rainfly and climbed into the tent, snuggling up the sleeping bag. Zach read half a chapter of The Silmarillion before he got too tired to keep reading. Our emotional energy was spent, and we couldn’t really grasp what was happening. Maybe tomorrow we’d understand better. 

We kissed goodnight, rolled over, and plunged into an exhausted sleep.

~~~

PCT 2014, Day 156: One Last Party

Pictured: two hikers who haven't showered in too long (aside from getting rained on) and want to document how bedraggled they are.

DAY 156

September 27th, Saturday

2615 to 2630.1

It was hard to get up that morning, and not just because our campsite was in a river valley untouched by the sun where the chill of the night pooled. I was still fighting my period, and almost felt too sick to eat breakfast (almost). We finally packed up and hit the trail around 9:30. It wasn’t a promising start to the day, but after a couple miles I was already feeling less sick and more alert.

Soon we left the woods behind and crossed through a meadow, with intermittent pines, under a perfectly-blue sky. We had been cold in the morning, but under the bright sun we heated up in no time and soon walked with our sleeves rolled up. We couldn’t ask for a more beautiful day. 

The landscape today, lit by a fair sun, revealed a new vividness of color: red huckleberry leaves glimmering with dew, feathery yellow larches against the solid blue sky. The mountains were getting jaggy on an impressive scale: we stared at them and couldn’t believe the angles were real. Whenever we crossed a moraine, we heard pikas squeaking and saw the bunny-like creatures hopping among the rocks.

Hiking through a strip of woods, we ran into Zen Dawg and stopped to chat. We remarked about how gorgeous the weather was, and Zen Dawg, smiling confidently, said, “We earned this. We earned this weather through our good deeds.”

I felt the trail flash before my eyes: whining at Zach, throwing temper tantrums, complaining to other hikers, bursting into tears at unhelpful moments, swearing, snapping and fighting with Zach, slamming my trekking pole into the ground and screaming. 

I giggled. “I don’t actually believe in karma,” I said. 

Zen Dawg seemed taken aback, but then he nodded. “Well, you don’t have to believe in it for it to be true.”

This seemed like a rather absolute statement for someone who subscribed to Eastern religion, but I nodded. “I guess not!”

With a friendly wave, Zen Dawg hiked on, and we didn’t see him again. But I was glad our paths had crossed.

Now we left the woods and started an ascent up a nearly-vertical slope covered in bushes. To traverse this impossible angle, the trail ascended in switchbacks nearly a quarter mile long each. We walked up at a gradual angle, turned around, and walked back exactly the way we’d come, just a bit higher. The landscape was unchanging as we zigzagged back and forth, back and forth. I couldn’t see where the trail was going, or discern which direction we were headed. The switchbacks continued, with the ridiculously gorgeous mountains on our left, then on our right, then on our left, then on our right. I sweated a little bit in the sun. Left, right, left right.

Without any kind of warning, my body just gave up. I stopped mid-step and my foot sank onto the ground, feeling like it had turned to lead. I gazed straight ahead, staring at the flaxen-colored grass growing on this slope. And then I began to sob.

Zach turned around, wondering what the heck I was crying about this time. I crumpled to the ground, the bottom of my backpack hitting the trail as I plopped down. I stared out at the mountains and cradled my head in my hands and wept. 

Zach, perhaps sensing that this was no ordinary breakdown, took off his pack and sat beside me. “What is it?” he asked. It’s pretty amazing that he still had the emotional energy to ask this question.

I’m not a naturally introspective person, so it often takes me a while to get to the bottom of why I’m reacting in a certain way. Through the tears, I managed, “My body is hurting.” This was true— periods are never fun, especially in the backwoods. But it wasn’t really that bad. It had to be something else. “And I feel like the switchbacks are never going to end,” I added. No, that wasn’t it, not really. I tried to shuffle through my feelings, digging down to find the root. What was it? “I feel bad,” I said in another feeble attempt.

Zach just looked at me patiently, waiting for me to get the heart of it.

At last I blurted out, “This trail has been hard, and we’re almost done.” And then I began sobbing again.

