CDT Day 109 (9/4/23)

Miles 2629 (Red line 2970.9)- 2664 (Green line 0) (35 miles)

Verbatim

Terminus Day. We moved at 7 and arrived at 8:30. It’s good at the terminus, and was fun to have good company. I enjoyed myself greatly. Photos were taken. Jokes were shared. It was supposed to be raining but wasn’t. The light was on the lake through clouds. I unpacked my plastic and laid it down. It was wonderful.

Then it was time to separate from my friends. They, with passports, would walk into Canada. I, with my feet, would walk 30 miles over Stoney Indian pass out to Chief Mountain. And walk I did. There was some great berry picking that slowed me down for ten minutes. But I knew the rain was coming. It was time to get out of there. The miles through the forest went quicker than the evening before. But, right at the bottom of the climb the rain started. It wet all the tall thimble berry bushes I’d been picking from. It was time to be wet. I crushed my last climb. The rain lessened as I moved above it. The lake in the pass’ cauldron was hazy and green. I met soggy weekenders. One group was astounded at the trip when I told them (A real thruhiker who really just finished?!). I ate some snacks at the top and ran down hill. Fifteen miles to a ranger station. Six from there to the road. I “hey-Bear’ed” the whole way down. I fell once. I remember being confused the next day why my shin hurt so bad. It was because I fell. haha

I didn’t see many people on the way down. A few gramas rejoiced with me near the top. A few others further down scoffed at my milage. (I think there was some passing comment about how I wasn’t taking my time. Like no lady. I walked here from Mexico. It’s raining and I’m going home). I eventually made it to a ranger’s station where a crew was painting a refinished cabin. They said they’d had the roof blown by winter winds and it ended up in the nearby creek. Incredible. I prayed in front of them to the trail gods for the rain to stop. Said I was very cold and might be back. I ate some snacks out of the rain. I said “FUCK” and launched myself back out into the wet.

Sure enough the rain stopped and I could see my shadow as the evening sun illuminated the clouds. Trail gods! I celebrated with a couple. I ran to the road. I was so chaffed. I imagined making it back to the hostel in East Glacier and I did through a serious of hitches. I even got a back of the truck hitch. :) It was awesome.

And just like that the trail was done.

Post Note

I got so wet in that rain. I was concerningly cold, and remember showing up at the ranger station to speak as an equal. I knew that I might need their help, and wanted them to know that I knew I might need their help. There was no dry ground, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the things in my bag were all wet too. That’s how it was after the last rainstorm at least. There was no guarantee of a happy ending at the end of the day.

I remember falling too. I’d not picked my foot high enough off the ground to avoid a larger and solid tree root. It was the sort of fall where your arms end up down by your sides. Certainly I braced my face first fall. But had to do so in a way in which I slid a little bit on the muddy ground. I sort of just stared at the dirt for a few seconds. There was water everywhere. I laughed and got back up and stopped running for a while. Then I started running again. Running in berry bushes is a pretty bad idea. That’s where you run around a corner and there’s a Bear and then it’s paw is in your face because the Bear was not expecting you strange human to come around the corner so fast. It’s probably worse in the rain because I imagine everyone’s in a bad mood. I don’t blame the Bear at all in that circumstance. So, I tried to sing and talk and make noise. But I got pretty tired of doing that over twenty miles of running. I wasn’t always the most vocal.

I knew I was saved though when I did finally arrive at the Chief Mountain border crossing. There’s a set of pit toilets there inside a concrete block. A roof. A lockable door. I was spared from both rain and Bear. It was awesome to see that pit toilet. And then with the security of the pit toilet I knew I could spend time hitching without anxiety. I wouldn’t have to strive during the last minutes of daylight to find or prepare a suitable camp spot. I first went over and got some water from the boarder patrol; who honestly were jerks. They let me fill from their hose, but they were really dismissive. Meh. I took an awkward selfie at the CDT border monument there and then walked up the road and started hitching. It was an infrequently traveled road, and the border crossing was set to close soon. It took an hour or more but hey; I got a hitch! I thought they were taking me to Many Glacier, but they actually took me to a resort called St. Mary Lodge. I guess I misheard. I was really tired. Anyways. I got a back of the truck hitch as the evening grey turned to black. It was probably 9:30pm at this point. It was a pickup truck with a roof on the bed. I sat on some folded gym pads. I looked backwards as we drove by cows grazing in the grasses beneath Glacier’s eastern mountains outside the park.

I arrived at St. Mary Lodge, which looked like a very expensive place to be, and said thank you and was pretty upset that I still had to figure out where the heck I was going to sleep that night. I’d lost access to the convenience of that coveted pit toilet. I went to the local grocer and bought two frozen burritos and a kombucha. I actually can’t remember what I did with the plastic. I want to say I still kept it. I didn’t need to, the trail was over, but it was habit. Then I walked into the souvenir shop and chatted up the very unloyal (stick it to the man!) and humorous cashiers there. For some reason the store was open until like eleven pm and those employees really resented it. Worked out great for me though! They gave me some green Darn Tough socks with Buffalo design. :D Free socks for life! I explained my predicament to the girl behind the cash register and she phoned a friend who worked at the lodge in East Glacier. This friend asked if I was a murderer. I said no, but that they probably shouldn’t trust me. I felt like my uncle Gary. When asked “how are you?” he always replies “misbehaving”. They decided to trust me. And then this random friend took me to East Glacier through some really cool old back roads before the start of her midnight shift. I was back at the Looking Glass Hostel taking a shower and in bed by 1am. Trail. Complete.

