Pct Trail Quotes

There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course. But I was pretty certain as I sat there that tonight that if it hadn't been for Eddie, I wouldn't have found myself on the PCT. And though it was true that everything I felt for him sat like a boulder in my throat, this realization made the boulder sit ever so much lighter. He hadn't loved me well in the end, but he'd loved me well when it mattered.

The PCT had gotten easier for me, but that was different from it getting easy.

How fabulous down was for those first minutes! Down, down, down I'd go until down too became impossible and punishing and so relentless that I'd pray for the trail to go back up. Going down, I realized was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

As difficult and maddening as the trail could be, there was hardly a day that passed that didn’t offer up some form of what was called trail magic in the PCT vernacular—the unexpected and sweet happenings that stand out in stark relief to the challenges of the trail.

And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.

I’d loved books in my regular, pre-PCT life, but on the trail, they’d taken on even greater meaning. They were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear.

I got an abortion and learned how to make dehydrated tuna flakes and turkey jerky and took a refresher course on basic first aid and practiced using my water purifier in my kitchen sink. I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be -- strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good. And the PCT would make me that way. There, I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous.

There were so many other amazing things in this world. They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn’t know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn’t crying because I was happy. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I wasn’t crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9,760 days that had come before them too.

Foot speed was a profoundly different way of moving through the world than my normal modes of travel. Miles weren’t things that blazed dully past. They were long, intimate straggles of weeds and clumps of dirt, blades of grass and flowers that bent in the wind, trees that lumbered and screeched. They were the sound of my breath and my feet hitting the trail one step at a time and the click of my ski pole. The PCT had taught me what a mile was. I was humble before each and every one.

weren’t things that blazed dully past. They were long, intimate straggles of weeds and clumps of dirt, blades of grass and flowers that bent in the wind, trees that lumbered and screeched. They were the sound of my breath and my feet hitting the trail one step at a time and the click of my ski pole. The PCT had taught me what a mile was. I was humble before each and every one.

In mijn dagelijkse pre-PCT-leven hield ik al van boeken, maar tijdens de voettocht kregen ze een diepere betekenis. ZE vormden de wereld waarin ik mezelf kon laten gaan wanneer de realiteit te eenzaam, hard of moeilijk werd om te verdragen.

I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Leaving Paul and destroying our marriage and life as I knew it for the simple and inexplicable reason that I felt I had to—that had been hard as well. But hiking the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard.

The PCT had taught me what a mile was.

hiking the Appalachian Trail is 100% about the journey and experience, and not just saying that you did it.

I’d made the arguably unreasonable decision to take a long walk alone on the PCT in order to save myself. When I believed that all the things I’d been before had prepared me for this journey. But nothing had or could. Each day on the trail was the only possible preparation for the one that followed. And sometimes even the day before didn’t prepare me for what would happen next.

Most of the people I met on the PCT passed only briefly through my life, but I was enriched by each of them. They made me laugh they made me think, they made me go on another day, and most of all, they made me trust entirely in the kindness of strangers.

That was my father: the man who hadn’t fathered me. It amazed me every time. Again and again and again. Of all the wild things, his failure to love me the way he should have had always been the wildest thing of all. But on that night as I gazed out over the darkening land fifty-some nights out on the PCT, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to be amazed by him anymore. There were so many other amazing things in this world.

Of all the things that convinced me that I should not be afraid while on this journey, of all the things I’d made myself believe so I could hike the PCT, the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.

Going down, I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you’d just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

By the way,” I said, “I wanted to tell you—about why I decided to hike the PCT? I got divorced. I was married and not long ago I got divorced, and also about four years ago my mom died—she was only forty-five and she got cancer suddenly and died. It’s been a hard time in my life and I’ve sort of gotten offtrack. So I …” He opened his eyes wider, looking at me. “I thought it would help me find my center, to come out here.” I made a crumpled gesture with my hands, out of words, a bit surprised that I’d let so many tumble out.

So much of being able to hike the PCT depended upon mind control: the stout decision to move forward, regardless.

