Time pressure and release; ‘making space’ to thru-hike the PCT

We are 7 days away from starting the biggest adventure we have ever undertaken. On Tuesday 13 May, my husband, Chris, and I will begin a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike. Whilst we have completed multi-day trails before in Africa, Europe and Asia, we have never hiked in North America and we certainly have never attempted to hike anything like the length of this trail – 4260 km. Our journey to the start of the PCT on the Mexico/USA border has taken us from Norway to South Africa to India to Norway to the United Kingdom, and now – finally – we are on a flight from London to San Diego.

The past weeks have been manic. I own a small travel and wellness business, and Chris is a senior software developer for a Norwegian Fin-tech start up. We have both had to put our lives on hold in order to make space for the 5 months of hiking across the USA. It’s easy to type out the words, ‘put our lives on hold’, and a lot less easy to actually do so.

Dealing with possessions

Firstly, we do not own a home, so we had to end our lease and put our stuff in storage. Our home at the time of applying for the 2025 PCT thru-hike permit was in east Oslo, Norway. We packed up and decided to put our stuff in storage near Oslo airport for the duration of 2025, with the intention of emigrating to another country when we have completed the longest single hiking trail in the world. We don’t know where that new home will be, but we strongly intuit that this trail will be a transformative pilgrimage of sorts and that we’ll walk towards a new life and place of belonging. Our only really valuable possessions are our 2 black cats, that are being cared for by my parents in Hermanus, South Africa.

Runs along the Thames in the UK week before our flight to San Diego. All photos are the authors own.

Resigning from full-time employment

Then, Chris had to resign from his full-time job and close off our main source of financial security. He’s been working towards handing over projects and ending his contract. We’ve been saving accordingly and making sure that we have enough for not just the ‘planned’ route, but also the ‘unplanned’ happenstance. Chris worked his last full day on April 30th and is now frill-free and foot-loose, with zero regrets and an intention to rethink his career path whilst hiking. Increasingly, he has been hyper-aware of the affect daily working hours on the computer have on his eyes, brain and body. Chris is seeking something beyond the screen, and open to fresh ideas for a career path/ new business that balances human-interaction, movement, and screen/brain work.

Stepping away from running a business

Over the first 4 months of 2025 I have been working towards handing over my business to a trusted employee. I have had so many contrary impulses with regards to this – from thinking that the wisest thing to do is to freeze the business temporarily, to close the business permanently, to keep operations on a low-ebb, to keep operations fully functioning and out-source everything. As mentioned previously, I anticipate the world will look and feel different when we step on the US/Canada border in early October, and so I actually don’t know what will be right for my business at that time. Chris and I both want to stay ‘open’ to transformation, which logically means ending that which currently ties you down. However, I also don’t want to flippantly discard the tangible value I’ve built over the years.

In the end, I have trod a middle path, slowing down and simplifying, whilst keep the lights on, and opportunity for a future in the green. As with any small business owner who began things on their own covering absolutely all aspects of operations, I found externalising my mental framework, organisation and rationale very challenging. Handing over the passion project has been a journey in trust and letting go.

I led the last retreat I will personally lead for InRetreat from 11-20 April. It was a 10-day journey in India from Mumbai to Kerala. Following that, I spent 10 days in the UK, staying with family and friends and desperately trying to finish up all the handover-calls and documentation to ensure Megan, who will run InRetreat in my absence, is set up for success. This month has been so full. I have found that time has simultaneously sped up and slowed down.

Chris testing out the equipment in his week in Norway to finish up with his job.

Time speeds up

In one sense, as we all know, when you are busy, jamming your days full of tasks, time speeds up. It feels like we never have enough time for friends, for family, for work, for ourselves. I actually feel exhausted by the pace of it all. I find myself wishing we could just slow down and enjoy the preparation phase more because it has already been so rewarding. Over January to the of March when we were based with my parents in Hermanus, South Africa, we’d wake up early and get 30-40minutes of planning done most days. This routine has flowered into an immense multi-page spreadsheet with precision planning, down to the last rooibos tea bag and Vit C tablet on trail. Not to mention the physical training – we have both put endless hours into trail running, hiking and weight-lifting to get strong and fit for the toughest physical challenge we’ve ever undertaken.

Time slows down

In another breath, it feels like the start of the trail is endlessly ‘just on the horizon but not yet here’. The list of things we have had to do felt endless – from work stuff as I’ve mentioned here, to personal finance stuff, to health, to insurance and updated wills, and saying goodbye and, and, and. Even as I type now, it’s still 7 days away and in that 7 days we have so much on the task list. In San Diego we have to buy A LOT of gear, some to begin with in Southern California, and some to post ahead to ourselves and use in the colder sections of the High Sierras and Washington state. We also have to buy, re-package, weigh and sort food parcels to post ahead to ourselves. And a close friend and her partner are travelling down to San Diego from Vancouver to see us over the 3 nights before we start the trail.

Our perception of time and learning

I once read an article written by a neuroscientist and philosopher that argued that our experience of time speeds up when we close ourselves off from new experiences. When we repeat tasks and experiences, and move through the same sensory and cognitive routines, time feels like it flows by quickly because our brain doesn’t need to process anything new. When we are repeating rather than learning our perception of time speeds up, and this happens to us in particular when we are adults because we tend to have seen it all, picked our lane, and then we stick to it.

Contrary to this, when we are children, each day is filled with learning and new experiences. If I think back to my childhood, I felt like every week – every afternoon – was a lifetime! If I think of a school holiday spanning 3 weeks, I can remember how endless that time felt. Now, as an adult, 3 weeks is nothing. We often feel like we exist in a tunnel from Monday to Friday, emerging from the work week in a tired daze, only to know, deep in our bones, that the weekend is also a blink of an eye and never long enough to fit in all things we want, need and deserve.

This article has stayed with me because it rings so true, and yet weirdly, in the past month time has both sped up and slowed down. I find this dual-experience interesting and it makes me curious about how we will perceive time on the PCT trail over 4-5months. Every day will indeed offer up new scenery and new experiences and many unplanned tributaries. We will also not be bogged down by the drudgery of day-to-day work stuff and emails (this is a very tantalising, delicious prospect of the journey).

But then, we expect that we’ll eventually after some weeks of pain and mistakes, get into a smooth routine of hiking, camping and provisioning. Will this mean that time speeds up and this epic experience slips by too quickly? Or, will the daily diet of massive physical output, simple and limited food, and breathtaking scenery slow down the passage of time, ushering us into a limbo space of trail life, measured by the distance between each snack and creek with drinkable water?

Early morning on our last big hike before we departed South Africa.

Time and space and walking

Time is, of course, also related to space. As we’re constantly moving north, day-by-day covering 30km / 20miles, will that mean that time speeds up or slows down? Our pace of movement through space will be measured by the cadence of our steps, and this is a relatively slow pace. Rebecca Sonlit writes in Wanderlust: A History of Walking that our cadence in walking is perfectly matched to our thoughts, making it a suitable pursuit for digesting thoughts, truly being with the present moment and moving through humanly-measurable time. Technologies that govern our modern lives, from computers, to jet aeroplanes, slice through space and time far more quickly than our fallible human brains ever can, Sontag argues, and so many of us exist in a state of existential anxiety, desperately feeling like we have to ‘keep up’. We’ll jettison our ties to the modern fast-paced world, so will time slow down?

I don’t know the answers to these questions but I’m excited to find out regardless. Let the trail begin and let time flow, as it is destined for us.