Day 137: Mile 2147.6 - 2165.1

Today was a sad day. After hiking together since basically Gilmore Lake (Day 96) until yesterday (Day 136), Double Snacks and I finally parted ways. She's going into Portland, then taking a train up to Olympia to meet Brett and her friend Julia, and Julia will drive them to White Pass where they'll all start hiking north towards Snoqualmie Pass. For the trip to Portland, this morning she got picked up by Spot (the Man, she always clarifies, because early on she also hiked with Spot the Woman), and first they stopped at the Bridgeside restaurant in Cascade Locks for breakfast. I joined them, met Spot (who evidently recognized me from the Sierras, although I don't think I ever met him formally before) who is a member of the Mazamas, and is basically section hiking the PCT. He did the Sierras this year, has already done Oregon/Washington and the desert, and plans to finish with NorCal next summer; we'll see how much of it is open! Spot's an older gentleman, but still keeps pretty active: he lives near Portland, will bike down to his sailboat and back, is planning an RV road trip, is section hiking the PCT--yeah, that counts as pretty active. Nonetheless, he still felt the post-hike blues after finishing the Sierra section this year. That's something that is coming up, actually; it's a known thing, especially for thru-hikers.

But today wasn't about the post-hike blues, but the post-group blues. Because today I was actually hiking alone. Not just by myself, but with nobody to meet at a break spot, nobody to expect at a campsite. Nobody to share the experience with. And as I was hiking I realized: I miss that. Spielberg last night had noted that: that on the AT, he would see folks in groups and, when one or two people in the group left the trail, the whole group left the trail--the experience just wasn't the same anymore. Even Cheez-It had mentioned this back at Kennedy Meadows North--the dissolution of the group had ended one of his PCT attempts. And I see that: I was slow getting out of Cascade Locks this morning because it felt strange to leave town by myself. I kept looking around hoping to see someone I knew, so I could say hi and talk about crossing the Bridge of the Gods--a distinctive PCT experience, walking across the wire-bridge that spans the Columbia River. But there was nobody around, and I just walked to the bridge, by myself, alone, and walked across.

It's the sharing, I think, that I'll miss the most. I'll see things, note things, and realize I won't be able to grouse about them with someone, hear their view of it, at the end of the day. And that's just sad. Previous times I've split from the group, I've gotten this sense of almost pride in going it alone, just me and the trail, welcoming the simplicity of independence. But this time, that feeling wasn't there, and it was just replaced with an emptiness. So I miss Double Snacks, and hiking without her rhythms--without knowing that she's up ahead and I need to push it a bit to catch up to her on her first break about 2 hours in, that she'll take lunch after noon since she likes to get at least halfway to camp before eating, that her second break will be about 2 hours after that--without knowing that she'll be at camp at the end of the day, did make the hiking feel more hollow.

And so for the first part of the hike today, I realized there's a change. Not only am I leaving Oregon and entering Washington, but the whole experience is changing to a more solo experience. And I realized that I had griped a lot about Oregon (and Double Snacks had even been there for that--seeing me at my lowest--too), and spent much of my time dreaming about what I will do when I'm off trail. There's a book, Pacific Crest Trials, that talks about the mental side of thru-hiking, and has this argument that, well, when it's tough, just imagine how much worse it would be if you were stuck back at a soulless desk in a nondescript cubicle. Only for me, going back isn't *that*: I have no job to go back to, so going back means I get to do whatever I want (at least in the short term). So I would dream of myself getting a bike, and biking every day to the Ayala Library on the UC Irvine campus, and sitting in a carrel reading about some technical nook that had fascinated me but that I didn't have to time to explore, or perhaps finally getting around to writing a series of introductions to math concepts that I always wanted to pen for my sister. Because at the end of the day, I'm not an outdoors guy, I'm a sit-in-the-library, and furthermore, a sit-at-a-carrel-in-the-library type of guy. When I think of a happy place, I think of the West Stacks of Green Library, where they used to keep government records in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, and where the floors were more metal scaffolding and wooden plywood than finished floors, and the ceiling was always just a hair under 6-feet tall--be careful about those sprinkler heads, don't bump your head on those! And it was noisy--the fans below going, loudly, all the time--and it was cold. But they had carrels on each end, and I would grab one, work on math problems, and pace up and down the floor, talking to myself, and no one would hear partially because the fans were so loud, but mostly because nobody was ever in there. It turns out people aren't constantly trying to get the Federal Farming Report for the Greater Kansan Area for 1937, and it's not like that wing is actually *pleasant*. But I loved it. And I love those sorts of environments, and while in Oregon I dreamed about going back to them, or at least their equivalents: sitting back at my desk in Irvine, the warm sunlight streaming through the open window, the day open to learning and exploring whatever little topic fit my fancy that day.