I came up with another reason to bolster my belief that this whole PCT hike had been an outlandishly stupid idea.

on the PCT, broke, but okay—getting to do what I wanted to do even though a reasonable person would have said I couldn’t afford to do it.

I’ve spent every waking moment nurturing and maintaining my relationship with this eighteen-inch by 2660-mile ribbon of dirt.

I’ve been eating this shit for so long that I’ve transcended the need to actually enjoy my food. No more desires. Eat to live, not live to eat.

The PCT had taught me what a mile was

.. And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.

Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again.

Dreading and complaining wasn’t going to make the mountains disappear.

In later days, I would always tell south bound hikers not to miss out on the Holy Cow Burger at Bob’s Dairyland in Roan Mountain, Tennessee.

Misery only added to the cumulative experience of the adventure that would ultimately sculpt me into a stronger, more resilient human being.

If only I would’ve known that Virginia was going to chew me up and spit me out onto the rocks of Pennsylvania, I might not have been so excited.

We stuck out like turds in a punchbowl, and everybody let us know (with

The snail goes up Mount Fuji, slowly… slowly.

I had come to realize that this whole place and experience is what you make of it. Your attitude and frame of mind determined everything.

In the early days, avoiding immediate misery usually trumped proper judgment, which almost always resulted in prolonged misery. 

the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard.

The PCT had taught me what a mile was. I was humble before each and every one.O

We don’t give our animal friends enough credit for the lives they lead until we try to imagine ourselves in their position. Only then will you find the respect for these creatures they undoubtedly deserve.

I periodically scanned the sides of the trail with my headlamp looking for eye shine. As a loose rule, the eyes of non-threatening animals reflect green in false light, while predator’s eyes reflect yellow.

People came and went in waves, sometimes gathering in little circles around me to ask questions about the PCT when they noticed my pack. As I spoke, the doubts I had about myself on the trail fell away for whole minutes at a time and I forgot all about being a big fat idiot. Basking in the attention of the people who gathered around me, I didn’t just feel like a backpacking expert. I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.

I went out there to live on a whim and have the freedom to stop whenever I got tired, or whenever I reached a place that was so beautiful that I couldn’t possibly pass it up. You don’t have that freedom when slack packing.

I’d loved books in my regular, pre- PCT life, but on the trail, they’d taken on even greater meaning. They were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear.

I’d loved books in my regular, pre-PCT life, but on the trail, they’d taken on even greater meaning. They were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear. When

A good rule to follow is to keep the price of your current resupply at or under the number of miles you’ve hiked since your last resupply. I’d hiked more than thirty miles of the trail up until this point and my resupply cost me $28.

I even found a Marijuana joint that was taped to the inside of a shelter log that had “Cheers” written underneath it. I left it where it was, but that’s the sort of crazy random things you could find in one of these journals… not just signatures. 

I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

I wanted nothing more than to yell at these people, “SHUT UP! I’ve been traversing cliffs, creeks, mud, jagged rocks, drop offs, bug hoards, and hellish inclines all morning and all I had to eat before all of it were skittles wrapped in a tortilla!” This

I think “adaptability” is one of the most important qualities an individual can possess, especially when it comes to hiking the trail. If you don’t know how to adapt, then you better learn to adapt! Bend and flow with your circumstances, don’t let them break you.

I will say that the experience would lose something if you spent all of your time out in the woods and not in towns having some fun, as well as a reprieve from the elements. The small towns that reside along the trail are as much a part of the experience as the mountains and forests.

Vrijeme na thru hikeu gotovo da i ne postoji. U današnjem svijetu satova čovjek je izgubio pojam o tome što znači živjeti neograničen vremenom. Vrijeme je suprotnost vječnosti. Vječnost je božanska. Osjetiti vječnost znači osjetiti svemir i njegov spokoj. Tek kroz spokoj čovjek biva izmijenjen.

I’d been on the PCT for a little more than a month. It seemed like a long time and also it seemed like my trip had just begun, like I was only now digging into whatever it was I was out here to do. Like I was still the woman with the hole in her heart, but the hole had gotten ever so infinitesimally smaller.