And guess who was there the next day! Pepé! And so were Pinky and Hershey Squirts and Biggy and Shepherd and Toledo and other new and exciting people to meet. And now I was the thruhiker who’d just completed the task and looked at these other people with envy from the other side of the equation. Yes I was done. That was desirable. But to keep walking…

A few people showed interest in my trash when they saw myself weighing on the hostel’s old scale (definitely the most accurate of measurements). I took all the gear out of my bag and then stood on the scale with my bag on, and then my bag off. The difference in weight with and without my waste was very close to fourteen pounds. For comparison, I think my gear set on the CDT weighed about eight pounds. 1 pound sleeping bag. 1/3 pound tarp. 2 pound backpack. Other stuff. Eight pounds. All together that makes a 22 pound base weight. Which is sort of funny because that’s really not that heavy at all. People start and finish trails with 22 pound base weights all the time. If your gear weighs that much then it’s probably more than you need for a summer thruhike, but that doesn’t mean people don’t do it. I think maybe the picture of a “trash burdened hiker” could be more heroic if the weight was crazier. Maybe people would listen better to that sort of an image. But then, if I wasn’t so streamlined, effective, and minimal a hiker, I’m not sure I could have completed the goal. I do think there’s more to be drawn from this illustration. That’s what I’m trying to say. The fact is that our world is not so streamlined a community as I am a thruhiker. So, let’s have someone with a 80L pack and 22 pound base weight take six months to hike a trail while packing all their plastic. That would be tremendous, and perhaps more indicative of the worst of what could happen.

When I’d arrived at the terminus I pulled out all my gear and laid it down in one square. And then I piled up all my plastic against the base of the terminus obelisk. The plastic was heavier. The plastic took more space. And then there was some of my gear which might have started out as gear but certainly didn’t belong there anymore. There were pieces of gear which L had given me throughout our relationship which had run their course. There was the pataguchi pack which I’d worn over my heart all summer. It was still in great condition, but I really couldn’t wear that any more either. So the line sort of felt blurred a little. I’m not sure any of my gear is truly separate from the waste pile. It’ll all end up there one day.

I was pretty exhausted that morning after my midnight arrival. So, I didn’t get up with any energy for making or walking to breakfast. Instead I walked into the hostel kitchen and grabbed an old pastry which a local restaurant handed to the hostel after the pastry was a few days old. It was $1. I unwrapped it from its plastic wrap, ate the pastry, and then threw out the plastic wrapping. I sort of just balled it up and tossed it away like a basketball at the overflowing 50 gallon trashcan. I made the shot and so didn’t have to go pick it up. Usually I miss. That was a shocking moment, to throw away plastic so directly. It was also shocking that I’d made the basket, I guess. It was a moment like when the spirit breaks open and you feel all liminal. I remember thinking, this moment will stick with me. This moment was worth the whole trip. If other people could just feel this. Just that right there. And I honestly still feel that way. It was really powerful for throwing plastic away to feel so wrong. I could feel the wrongness of it.

And then at some moment that morning I was sitting in the rocking chair which I’d used to buffer my sleeping space from my neighbors the night before. I was wearing my sweater, was wrapped in my sleeping bag, was sort of itchy on account of my profusely soaped scoured skin from the shower and rain chaffed hike. I turned off airplane mode on my phone to catch up on the last few days of missed service, and wouldn’t you know it L had messaged. Uncanny really; she’d left a voice memo asking if I’d finished the trail. I think she’d messaged within a twelve hour period of when I’d actually finished. Receiving and opening the voice memo was a bit disturbing because I had to hear her voice and I love the sound of that voice. I remember asking myself if hearing her voice was something I could handle. I decided that no it probably wasn’t and then opened the memo anyways. That’s about the extent of my capacity for self-restraint.

I knew that once I’d listened to the voice memo it would become obvious that I’d listened to it. It’d either erase after two minutes or I could save it permanently, which would change the memo’s status. I think I was sent a voice memo for just this reason. L had to know if I was listening. I feel bad about that. And it is 100% totally understandable that she would wonder and need to know. I definitely threatened to block her before during the mess prior to trail. So, the “not listening” card had definitely been on the table. But I was listening, each and every time she’d messaged me. And each time she’d message I felt the full spectrum of emotions. And each time I’d felt so unsafe I just couldn’t bring myself to respond.

