To Going Beyond: Day 1 on the PCT

This is where I begin

I wake to the moon. It’s a pre-dawn hour. Stillness seems to hang in the air outside my tent as if the world is waiting for its cue and a grand show were about to begin. The anticipation bubbles inside me, but I know the wait is finally over. Today, I start my over 2,650-mile journey to the Canadian border.

The Southern Terminus

I carefully pack up my things and make my departure from CLEEF to the southern terminus in the darkness. No one else is around yet, expect for a border patrol car lurking along the perimeter. The dark hours are always so peaceful and instill a sense of tranquility within me. Coyote howls add a slightly eerie, sorrowful ambiance that I relish, while the crisp air numbs my fingers making me feel alive in this sleepy world. I walk up to the terminus and take the moment in. The lights of Campo in the distance remind me of stars. I’m going to be making my way beyond those stars.

Selfie at the southern terminus

Dawn On

A little past the 1 mile marker, the sun rises. It’s a radiant Fanta Orange sky with shadowy oaks occasionally interjecting the colorful display. I decide then that I’m going to capture sunrises throughout my hike. The pictures will be like fireflies in a jar, lively luminous objects that add light to my memory catalog.

My first sunrise on the PCT

Today, I realize, is the start of building routines. For the next five months, I will be embracing a new lifestyle and with that comes new habits as well as practices. What will they be? I ponder this for most of the day and start experimenting. Rising before dawn was pleasant. I liked the solitude and quietness that precedes the day. Maybe that will be a routine. Taking pictures of colorful sunrises is another keeper. I wrote during lunch and stretched whenever I retrieved my water bottle. These are more routines worthy of continuation. One routine from ordinary life that I wish I could practice out here is reading a physical book (what I would do for a copy of Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark). But, alas, I can’t justify the extra weight. As these routines develop, they’ll shape the new trail character I become. These early weeks are the critical, formative times.

Reflection and Pondering

As I wind down for the evening, I’m thinking about distance. Compared to a car, my hiking pace is pitiful, yet I have an exact understanding of how far my few miles are compared to all those great distances I’ve driven. Zooming down the I-5 at 70 miles per hour, I forget the effort each mile requires. Roadtripping from WA down to the US-Mexico border was a 4 day jaunt for my partner and I. Now, I’ll be essentially retracing our trip, making my way back steadily for the next five months, gradually accumulating miles.

View of Mount Shasta from I-5

How will my understanding of this geography—the geography that has defined my childhood and adolescence—change? As I begin my trek through Southern California, I am reminded that these were the places I went to and were surrounded by as a child. I wrote a poem long ago that began with the stanza: “In the bowl of sage scrub, / Is where I reside. / Not the pine-laden, / Steller’s jay haven, / Of the mountainside.” While I am traveling through an abundance of sage scrub, I am now also experiencing those mysterious mountains that made up the largely unexplored borders of my childhood. With each step, I’m acquiring a context I yearned for throughout my youth.