hardtimespct-blog

[hardtimespct-blog]

My last training hike up Hex Mountain with friends for my 30th. It was around 8 punishing miles, and made me feel grateful for the gentle inclines of the PCT. I felt encouraged, albeit a bit sad to leave the landscapes of Washington in the dust (for now.) I fly to San Diego Tomorrow.

[hardtimespct-blog]

Chapter 0

I’m sitting here, at work, looking around my space. There’s a bag of stewed Madras Lentils that I’ve refused to eat for weeks. There’s my business card taped to my monitor, because after 3.5 years I still don’t know my work phone number. There are two cards left to me by dear colleagues who also quit. One of them is has “Pobody’s Nerfect” hand-stitched into it, except “Pobody’s” is misspelled, hilariously, “Pobodies.” There are succulents that look cover-worthy for Better Homes and Gardens, thank-you-very-much. There are like 30 tabs open in Chrome. There’s an unread Slack message about a reconciliation report that needs my attention, but frankly won’t get it. There’s all these reminders of career, of money, of upward mobility all nuzzling up to me as if to say, “Honey, don’t go. Homelessness won’t suit you well.”

I’m leaving all this to walk in the desert. Humans sought for millennia to get out of the inclimate, hostile environments we came from. We created language, tools, society, the industrial revolution, ergonomic keyboards, etc., all so we could avoid death and discomfort for just a little longer. And here I am turning my nose up at all this so I can go probably be bitten by a rattlesnake in the goddamn Mojave desert. 

“Atta boy, tiger,” I can hear by school bus driver saying.  

I intend to hike along the PCT for as long as I can this summer. Like Instagram influencers, award-winning (and often besmirched) novelists, and batshit-crazy super athletes before me, I intend to wake up too early everyday to walk too far for a few months in Western America. The computer, the hand-me-down desk chair, the Cisco business-model phone with it’s twisty, obnoxious cord can all wait. I’m becoming hiker-trash, baby.