Zach put his arm around me and the two of us sat there. He showed no emotion, but he was there for me. And I realized that I wasn’t sad, or even upset, really. The emotions of coming to the end of a five-month backpacking trip were just too big for me to handle— crying was the only release. It was a proper reaction. It was a good reaction.

When I finished crying, I felt clean. I felt strong. Zach looked at me, expressionless, and said, “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Then we stood up and continued up the switchbacks. Left, right, left, right, left, right.

Finally, the trail veered off to the left.

We crossed over a mountain ridge, barren and rocky, where all the slopes looked like they could turn into an avalanche at any moment. Winding through the alpine turf and gnarled trees, we realized that this area actually looked a lot like the desert section of the trail. 

In our sightseeing, we completely missed the only source of water for miles around… and realized this when our Camelbak came up dry right after we had crossed a massive scree field. We stared at each other in disbelief. How on earth did we keep making this mistake?! As usual, Zach took the water bottles and backtracked while I sat down to wait it out. This was the last assured water for 20 miles, so we wanted to load up.

I sat on the trail, looking out at the vast landscape all around. There was a verdant valley, marked with a burned area that looked like a hedgehog of land amid the green carpet. The mountains were a gorgeous barren shade of sienna, jutting at severe angles. Above in the sky, puffy clouds hung about.

At that moment, I felt like we were never going to reach the border. I wasn’t in despair, but I just felt like it was an impossible feat. Cognitively, I knew we were only two days away— but how can you believe that you’re going to reach your destination when you’ve been on your journey for so long?

Day hikers were out en force today, and I chatted with them, and they all congratulated us on being so close. At last Zach rejoined me with a full load of water, and we set off again, trekking across the barren mountainsides and scree fields.

We passed a few jeep roads and at last we reached Hart’s Pass, a dirt road with a little trail register, some camping spots, a fire pit and picnic tables, and (hallelujah!) an outhouse. 

We took a break there, but just as we were planning to hike out, a crowd came rolling in— Angles, Ninja, Pippin, K2, Sloe Gin, Landfill, and String Cheese. String Cheese’s dad, named “Big Mac,” had brought his jeep up the mountain to meet her. He’d be hiking with her to the border, which I thought was cool. He had also brought a load of sandwiches for String Cheese and her friends, and they welcomed us to partake in the feast! We all sat on the grass by the road, munching on sandwiches and chatting. 

Zach and I once again stood up to hike out (after all, we’d only done 15 miles today), but the group said they were all camping out and making a fire tonight. We looked at the mileage: we could still make it to Canada in two days, as planned. (Our motto had also become, “Always choose the morale boost.”)

The group worked on gathering wood, and soon a cheerful blaze was in the fire pit. A nearby camper, a photographer, came over to hobnob and tried to impress us with his camping stories (it didn’t work). We all cooked our dinners, some over our cookstoves, others directly in the fire.

Once the photographer left us alone, we laughed and chatted and swapped trail stories, which ranged from the mundane to the bawdy. I don’t even remember half of it, but I do remember laughing so hard that I almost cried.

One of us brought up the weird way that your mind works when you’re on trail, how you think about the most mundane things for hours on end. “Yeah!” I said. “I just keep obsessing over the different ways to eat a watermelon.”

“I think about cars,” Angles said. “I think to myself, ‘How many wheels does a car have? Does it really have just four?’”

The group fell silent, all of us seriously pondering.

“No, it has five,” someone said. “The steering wheel.”

We all nodded and made noises of epiphany. We conjectured about other wheels that might be present in a car. (Did gears count? Does a car have gears?) Then we all began to chuckle, not because he sounded crazy but because all of us thought about things in exactly the same way. Modern human brains are not accustomed to this much solitude. None of us ever thought deep thoughts— we just pondered watermelons and cars. And food. Always food.

That night, huddled around the fire as the night pressed in with freezing cold, was glorious. We were all in high spirits, slaphappy, at ease. We were going to make it. We were all going to make it. 

At last, Zach and I raced to set up our tent in the cold and dove inside. Most of the other hikers huddled in their tents as well, or else cowboy camped and cuddled up like a pile of wolf puppies. Curled up in a fetal position with the freezing pad beneath me, I snuggled closer to Zach.

I felt so happy.

We were going to make it.

~~~