an early taste of trail magic

Eliza and I first hatched the notion of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail last August while on a short afternoon walk on a wee five mile chunk of the said gargantuan pathway, just north of the Bonneville Dam, traversing a tragic, but beautiful, nonetheless, clear-cut swath of Douglas Fir forest. The day was gorgeous and sunny. We swam after a few miles in a crisp little pond, and ate a lunch of snack foods and candy bars that we had picked up at a gas station somewhere on our way out from Portland. We were leisurely, just relaxing--on a weekend visit together. We had been living 500 miles apart for nearly a year--she, in Oakland; myself, in Portland--and as often happened when we were together our thoughts and conversation turned to the future. What should we do next? It had been a few years since we both graduated from college and since then we had both held a couple of Americorps service jobs. They had been laid-back, fun, fulfilling, and--importantly--finite positions. And now, it seemed, real life was once again breathing down our necks, begging a response to that big bad question. "What are you going to do now?," it seemed to moan, almost comically.
We are part of a generation, within the middle and upper classes in America, which is unable--or unwilling, perhaps--to make a substantial commitment to much of anything. Newsweek published an article a couple of months ago describing the current post-graduate-aged generation as immature and unwilling to grow up, spoiled by over-supportive parents, promiscuous, selfish. We jump from job to job, we switch partners constantly, we move from city to city, coming home and crashing at our folks' pads in the interim--whenever funds run low or another big change becomes imminent. We are collectively afflicted with a wonderfully self-indulgent case of ADD. Through our lives, we have been inundated with the notion that our lives are our own to live, and that we can do anything. What we choose to do, career-wise and otherwise, should be exactly what we want to be doing. "Dabble, try it out, go back to school, travel," we tell ourselves and each other. We want freedom, and first of all that means doing just what our parents weren't able--or weren't willing--to do. We are post gen-X and a good number of years out from the dubious decades which defined my older brother's American generational identity. He was able to successfully find his niche there, though, complete with all the trappings--a good career, material comforts, a beautiful family. I visit them often and find great inspiration in his life and work.
Personally, I couldn't care less for social-generational generalizations. I know that my life is my own responsibility. Living well and doing good work are what I try to do. Life, I feel, may be very long. However, it may not be. There are a great number of things which are entirely out of our control and these things we can choose to revere or we can simply forget about them. I choose to follow a moderate and middle course with respect to this truth, awe-struck at some things, such as the mysterious and manifold mixture of good and bad in all people, and utterly ambivalent to others, like the uncertainty of whether or not an errant automobile will swirve into my path tomorrow, ending the whole spectacular show disappointingly early and rendering all my grandiose dreams and visions nul and void. Beyond all the numbers and the Newsweek studies, I presume that to a degree all people are working through a cloud of uncertainty in their lives searching for value and meaning in life. So what is my next step along this path to be?
That day, Eliza and I got onto the inevitable all-encompassing subject of the future and change, our relationship, career choices, and all the rest. Predictably, as we made our way cheerily along the parched trail, where at intervals the torn and eerie debris of a recent violent and indescriminate clear cutting was already being overgrown with some of the region's most pervasive invasives, we started in on our daydreaming. There was sure to green grass awaiting our arrival on the other side of the hill. Just how green though? And which path should we follow? Eliza, more than anything, wanted to to do something physical and active--something to fill each shared day with radiance and health and sunshine. She had worked for a year as a volunteer coordinator in West Oakland in a hot upstairs office. There, doing good work, she sat for an hour twice a day on a crowded bus, walked on filthy sidewalks through a ubiquitous scattering of chicken bones and saliva, was the scowling recipient of daily cat-calls coming from passing cars and gangs of malingerers trolling around in front of corner stores and bus stops. While she found a great deal to appreciate there in the East Bay, all in all, she felt as if she had been living in a cloud of automobile exhaust and soot for a year and she was ready for a big change. I, on the other hand, had been working all summer as a leader on an environmental restoration and conservation crew building trails, tending and watering tree plantings, working with and teaching environmental education to kids around the Portland area. The outdoors bug had bitten me already.
At first we must have only joked about doing such an outrageous thing as to go hiking for 6 months. Already, after just a few miles, my tender heels had blistered under the straps of my sandals. "We'll see about this plan," my body was telling me with a not-so-subtle sting. I remember the notion hanging out in front of us--a white, cotton-candy, cartoon bubble. It was just another cool idea. We had no concept of what it took to attempt a thru-hike, let alone, how to go about preparing for such a thing.
We re-emerged from the trailhead and headed back to the car which I had borrowed from a housemate that day to find a notice stuck under the windshield wiper. Oh no, I thought, it can't be. And as we got closer and the flapping piece of paper left me no doubt, I began entertaining more explicit thoughts: "Are you F---ing kidding me? We got a ticket!? F--- this. Forget it. Let's go. We're not hiking any freakin' trail ever again." I don't deal with tickets all that well. But to my great relief and tremendous surprise, it wasn't a ticket after all. It was a forest service day pass that someone had generously donated to our daily outing. We hadn't expected anyone to be checking, for whatever reason, and while we had hung our old NW forest pass in the window, it was clear that it had expired the month before. Maybe it was even a ranger who had given the day pass to us, noticing that our forest pass had only recently expired and assuming that we would surely appreciate his generocity and go get another one right away. Whatever the reason, we both felt blessed that afternoon driving into the sun back towards Portland. Looking back now, it seems a very fitting beginning to our journey. We had had our first taste of trail magic and didn't even realize it.