Try to imagine the helplessness you might feel if it were you that was stuck in that spot, completely exhausted and in pain with steep 1,000 foot climbs on either side of you. Imagine how defeated you might feel if you knew that you had to climb one of them in order to reach any kind of decent cover for camping.

Few things in nature can compare to the long, mournful wail of a loon echoing across water and through the forest. It’s an evocative sound that will stick with you for the rest of your life and make you nostalgic for things that never even happened to you. Eerie, yet beautiful, the sound will conjure up images of solitude near mountain lakes and ponds, shrouded in fog during the early morning or late dusk, surrounded by the silhouettes of pine trees. It’s a sound that relaxes and submerges you into the tranquility of nature. I don’t think there is another sound in the world that reminds me of the wilderness more so than the wail of a loon.

The unwritten rule for hikers is to take one of whatever is provided. If there is a large selection or quantity, then you might take one of each or one of a couple things, then move on. You have to be considerate of the people hiking behind you that haven’t arrived yet and give them a chance to get in on the magic whenever they get there. 

I knew that the feelings they got from providing the kindness was stronger than the gratitude I got from receiving it. It was on this day that I realized I wanted to experience that feeling as much and as often as I possibly could. I wanted to do good things for people I didn’t know and watch the surprise and appreciation wash over their faces.

As if the answer to that question held the key to my success or failure at this—the hardest thing I’d ever done. I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

This day and age, so many people over-complicate their lives to the point of ludicrousness.  I couldn’t see myself ever going back to my life of over consumption and over indulgence with the ambition to acquire “more.” When you simplify, you learn to be happier with less. It’s a happiness that trumps every other happiness I’ve ever experienced thus far in life.

Any question or piece of advice you needed about the trail, he had an answer that was spot on. Probably the greatest advice he gave was that it wasn’t a “one size fits all” answer. He encouraged and gave you the confidence to trust in yourself to figure things out on your own and find out what works for you, while simultaneously dropping little hints to help you along.

Out there in the woods, there’s no one to impress and no one to judge you. The only people you’ll see are your fellow hikers, and they don’t care what you look like, or what you wear. It’s when you get past this attitude of judging people by their surface appearance that you’re able to genuinely get to know someone on a deeper, more personal level. This is why relationships formed on the trail are so strong. In

Every now and then I could see myself--truly see myself--and a sentence would come to me, thundering like a god into my head, and as I saw myself then in front of that tarnished mirror what came was "the woman with the hole in her heart." That was me. That was why I'd longed for a companion the night before. That was why I was here, naked in a motel, with this preposterous idea of hiking alone for three months on the PCT.

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. The radical aloneness of the PCT had altered that sense. Alone wasn't a room anymore, but the whole wide world, and now I was alone in that world, occupying it in a way I had never before. Living at large like this, without even a roof over my head, made the world feel both bigger and smaller to me. Until now, I hadn't truly understood the world's vastness--hadn't even understood how vast a mile could be--until each mile was beheld at walking speed. And yet there was also its opposite, the strange intimacy I'd come to have with the trail, the way the piñon pines and monkey flowers I passed that morning, the shallow streams I crossed, felt familiar and known, though I'd never passed them or crossed them before.

I believe the ability to view the agony and discomfort of a miserable and painful situation as a character building and physically strengthening experience. It is what separates the mentally tough from the mentally not so tough. The ability to recognize that in the long run, one’s suffering can be nothing but beneficial in the future when confronted with similar situations. Where many might crumble and quit, others see the bigger picture, persevere, and ultimately become stronger. That’s

saw that I was surrounded by hundreds of azaleas in a dozen shades of pink and pale orange, a few of their petals blowing off in the breeze. They seemed to be a gift to me, like the peach, and Kyle singing “Red River Valley.” As difficult and maddening as the trail could be, there was hardly a day that passed that didn’t offer up some form of what was called trail magic in the PCT vernacular—the unexpected and sweet happenings that stand out in stark relief to the challenges of the trail.

