Just Dance.

High Sierra Mountains
August 27, 2018

20.9 mother fucking miles.

As I wake to sun rays shining strong through our frosted tent walls, I have no way of knowing the emotional roller coaster waiting for me along today’s stretch of trail.

We get a later start than usual, rolling out of the tent at 9AM with the sun already high in the sky, warming us from our coldest night yet. This is the first time in our six nights along this High Sierra trail that my twenty degree sleeping bag hasn’t been enough to keep me cozy. Despite that, I slept like a baby after yesterday’s exhausting climb of Forester Pass, the highest point on the entire Pacific Crest Trail and the tallest peak I have conquered on this 100-mile section hike.

I sit sipping my caramel latte on a rock overlooking Crabtree Meadows, letting my thoughts wander lazily with the softly singing creek below me. I relish every sound, every touch of breeze, every tingling, tickling ray of sun brushing up against my skin and lighting up my world. I am almost at the end of this hiking journey, and I can’t help but feel a whispering sense of dread that I don’t quite understand. I gently push the feeling away with a sun salutation and break camp.

We climb up and over Guyout Pass at 11000 feet, feeling every ounce of elevation gain in our sleepy muscles before descending the other side to Rock Creek at 9700 feet. This will be the last water between here and a lake called Chicken Spring Lake over eight miles away. As I refill my water bottles, I reflect on my gratitude to be feeling stronger than yesterday, marveling at what a couple popped blisters and a good night of sleep has done for my pace, comfort and overall gait.

But all of that slowly deteriorates a mile or so past the creek crossing.

I don’t know if I owe the emotional spiral to the crushing water weight (6 liters, over 12 pounds of water between us) over this long dry stretch, the cumulative exhaustion of nearly 100 miles traveled in a week when my body has never done that before, the uphill exposed deep-sand desert trail, my increasingly sore muscles and joints turning my walk into a sad little gimp, or maybe the pressing realization that every step takes me further from this forest, these trees, the safety of this place where everything makes sense.

It may even be the fact that my hiking partner, true to the tenacious spirit we usually both share, is once again one-upping how far we will go in a day. I feel the self-laid burden of having something to prove, though I hardly know to whom. The sense of self-proclaimed inadequacy that pushed me to high achievement throughout my childhood comes creeping back to propel me now. Rather than voice my gimping emotional state or my campsite preference for our last night in nature, I silently press on in acceptance of this additional four miles of trail leading to the Horseshoe Meadows parking lot. All I really want is wilderness, an alpine lake bath and a big dinner spent studying the stars. But I’m too exhausted to fight toward a compromise, too exhausted even for the forming of words.

Maybe it’s all of these things that send me spiraling on my rickety, emotional roller coaster. I start into what I will later dub the five stages of hiker grief.

Physical Woes.
I can feel my blisters getting blisters of their own. And wow, when did everything from my ankles down get this damn sore? Maybe if I just stretch a little… owfuckow! My shoulders and back are one big, achey-brachey knot. And my hips… ugh, this pack is HEAVY with all this damn water weight…

Denial.
… I can’t possibly make it all the way to the meadows in my sorry state. I don’t even know if I’ll make it to that damn, elusive lake. Does it even exist?? Maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere and walked 5 miles in the wrong direction. It’s getting later and later.. how will we ever get anywhere campable by dark?…

Anger.
… How the fuck am I even supposed to do this right now? Don’t I get a say in how much trail is enough? And this fucking lake, where even is it?? This is the longest “almost there” of my life. I’m officially renaming it Chicken Shit Lake. I swear we are walking on a desert treadmill because I’ve definitely seen this exact stretch of trail at least ten times in as many minutes. This is Hell’s time warp. An infinite loop of misery. I’m totally spiraling…

Acceptance.
… Okay, we’ve reached some kind of overlook, and I can finally see Chicken Shit Lake. It actually does exist in this universal dimension. My hiking partner is still hellbent on reaching the meadows by nightfall. I guess we’re doing this. Time to dump some excess water, breathe a second wind into my lungs, and blast classic rock through my earbuds to drown out my anger, my denial, and my every aching muscle.

Pearls and swine bereft of me. Long and weary my road has been… I’ve put millions of miles under my heels and still too close to you I feel…

What is this feeling I’m too close to? What is this rising panic within me?

Deliriousness.
… I just have to let the music take me. Don’t think, just vibe. So so hard.

I am not your rolling wheel, I am the highway… I am not your autumn moon, I am the night.

So hard the epic story of a Juke Box Hero makes me cry. So hard everything is hilarious and, holy shit, look at us go just blazing up this trail, already standing victorious on top of this silly little Cottonwood Pass as the sun begins to creep over the horizon.

Running wild and running free… living like we’re renegades, renegades. Long live the pioneers, rebels and mutineers. Go forth and have no fear.

