CDT Day 81 (8/7/23)

Miles 1961.8 (Red line 2223.5)- 1973.7 (Red line 2236.4) (12.9 miles)

Verbatim

TRex and Ritz want me, right now, to look up on YouTube, the footage of Malibu getting WRECKED on season one of American Gladiator. Look up “Malibu interview”.

“Butter Scotch Butts Make me Nuts” (What? I don’t know what this is about. hahaha)

I’m writing now from the Mustang Inn on the morning of the 8th. I’m in Leadore! And there is food. The hosts Jen and Mark are super cool. And now Jen and Carolyn are making breakfast for Ritz and TRex and it’s likely that I’ll eat some too and pay them. haha

The hiking yesterday was really really beautiful. Elk Mountain is a stunning 360 degree peak. And the climb was calm and interesting and full of cows. Hiking down the mountain was flowy and pretty. It was a hungry time. At one point my blood sugar was so low I had to sit down, put on a sweater, and eat. My arms were cold and tingly. I was very ketosis I think.

I met a nice guy named Magnum PI and chatted with him for ten minutes thinking it wouldn’t make a different in hitching from the pass. But just as I got to the pass a car was pulling away having dropped off Hook. Which is crazy! I was like, NOOOOOO! I put my arms up but it was too late. This began a sit for three hours; from 12-3. Waiting for a ride. There’s no service from the pass, so I was committed to waiting. I couldn’t call. Two semis drove by. And a road grading machine came to the top and went down the other way. It was a bummer. But! Some good! Ritz and TRex, SOBOs, came down to the pass. They gave me some much needed snacks and we waited in the hot sun together looking at the clouds. They’re really fun.

We finally got down the mountain with a kind family driving to the Sawtooths from Bozeman. We all crowded in the back. We got to the small store and I started eating immediately. The sandwich was good. The pizza was maybe too much. I saw Forest!

We came to the Mustang Inn, a very nice place, and I stayed. Now it’s morning and I need to eat the rest of my pizza.

The Mustang Inn has been a great experience. I’m really thankful to see and hang out with Forest. What a cool guy. He makes wine! And that’s incredible.

Post Note

It’s a good sign when my journal makes less narrative sense. That implies that in the moment of writing I had enough of a social life going on that I couldn’t concentrate on the writing. That’s actually really good. Those sort of moments were few and far between.

I just watched the clip of Malibu from American Gladiator. It’s pretty funny. hahaha. I wrote that section of the day’s entry while up at Bannock pass with TRex and Ritz. They put me up to it and said I had to write it in my journal. My guess is that we were talking about American Gladiator and Malibu because we were finding ways to be cheerful about sitting “underneath some of those cosmic rays”. We sat on a shadeless dirt road under the August sun from twelve to three without a source of water. We joked. Told stories. Apparently Trex and Ritz, who are a married couple, thruhike every summer. They’re “lifers”. Thruhiking to them isn’t some grand adventure or some life defining moment. It’s just what they do each summer because they like it. What better way is there to spend time?

Thruhiking means so many different things to different people. To some it’s a once and a lifetime trip. It’s something they’ve dreamed about for years. They’ve saved money. Quit a good job. Sold their house and don’t know what’s next. For others a thruhike looks something more like picking up the pieces. They’re divorced or broken-up with. They lost a good job. They almost died, or lost someone significant to them, and decided once and for all to start living their own life. Still more some come to thruhiking as a way of celebrating an opening in life. They’re finally divorced! Or they just retired. Or they no longer have to care for an aging parent and/or children and can start living their own dreams again. Some come to walk because they don’t know what else to do with themselves (I think that’s me). No thruhiker fits neatly into any category. We all find our unique way into showing up and making meaning out of the unique experience that is having enough spare resources to go walking for a really long time. This dynamism is what makes it so exciting to meet, walk, and talk with other people out on trail. Hello you, who are so different than me. How did you, in all your unique complexity, find yourself on the same part of the same dirt ribbon at the same time as me?

For many the first thruhike is the only thruhike. “One and done”, is the phrase. You can imagine how a “one and done” experience makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. If you’re moving into a new career, or celebrating a last hurrah at individual freedom, or planning on starting a family, or walking the hike you always dreamed of, or squeezing in one last adventure on an aging body; one and done is fine. But I personally don’t understand it. I couldn’t imagine doing the PCT and then having stopped there. L is maybe a one and done. Maybe not. She’s made stabs at another hike as well.

She quit though. There was too much uncertainty in life. Too much relational turmoil. Being on trail while your life is hell is really uncomfortable. Are you moving forwards into your own independence, ability, journey? Or are you running away? It’s hard to know. And what are you going to think about all damn day if not the conundrum that is all your stresses in life? Trail is a brutal mental game. Who cares about the physical mountains. If you’re depressed, angry, lonely, tired, and feel like giving up then trail is the most difficult thing you’ve ever done. Who cares about the weight of your pack. Your heart always weighs more. No one ever forgets to pack their inner demons on a thru hike. Someone of us are just fast enough out there to keep outrunning them.

There was some tension in my relationship with L about the fact that I didn’t know what to do with myself other than hike. I couldn’t, still can’t, find a job as a pastor because I’m too damn honest with myself, the world, and in the way I talk to people (On my good days that is. I definitely do my fair share of deflecting). I understand that I’m unfit to be a pastor because there’s no room for me to be me. I’m not sure there was room for me to be me with L, either. And then being a chaplain is really stressful. I don’t know. I’ll probably get back around to it. It felt… significant. And the work was actually really engaging. It was just really hard. And everything else in my life when I was training to be a chaplain was really hard. So, because these more professional things didn’t make sense, I would hike.

But, I’ve never completed a trail I didn’t quit first. I’ve quit the PCT in 2019, the AT in 2019, the OCT in 2021, the CDT in 2022, and then the AT again in 2023 (I did end up giving it a try after the CDT. Lasted four days. It wasn’t right). I think L sort of scoffed at the fact that all I could do was walk and not always very successfully. Or maybe that’s just my insecurities talking. She’d probably say that wasn’t true, but would say that an endless walker was no way to share a life. That probably is true. But then I thought she knew that all my dreams were about walking when we started dating?.. Still, the fact that L tried and failed at a hike is important to me. L gets it now; maybe. Walking the CDT was literal hell. I did it anyways. They say not to quit a thruhike on a bad day. You go home, miss the challenge, miss your friends, regret that you didn’t step up to face the giant. So, how do you quit a thruhike when they’re all bad days?

It was the most disappointing moment to come up to Bannock pass and see a car pulling away. But, I wouldn’t have experienced what I did with TRex and Ritz. Sitting at a remote pass for a few hours waiting for a hitch is part of the trail. It’s a unique space of time. Your job as a thruhiker is no longer to move. It’s to wait. Sitting and resting, something you’ve longed for throughout countless hours of walking now seems like a rather rejectable proposition. But you sit and wait under the pressure of limited water and food and under duress of exposure to those cosmic rays. If you leave the road to manage any of these factors you must resign yourself to the risk of missing the one moment when a car actually done come over the pass.