My beauty and independence were new for me. They brought me pride and satisfaction; they changed my sense of possibility. I felt awake in my body. Living in the woods, building my little shelter each night, a silent shadow, drifting in and out of mountain towns, a ghost, I was entirely self-reliant. On the trail I had persisted despite fear, and walking the Pacific Crest had led me deeply into happiness. I felt amazing now. In this body that brought me twelve hundred miles, I felt I could do anything.

There’s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course. But I was pretty certain as I sat there that night that if it hadn’t been for Eddie, I wouldn’t have found myself on the PCT. And though it was true that everything I felt for him sat like a boulder in my throat, this realization made the boulder sit ever so much lighter. He hadn’t loved me well in the end, but he’d loved me well when it mattered.

I put my money back in my pocket, turned my headlamp off, and stared out my window to the west, feeling a sad unease. I was homesick, but I didn’t know if it was for the life I used to have or for the PCT. I could just barely make out the dark silhouette of the Sierra Nevada against the moonlit sky. It looked like that impenetrable wall again, the way it had to me a few years before when I’d first seen it while driving with Paul, but it didn’t feel impenetrable anymore. I could imagine myself on it, in it, part of it. I knew the way it felt to navigate it one step at a time.

On this road I found two large coolers and a short note explaining that it was “Trail Magic” left by a thru-hiker who completed the trail in 2012. I opened the first cooler to find that it was full of Gatorade.  It must have been left the day before, because the ice had turned to slush and those babies were as cold as Antarctica! I can say with complete honesty, that the blue Gatorade I consumed at that spot was the single greatest drink of liquid that I’ve ever had in my entire life. Never had a cold drink tasted so good to me before. The positive psychological affect this had on me was unbelievable.

You don’t often find trusting and kindness like this in the world anymore. Strangers inviting strangers into their homes to have dinner with them is practically unheard of in this day and age. It felt amazing to be on the receiving end of such kindness, but somehow I knew that the feelings they got from providing the kindness was stronger than the gratitude I got from receiving it. It was on this day that I realized I wanted to experience that feeling as much and as often as I possibly could. I wanted to do good things for people I didn’t know and watch the surprise and appreciation wash over their faces.

Krenuvši na ovo putovanje bio sam čovjek potpuno urušene vjere u ljude. Živio sam u okruženju koje me je sustavno gazilo, uvjeravalo da ne vrijedim takav kakav jesam, da moram postati netko drugi da bih bio dovoljno dobar, u okruženju u kojem sam uvijek bio drugi, manje vrijedan, onaj koji ne zaslužuje. A takav nam je i svijet. Suvremeno nas društvo uvjerava da vrijedimo onoliko koliko zarađujemo, koliko posjedujemo, kako smo sposobni izgraditi carstvo na muci drugih, koliko smo sposobni prodati se, zadiviti druge i pružiti usluge i znanja koja se mogu prodati i unovčiti. Tko se tu ne uklapa, tomu se dobro ne piše

It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn’t simply walking—that I needed to begin respecting my own body’s boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me. Moving forward, I wanted rules. First—when I felt unsafe I’d leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I’d been bitten—the violation. If I wasn’t interested, I would reject the man blatantly.

A word to the wise, NEVER try and push bigger miles when you begin a long distance hike without any prior experience or conditioning. Listen to your body, and unless you absolutely have to go further due to water or an emergency, stop when it tells you to stop. It will save you a tremendous amount of pain and heartache. I can’t tell you how many people I saw quit the trail due to overdoing it in the beginning and hurting themselves or causing themselves more pain than they could tolerate. There is no harm in going slow and building yourself up gradually. You have plenty of time and distance to grow stronger, and believe me, you will! I

But walking along a path I carved myself—one I hoped was the PCT—was the opposite of using heroin. The trigger I’d pulled in stepping into the snow made me more alive to my senses than ever. Uncertain as I was as I pushed forward, I felt right in my pushing, as if the effort itself meant something. That perhaps being amidst the undesecrated beauty of the wilderness meant I too could be undesecrated, regardless of what I’d lost or what had been taken from me, regardless of the regrettable things I’d done to others or myself or the regrettable things that had been done to me. Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.

