Day 122: Mile 1872.1 - 1894.8

I really don't want to write today.

So today I made a stupid stupid mistake: I forgot to turn on the tracking on my Garmin inReach. So there's no record of what I did today. So in my mind, the 23 miles I did today?: they never happened. They don't count, and there's yet another gap in my PCT hike. I need to make them up. Right now, I'm thinking about backtracking--basically turn around and go back tomorrow, then turn around and come back the day after tomorrow. Problem is, right now I'm hiking with Double Snacks, and she has a ride set up for getting out at Pamelia Lake--and that's not easy, since Pamelia Lake is in the middle of nowhere. If I backtrack, I'll lose the chance at that ride--there's no way I can catch up a 2-day = 45-mile gap in less than a week.

But today was turning out to be a bad day from the outset. In the morning, I finally admitted to myself that Oregon is boring. It's just trees trees and more trees. There's nothing else to see. I've heard tell that there are views, but everytime the trees happen to part--this happens maybe every 2 miles or so--I look out and all I see is a white wall of smoke. And then I walk another 100 yards and the parting ends and it's just trees trees and more trees. I'm told it's supposed to be pretty out here, I'm told there are supposed to be some nice views, but I can't see anything. Like this morning, at one of these vistas, I looked out across a vale to the ridge on the other side, and I could see that at one end it wasn't just trees, but some sort of rock formation, some sort of cliffs. Would probably have been interesting to look at. But let me ask you this: if I were to draw you a line that's flat then drops, but with some jaggies, a little wiggle here and there, would that be compelling? Is this line alone beautiful?

Is it worth hiking 22 miles a day, pounding your feet so much your toes have gone numb, and the muscles in one are so messed up it constantly feels like I'm stepping on a rock edge even when my foot is perfectly flat?

Oregon reminds me of a slot machine in a casino. It always claims the big prize--beautiful views!--and always says that, hey, look it hasn't been that long since we paid out the big prize, just check the board over there announcing the last winner! See how recent it was! That board is the Guthooks comments which say that this point has a great view of this mountain, or that point is a great place to take lunch and take in the lake. Well I went to the first place today, couldn't see anything beyond the first ridgeline, certainly not the mountain miles and miles beyond it. And I went to the second place today, and you can see maybe the first 40 yards of the water before it disappears into the endless wall of white. And top all that off with the fact that the smoke *does* make it hard to breathe, and I *am* having trouble, likely partially because I'm doing strenuous exercise, and partially because my rib injuries aren't still fully healed, so my breathing doesn't hurt per se, it just feels like I'm trying to stretch out a knot in my back with every deep breath.

On a day when my mind is consumed with thoughts like these, I go even further and forget to turn on tracking. And this just brings home--again--the fact that this trip is a failure. Even if I reach Canada, still this trip is a failure. I will not have achieved anything, will not have accomplished a damn thing. Because I haven't finished the trail. I haven't finished the Bobcat Fire Closure; I haven't finished the Lake Fire Closure (although I did the road walk instead so maybe that's fine); I haven't finished the 300 miles I skipped from Sierra City to Dunsmuir (a gap so large people thought I had taken a plane!); I haven't finished the part around Crater Lake (because I took the alternate); I won't have finished the Lionshead Fire Closure coming up (because it's still closed); and now I haven't finished 23 miles here in the middle of smoke-infested Oregon. And I was calculating ways to get back and do this, and to make up a 1-day mistake will take at least 3 days of hiking, probably 4, with plenty of logistical problems to sort out. And who knows what conditions will be then? Earlier today, Double Snacks was lamenting that she's been through this part before, and the Oregon of her memories is much nicer making all this much tougher to get through. But to my mind, this smoky, grinding, interminable green tunnel is what Oregon *is*, and the thought of returning here just to make up for a stupid stupid mistake on my part is just looking ahead to see more pain, and pain that you have to plan for, set aside time for, sort out logistics for--pain that you have to work for.

