My boots are cold from the frosty air. The moisture from my sweat from the day prior has now frozen to the Gore-Tex on the inside. It is 5:25 am. The sun won’t rise for another 45 minutes and yet I am awake. My headlight pierces the darkness of the surrounding area and I look for eyes glowing in the distance. One eye, or two I am certain that I am being watched by a mammal that is not a human. I scan around my tent slowly, but there is nothing. I look the other way, and still nothing. It is just me. Alone. In the woods.
I wonder to myself if my hope for eyes was for my own comfort. I am not afraid of animals, I find their presence comforting for the most part. There are of course exceptions to that, but animals are just as curious as I was when I was 12. They too want to be enjoyed.
My cold boots begin to warm up a bit as I walk over to grab my bear canister. My body is sore. 23 miles the day prior has left my knees and my achilles achy. I now have over 160 miles of the trail complete. My steps are no longer smooth. Heel toe movement is impossible, I am merely placing one foot in front of the other and with a Frankenstein clunk each foot hits the frozen ground. I roll my neck around and it cracks and pops. I stretch my arms over my head and as I walk my shoulders creak. Today will be another 25 mile day with two passes to climb. 5000 feet of elevation gain and 6500 of elevation loss. This will be my biggest day yet.
I lean over to pick up my bear canister. It’s heavy, heavier than I want it to be. I wonder briefly what it would be like to eat all the food I have left and carry an empty canister. 2.7 pounds of plastic and that’s all. No food. I chuckle as I realize the absurdity of eating 4 snickers, a pound of gummi bears, 14 protein bars, and three dehydrated meals. I reach into my pocket and remove a quarter. Apparently bears don’t have quarters, because if they did, they too could open a bear canister with ease. I unlock the canister and reach down into the depths and pull out two packets of instant oatmeal, one is apple cinnamon and the other is multigrain raisin. I then grab a protein bar and set them all on the cold ground. Inside my tent is my stove, I reach in to grab it and my nalgene bottle. I am grateful that I filtered water the night prior because right now it can’t be much above 15 degrees. I dump 2 cups of water into my Jetboil and I light it. I can feel the warmth emerge from its blue flame. I will soon feel warmth in my belly. I begin to get excited for the day.
As the water warms up and the flame hisses beneath it I start to pack up my house. My sleeping bag is frozen at the bottom. Condensation has turned to ice. I krinkle it to break it up as I stuff it into my stuff sack. The tent is next. It too has frozen and I now know that I will have to take at least one break today to dethaw my tent in the sun. Just then my water boils.
Minutes later I hit the trail, belly full with warm oatmeal and a really gross protein bar. I’m 11,000 feet up in the High Sierras. Alone. And I wonder if this is heaven. The gray rocks and the blue sky above bring comfort to me as my body begins to loosen up. I was made to hike. Something deep in the core of my soul longs for movement. I’m certain my mom must have walked a lot when I was in the womb. As those first cells of my body were coming together and multiplying there had to have been movement. Nothing else can explain why I feel the constant urge to place one foot in front of the other. This sense of movement infiltrates everything in my life. It’s a blessing when I allow it to be, it’s a curse when I don’t manage it well. But mostly, it just is. It’s a reality that I am coming to terms with. I must be on the move. If I don’t I slowly begin to go crazy.
The sun begins to come over the mountains to my left and their shadows reflect across the valley. This is my favorite time of day. The only warmth that exists is the warmth that I create through walking. Everything else is cold. My nose is cold. My ears are cold. The rocks are cold. I’m guessing even the animals are cold. But soon, a miracle will occur. A miracle that has been happening everyday for thousands of years. The sun will warm everything up. Birds will start to sing. Animals will come out and play. And I will get to witness it all. The sun rising on the trail is always a miracle. It signifies life. It signifies hope. I’m not surprised that many societies throughout the years have prayed to the sun.