I’d never set foot on the AT, but I’d heard much about it from the guys at Kennedy Meadows. It was the PCT’s closest kin and yet also its opposite in many ways. About two thousand people set out to thru-hike the AT each summer, and though only a couple hundred of them made it all the way, that was far more than the hundred or so who set out on the PCT each year. Hikers on the AT spent most nights camping in or near group shelters that existed along the trail. On the AT, resupply stops were closer together, and more of them were in real towns, unlike those along the PCT, which often consisted of nothing but a post office and a bar or tiny store. I imagined the Australian honeymooners on the AT now, eating cheeseburgers and guzzling beer in a pub a couple of miles from the trail, sleeping by night under a wooden roof. They’d probably been given trail names by their fellow hikers, another practice that was far more common on the AT than on the PCT, though we had a way of naming people too. Half the time that Greg, Matt, and Albert had talked about Brent they’d referred to him as the Kid, though he was only a few years younger than me. Greg had been occasionally called the Statistician because he knew so many facts and figures about the trail and he worked as an accountant. Matt and Albert were the Eagle Scouts, and Doug and Tom the Preppies. I didn’t think I’d been dubbed anything, but I got the sinking feeling that if I had, I didn’t want to know what it was.

At around 8 pm we heard the sound of sirens. As the sound drew nearer and nearer, we caught sight of a fire truck. As it reached the hotel, the truck pulled into the parking lot with emergency lights shining and horns blasting. It came to a stop in front of our congregation. We didn’t see a fire or any other emergency in the immediate vicinity, so this was quite unexpected. Perhaps our smell had been reported as some kind of toxic leak or spill? Firemen began to pour out of the truck carrying different trays covered in foil. I could hardly believe my eyes. The local Franklin Fire Department had brought us all a spaghetti and meatball dinner! They also brought salad and pudding for desert. This was an example of trail magic at its finest.

BOOKS BURNED ON THE PCT The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California, Jeffrey P. Schaffer, Thomas Winnett, Ben Schifrin, and Ruby Jenkins. Fourth edition, Wilderness Press, January 1989. Staying Found: The Complete Map and Compass Handbook, June Fleming. *The Dream of a Common Language, Adrienne Rich. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner. **The Complete Stories, Flannery O’Connor. The Novel, James Michener. A Summer Bird-Cage, Margaret Drabble. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov. Dubliners, James Joyce. Waiting for the Barbarians, J. M. Coetzee. The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 2: Oregon and Washington, Jeffrey P. Schaffer and Andy Selters. Fifth edition, Wilderness Press, May 1992. The Best American Essays 1991, edited by Robert Atwan and Joyce Carol Oates. The Ten Thousand Things, Maria Dermoût.

There were so many other amazing things in this world. They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn’t know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn’t crying because I was happy. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I wasn’t crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9,760 days that had come before them too. I was entering. I was leaving. California streamed behind me like a long silk veil. I didn't feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.

There were so many other amazing things in this world. They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn't know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn't crying because I was happy. I wasn't crying because I was sad. I wasn't crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9,760 days that had come before them too. I was entering. I was leaving. California streamed behind me like a long silk veil. I didn't feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.

It amazed me every time. Again and again and again . Of all the wild things, his failure to love me the way he should have had always been the wildest thing of all. But on the night as I gazed out over the darkening land fifty-some nights out on the PCT, it occurred to me that I didn't have to be amazed by him anymore. There were so many other amazing things in this world. They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn't know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn't crying because I was happy. I wasn't crying because I was sad. I wasn't crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9.760 days that had come before them too.

