at the precipice

I am standing on the precipice of a great journey.

Before starting such a journey, whether it be a mental, emotional, physical journey or a combination of the three, we are often tasked with finding our “why”. This way, in the tough moments, the times when we are grappling with giving up and abandoning the journey, we will have a touchstone to return to, a grounding point to hold us fast.  The two thousand, six hundred and fifty-three miles of the Pacific Crest Trail is such a journey that will invariably present such moments.  There will be struggles that will make one want to pack it up and head home.  I have been contemplating my “why” and have struggled to come up with a concise mantra that I can repeat while slogging through cold rain or arid desert.  Not that I don’t have a deep drive to take on this trail, but I simply have not found the words to sum up such a complex feeling.

My name is Melissa (no trail name yet) and I will be starting to trek the Pacific Crest Trail in a few days.  If all goes well, I will turn 40 somewhere in Northern California.  I am leaving a perfectly good job, and the security that holds, to live out of a tent for the next 5-6 months.  And there is no clear plan for post-trail; no home to return to, no job lined up.  I have never lived without a plan. I have always known what would come in the next months to years. Now, I will leave that safety net behind to become voluntarily homeless in what is left of the wilderness of the western United States.

To return to nature and throw off the choke-hold modern life has had on me has become more and more appealing.  I have worked hard through the last two decades to get where I am, but still have not felt satisfied.  I spent 10 years in training after college to become an Orthopaedic Oncologist, a surgeon who specializes in treating tumors of the musculoskeletal system.  Over the years I have accumulated a group of patients. Patients who follow me through the day, have touched my heart, shaped my choices, and kept me awake at night.  These patients are young and old, from different areas of the country and with different backgrounds. They have one devastating thing in common. Cancer has claimed their lives.  And I am left to wonder if I could have done anything differently that would have given them a different outcome.  It is a burden that I am ready to lay down.  When I think about this hike, a sense of freedom and peace comes over me and I yearn to breath in the open spaces of this world. I think those patients will come with me, for a while at least. But maybe we can all find some peace sitting under a tree by a mountain lake.  Doing what I do has taken a toll on me. But it also has given me perspective. I do not want to wait longer to start living. Too many people sit in my office and tell me they just retired only to be diagnosed with a terminal disease.  Without exception, every patient I have told about this hike have applauded the decision.  They understand all too well, that life is fleeting and we must take hold of what we can, while we can.

Every mortal will taste death but only some will taste life – Rumi

This is more than a need to escape the reality of our mortal life.  I yearn to be on my own schedule, with no one to report to or feel responsible for besides myself.  To be free of the cage my life has become. A cage I willingly built myself, constructed of the material things I thought would fulfill me.  The cage continued to feel smaller and smaller until a dream slowly began to take form.  A dream of living a simple life, stripping my life of the “stuff” that fills it, to return to the barefoot child filled with wonder that I left behind.  I want to drink in the feeling of standing on the shore of a mountain lake with the sun on my face, letting it fill me with warmth and nourishing my soul.  This is a feeling that I have never quite found in my life of fancy restaurants, the latest tech gadgets, and expensive toys. But I have glimpsed it kayaking down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon with nothing but what I could carry in my kayak to live off for 8 days. It was there when I slept under the stars in Idaho with no cell service for a week. I felt it on the top of Half Dome in Yosemite and Angel’s Landing in Zion.  It is a peace that comes from being so immersed in nature, so grounded to the natural world that nothing else matters. This is the feeling I am chasing on the PCT, with the hope that I will be able to cultivate a life with a deeper spirituality and less connection to the “things” modern society says are important to own.

All of this is rooted so deep in my gut that I cannot fully bring it to the surface and translate it to the paper in front of me.  But it is there, grounding me, providing the base of support I will need in the coming months.  This is my “why”.

It is time

The start day approaches, the permit has been printed, the home is sold, and the goodbyes have been said. I am ready.  It is time.  See you on the trail.

 

-MP