So hard I don’t feel my knees and ankles and muscles screaming as I race the 1100 foot, switchback-strewn descent down the other side of the pass.

All right now, baby it’s all right now. Let me tell ya now.

So hard I gotta baby Groot dance behind my 4mph partner racing ahead on the trail. I think I’m being sneaky with my dorky let-loose dance moves, but I soon spot my long shadow stretching southeast ahead of us both on the path to betray my every silly groove. Can I get a C’est la vie?

I got somethin’ make the devil gonna run. Run devil, run devil, run devil, run. You betch’yer bottom dollar he’s gonna be gone.

That looming undercurrent of dread I felt earlier bubbles back to the surface, confusing my already emotional senses and bringing me to the brink of tears as the sun sets in earnest somewhere around mile nineteen.

Don’t go round tonight, it’s bound to take your life. There’s a bad moon on the rise.

We leave the trail, and I can’t hold back anymore. I break into a secret crescendo of quiet sobs as we begin walking through the trackless woods. A shortcut. I hadn’t realized until now what that narrow strip of dirt winding endlessly ahead actually meant to me. It meant freedom, it meant familiarity, it meant adventure. It was a taste of my larger dream to cross the country on the entire length of this 18” by 2,650 mile path. And after a week of faithfully following where it led, we just turned our backs and left it thanklessly in the dust at the very end of our journey. I am overcome, and I don’t really fully understand why.

One moment, there are trees all around me. The next, parked cars in predetermined rows. I have gone suddenly from bark to metal. From cushioning dirt to unrelenting concrete. From fresh forest air to the toxic stink of human waste wafting heavily from a nearby latrine. From wind gently rustling overhead tree branches to car doors and voices and a noisy water spigot. From lakeside wilderness to a pay-to-camp sandbox alongside the parking lot surrounded by people in every direction.

I am overwhelmed. Shell shocked.

By the time we get into camp, I drop my bag with the hurried excuse of needing to pee and practically run back to the safety of the beckoning trees. I don’t know how far I go before finding a semi-secluded rock behind a downed stump and finally collapsing into an emotional, sobbing heap.

I openly cry right into my (thankfully clean) pee bandana. It takes me awhile, and I don’t hurry as I cry harder and softer and harder again, letting everything settle eventually back to a place of even breathing. I stare and stare at the trees, so steadfast, at the darkening sky, so vast, at the downed tree, so knowing and so indifferent, sheltering me from all the things out there in the civilized world I have just been so jarringly returned to.

Words spoken to me by my hiking partner earlier today come whispering back, “You have a good thing going. A good husband, a good job, a good life. You worked hard to get here.”

And he’s right really.
And that’s the crux of it.
Why, given this “good life”, do I feel so utterly depressed?

Well take your time, don’t live too fast. Troubles will come, and they will pass… Oh don’t you worry, you’ll find yourself. Follow your heart and nothing else. And you can do this, oh babe, if you try, all that I want for you… is to be satisfied.

And then the real reason I have been sobbing unabashedly in the nestled quiet of these knowing trees comes to me in a single stream of thought, and I think I say it out loud:

“I’m not ready.”

Not ready.
Not ready to face the civilized world of latrines and asphalt and cars and people everywhere and my own good life.
Not ready to go back to my good job where I feel restless and increasingly burnt out.
Not ready to keep trying to maintain my good marriage in the face of the confusing depression that seeps into so many of my interactions.
Not ready to leave this one place where everything makes sense.
So not ready, it physically hurts.
So not ready, I want to just lay cradled in this dead tree stump for my comprehension of eternity, for a start.

I wanna feel the waves crashing into heartache, I wanna write my name in the sky and never come back again…

But I can’t stay here. So I sob my heart inside out in the fading forest light, tuck it carefully right side in again and actually pee for good measure before straightening up and walking like a wounded soldier back to the battlefield of civilization waiting just over the distant hill. The presence of the trees nestles deep within my soul as I walk, a keepsake for carrying on.

I don’t know where I belong, I don’t know where I went wrong… I belong with you, you belong with me, you’re my sweetheart…

I keep crying quietly despite my best efforts throughout the rest of the evening. My hiking partner, to his credit, pretends not to see. I appreciate that unspoken agreement more than I can say.

We sit staring at the night sky filled with stars as we eat two dinners apiece (beef stroganoff, then macaroni & cheese) followed by a king-sized Snickers bar. I try to ignore the army of campers in every direction, their not quite whispered conversations, their glaring campfires, their pervasive presence in my last night that was supposed to be spent in the solace of the wild places, not this parking lot stinking of human feces and camp smoke.

“Not ready…”

Once the waning but nearly full moon rises in sky, obscuring all but the brightest of those innumerable stars, we slip unceremoniously into our tent and let sleep take us.

Oooh child, things are gonna be easier. Oooh child, things will be brighter.