CDT Day 89 (8/15/23)

Miles 2159.45 (Red line 2422.2)- 2194.2 (Blue line 25.9) (34.75 miles)

Verbatim

I slept really well and peacefully this night. I kept sliding off my groundsheet, however, because the ground was somewhat slanted. I woke up at 6:30 to the sound of Deer snapping twigs. There were several male Deer around. One Grouse as well. It was fun to see the Deer and Grouse acknowledge each other. Neither were afraid. Animals be homies. haha

Eating my oatmeal, muffin mix, grape nut breakfast is a win. It’s a lot of food and is hard to eat. Especially when I’ve just woken up and the mere act of standing will catalyze a near desperate urge to poop. It does keep me full for four or five miles though. Which is great!

The hiking up and over the passes was good. It’s nice to hike uphill and get into the zone. The pack can feel lighter going uphill, because it sits easier on the back. Downhill the pack really pounds on my back.

There were a number of really pretty views and pretty lakes. They had a number of day hikers/swimmers/boaters around. Easy access I suppose. I spent a lot of the morning really angry. I’m pretty tired, and tired of feeling like I’m “cleaning up” from last year. I wonder if and when that feeling will go away. I listen to Critical Role when I feel angry, which is a great help and blessing. Something to take my mind off things and soar into imagination.

I took the Anaconda alternate, which meant descending into the hot and smokey valley. I wanted to make it to town before the grocer closed at 10. It was a long road walk. Eleven miles of asphalt into town. Four-five miles of dirt beforehand. I met a guy named Tin Man, SOBO, who was walking back north because he’d forgotten his GPS device.

He was great company and a good mental break. The road walk was not bad at all. Lots of CDT comments complained about it. But it was nothing compared to the OCT. haha

I got to town too late for the fried food in the grocery store. But man was it good to sit down. I stayed for free at the local hiker hut where Amelia Earhart and Jesus were set up. There’s a clipper, so I can shave my beard! There’s also wifi and a swimming pool nearby. I slept in the park on the grass and it was very loud with trucks and basketball and other stuff, even at 1am. I’m tired. I’ll try and get out of town around five this evening or so. It’s not far to Helena, and I can change my Darn Toughs there.

Post Note

I feel very prompted by this day’s journaling. It was a full day. There were animals, there was cell service at a pass and views, there was a backpack torn open by Marmots, there was the sort of outsider experience you get as a thruhiker when you come to populated area and see all the people and their lovers and their families celebrating the warm safety of summer, there was a new friend walking the wrong way, there was a road walk, and there was town and some old friends. This is one of the CDT days I can remember really clearly.

The Marmot torn backpack was funny. I’d just hopped onto the Anaconda alternate and made my way across a slope on some beautiful trail to a saddle between two mountains. There was a backpack with some snacks, a book, and a jacket strewn out about the trail. I couldn’t see anyone around, thought about taking the food, decided against it, put things back in the bag, and then went on my way. A few switchbacks down my descent I came across a middle aged lady climbing in the opposite direction. She asked if I’d seen her husband. I said no, but that I had seen his bag scattered by Marmots. She laughed and then pointed to the ridge line of one of the mountains off the saddle. There he was, striving for the summit, without a backpack on. We smiled, shared the moment, and then she encouraged herself to get to that backpack before more damage was done. We said goodbye and off we went.

I’d picked up some muffin mix! Jiffy muffin mix is pretty yummy when mixed with water in your hiking pot. It’s sweet, but not too sweet, and has the curious aftertaste of baking powder (soda?) which is actually quite pleasant when you’re bored walking all day and tired of eating all the same things. I got the blueberry kind. Those blueberries tasted so sweet and they kinda popped in a non-blueberry way when I ate them. I looked at the ingredients and sure enough; they were not real blueberries. I love Maine blueberries. Maine blueberries are small. And the fake blueberries in the muffin mix were also small. I was hopeful. I was disappointed. And look! There’s lard in the Jiffy mix. No wonder it tastes so good… Animal fat. I’d eaten pig once again, and that was disappointing for a number of reasons. Foremost, because of the expanded principles of my ethical concern, it meant I wouldn’t be eating the yummy curious baking powder muffin mix anymore. I also imagined how I would have naturally encouraged L to try this fun new food had we been hiking together. She would have felt so betrayed when one of us found out about the lard.

I’ve referenced in a couple entries about how this 2023 CDT hike felt a bit like “cleaning up”. It really did feel that way. Which is pretty sad, I think. To explain I’ll have to do a bit of a life narration, so please bear with me.

I found I really liked walking longs ways (which found its expression through traditional “thruhiking”) the year after I’d graduated from college. In 2019 I’d taken a stab at multiple trails, intending to have a young twenties adventure of a lifetime. It was a one-and-done scenario, if you will. But my hiking in 2019 went off to a rough start and I was really enjoying investing in the relationship I had at the time. By the time I was really committed to a trail, the AT, I received a job offer to teach high school Bible at a private Christian academy (I grew up religious and had majored in Religious Studies at college). I took the job! It was close to my college, friends, and partner and would empower me financially to continue hiking the following summer.

But the next summer was 2020 and COVID-19 was within us but we didn’t really know what it was and certainly didn’t have vaccines. The trails asked us not to hike, just to let them rest for a year. I complied. I didn’t want to be a mobile infection carrier (I think of the Rats of the Renaissance bringing bubonic plague along trade routes) walking from town to town through populations of older, rural, white Americans. This demographic, through my experience at least, was the sort of people group who wouldn’t vaccinate, wouldn’t have been caring for their health, and wouldn’t have the resources to have been caring for their help or get help if the need arose. I didn’t want to be a part of getting anyone sick.

