On April 23rd I arrived at the monument marking the Southern Terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. It would be five months before I reached its Canadian counterpart. I stuck my leg through the red slats of the border wall and started my 2650 mile hike across America.
Life on trail was raw and real—majestic mountains, plain plains, warm water and Snickers bars and ramen bombs, blistered feet, sticky sweat, stinky clothes, and the heat of the sun beating from the sky. It was learning to live with ten pounds of possessions, among which included one hiking shirt, two pairs of socks, half a toothbrush, and a puffy jacket that doubled as a pillow. There the struggle of the human condition was distilled down to the rhythm of resolve: step by step, heart towards the horizon, always northbound.
The Desert (miles 0 to 702)
The stresses of life switch from mental to physical, and sore muscles feel better than a burnt out mind. One learns to take what is given, and cherish the rest. I’ve taken water from snowmelt waterfalls, muddied puddles, and a cistern with a film of algae and bugs floating on the surface. That last one tasted a bit funny, but water in the desert is worth more gold.
Sometimes trail angels set up stations with lawn chairs and snacks from the outside world, and there is no better feeling than being surprised with the sweet syrup of an ice cold Diet Coke. The knapsack problem dictates that sodas, juices, fruits, and fresh foods aren’t worth their water weight on trail. So we craved those constantly.
There was an abundance of time. In real life, there’s always more things you want to do than things you can do, and cheap entertainment fills the gaps between busy schedules. While walking twelve hours a day, I had four options: music, audiobooks, my own thoughts, and those of other hikers. I replayed the highlight reels and cringiest moments of my life hundreds of times, and though I didn’t come up with any monumental realizations or reflections, it was nice to process the past and solidify the nature of me.
People were ephemeral and that made relationships beautiful. You would meet somebody you really liked at a water break and never see them again. Or they’d pop up at a grocery store in a random town a thousand miles later. Every so often you'd run into a trail register, where you sign your name for the people behind you and smile at old friends now far ahead.
We all had trail names. You couldn't come up with your own, it had to be bestowed by another hiker. Mine was Rockslide. On account of stepping on a loose rock and tumbling fifteen feet down the side of a mountain (those scars still haven’t healed). Some names were quite memorable—I hiked with a Shitwater in Oregon and split an Airbnb with Croquettes, who stuffed the crocs tied to the back of his pack full of snacks).
My best night was when my trail family ate mushrooms and night hiked across the Mojave Desert. I cried contemplating the beauty of the big dipper amidst the sand dunes.
My worst night was in Washington. A part of the PCT was closed because of wildfires, and the detour I planned involved miles of trails that had been long reclaimed by the forest. What followed was hours of bushwacking through thick brush, following the ghost of a game trail, getting stung by ground wasps. It wasn’t until 2am that I made it out of the woods back to a footpath.
The most beautiful stretch of trail was the high Sierra—the scent of cedarwood wafting through the air, midday plunges into alpine lakes, mountain vistas used as MacBook screensavers. Many evenings we slept under the light of a thousand stars, using our unpitched tents as tarps. Cold nights gave way to crisp mornings and warm afternoons. Long stretches of snow covered the mountain passes that we toiled to climb every day and glissaded down afterwards.
In Yosemite, after Tuolumne meadows, was when all hell broke loose. Mosquitoes started to spawn. Existence was acceptance you’d be bit, even while wearing a coat of deet. The only escape was walking faster than they could fly. I became really good at sensing bites—if they were to feast on me, I made sure the price of their bloodmeal was their life. At night they would congregate in hundreds on the walls of my tent, and I’d entertain myself squishing them between the mesh.
It is in the small towns and rural stretches of country where the kindness of strangers lives on. Out there, people will pull over for a weary traveler with an outstretched thumb, driving the wrong way to drop you off in the right part of town. Strangers have welcomed me into their homes, served up home cooked meals, invited me to church bingo nights and barnyard get-togethers. One guy handed me a $20 bill outside a post office and told me to buy myself something nice. It’s hard to be kind in cities—there’s a surplus of need and a dearth of trust. And now, living in the most city of American cities, I’ve come to miss the kinship of man.
I’m especially proud of two things from the hike. The first is that I kept a continuous footpath from border to border. Most people don’t—they decide against walking alongside a major highway to reroute from a fire closure, or skip around sections to reunite with friends. After a certain point when the novelty wears off and it becomes a matter of will to finish, it’s tempting to take shortcuts.
The second is that I didn’t lose much weight. Early on, I met a previous hiker who had to quit a third of the way in since his body began to consume itself. Hiking thirty miles a day is really calorically intensive. I made sure to eat 5000 calories a day, with my primary food groups being candy bars, olive oil shooters, oreos, and Knorr’s rice sides. Lunches were rough—the typical lunch was a tortilla wrap, a block of cheese, and some plant based ham if available. I gained a profound respect for the longevity of cheese; I carried cheddar for several days in hundred degree temps and it never went bad.
Now that I’m in New York, whenever I tell folks about the hike, the first thing they always ask is why I did it. I have a hard time answering. There’s some intangible beauty to life on trail that attracted me, that I still crave. Perhaps it’s along the lines of what Thoreau said two hundred years ago:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
- Rockslide