Imagine leaving behind the safety of the forest!
Based on my Pacific Crest Trail experiences in 2014–2015.
Written for a Medium Writers Challenge.
A 100-mile backpacking trip seems like a big undertaking, but this summer I’ve been doing one every week.
The most stressful part is actually the town visit between these trips.
Every day I hike in the cool early morning light. I hide from the afternoon sun like a lizard, climb from desert floors to mountain passes, filter water from creeks, and sleep under the stars.
Other than the long winding scar I follow through the wilderness and the occasional sign marking it, human constructions are absent from my world.
If I had unlimited food and indestructible gear, I would hardly need to visit town at all. In reality, I must resupply in order to travel these 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada.
Today is resupply day. My food is almost gone. I camped 8 miles before the highway last night, and this morning I’m running on fumes; the Cheeseburger Bird has been taunting me with its constant refrain and I wouldn’t mind a milkshake either.
The first sign I’m approaching civilization is muted white noise, panning across the landscape. Tires on asphalt.
That sound of the passing car carries with it so many implications. There’s a road down there. An expanse of smooth pavement that can take me anywhere in North America at lightning-fast speeds (at least compared to my modest 2.5 MPH hiking pace). You know that week I just spent laboring through the wilderness? Someone in a car could make the same journey in a couple hours, sitting on a soft seat, singing some sweet songs, cracking a cold kombucha.
I’m not convinced they appreciate how luxurious that is.
I reach the highway and the first thing I notice is: I’m exposed. I’ve been in solitude, or close to it, for the last week, and I never had to think about being watched. Forest animals don’t judge you for being weird. They don’t judge you for anything. But suddenly there are people in my line of sight — who knows where they’re going, who’s coming around the bend next? What do they see when they look at me?
Anxiety is outweighed by the anticipation of that hot meal in town. Pretty much everything sounds amazing compared to my daily staples of cold ramen, instant potatoes, trail mix, and tortillas & PB. I put my thumb out and wait for someone to let me into their miracle machine.
A family pulls over, I hop in the bed of their pickup truck, and when they pull back onto the road it feels like one of those rollercoasters that shoots you from 0–100 in 2 seconds. The speed is euphoric. They’re lucky I’m in the back of the truck so they don’t have to smell my unshowered body with 100 miles of dirt and sweat caked on.
A town fades into focus. Houses. Advertisements. Businesses. Fashion. Work. Hustle. Ah, right — this world again… time to brace myself. The truck lets me off at the center of town.
I have to pee, and my first instinct is to look for the nearest tree, but that’s not acceptable here. I must wait to find a toilet so I can flush it down and waste water. The general difficulty of locating bathrooms suddenly seems like a major design flaw of towns and cities.
Grocery stores have bathrooms, and I need to resupply on food anyway.
“I am going to the grocery store” is one of the most common strings of words to roll off the tongue when asked to give an example of an English sentence. In our culture, the existence of grocery stores is seen as a basic property of the universe. Of course there’s a place nearby filled with thousands of food items for convenient purchase!
It doesn’t seem so inevitable to me anymore. I take a few steps into the store and all I can do is stand there with my jaw hanging open, eyes glazing over. There are SO. MANY. OPTIONS. An insane overabundance of food choices. So many advertisements screaming at me. I’m drowning in words and packaging and temptations. Sterile floors, entire walls of refrigerators, music from my childhood. Nothing about this is natural.
I can empathize with the 4-year-old kid who wants every piece of candy: you can’t just put all this food out on shelves and expect not to trigger the primal part of the brain that wants to take as much as possible. I grab a cart and start wandering the aisles, throwing in whatever food looks good (and provides at least 200 calories per dollar, 200 calories per ounce).
I wonder how badly I’m offending the people in the checkout line with my body odor. I wonder if it’s worse than the choking chemical stench of detergent, shampoo, deodorant, cologne, and perfume I am enduring.
In the parking lot of the grocery store, stripping my food of excess packaging and cramming it into my bear-proof bag, I recognize another hiker who I met earlier in this section of trail. Smiles and fistbumps — I’m not alone in this town anymore! He invites me to share a motel room with a few other people and I accept. It’ll be good to get a shower.
The water washing onto the shower floor is black. My “tan” legs were only dirt-coated. It’s the first time I’m feeling hot water in a week and I breathe deeply as the blood rushes to my skin, scrubbing down twice, three times.
Inside this town, this fortress of civilization, our room is a little oasis of wildness. Our gear is sprawled everywhere. Filthy socks are being washed in the sink, water refusing to run clear. We’re drinking beers and telling stories. We’re going out for burgers and ice cream and coming back to crash by 9:00PM.
I sleep fitfully, as the room is strangely dark and quiet. I’m used to a bit of moonlight and breeze. At 3AM I have to pee but I try to fall back asleep because I don’t want to step over my sleeping friends or wake anyone up. This wouldn’t be a problem in the forest.
In the morning I’m back by the highway with my thumb out. I’ve sink-washed my clothes, charged my battery pack, filled up on food, and everything is packed and ready to go.
The man who picks me up is curious about my hike, but also concerned for my safety. Aren’t you afraid of bears? Or crazy people? Or bad weather?
I look at him, smoking his cigarette, piloting his car at 55 MPH mere feet away from dozens of other 5,000 pound hunks of steel moving equally fast in the opposite direction, and I tell him: No. I feel safer out there than anywhere else.
The stress of all the commotion, the hard geometric angles, the concrete, the pollution, the money of it all, the sheer overstimulation. The background noise I never noticed until I became familiar with true silence. Coming back to civilization is not a “break” anymore; I have to prepare myself for it mentally so I can get through it and leave again.
I wave goodbye and I’m walking into the woods alone again. Tires-on-asphalt fades away behind me, replaced by the sounds of birds and swaying branches.
Finally, I can let down my guard and breathe again. I can pee where I want. I’m back where I belong.
