Leaving For the Oregon Coast Trail + What Do I Need?

It's 100 degrees here in Portland this weekend. I sucked in all the cool air last night, shut up all the windows before it crept over 70 degrees this morning and I am sitting in fine comfort, for now. I am cool blooded though, so I enjoy the heat for the most part. Sipping holy basil and mint tea, with a little watermelon on the side. Good refreshing things.

My mind keeps drifting back to this this picture I took almost a year ago, when I was on a camping trip with my herbalism school. It was such a hot and dry summer last year...

It's always cool on the coast, or at the very least there will be that persistent breeze rolling in off the ocean. Filling you up with the sweetness of negative ions, salty skin and tousled hair.

My stomach flips a little in that good way; when I look at my calendar and see July creeping up faster than I thought possible. In less than a month now, I'll be living on the Oregon coast for a month.

My home and all that I'll need to live outdoors will be on my back. I'll be avoiding lingering in towns and spending as much time as I can out on the route that will take me to the California border. From there, I'll have to find my way home. Likely by a mixture of bus and train.

It's going to be super amazing. But I am also kind of preparing myself more for the uncomfortable aspects of what I'm doing. The word for it is called thru-hiking - when you hike one long continuous trail from beginning to end. It's my preliminary step towards finding my style for when I take on the Pacific Crest Trail next year. To know what I am comfortable with, what I need and don't need, what I want and don't want. 

I don't know what to expect. I have never done anything like this in my life. I've never even been on a trip this long before, as I have spent the majority of my adult life... well, adulting. Running a business, tending to the day to day.

It's been both easy and hard for me to set aside time like this, for a big endeavour. It feels kind of like a chink in my mental calendar year - I'm excited and a little irritated by it. Aries don't like to slow their roll and I can't get rolling on some projects I've wanted to pick up. My ingrained scheduling will be disrupted and I feel like I can't begin anything right now. 

It's a preparatory limbo.

What I do know is, my constant companions are going to be the ocean, trees, plants and the moon as she moves the tide back and forth. Controlling my movements of when I can and cannot hike. When I can and cannot pass around a point, or make it to the next headland, to my next camp spot. 

I keep thinking about how I should prepare for the spiritual aspect of this hike and I think about how I am going to do that when I am on the PCT too. I think about physical tools I would need to engage in spirit work, pay homage to the moon in her phases, or to honor a spirit of place. I think I need these physical accoutrements to make contact, to do the work, to engage. Then I realized I don't. I realized...

All the tools we need are in us. 

So I decided to stop stressing about that part. Because either they'll find me, or I'll find them... we'll find each other somehow. I'll figure it out when I get there. I keep telling myself that.

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If you're wanting the more detailed and nitty gritty aspects of my hikes and the preparation that I do for them, you can follow me on my other blog, Witch Wandering (which, there are no posts yet, but soon). In that space I will be keeping a daily trail log (updating on trail when able to do so) and posts on what I carry gear wise, eat, prepare, etc. I do hope to squeeze in a from the trail post here too, if possible. We'll see how it goes.

A Declaration: THRU-HIKING THE PCT 2017

I heard about it most officially from a wildland firefighter I had been dating, back in October of '14. He said, "...and I was working on the Pacific Crest Trail," in a kind of mystical tone. A small ding went off in my brain. I had this strange vision that it was near the coast for some reason, I suppose I was confusing the word "crest".

A few months went by and while looking over a map of Indian Heaven Wilderness, I saw this bold endless looking red scar across it: Pacific Crest Trail 2000. Ding.

My friend Lacey was planning a visit back in April, she wanted to do some nature exploring, but didn't have a clue what she wanted to go do or see out here. So, I ran a few ideas in my head... and thought of that movie everyone was talking about a while back. The one with the shoe on the cover, part of it was filmed here in Portland, had that girlwhatshername from Legally Blond play the character. I suggested to Lacey to watch it to get an idea of what we have out here, as some of it was filmed in Oregon and showed some scenic views of our state. I had to google what the name of it was... and then I realized, oh. It's about a woman who hikes the PCT. What is this trail anyway? Commence googling.

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The memory of brain dings and feelings surfaced. So this is what it is: 2660 miles from Mexico to Canada, along the chain of mountains through California, Oregon and Washington. Pilgrims from all over the US and world come to hike it in sections and even in its entirety. Most northbound, some south bound on a journey that takes on average, about 5 months to complete. I discovered the trail blogs of people accounting each day of their struggle for water, intense hunger, storms, chewed up feet, giving up, mountain lions, hypothermia, heat stroke... a whole strange subculture of these people called thru-hikers. I wanted that life.

I decided, that I was going to become a thru-hiker. I was going to do it. This made me happy in that same way, when I was just 12 years old with a plan to run away to to smoky mountains. There was that embracing of my child-self that I do my very best not to loose. We loose it so easily in these times.

That was early '15, when I had decided. Desire waxed, waned, eclipsed. Am I ready to give up my (relatively speaking) affordable Portland rent, in my pretty damn nice apartment that I magic-ed my ass into? What about my business? What about Tucker? Do I really want to displace myself like this? Become homeless for 6-8 months? What about afterwards? What about the threat of depression that will inevitably set in after I am done? Is it worth stirring up my life for this desire?

Always I came back to: Yes.

The stars, the dirt, the trees, the crossroads. The hunger that will chew at me. The relentless sun burning me. The feeling I know I'll get walking into familiar territory, seeing old plant friends and mountains. Knowing there won't be some great epiphany at the end. Knowing I'll hate it at times. Knowing I will love it. Knowing I will be scared shitless and knowing I will be humbled by vastness and beauty, the kind that there are no words for.

So, now it's 2016. Instead of saying, “PCT in 2017...” I get to say, “PCT, next year.”

Next year.

It is now even more of a reality. Now I can buy data books that will be slightly more relevant to nerd over. Now I can start gear testing and collecting. I have to start saving money and reorienting my business and job to work well without me for part of spring and summer.

Have I ever backpacked before? Nope.

Is this crazy? Maybe. Lots of people do it with no prior experience. Thankfully an ADD mind provides you with a what seems like a contradictory ability: hyper focus (usually only on things we are fascinated by). So I have been adsorbing like a sponge, everything. Stove vs. no stove, tarp vs. tent, resupply strategy, food choices, shoes, foot care, hiking gait, sleeping bag, socks, treking poles, ultralight everything. All the things. Reading all the stories. All the books. All the info.

I know that no matter how much I meticulously prepare, I will not be fully prepared for it.

So, that's that. My deceleration of doing.

PCT 2017.