I finally began loving every last bit of the experience; the good, the bad, and the ugly. The indifference, acceptance, disdain, and hate for all the obstacles and challenges I encountered out there had all but vanished. Now, all that was left was this crazy maniacal love for all of it… the mud, the rocks, the cold, and the terrible weather. I was done trying to ignore or curse them, and instead embraced all of it. I finally realized that it was an attitude such as this that set thru-hikers apart from every other person that couldn’t or wouldn’t complete this adventure. Aristotle said, “Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of mind.” That quote pretty much sums up the state of mind that you have to adopt in order to overcome the challenges of the Appalachian Trail.

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. The radical aloneness of the PCT had altered that sense. Alone wasn’t a room anymore, but the whole wide world, and now I was alone in that world, occupying it in a way I never had before. Living at large like this, without even a roof over my head, made the world feel both bigger and smaller to me. Until now, I hadn’t truly understood the world’s vastness—hadn’t even understood how vast a mile could be—until each mile was beheld at walking speed. And yet there was also its opposite, the strange intimacy I’d come to have with the trail, the way the piñon pines and monkey flowers I passed that morning, the shallow streams I crossed, felt familiar and known, though I’d never passed them or crossed them before.

I'd read the section in my guidebook about the trail's history the winter before, but it wasn't until now—a couple of miles out of Burney Falls, as I walked in my flimsy sandals in the early evening heat—that the realization of what that story meant picked up force and hit me squarely in the chest: preposterous as it was, when Catherine Montgomery and Clinton Clarke and Warren Rogers and the hundreds of others who'd created the PCT had imagined the people who would walk that high trail that wound down the heights of our western mountains, they'd been imagining me. It didn't matter that everything from my cheap knockoff sandals to my high-tech-by-1995-standards boots and backpack would have been foreign to them, because what mattered was utterly timeless. It was the thing that compelled them to fight for the trail against all the odds, and it was the thing that drove me and every other long-distance hiker onward on the most miserable days. It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. That's what Montgomery knew, I supposed. And what Clarke knew and Rogers and what thousands of people who preceded and followed them knew. It was what I knew before I even really did, before I could have known how truly hard and glorious the PCT would be, how profoundly the trail would both shatter and shelter me.

But on that night as I gazed out over the darkening land fifty-some nights out on the PCT, it occurred to me that I didn't have to be amazed by him anymore. There were so many other amazing things in this world. They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn't know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment i was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn't crying because I was happy. I wasn't crying because I was sad. I wasn't crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9,760 days that had come before them too. I was entering. I was leaving. California streamed behind me like a long silk veil. I didn't feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.

Looks to me like you could stand to lose a few things,” he said. “Want some help?” “Actually,” I said, smiling ruefully at him, “yes.” “All right, then. Here’s what I want you to do: pack up that thing just like you’re about to hike out of here for this next stretch of trail and we’ll go from there.” He walked toward the river with the nub of a toothbrush in hand—the end of which he’d thought to break off to save weight, of course. I went to work, integrating the new with the old, feeling as if I were taking a test that I was bound to fail. When I was done, Albert returned and methodically unpacked my pack. He placed each item in one of two piles—one to go back into my pack, another to go into the now-empty resupply box that I could either mail home or leave in the PCT hiker free box on the porch of the Kennedy Meadows General Store for others to plunder. Into the box went the foldable saw and miniature binoculars and the megawatt flash for the camera I had yet to use. As I looked on, Albert chucked aside the

It was moments like finding coolers full of drinks and snacks left out in the middle of nowhere that made me appreciate the little things in life. Allow me to try and put this into perspective. When I ran into trail magic like this, or when I was in town for the first time in nearly a week and about to have a sweet tea, a slice of pizza, or any one of the small things that we would normally not think twice about in daily life; a special feeling would wash over me. I can only describe that feeling as being exactly like the feelings you would experience as a child on Christmas morning or waking up on your birthday, except stronger. Out here you don’t get that feeling only twice a year. You get it every time someone performs a simple act of kindness, or when you get a dose of something that you otherwise could’ve had at any time back in the “real world.” It’s addicting, humbling, and eye opening. It makes you appreciate what you had before the trail and makes you want to never take such simple things for granted ever again. 

