When does your PCT journey really begin?
“I feel like our PCT journey began today!” My husband enthusiastically proclaimed over a mediocre lunch in Oslo on December 7th 2024. The tiny cafe was rammed with people hidden below massive coats and blank expressions. Each time the door opened a frigid chill ran through me as I worked on a sad sandwich. I had just finished teaching my last yoga class in Oslo that morning, and Chris, ever supportive, had been there. We are about to head into a frantic tunnel of packing up our house, preparing boxes, ordering storage facilities and leaving Norway. It is the first weekend of December, and we are also 5 months away from starting the most epic journey we’ve ever embarked on, a thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail – class of 2025!
Why would the journey start a whole 5months before even arriving in the USA you may be wondering? I think answering that question overlaps with another bigger question: How and when exactly do we determine the beginning of a journey?
Leaving behind the old and becoming the new
Of course the most obvious beginning is the moment of physical departure. But what makes something a ‘journey’ and not just a ‘trip’ or ‘holiday’, is that a journey involves transitions and ground covered not just physical but emotional and even spiritual.
What I mean by this is that a journey is a phase in life, or path travelled, that takes you from one place to another. Being in this ‘other’ place implies leaving behind ‘old’ and embracing ‘new’. In other words, a journey is transformational on multiple levels of self, and so the start and end is related to departure and arrival, but it is more than that, it is also ‘leaving’ behind something and ‘becoming’ the new.
By this logic, the departure is the moment you chose to leave something of yourself behind in order to make the journey a reality. The beginning is a moment of saying ‘no’ to part of the person you were up to that point. It is about saying ‘no, not right now’ to an alternative opportunity, like studying further, or starting a family, or buying a house, or taking up a new job.
My departure point
The last yoga class I taught was the departure point for me because the students who attended my classes are the most meaningful community I managed to build as an immigrant in Norway, a place notoriously difficult to integrate. On the whole, as a child of the African sun, I’ve hated living in the cold, frozen landscape of the north. I’ve felt dislocated and cooped up, and yet the people in this Saturday class showed me a glimmer of warmth I was otherwise chronically craving. Leaving the studio was saying ‘no’ to Norway. It also implied an acknowledgement that things hadn’t worked out and that we were done trying.
As I taught the last yoga session we had together, the atmosphere in the studio was focused and sincere. Once it ended, people wished us well, and honoured the departure – right then and there – as though offering up a prayer to the gods to keep us safe over the long path ahead.
As the door to the yoga studio swung closed and I entered the dark mid-afternoon Oslo street, I took my first steps on the PCT because I bid farewell to a community who accepted me, and left behind a version of myself stuck in a context I didn’t belong to.
Why the PCT?
Over the past year or two we have felt like life was happening to us, and we were just trying to keep up with the pressures of everyday stuff, rather than crafting a life intentionally that we choose and want. We felt like we got into a habit of just barely keeping up with passing time, and felt dislocated from the affirming company of supportive family, friends and community. Over this time I have lost confidence in myself and felt like I stopped imagining bold and expansive dreams for myself, let alone actually reaching for them. I know Chris has also become increasingly aware of how much time he spends ticking off tasks whilst sitting behind a screen and working for someone else’s dream, rather than crafting his own.
This is the context in which I stumbled on a post on social media by a long lost friend (someone I met whilst on student exchange in Sydney in 2009!) who completed the PCT in September 2024. I saw the post and just thought instantly, ‘yes! This is for us!’. That evening I showed Chris and asked him if he’d be keen and his reply was also an instant, ‘yes!’ You know you’re with the right partner when they say yes to crazy adventure ideas you float without a second of doubt or reservation!
We hope to rediscover our confidence on this trail, and walk towards an answer to the question, ‘what constitutes a home for us?’. We also simply LOVE being in nature, and we have done several multi-day trails together already, both in Africa and Europe.
What lies ahead for us on this journey
Chris and I have packed up our apartment, and put all our stuff in storage near Oslo airport. With 3 suitcases and 2 cats, we flew south to our ‘homeland’ – South Africa – on 16 December 2024 (now that was an ordeal! If you know of anyone who has decided to emigrate to South Africa with their domestic animals, feel free to put in a comment below and ask me questions because it is the most complicated procedure imaginable!).
We will be working remotely from Hermanus and Cape Town over the South African summer whilst getting fit and ready for the massive PCT challenge. We are both big into trail running and hiking, and this corner of the world offers so many opportunities for that. Chris is a senior software engineer and I own a travel and wellness company. I will be leading some retreats over February – April 2025. We then say goodbye to our cats, who are not keen hikers and are in the care of my parents in Hermanus for the duration of the PCT. We fly to San Diego in the first week of May – our PCT start date is 13 May!
Well, our journey is underway! I hope you’ll join us 🙂
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Comments 5
Good luck on your PCT hike. David Odell AT71 PCT72 CDT77
As you said I felt like “life was happening to us…crafting a life intentionally that we chose and want”, now my husband and I will be hiking the PCT SOBO this coming year. A dream I’ve had for years now, just lucky to share the experience with my husband now. Happy trails!
I guess Google is telling me it’s time to start my own PCT journey. 🤔🧘♀️✨️✨️✨️✨️
I think the PCT doesn’t really begin until you pass the road to the Paradise Valley Cafe, highway 74 at about mile 150. That is when you head uphill big time onto the San Jacinto Mountains. If you are still in March, maybe April you will hit snow and possibly dangerous snow. Then you know you have really started.
Nina, this blog is soooo awesome! Love all the awesome photos and the thoughtful reflections. Great work 🫶