Reflections of trails 3: mountains of Sierra Nevada

My husband, Chris, and I are trying a Pacific Crest path through a walk and now we are in a city of the ski resort under the mountains of Sierra Nevada called Mammoth, while we stop for a day to replenish our food for the next section of the path, wash and wash clothes. We have just spent 12 days in the trot in the powerful mountains, covering 8 passes and the Mount Whitney summit. It was the longest and transformative period of the path so far for us, which we started on May 13 at the border between the United States and Mexico in southern California. These are some of my paths of trails:

Anonymity and through

In the last 57 days along the way, I have not spoken with other hikers about what I do in the «real world» at all. I have actively avoided conversions about ‘what you do’ and if I am sincere, it is not a common discussion issue that I have often heard. There is an immediacy in hikers’ concerns. The discussions focus mainly where they plan to camp tonight, where he camped last night, how the route was on the pass or where he plans to react then. Because of this, and being out of mobile connectivity for long periods (Ah, the happy empty emptiness!), I have felt a curious distance within me.

In general, when you meet new people, one of the first ways to ‘place them’ or ‘define them’ is through their work/profession. Knowing this information helps you understand what most of your time do, as well as your probable interests and objectives: it is a convenient way of defining and ‘confinement’. Reciprocally, when you talk about yourself in the same way and again in relation to your work, you elaborate a narrative about you that becomes fast, reliable and reusable. This is useful and practical, but also limiting. I settled in this new freedom, I have been contemplating what happens with my imagination of itself and the future that I want to create when those narratives fall and become redundant. What new possibilities can I imagine for me?

I still don’t know the answer to this, but I have noticed that without the information of ‘What is their work’, people relate to me differently. During the last 10 years of my life I have been directing small businesses in the yoga and travel industry. In general, people listen to ‘yoga’ and immediately place me: vegetables, vain, pretentious, love to hug trees and publish about it in social, superficial, not ambitious or professional (add to the list yourself). Before that, I was in research and academia completing a doctorate in history: serious, reflective, boring, released, committed, etc. Now on the PCT I am just South Africa, walking with Chris in South Africa. This is all the information that I am willing to give, but also all the information that people need. I have found it so liberating and I feel renewed not to be locked by others and me.

To bring this dimension of anonymity one step further, many through hikers in the US. UU. They only go through their trail names. There is a cultural/tribal habit between the community through the United States to order others with a new name. This name is used as a badge of pride; It means that you have started in the tribe and that they have seen you by some habit or practice that is exclusively «you» as a hiker. Once you have this name, this is automatically how it is presented, how the registration of trails and its profile in the mobile map/navigation application that everyone uses. These names become another veil distancing themselves from their out -of -way.

Many of these names are connected immediately and obviously to something related to the path: rhythm, torque, mango, speed, rabbit, diversion, cowboy, trail chef. Others surprise me that people will accept them (you can give you a name, but you don’t have to accept it unless you identify yourself), like the big girl, the ball bag (a girl!), Free lunch (how could you make friends with that name?) And the French couple who goes for ice cream (when I asked who is cream and who is ice, they said they did not understand the purpose of my question). Then there are the names that people obviously gave themselves, as a small Italian man known for stealing free mayonnaise and mustard bags of restaurants to eat (» said free calories!) What is called Phantom Opera, an unlikely and great designation if I ever heard one!

Interestingly, Trail Angels also commonly has trail names. These also create a distance between the «daily self» and the «being of the path.» For example, there was an angel on the path who told us that he felt protected by his path because his business, a camp and a hiker shelter in the desert was 100% illegal and «if the federals ever looked for me, I would pick up the next backpack and go out saying:» Who is the owner of this place?

The culinary trip

Once Chris and I had confirmed our PCT permits and we successfully obtained our US visiting visas. UU., We began to tell family, friends and colleagues about our great plans through 2025. One of the first people who know me well was, what will you eat? How will you survive as a vegetarian that loves fresh fruit and vegetables in the rural United States (infamous for fast quality food) for 5 months? My answer was, I will make a plan (rice, beans, oats, dried fruits and nuts, cheese) and completely advance that my 2025 PCT through the chain will not be a culinary experience, it will be a wonderful trip in many ways, but I will simply put aside my expectations of fresh quality food. Well, reality on the road has been that all Chris and I speak, we think, plan, dream and spend our money is food. It has been a culinary trip!