was strange but true. And perhaps I’d known it in some way from the very beginning. Perhaps the impulse to purchase the PCT guidebook months before had been a primal grab for a cure, for the thread of my life that had been severed. I could feel it unspooling behind me—the old thread I’d lost, the new one I was spinning—while I hiked that morning, the snowy peaks of the High Sierras coming into occasional view. As I walked, I didn’t think of those snowy peaks. Instead, I thought of what I would do once I arrived at the Kennedy Meadows General Store that afternoon, imagining in fantastic detail the things I would purchase to eat and drink—cold lemonade and candy bars and junk food I seldom ate in my regular life. I pictured the moment when I would lay hands on my first resupply box, which felt to me like a monumental milestone, the palpable proof that I’d made it at least that far. Hello, I said to myself in anticipation of what I’d say once I arrived at the store, I’m a PCT hiker here to pick up my box. My name is Cheryl Strayed.

By the time I arrived in the town of Mojave, California, on the night before I began hiking the PCT, I’d shot out of Minnesota for the last time. I’d even told my mother that, not that she could hear. I’d sat in the flowerbed in the woods on our land, where Eddie, Paul, my siblings, and I had mixed her ashes in with the dirt and laid a tombstone, and explained to her that I wasn’t going to be around to tend her grave anymore. Which meant that no one would. I finally had no choice but to leave her grave to go back to the weeds and blown-down tree branches and fallen pinecones. To snow and whatever the ants and deer and black bears and ground wasps wanted to do with her. I lay down in the mother ash dirt among the crocuses and told her it was okay. That I’d surrendered. That since she died, everything had changed. Things she couldn’t have imagined and wouldn’t have guessed. My words came out low and steadfast. I was so sad it felt as if someone were choking me, and yet it seemed my whole life depended on my getting those words out. She would always be my mother, I told her, but I had to go. She wasn’t there for me in that flowerbed anymore anyway, I explained. I’d put her somewhere else. The only place I could reach her. In me.

We pulled into town in the early evening, the sun dipping into the Tehachapi Mountains a dozen miles behind us to the west. Mountains I’d be hiking the next day. The town of Mojave is at an altitude of nearly 2,800 feet, though it felt to me as if I were at the bottom of something instead, the signs for gas stations, restaurants, and motels rising higher than the highest tree. “You can stop here,” I said to the man who’d driven me from LA, gesturing to an old-style neon sign that said WHITE’S MOTEL with the word TELEVISION blazing yellow above it and VACANCY in pink beneath. By the worn look of the building, I guessed it was the cheapest place in town. Perfect for me. “Thanks for the ride,” I said once we’d pulled into the lot. “You’re welcome,” he said, and looked at me. “You sure you’re okay?” “Yes,” I replied with false confidence. “I’ve traveled alone a lot.” I got out with my backpack and two oversized plastic department store bags full of things. I’d meant to take everything from the bags and fit it into my backpack before leaving Portland, but I hadn’t had the time. I’d brought the bags here instead. I’d get everything together in my room. “Good luck,” said the man. I watched him drive away. The hot air tasted like dust, the dry wind whipping my hair into my eyes. The parking lot was a field of tiny white pebbles cemented into place; the motel, a long row of doors and windows shuttered by shabby curtains. I slung my backpack over my shoulders and gathered the bags. It seemed strange to have only these things. I felt suddenly exposed, less exuberant than I had thought I would. I’d spent the past six months imagining this moment, but now that it was here—now that I was only a dozen miles from the PCT itself—it seemed less vivid than it had in my imaginings, as if I were in a dream, my every thought liquid slow, propelled by will rather than instinct.

I hated my inability to explain my life on the trail to her and my mother’s inability to comprehend. I hated her consistent need to know the list of different foods I’d eaten that day. I remembered how she’d asked me if I’d had a good dinner in the same phone call when I’d told her I’d been raped. I considered, tomorrow night, not calling her.

I didn’t know what I would do. There was no way I could survive. I stared at my damp tent ceiling, feeling the frigid air against me, the frozen ground against my bottom, so cold my bare skin burned. I needed to get to the next trail-town, Mammoth Lakes. There was no one here to save me now.

