It is strange. We are out here hiking so long each day and so rigorously plodding onward, day in and day out, that I can barely imagine doing anything else. I certainly think of other things, but actually doing? It's a stretch. We've become obsessed with making our miles, with putting every obstacle behind us, with finishing this walk, this trail. We couldn't stop now even if we wanted to. Something is pulling us along. There is but one focus.
It was probably the second day coming south from the Canadian border that we sat down together under a rolling wave of mist, no doubt, and tried to set out our goals for this long stretch before Eliza's friends' weddings during the first week of September. We really didn't know where to begin. A whole list of unknowns presented themselves. Will we need days off? Can we healthily and realistically sustain a pace of 25 miles a day? Could we handle even more? Is there any way we can possibly finish this thing?
In tackling such a long-term plan and such long-range questions, I've found that we'll go through a whole cycle of responses and establish a slew of corresponding goals. First, in a fit of optimism and enthusiasm, we agree that, no, we do not need many days off; that, sure, we can handle two months of virtually non-stop hiking. (We must have been strolling along a level escarpment somewhere at the time, gazing out over breathtaking vistas of snow-capped peaks endlessly fading into the hazy, blue distance.) The mind comes to drastically different conclusions, however, when the body is faced with the foot-pounding pains and the all out weariness of trudging across an endless tundra, mile after mile, up and down, over these tiresome and infinite mountains. And so we oscillate. Sometimes sure, sometimes surprised with ourselves, sometimes just too tired to go on. The zero has become an infrequent occurence, but still we fantasize occasionally.
We talk about this stuff every day. It is one of our standby conversations, our watercooler talk. "If we push for three days at 30 mpd, we could do a 23 on Thursday and have the afternoon off to get a hot meal in town. If we only take one zero from here until there, we'll be able to make Sierra City by Friday and hit the PO before it closes." And on . . .
Two hours later, exhausted, laid out on an exposed roadside somewhere, we'll reverse our plans entirely. "Stop in town. Ice cream. Sleep."
Yet, somehow, here we find ourselves -- still pushing, still pressing onward, going faster, putting in longer days (even as these days keep getting shorter and harder to face each morning). In the past two months we've hiked twice the distance we hiked in the first two months on the trail. We have little more than 500 miles before us. We have yet to flag in our commitment to doing this thing, even for a moment.
Today we passed through Belden, CA -- a tiny town on the north fork Feather River. We picked up a food drop there -- once again generously provided for us by Gary and Cheri -- and a memory chip for my camera that had only arrived moments before we did, and then we were off again.
Leaving town, we faced a very formidable climb, perhaps one of the steepest we've seen thusfar on the PCT. The afternoon was mild, though, and we were accompanied by a good breeze.
On and on we walked into the darkness, finally camping on the side of the chalky white, dusty trail.
The sunset was beautiful and broad. We had a great view of the surrounding hills and lakes as we descended along the south slopes of Spanish Peak.
The greatest moments out here are the quiet, unexpected, subtle ones -- the instants when the world seems to be just right; the colors, the sounds, the feel of the earth moving beneath your feet, busy in its orbit, sailing through space. The perfect sunsets, the cool gleaming lakes sucking you in, tree tops angle in to frame the empty blue heavens. The telegraph-tapping, clitter-clatter flapping of joyous-seeming grasshoppers in the sun and the occasional peep of a fleeing, flapping quail.
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