So instead I went to graduate school. A friend had encouraged me to apply over the winter. I applied for an advanced scholarship by walking, the day of the deadline, into the front office at 4pm (after driving there after school) and applying before the office closed at 5pm. Yes. I got the scholarship! I was enrolled in a three year program which meant that I had two, and realistically three before finding work, more summer breaks. Those were three perfect slots with which I could implant three thruhikes. I hung the NatGeo posters on the wall and my dream for the American Triple Crown (PCT, CDT, AT) was born. And this is an important part of expressing my inner state. I could only really rationalize taking time for these three hikes if they fit within the larger framework of my “societal progression” (I’m not really sure what those two words mean to me, but they’re just the words that naturally came to mind).

I was raised in a professional family. Everyone here is smart, reads books constantly, pays their bills, has inquisitive eyes, has earned a high level of education, and found their profession in a service oriented industry. The idea that I could just “be a bum” (my words) and go walking for myself really doesn’t fit with how I understand my family’s expectations or the way I’ve conceived of myself. Thruhiking just seemed so selfish. And it certainly isn’t helping me save for retirement or buy a house or provide for a family. Aren’t I supposed to be doing all those things? How does this sound? “Hey babe, I saved 60% of my salary of one year of teaching, but then I spent it on tuition and hiking”… I don’t think that’s going to help me get a girlfriend. You’re supposed to spend that money on concerts and dinners instead I think. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve totally experienced the multilayered generational, familial, relationship, social, church, auntie and uncle pressure of the question “so what are you doing with your life?” when seen in public. What do I say? “I’m going walking again”.

I’d planned to be a pastor when I finished college. But my beliefs changed (for the better because I’m more “me” now than I was before) and I was too honest in interviews. I couldn’t get a job. Maybe I just suck at interviews. But, I want you to know that I actually think I’m great at interviews; I just go about them differently than maybe you do. Still can’t get a job though. So, no pastoring! So then I was a school teacher. But I don’t want to be a school teacher. It was fun, but it’s not what I want to do. Graduate school offered a plan B of sorts. I could convert my Religious Studies degree and current Masters of Divinity program into being an Interfaith Chaplain. All the while I could walk all the trails, like I did with the PCT in 2021.

That sounded good! But to do that program I needed to participate in a practicum. So applied for some Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) programs and got into one at a hospital in Portland, OR. Hurray! Except this program started in early August; thirty days sooner than my school year would start. That meant my 2022 hiking season was cut short from 100 to just 70 odd days. That wasn’t enough time to squeeze in a thruhike. And so in 2022 I gave the CDT a shot thinking maybe there was a way to fit it in. I just had to average 35s. There wasn’t a way… On top of that there were fires and snow and floods. So I got off and walked the OCT and biked the Pacific Coast highway up to Portland instead. Small trips really.

Then most everything in Portland sucked. I got hit by a car riding my bike. I got sick with COVID for two weeks. I lived in a basement. I wasn’t enjoying the two graduate courses I was taking alongside my practicum. I couldn’t bring myself to make friends or spend time with the childhood friends who lived there. I felt stressed every time I road a public transit system I didn’t understand. I got broken up with. I was really lonely through the holiday season. I worked hard. I wasn’t sleeping well. It was life in a new city. I just wanted to read books and not feel like I was responsible for other people’s well being. I wanted to have friends but I just wanted to be left alone.

The CPE program was excellent. But CPE is also REALLY exhausting. For me it was REALLY hard. I was watching people die for the first time in my life. I was watching people watch their loved ones die for the first time in my life. I was rocked to my core in seminar with my cohort. Portland was a mess. The only redeeming factor was the quality education I got at the hospital except that going to the hospital left me so exhausted and tired and mournful that I couldn’t show up in other parts of my life.

Eventually Portland and CPE was over and I came home. I worked to finish my last semester of graduate school. Except then was added a whole new layer of relational turmoil. It was not a clean breakup. So eventually I made it out to the CDT in 2023 with all the weight of how disappointing and hard the last year had been. I wasn’t hiking the AT this summer because I still had to hike the CDT I hadn’t finished last year. And I’m a thruhiker, not a section hiker, so I had to start all the way over. I had to walk that desert. I was supposed to be hiking the AT this summer so I could triple crown and get a job and settle down and be the thing I was supposed to be. Instead I was just cleaning up from last year; unable to really put the past away.

So I carried my plastic. Maybe I carried the plastic to hurt myself for all the pain I’d caused and had been caused. Maybe I carried plastic to symbolize how I felt. Maybe I carried plastic so I could be of service by communicating something thoughtful and thereby rationalize my commitment to continue hiking even outside of the calendrical framework I’d deemed acceptable. Maybe I carried my plastic so I could write a book and make money and then tell me grandpa “see I’m doing something with my life which translates to what I think you think is valuable”. Maybe I carried my plastic so I could communicate something of “service”. I guess it was all of those reasons. You could probably add to the list. I’m sure there are parts of myself I still can’t see.

Anyways, I got the the Anaconda grocery store around 9:40. They’d already put away all the fried food. I really wanted to eat some chicken. Why chicken? I don't know. Screw it all.