Already, this little-walked gigantic trail through my country’s Western wilderness held in my mind the promise of escape from myself, the liberation only a huge transformation could grant me. This walk would be my salvation. It had to be.

Still I walked into the snow, moving to keep warm, burning precious energy searching for an answer I couldn’t think of. I didn’t turn back, compelled to continue without the trail. I didn’t want to risk futilely backtracking. If I couldn’t find the trail before dark, I could wake tomorrow disoriented and desperate, without having even made any new miles; my loss of the PCT should have distressed me, but a new instinct led me forward. In this moment of despair I was refusing to stop fighting. I asked the mountains for some guidance, the strength to get myself out of here, and pulled wild power from within myself I’d never known I’d had. I was no longer following a trail. I was learning to follow myself.

Hiking the PCT was merely a pause button. The trail wasn’t a destination. It was no answer. Walking in solitude fixes nothing, but it leads you to the place where you can identify the malady – see the wound’s true form and nature – and then discern the proper medicine.

I don’t remember having one conversation with my dad in the three days I was home, but looking back at my journal, I see I wrote about him. I scrawled about how I heard him telling my mom that I needed to go back. I was unhappy; he thought the hiking was better for me. I wonder why he told these things to my mother, nothing to me. I wonder if overhearing his approval encouraged me to finally fly back to the trail. Maybe. Maybe my father’s faith in my walk—in me—made me feel strong enough to leave. His actual words, as I wrote them in my notebook, were, “She’s an adult now, she can do what she wants. It doesn’t mean she’s not selfish.” He almost understood.

From that unremarkable gap in dense northern forest, I could finally see clearly that if I hadn’t walked away from school, through devastating beauty alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, met rattlesnakes and bears, fording frigid and remote rivers as deep as I am tall—feeling terror and the gratitude that followed the realization that I’d survived rape—I’d have remained lost, maybe for my whole life. The trail had shown me how to change. This is the story of how my recklessness became my salvation. I wrote it.

If I couldn't find the trail before dark, I could wake tomorrow disoriented and desperate, without having even made any new miles; my loss of the PCT should have distressed me, but a new instinct led me forward. In this moment of despair I was refusing to stop fighting. I asked the mountains for some guidance, the strength to get myself out of here, and pulled wild power from within myself I'd never known I'd had. I was no longer following a trail. I was learning to follow myself.

Somewhere on the trail was supposedly a cluster of thru-hikers who’d formed a group called The Vortex. As in, once you got sucked in, all hopes you ever had of completing the PCT this year were pretty much gone.  All I knew about them was that they prided themselves on the fact they’d taken forty zeroes thus far, hadn’t missed a bar between here and Campo, and never hiked more than fifteen miles a day.

I flopped down on my air mattress, and here I lie. I can actually feel my heartbeat throb in my aching, swollen feet. I’m cross-eyed and drooling on my pillow. I try to write, but coherent sentences do not come easily. I can barely think, yet I find I cannot stop smiling. I can already tell I’m going to like this PCT thing.

The Allman Brothers were from my hometown of Macon, Georgia, so requesting this song was a small lapse into provincialism. In 1972, the group’s guitarist, Duane Allman, had died when his motorcycle had crashed into the back of a peach truck. They subsequently named the album they had been working on, Eat A Peach. Its memorable lyrics, which came pouring out of Wisconsin’s machine at 9,000 feet in the California mountains, go as follows: Well, I’ve got to run to keep from hiding And I’m bound to keep on riding And I’ve got one more silver dollar But I’m not gonna’ let ‘em catch me, no Not gonna’ let ‘em catch the midnight rider. The song is a paen to freedom and independence, which, come to think about it, is kinda’ what the PCT is. And the God’s-honest-truth is that for the next two days this song carried me a total of fifty miles in an elevated state of morale.

PCT THRU-HIKER ADVICE: “Pack light, don't take extra #$!@ you don't need, and don't wear hiking boots for the love of God! Oh, and remember to bring Choffee.” KRAV