And that brought up a whole other slew of feelings that I had in Oregon, about how I'm not really a thru-hiker either. There are people who *are*: Double Snacks definitely is, Dylan fits into it like a glove, and there are many other besides out here who fit the bill. But I feel I never quite fit into the thru-hiker mold. There's a certain sort of bravado to a thru-hiker, a certain sort of confidence and single-mindedness, mixed with a flair of devil-may-care, that I don't have. Sometimes I can fake it, but I definitely don't have it. So I always ended up being just a guy--usually on the outside--who happened to also be walking the trail. Just a day-hiker carrying a tent, is all.

And there's a lack of adventure out here, or at least I should say, a lack of the type of adventure I'm used to. I'm used to Saturday hikes where I pick the route, I have to search for the trail junction and the correct turn, figure it out on my own without any helpful Guthooks comments. And where I'm all alone, so if something goes wrong then only I can deal with it, whereas out here I know that if I wait, somebody will eventually come along. But here everything is already planned, everything is already dictated, I just have to follow it. And that feels less like an adventure to me.

So all these emotions--missing Double Snacks; longing to go back home to a sunny desk and plenty of mental candy; feeling like an outsider who doesn't plug into this community; feeling like an imposter; arguing that, no, this isn't an adventure, but a guided walking tour--all these came flooding back as I entered Washington. And all against a backdrop of the sadness of endings: the ending of a tramily of sorts, of the trail coming to an end "soon", of no more chances to sit on a bench, slurping mint ice cream soup, gazing at the Dipper and just talking with friends (sitting on that bench will likely go on the list of indelible memories from the trail). And all those feelings were a bit overwhelming, rotating through in their punches. There are answers for each of these separately of course, counters and reversals and sometimes even punishes (to invoke FGC terminology), but when they come one after the other after the other, and so fast, there's nothing to be done but weather it, I think.

But two things saved me today. The first was the views. Just going over the Bridge of the Gods: it's much larger in person. As in, forget YouTube and Instagram, forget videos and photos of the bridge, just standing on the shore and looking at it, it looks big, sure, but nothing special. But get up onto it, walk along it and its wire-grid platform (and into oncoming traffic), and it seems so much more massive and expansive. Because from up there you can look out over the Columbia and see *shapes*: the shape of the river curving downstream, flanked by lone train tracks on both sides; the shape of Thunder Island sitting in the middle upstream, and the gentles curves of the green mountains, some parts highlighted to near yellow as the sun peeks through the blue between the clouds. Seeing that whole geography just makes the bridge also seem larger and bigger. (The walking into traffic--and there's plenty of traffic--just makes the bridge seem *longer*, but not necessarily bigger: quite the opposite, since you quickly realize it's just two lanes with no shoulders, so when that oncoming truck passes, it's going to get tight!) And in other places along the trail today, the green tunnel (which is indeed noticeably thicker than Oregon already) would break, and I would get to look out over the canyons and see these wide, to-the-horizon views. If Washington keeps this up, it'll indeed be nice! 

And the second thing was the climb. The climb out of Cascade Locks is notorious for being long and laborious. And it was indeed long, and it did take work, but I didn't feel it was necessarily that bad: it's all stuff we've done before, albeit arranged a bit differently. But the climb was still a climb, and as such, my mind blanked (think?, who can climb and think at the same time?!). And that kept all the above thoughts and emotions at bay: simply no brain capacity to accommodate them! So that helped too.

Now I'm not saying I'm through with all these thoughts and emotions--probably aren't, in fact. They'll be back. But there *is* another way of looking at things, there *is* another equilibrium to be found, of this I feel pretty confident. And maybe, over the next couple days, as I get used to being on my own again, maybe I'll be able to find at least a small part of it.

