When we get off the PCT I have twenty days. Twenty days left off of work, twenty days that I fought to get covered and that I’d promised someone payment for. I have twenty days and, for reasons some understand and some never will, I need to hike.
We search. We go further and further South and then East looking for a trail with less smoke, and gradually the most clear and obvious option appears. We can do the Tahoe Rim Trail! Yes!
The TRT is 170 miles long, just a little under what we have left of Washington! The terrain is decidedly more merciful, which we both know could be good for morale. It’s beautiful, extremely well maintained, and half in California, which I love because I’m from there. (Why do I love the place where I’m from when growing up contained so much addiction, loneliness and abuse? That’s another question for another time, perhaps.)
Ultimately, we decide definitively on the TRT because air conditions are designated as “good”. This is simple, but nearly no other trail on the west coast can boast such a thing, not this deep in August in the global warming inferno that is late stage capitalism. We will hike around Lake Tahoe because in Lake Tahoe we will be able to breathe.
Carrot and I wake in a cheap motel room. We left Washington five days before and every day since has been either an anxious one or a restless one. I’m not going to hike to Chelan. We won’t ferry to Stehekin. We won’t walk to Hart’s pass, to the border monument, and then back again to Hart’s Pass because neither Carrot nor I has a passport to get into Canada. I won’t get to finish my best laid plan and though I know the smoke and the wildfires are indicators of much bigger issues than the end of my hike, I am sad. My puny human sorrows sit with me, even when I pretend that I am fine.
We take our last town shower for a few days, eat the last of our heavy foods (oranges and bananas, wraps of gluten free tortillas and avocado and baby kale and chicken for Carrot + baked tofu for me) and we gently close the motel door, leaving the keycards on the desk behind us. I say nothing as I pack up the car and we listen to nothing on the hour drive up a winding road filled with cyclists racing up blind turns and flipping back down to bomb the hills. The only way I can describe the feeling inside of me is to say that it is quiet.
After an hour we find ourselves at one of about a million trail heads for the TRT. we pull our packs out of my tiny Chevy, careful to make it obvious that there isn’t shit to steal in our absence. I have historically been kind of a nervous nelly, but I tell myself that leaving my car at this trailhead is an exercise in trusting the universe. The car will be fine while we hike I think. Everything is going to be ok.
I braid my hair and eat a handful of chips as a signifier: we’re going to hike after a week of weird sleep and anxiety and rest that we didn’t want and maybe didn’t even really need. We click our poles up a side path to the trail and the abundantly clear marking that continues all day appears: Tahoe Rim Trail, right this way.
In my first few miles I think of the PCT. I think of how hard it was and how much I loved being there and how the hike felt so significant to me and how also the difficulty of it all showed me how quick I am to beat myself up at the first signs of imperfection. I feel grumpy with the Tahoe Rim Trail: I can still see the highway at every turn and it’s gentle nature makes me feel like I have given up. I imagine 170 miles of flat tread with highway views and grow sullen. What if this trail isn’t fun? What if I hate it or Carrot hates it or we fight because we’re bored or it’s easy trail but still too hard for me or…
The time that passes in sulking fits feels like mud: thick and heavy and entirely uninteresting. By the time we reach our first creek I am tired of myself. I force myself to sit and drink some water, eat some smashed gluten free bread dipped in peanut butter. I try to open my eyes to what I have in front of me, and stop thinking so hard about what I am missing out on.
Carrot gets her period and I remember that I have mine too which explains some things. I try to give myself a fucking break. I left the PCT because it’s sucked to breathe there. I have in front of me 170 miles of mysterious who knows what with my favorite person on planet Earth. Probably I should enjoy that, right?
Right.
We cross into Nevada and two things happen, 1) suddenly we are in a golden glow that is breathtaking, and 2) the terrain becomes sandy and most of the plant life is low. We are up at elevation and though I am out of breath from the change the air I can get is mounds and mounds and mounds of clean oxygen. Was I just going to try to get out of noticing?
The highway disappears. I put on my audiobook and I cruise- brain off, one foot in front of the other. The sand persists, and so does the golden glow and I am thinking this is what you get to do over and over again and laughing at myself and my longing and my feelings. Feelings aren’t facts, or so they say- but it’s so easy to forget. I feel sad but my life is not sad. I feel alone and afraid but I am surrounded by so much support- really on a constant basis- and if push came to shove I could probably be brave.
I see Carrot every few miles for water stops or rests or snacks and at last I am okay with the system breakdown. We don’t all get to do exactly what we set out to do all the time. Many people don’t get to do exactly what they set out to do most of the time.
The air chills and I spoon a travel pack of Madras Lentils splashed liberally with olive oil into my mouth. I packed out a few heavy luxury foods for this section of trail and I am grateful to former me for hooking current me up with this warm spicy meal that happens to be different than the dinner I’ve eaten day after day for weeks by now. As the glow wanes and dark takes over, the temperature drops and from the hug of my quilt, my leggings, my short sleeve, my long sleeve, my puffy, my gloves and my winter hat, I burrow in.
The valve that’s squeezing at my insides releases a little, and for now- that’s totally enough.
The valve that’s squeezing at my insides releases a little, and for now- that’s totally enough.
