The Audacity!
You know, anxiety REALLY sucks. The NERVE it has, to try to ruin my plans… the AUDACITY it has, to make me reconsider this whole trail… EXCUSE YOU! I’m supposed to be excited about this huge, beautiful, life-changing trail and all I’m thinking about is, “to bag liner, or not to bag liner? Will I freeze my butt off? It gets warmer, right? People keep talking about being freezing… the snow will end. IT GETS WARMER RIGHT? Should I have waterproof boots? I have the right skills to do this, I was a girl scout! I TAUGHT wilderness survival! Shoot, I don’t have a paper map! (Add a topo map to shopping list).”
I will be stepping foot on the trail in one month from today… What if's keep flooding my mind and I second guess, my ability, my gear, and my decision to even hike. Social media really is so hard to navigate because so much of it is fear mongers’ blowing situations out of proportion (and a lot of them haven’t even thru hiked before). Most of the time though, I feel like some old man is yelling at me about how my pack is too heavy and how I wont need that extra two inches of my toothbrush because it’ll weigh me down… SIR, if my TOOTHBRUSH is the only thing weighing me down, I THINK I’ll survive… It’s people like that who make me think, “gross, is this what the backpacking community has become?” Every one’s first question to me is usually, “have you seen that movie with Reese Witherspoon?” SPOILERS!!! If this heroine addict in the 80s can carry a heavy external frame pack with no backpacking experience, WHILE going through withdrawals… why should it matter what my toothbrush weighs? You know? Other times it’s really nice to be able to connect with people that I may be hiking with or get advice from people who HAVE hiked it before.
SIDEBAR: On the topic of books, my bedside table currently looks like what Jaason calls, “a set designer trying to prove to the audience that ‘this girl is a bookworm.’” If you are OR are not a backpacker but read the book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed and liked it, here are some others: Journey on The Crest: Walking 2600 Miles from Mexico to Canada by Cindy Ross. It’s her journal and she wrote about her emotions and near-death experiences, and it honestly feels fake how WILD the trail can get… but obviously its very real and she does it and its amazing. Hikertrash: Life on The Pacific Crest Trail by Erin Miller. Short Stories from Long Trails by Justin Lichter. Of course, there are loads more books, but these are just some of the ones I have.
Social media isn’t the only thing stressing me out either. I have a full-time job that I actually like and am super invested in but now, in 20 days I won’t work there anymore. On top of those 40 hours a week, I am trying to squeeze in seeing as many friends as I can before I leave while still being safe about it. I feel like time is moving too fast and too slow all at once. Its like the day drags on and I just want the next day to be here already and after I blink, it’s been 4 days and I didn’t get done what I needed to get done the week before. I have so many lists of things that need to be done that aren’t even trail related so the trail just seems like a thought on the back burner. I’m not sure if maybe its just something that hasn’t hit me yet. Maybe I’ve just kept myself so busy that I don’t have time to daydream about it like I used to… Just writing this though, makes me want to rewatch Elina Osborne’s PCT series. (Timelapse: I took a break from writing to watch Elina’s PCT Prologue. I got teary eyed at 38 seconds in.) I think my issue with not having as much excitement is that I’ve been “studying” too much. I used to watch every one’s bad ass mini documentaries and get so excited that, that could be me one day… well, that day is coming up, rrrreal fast. I’ve been so worried about how I’ll stay warm and what food I’m going to eat and how many pairs of socks do I need, that I haven’t really processed that this is going to be fun. I’ve been preparing for the worst, most awful, treacherous, hike that I must get through and kind of forgot that the hike could be good. Yep, I think I found my issue. On that note, here is a quote from my friend who hiked the PCT a few years ago:
“When you’re out on the trail, it doesn’t matter where you live, what job you have or had, your race, religion, status, sexuality, gender… nothing like that matters, because at the end of the day, you’re all just sitting in dirt together. You’re all on the same level.”