But this time I did respond. I sent her a photo of the terminus with my trash and gear piles. I made sure not to send a photo which had me in it. She expressed what I think was amazement and congratulations. She noticed that the gifts she’d given me had remained in use. I think I commented about how some of the gear had lived a good life and had reached its end. The conversation didn’t last long because I didn’t express any curiosity or interest in her life. Again, too dangerous. When conversation isn’t mutual it doesn’t really go anywhere. So the conversation ended after four or five iterations.

A lot of my sentences remembering this conversation begin with “I think”. That’s because I don’t have record of the conversation anymore, and it was quite an emotionally saturated Andrew who actually lived the conversation. So I don’t exactly trust my remembrance. It is, however, what I remember. And there’s no way for me to check because I deleted my and L’s text history when I got home and worked with my computer for the first time in four months. But deleting the text/audio/photo history of our shared life didn’t feel liminal like throwing away the ball of plastic had. It just sort of felt dull. numb. gone. All it took was two clicks. “Are you sure?” Yes. I’m sure. Right now I would, if I could, insert the downturned/closed eyes emoji to help indicate what I’m trying to describe. A sort of resignation, a sadness, I think.

I ended up packing all my plastic back to my parents home in Maine. I didn’t know what to do with it, and a lot of people had asked; “what will you do with it when you’re done”? I thought the answer was obvious; “throw it out duh”. What else can you do with single use plastic? Throwing it out is what it’s for. That is the telos of its design. But I brought it home because I thought maybe I would sift through it all and keep a record. “This many candy bar wrappers”, “this many Isadora bean bags”, “this many silvery ramen flavor packages from inside this many ramen plastics”. I thought that might be interesting information to share. And I knew there’d be stories in those pieces of plastic, like; “this plastic pizza microwave pad is from the cardboard boxed pizza at the Burro Mountain Home when I thought I was eating plastic free”.

So about a week after I was home I took my bag and dumped all the trash into the bathtub and started to sort through it and wash it and prepare for counting. But, fifteen minutes into the process I got really lightheaded and sick. I was overheating, stressed, couldn’t focus, and couldn’t really find a way to sort through all the mess. Like, I put all of one kind of trash in one pile. So what. It’s still just trash on my floor. And it smelled really bad too. There was mold. There was rot. I hated every second of it. I’m even feeling sick thinking about it now. I sort of go mentally foggy, and feel pressure on my eyes. I feel like I can’t look up and to the left. I can look up and to the left. I just feel like I can’t. I’m crazy! Anyways, after a half hour I bagged it all back up and took it out to the trash can and threw it away. I washed out the inside of my backpack with a hose on full blast and then hung it outside in the wind and sun for a few days. Then I laid myself out in the sun and wind for a bit as well.

I guess right now I’m trying to imagine if there’s any interpretive meanings I can draw from this last experience with my trash to then apply to my experience with relationships. I can think of a few ideas, but discard them all because people are not trash. People are not anything like trash. I’d advise you to throw away any attitude with such an indication or alignment as well. People are beautiful, learners, curious, trusting, courageous, take risks, act impulsively, are self-preserving, lose control, make choices, affect others, get back up again, long for connection, and ______. People are a lot of things. But people are not trash. Relationships are not, should not, be anything like single use plastic. It’s not worth trying to draw any meanings between people and trash because all the ideas you can come up with end up drawing meaning between people and trash. All I know is that it’s hard to sift through the present reality of the past.

I’m really not feeling confident I’m expressing myself well. I feel an immense weight about the way I could be continuing harm and pain by sharing my experience through this blog. Though the continuation of harm isn’t something I want, I choose to share despite the risk of its reality. I’m sure some people, in an effort to assuage my anxiety, would say, and some certainly already have, that they’ve been touched or moved or that the sharing of one story helps others feel humanized in their own story (that’s what good stories do). All of that is great, but honestly doesn’t matter anything near as much to me as does the likelihood that I continue to hurt those I love. I’m sorry.

Thanks for reading me. But also thanks for remembering that what you’re reading isn’t me, nor is it an accurate understanding of anyone else represented here. People go so far beyond what’s on the page. This is a representation of the story that I lived on my 2023 Continental Divide Thruhike from Mexico to Canada along the rocky spine of the United States. I spent lots of time alone. I spent a lot of time with cows. Now I got to spend, albeit in a distant way, some time with you.

Final Remarks

Hey! You did it! You read me walk the whole way from Mexico to Canada. That was a long ways, and you did a good job I think. :) Isn’t it exhausting?

I’m here now after just finishing the last of the 109 journaled entries. Good news (I presume at least) is that there are a few more entries coming. I’ll be sharing a list of all the trail names I came along on my trip. I’ll also be sharing the animal log I took. They’ll post over the next two days.

There are so many stories from this trip which go beyond the scope of what I wrote about in my journal and in this blog. Each of the names you’ll read and each of the animal references you’ll see have a whole life and trail of their own. Please imagine away. :) Maybe reading all those names will help you come up with a name of your own!

I’ll also return to this website in the future sometime to write more. I’m not sure what that looks like right now. But, I’d encourage you to return to this story as often you’d like. You might find something more has become available in the meantime.

Thank you thank you thank you.

-Andrew