I have been on the trail for 11 days now. And what’s amazing to me is that the only thing I can remember of real life is that I’m to busy. That I feel more whole when my life is simple. I haven’t felt the need for Facebook. Ever. I haven’t felt the need for email, or alerts, or status updates ever. I suddenly feel like I am a victim of my own indiscretion. Why did I join Facebook? What was the allure? What seduced me into it? And then twitter. Instagram. Out here, none of that matters. It’s just me, my backpack, my thoughts, and the weather. Speaking of which, I am now sweating. The sun is fully up and has reached my part of the trail. I remove layers, take a sip of water and pull out my map.
My map is my only friend on the trail. It is the beacon that guides me to where I need to go. What it speaks is beautiful. Elevation gains and losses. Miles to go. Each night in my tent I look at my map for nearly an hour it seems. I look back at how far I’ve gone and remember moments from the trail. Who I saw where, what I thought about when, and how many miles I’ve traveled. I then look forward wondering what I will encounter on the trail in the coming days. Will I have any moments of terror? Will I make it? Who will I meet and what stories will I be able to tell. What my map is telling me in this moment is that I have already traveled 5 miles and I am only a mile away from my next pass. I finish my snicker bar and button down my pack again. As I strap it across my chest a deer wanders onto the trail and looks at me. I expect it to be terrorized. Big. Scary Human. But the look in its eyes is the opposite. Am I supposed to be afraid of it? It certainly thinks so. I walk toward it, it doesn’t move. I then hear a noise further down the trail. A yearling is 10 paces back. I suddenly get it. Good mother. Amazing mother. Protecting her young. But nonetheless they are in my way. I need to keep moving.
I bang my trekking poles together and the first words out of my mouth that day are “Please move deer, you are in my way.” As soon as they leave my lips I want them back. How is a deer in my path an inconvenience to me? There is no street light, there is no one texting at a red light, there is no real traffic or honking of horns. And yet I feel inconvenienced. I walk closer to the deer and it still doesn’t move. I’m so close at this point that I could probably touch it with my pole. I realize I have now lost. The deer won the standoff. I move to the side of the trail and she walks by, her yearling follows. I fight the urge to fist bump them. I don’t think they’d understand. And it probably wouldn’t end the way I envision it in my head.
I continue to walk down the trail and make it over the first pass. At the top I run into Jasper. I’ve met Jasper before. Many times. There is a term on the trail called yo-yoing and it’s annoying for all parties involved. It happens when you pass someone, then they pass you, then you pass them, etc. You eventually run out of things to talk about and you secretly wish that one of you would spring ahead 5 miles so that you could just end the game. But Jasper has always been pleasant to me. It’s his second time on the trail. He’s from Japan and flies over just for the John Muir Trail. He can’t be over 21 years old and is dressed from head to toe in Patagonia gear. I ask him to take my picture and he asks for the same. I offer him some gummi bears, he accepts a handful. In 15 miles I know I will regret this gesture of kindness. I know that I will want those tasty morsels of instant energy back. But for the time being I just want him to think that not all Americans are assholes. He thanks me for the treats and disappears around the corner.
When you are hiking alone each human interaction feels very similar to a sip of cold water on an empty stomach. You can feel it hit the bottom and splash. I suddenly wish Jasper was still around so some more words could be exchanged. I don’t necessarily care what words. Just enough words so that the splash in the stomach would disappear.
This isn’t a feeling I feel very often. I am usually annoyed by people. Being an introvert it is sometimes hard not to look at people as straws. Slowly sucking the energy out of me only to leave me exhausted and empty. It’s honestly part of the reason why I hike alone. And why I hike in general.
The trail has a weird way to bring pieces together that we could not fathom being brought together. Pieces of our lives that seem so separate and distant slide next to each other and may even spoon each other. And then, a ton of bricks drops from your heart. You leap out of the way to (hopefully) avoid the collapse and you suddenly feel light. You feel repaired. Something that felt so foreign and strange makes sense in a way that you wonder why you didn’t see it before. You let out a chuckle and a sigh and press on.
As I feel lost in my thoughts I begin to realize that my day is almost done. The sun is now setting to my right and my shadow has disappeared. Camp is just around the corner. I will sleep well tonight. Tired from the day. Overwhelmed by the beauty that I saw that day. And confused as to why I live in a city.