First, apart from hiking and sleep, it seems that we spend all our time planning meals, making purchase lists, packaging and supply. The replenishment missions are such a large part of until use, especially in remote regions as we have just passed in the high mountains. Chris and I entered great American supermarkets often stunned us, overwhelmed by the options. I often wonder how it is possible to have so many options, flavors and varieties of one thing and still be sensible and satisfied; I could always have chosen differently, so there is always missing?

When in the cities to replenish we also eat often and greatly, trying in vain to satisfy our hunger for backless hikers. I have eaten more diverse and delicious things so far in California cities than I could imagine! As the budget decreases, we get more hungry!

Then, on the path, we demarcate the day according to meals and snacks. As soon as one meal or sandwich passes, I am focused on the next one, lustfully thinking about that protein bar or noodle package. Now dream regularly with food or as food; The food is also the main protagonist in my subconscious at the time it seems. I wonder if this is because I enjoy food more than ever in my life now. As with pure gratitude and pleasure, with the hope of getting as many calories of the day as possible, which is a refreshing and something healing for a woman. I certainly spent a large part of the teenagers and twenty trying to be thinner and limiting my food intake. I look back now with some sadness, and advance excitedly by how I could integrate this changing relationship with food into the daily post-probable.

Find presence and time pressure

I have noticed a curious malleability in how slow or fast time passes while walking along the way. My predetermined mental disposition is to be «to look forward», as mentioned above with respect to food, but also more widely. I am always focused on the following, «only 2 km / 24 minutes at this rhythm and we will be in the river, then the climb begins,» I tell myself. Then, I arrive at the river and the mental dialogue is: ‘OK, it is an rise of 400 m, focus on the first 250 m, then you can take a short water break and complete the last 150 m’, and so it continues. I have noticed that the more desperate or very acute, my mind is trained in the future event, the slowest and, often less pleasant moment, the present time passes. Maybe everything I see and advance is less pleasant because it is not where my mind strives to be ‘in’.

Sometimes, however, I am adorned with a period in which I am out of the predetermined mental value and dialogue, and I am moving, looking, being. These are the sweetest moments along the way and spend in an effortless flash. It is not that this ‘flash’ leaves without a porous reciprocity and communion with the beauty of the landscape and the way. On the contrary. In these periods I am very tied with everything and perhaps experiencing what could be called a pure presence.

In the mountains, possibly the most dramatic and picturesque section of the entire PCT, Chris and I often discuss whether through the hikers we were running along the path. We reflect if we could, and how we could, stay in places that hit us or take a slower day. We wonder if we would look back in our precious, unique in life, the Pacific Crest Trail and Go: ‘Shucks, why do we hurry that magical moment?’ ‘

Obviously, we cannot know the answer to this with certainty now, but what I have learned from the mountains is that a walk of this magnitude, if it is done with a serious intention to complete it faithfully the best one that can be of one capacity, comes with certain conditions and limitations, and that these conditions and limitations are different from other paths and efforts of high audience. If we want to get to Canada before the snow causes Washington’s mountains to be impassable for winter, we have to move and we have to continue moving. The beauty and challenge in this walk is to find the balance for you in terms of the rhythm that can take 2650 miles in a season, and the cheerful joy in your mind and body at that pace. I began to launch the repentance that I initially felt when I looked at the hikers of the section, or the hikers of John Muir, who can walk slowly and delay in long breaks under the warm sun with a lake. The reality is that, like PCT, through a trip, you have to walk, and you have to walk all day and you have to keep walking north. This does not mean that the path and the majestic landscape that you pass, but you have to do it as you move.

I have begun to think about our trip in terms of a hummingbird (a colibri as it is known here): a light engine, which stops frequently, but only briefly to eat before moving forward, in flames with the colors of the sun, rivers and mountains.

* This publication was written on a mobile phone, so I apologize beforehand by any typographic error!