This whole incident just emphasizes that, lest I think I have "achieved" something with this trip when I get to Canada, in reality I haven't really achieved anything. I won't have walked from Mexico to Canada; I'll have walked a lot of the way, sure, but I'll also have driven a lot of the way--300 miles!--so why didn't I just drive all the way in the first place? In the end, there's nothing remarkable in what I'm doing, certainly nothing praiseworthy. People have said, oh, it's so inspiring what you're doing, I really admire you. Their feelings, while genuine, are--I feel--misplaced. I'm just taking a vacation, just wasting a few precious months of my life on something frivolous, is all. Or worse: on something selfish, like how a PhD is supremely selfish (ask anyone who has one). Is that inspirational? Is that admirable? Is that something worth looking up to?

The answer is obvious.

So today ended up being a terrible day. It started not so great, got better in the middle, then ended on a bitter bitter note. And I'm very negative right now. But I was this way right before Forester Pass too, and there was a revelation on the other side of that one. I don't think there will be similar this time around, but we'll see what happens tomorrow.

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Some notes:

-- Six Horse Spring > Windigo Pass > Cowhorn Mountain Traverse Junction > Summit Lake > Campsite

-- And I know it's not fair to compare Oregon against the desert--I really like the desert--but Oregon is much worse. Because while in the desert it's hot and miserable, you know it's *supposed* to be hot and miserable: the desert doesn't deceive you in any way, doesn't make you comfortable in any way. It's tough, it lets you know it's tough, and that's that. And when you get somewhere in the desert, you feel you've achieved something. Whereas here in Oregon everything is green and comfortable, the trail is softer under your feet, the sun shaded by trees over your head. But it's still just as repetitive and boring and uninteresting as many say the desert is (to be fair, they simply haven't spent enough time in the desert to learn to recognize the differences between this type of scrubland and that type of shrubland) (and to be even more fair: I don't have the 3 years of weekly hiking experience in these forests to notice the same differences myself), Oregon is just more insinuous about it. And when you get somewhere, you don't feel you've gotten anywhere: the only way you can tell is by looking at a GPS marker, because otherwise everything looks exactly the same.

-- How about the hiking today? Well, today the smoke was pretty thick. Usually the morning are a bit more clear, and that was true today, but I could still smell the smoke. And the smoke was certainly obscuring views: at one point, I passed by Cowhorn Mountain and I could see the hints of some absolutely fascinating rock and cliff work. Only I couldn't see any details, it was all hazy with smoke--and it was, what, maybe just half a mile from the trail? We continued hiking back into the woods woods woods, and usually the smoke rolls in more thick around 5pm--that's when I start noticing more trouble breathing. Only today it came in early, around 3pm and stayed around until even now. And so when we arrived at Summit Lake in the late afternoon--a lake so nice that a southbounder had said he took a zero day, on trail, just to hang out at the lake--the lake looked just like waves for about 30 yards, then nothing but white and gray thereafter. And throughout the day, we walked along ridges, and you could see these camping spots along the edges, and you knew these were spots with beautiful views, and I would stand in those spots and look out and see nothing but a wall of white. (And try not to think about the fact that I'd been breathing in that wall of white all day!)

-- Other people have been feeling down about Oregon too. Double Snacks feels down because, as I mentioned above, she's hiked this section before, in 2017, and remembers it as being much more pretty. And now she's hiking it again and it's just smoke. And I talked to Freewalker today--who I've seen off and on, but I really just met last night at the campsite--and all he sees in Oregon is burn zones of dead trees, and even in the live forest, the ground covered in fallen trunks and dead branches. So much so that at Windigo Pass, he opted to take the alternate route--a dirt road--if nothing else because it represented a change of scenery, and he hoped that that would help.

