FEATURED POST

The long trail ahead. PCT

There is a game you can play as you walk around the city: Following a repeating sequence of turns, i.e. Left-Left-Right-Left, you will end up places you have never seen before, even if you’ve lived in that same city ten years.  We choose certain routes based upon instinct and habit; this game’s purpose is to override them.

Thru-hiking is similar.  The trails are at once wild and urbane.  The land they’re built on has been repurposed by humans time and time again, from orchards and farms, to mining camps, wind farms, and cities, all of which make up a large portion of the scenery of your hike.  Yet on the Pacific Crest Trail, the rivers of snow melt that run off Glacier Peak continuously knock down the bridges that are built across them.  And as I made my way to the Big Lake Youth camp, on the PCT in Oregon, for a hamburger and fries, a mountain lion watched me from a cliff above the trail.

Thru-hikers, like other adventurers, need no encouragement to get outside and explore.  But thru-hikers, unlike other adventurers, choose to do so in a very restrictive way.  The parameters are set, to become a thru-hiker you must walk every inch of a trail in one calendar year.  You must follow it everyplace, through backyards, battlefields, zoos, highways, clear-cuts, deserts, forest fires, and mountain passes.

UltraBrite on the PCT

Obviously a man-made trail is most often the path of least resistance through the woods, so to follow the trail appears an easy choice.  The trail, blasted into the cliff face (Eagle Creek blue blaze on PCT) or sturdy with rock stairs down a rocky slope (Golden Staircase, John Muir Trail) is, again, the safe choice.  But sometimes, the official trail is not the shortest route (Tejon Ranch, anyone?), nor is this or that trail town a place we’d choose to stop in (none need be named here).  Yet, married to the trail as thru-hikers, we choose the man-made option.  What keeps us on the staircases instead of in the waterfall?  What draws us to sleep in the campgrounds with the fire pits and the bear lockers instead of the caves, the mine shafts, or the flat rocks on riverbeds?  Is it fear?  Is it convenience?  Are we still an explorer if we’re hiking on a trail?

PCT Family

I think psychogeography gives some insight into the mind of a thru-hiker.  By setting limitations we force ourselves to go places we would otherwise avoid. By walking “inside the box” we show ourselves something new and give ourselves the opportunity to react spontaneously to it.  Not once or twice, but for four, five, and six months straight.  We restrict our latitude in order to experience more deeply the longitude.

Thru-hiking introduces you to your free self in an environment right at the edge of civilization.  It’s a controlled experiment in exploring the possibilities that exist for you in a world where everything you need is on your back and you are free. There is convenience, there is fear, and there are satisfying points where you overcome both.