A second chance for the CDT?

„There you are“, she says, her tone is jeering. It’s not a warm welcome. As if she knew I couldn’t stay away. And she isn’t wrong, is she? I bite my tongue and swallow my witty remark, I sheepishly shoulder my backpack and return to her: the Continental Divide Trail.

It’s been 10 days since I left. 10 days since that peaceful, freeing hitchhike leaving the CDT. It felt like getting out of a toxic relationship. I could breathe, there was a whole world besides this hike. But is it the world I want?

Confessions in the trunk of a Toyota

10 days earlier: Disappointed and tired, I throw my pack in the belly of a Greyhound bus. While we slowly make our way across the country to the west coast, I am either sleeping or staring out of the window. I should be excited about where I’m going, Washington, but a part of me feels broken. After all, I’m returning to the PCT – my love, my darling.

Boomer is waiting in a grey 4×4 Toyota, parked in the parking lot a shabby motel. We’ve never met before, we just found each other via Instagram. But when there’s two deeply tanned women in fleece jackets, looking a little lost in the typical Washington rain: we don’t need to look twice to recognise each other. And within a few hours we somehow go from strangers to friends as if we’ve known each other for years.

We spent our days with hiking, camping, snacking and talking. I spend so much time abroad, I sometimes forget how comforting it is to speak my native language. The small anecdotes and jokes that lose their charme when translated into English. One night we‘re both sitting in the back of the car, avocados, bags of chips and cookies scattered around us, and somehow stories spill out of me, that I rarely share with people I’ve only known a few days.

Like an axe

Something shifted that evening. There’s a beautiful quote by Ocean Vuong, from „Woodworking at the end of the world“, Time is a Mother:

Then it came to me, my life. I remembered my life the way an axe handle, mid-swing, remembers the tree.

And suddenly, I remembered who I was. And while my life had been a journey, it had never been a clear cut good story. It has always required mending and rerouting and taping the seams.

If a few years from now, l’ll be sitting in the back of a car again, with a stranger, talking about my life. Is this the story I want to tell about the CDT? Could I say I’ve given this trail my all?

It’s not too late to rewrite this chapter.

A double of beginnings

By the time Boomer and I empty the trunk of the Toyota – our adventure vehicle, our home – a few days later in Portland, we have both changed our story. Boomer will start hiking the PCT southbound and I will return to the CDT.

I’ll never love the CDT like I loved the PCT. And I don’t need to. Not every chapter needs to be the best. Not every person we meet will end up as a beautiful love story, but aren’t they still worth meeting?

The one that got away

You remember your „one that got away“? The person we crossed paths with and then life pulled us into different directions, we were too shy or we lost their number in the pocket of our jeans. And we keep wondering about them – what if? 

What if I take another 21 hour bus journey from Portland to Spokane to Butte to Helena? What if this is not where the story ends. What if I tried again?

I don’t think this love for the CDT that I’m missing is found up on the switchbacks or tucked between the pine trees. I think love is a choice.