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Some notes:

-- Marine Park Campgrounds > Bridge of the Gods > Gillette Lake > Table Mountain > Makeshift Campsite

-- At breakfast, there were other hikers, including Gutfish who greeted me warmly. And I asked about the schedule and he smiled and said we're 6 days ahead! We can afford to take it easy! And I laughed and went back to my table. Because I definitely don't *feel* that way: I feel I need to do the opposite, to not take it easy but get miles in, because of the Race. I remember Ismael had mentioned that on the AT, it was "last one to Katadin is the winner", but I don't feel that at all out here on the PCT. Rather I feel I need to use every "nice" day I got to get miles in, because the days of cold and wet are coming, and then the days of cold and snow are coming, and I'm not well-equipped to handle those so the best I can is minimize their number.

-- Found a hair tie in middle of trail, and this is good: now I can try out my marigolds solution when it rains. Yes I'm carrying a pair of marigolds. But I now have two hair ties--or should I say hair "elastics"--and I can properly cinch down the wrists of each!

-- Lots of banana slugs on the trail today. I had first seen them a couple days ago: just one big guy, slowly crossing the trail. Mostly that's what they were doing today as well, but one--covered beneath some undergrowth overhanging the trail--was actually traveling *along* the trail. *That* one, then, is going to Canada! But they're all pretty big, and much darker than I had expected.

-- I learned a lot from Double Snacks. I learned how to nero--how to get into town, get chores done (or done enough), and get out the next day. There's a certain sort of task management and just sheer energy that needs to be in place for that to work. I aspire to be as steady as she is: always up and hiking by 7:30am, always knows the goal for the day, always moves inexorably towards achieving it, always does. There's a system that she has going for hiking, and while I can't see it all, I can dimly perceive parts, and those parts are, trust me, worth emulating! Although for all her admirable steadiness, she *will* surprise you: she *will* pick the *other* campsite. And she's quite adventurous with meals, for example: experiments a lot with mixing things together, and her combinations usually end up pretty good, like her minute rice, coconut oil, and dried fruit cold soak breakfasts. So put that together with the constancy, and she's one of the people I always think will make it!

-- But if Freewalker's application of the Shikoku metaphor is correct, then from Double Snacks I learned self discipline, which is invaluable. And I *should* have learned how to see the happy thing on a bad day and how to let that be enough, and how to not complain when it's a bad day. But that's an advanced lesson, and I'm still a rank amateur at this whole hiking-and-camping thing.

-- In retrospect, I'm surprised that Double Snacks put up with me as long as she did in Oregon. Especially when I screwed up my tracking and became unhinged--and not in a fun silver border way, but in a bad self-destructive way. And I suspect it scared her some, and I suspect she doesn't like dealing with conflict like that--who does?--and I *was* feeling combative: that's part of the self destruction, to push the people closest to you away, and you're on a hair trigger to do it, to push the red button and assure destruction. And I was serious about going back to redo those bits of trail, and I never thought: where would that have left her? I mean, sure, she can more than take care of herself--better than I can take care of myself, certainly!--but still, I was only thinking of myself at those times and being selfish. And that's not right. So kudos to her for dealing with that: to quote Jessica at Shelter Cove, she saw me at my worst.

-- There were some other hikers out here today: Firebreather, who crossed the Bridge of the Gods just ahead of me and who I would leapfrog with all day; and Jailbreak and Emily, now in a group with Tidbits and Sunspot and Wa-Wa, all taking that initial climb out of Cascade Locks one step at a time; and Shark Bait who keeps stopping to eat all the berries, and showed me his fingers stained in red and purple juice; and another hiker who I didn't recognize but who, again, leapfrogged with me all day. And that may seem like a lot, but honestly, it feels like very few. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of folks out here.

-- Today's peanut M&M color is blue.

-- Camping cohorts: none, it's just me. In this spot that's not on Guthooks, but is mentioned in a comment, one of those "there's a campsite 0.5 miles before this stream" sorts of things. And I admit that Rock Creek is about 2 miles ahead and was in shooting distance when I stopped, and I considered continuing on to there both for the miles and for the company--I know two other hikers heading out that far--but in the end I settled with here. I'm never that fast out of town and always do shorter miles anyway--I see it as a getting back into the swing of things transition. Plus out here I can type and won't bother no one!

-- I will say, though, that this campsite is doubly slanted: if she were here Double Snacks would just look at my tent and smile, bemused, even as internally she would just be shaking her head!