-- Incidentally, Freewalker did the AT last year, and is doing the PCT this year. That's a ridiculously fast turnaround--as he himself notes--but he also notes that since the scenery of the PCT is so different than the AT, it's ok. Although he's got extremely tired of "trail food" extremely quickly on the PCT! I asked him about the CDT, and he will do it, but *not* next year: the scenery of the CDT is too similar to the PCT, so he'll need a little break!

-- Even without the AT, he's averaged probably about 700 miles of hiking a year for the past 10 years. That's a lot! He's done a lot of trails in Europe, in France and Spain and Switzerland and Italy (I think he did Canterbury to Rome at one point). He's also lived in a variety of places: from Sao Paolo, he moved to LA to attend Cal Arts, then moved to New York, before moving to Florida a couple years ago. His Florida place is in the suburbs outside Orlando, which initially he wasn't enthused about--he'd lived in big cities (Sao Paolo, LA, New York) all his life--but his wife wanted to move there, so he went. And discovered he loves it! He misses the big city, sure, but where's he at, nature is right there! Just a short walk from his house--maybe half a mile?--and he's on the Florida Trail, with all the bears and alligators and whatever other crazy animals there are in Florida, all right there! And that makes him pretty happy.

-- Freewalker has hiked the Shikoku 88-temple route, which he says is amazing. And that hike is a religious pilgrimage, and it's mapped into four parts: awakening, self disciplne, enlightenment, and nirvana. And he found this framework useful for understanding the AT: from Georgia to Tennessee was awakening, the mid-Atlantic states up to Vermont were self discipline, then Vermont and New Hampshire (i.e., the Whites) were enlightenment, and finally Katadin was (clearly) nirvana. But on the PCT, he's had a hard time applying the same structure. Ok, so the desert the awakening. But then what about the Sierras? Are they self discipline? Isn't that more like what Oregon is turning out to be? But then where does englightenment come in? In Washington? That seems too late. And shouldn't that be the Sierras? Anyway, he had spoken with some SOBOs, and felt that maybe the mapping would work a bit better there: Washington as awakening, Oregon and NorCal as self discipline, the Sierras as englightenment. But then that left the desert as nirvana, which he didn't like. But to which I pointed out, well, nirvana is a sort of nothingness, and the desert is certainly full of nothingness! But I don't think he was convinced!

-- I did have some good conversations with Double Snacks today, including a good rundown of resupply in Washington--she's hiked Washington before, so it was all from her experience. And her experience--contrary to that of Crunchy--is that the resupply is a bit slim in Washington. Mostly convenience stores and gas stations, so the selection isn't great (or to put it in Crunchy's term: we're fairly "particular" about our resupply). But it was good to get an at least preliminary list of resupply spots from her, and they look to correspond pretty well with the Halfway Anywhere survey (which is how I usually pick where to resupply).
-- In addition to Freewalker, it seems a *lot* of people took the alternate route at Windigo down to Shelter Cove. And I think the smoke is a factor: there's not much to do in the smoke anyway, so might as well make the way a bit shorter. But still, I was a bit surprised: it seemed like almost everybody but Double Snacks and me were taking the alternate!

-- At Summit Lake, we went down to get water and at a campsite next to the water was a huge tent--the kind you can walk into--and all mosquito net mesh. And inside was setup a cooking space and kitchen, basically, for a grandpa, grandma, daughter, and grandkid, out for a week on the lake. Grandpa and grandma had come out from Minnesota to see the grandkid and go on this little trip, and they looked like they had fully prepared: there was a paddle board, and some floating animals all off to the side. But grandpa saw us and got to talking and, when he realized we were PCT hikers, offered us some kiwis. ("Kiwi fruits, Dylan: a kiwi is a person--you mean a kiwi fruit.") Which we gladly accepted and ate--a simple halving with the knife, then scoop out with the spoon--they were so good! And then he offered to take out our trash! So there are amazing people on the trail, people who do trail-angel-esque things without even knowing what a trail angel is. (There *are* positive things, must remember that, only it seems they come from other people, whereas idiots like myself only seem capable of making mistakes that have to be paid for.)