Why the PCT?
When I was 18, my coworker and I traded books for fun. I don’t even remember what book I gave her, but she gave me a copy of Wild by Cheryl Strayed, about a woman who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in the 90′s. I loved the book because not only was it about this great adventure of the solitary trek that she took, but it was also a story of healing, a search for meaning and the strength to move forward after losing someone that she loved.
The author lost her mom to cancer when she was 18 or 19 years old, and it came on very suddenly. Within a month of being diagnosed, her mom had died, and the suddenness of the event really wrecked her and her siblings and step father. For years afterwards, she struggled with a drug and a sex addiction, got married and divorced, and just felt lost (The quoted sections ahead are all shared from her book).
“I was a terrible believer in things, but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith, or if there was such a place, or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake.”
Randomly, she comes across a guidebook all about the PCT, and on a whim decides that she needs to do something different with her life. So she sells everything that she owns, goes to REI and buys a bunch of backpacking gear, and sets out to hike this trail with absolutely no backpacking experience. At the beginning her pack was so heavy that she called it “Monster” and could barely lift it. But she set out and hiked 1,100 miles in 94 days, reading, journaling and taking in this brutally hard experience. She conquered her fears and achieved this incredible thing that most people don’t even imagine doing.
“Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.”
It was this incredible journey that she undertook that actually helped her move on with her life and deal with her Mom’s death, perhaps in a way that almost nothing else could have. I loved it. It’s an incredible story with so much beauty and wisdom, and it inspired me like nothing else ever has. After reading it, I knew that I wanted to have my own experience and hike the PCT for myself.
“I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I didn't embrace the word as my new name because it defined negative aspects of my circumstances or life, but because even in my darkest days—those very days in which I was naming myself—I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn't have known before.”
I had briefly mentioned this “wild” ambition to Landon, but we didn’t start seriously talking about it until Spring of 2018 when I was finishing up nursing school. I told Landon that before we had kids, i wanted to hike the PCT. Always down for an adventure (especially of the outdoor variety) and being the supportive husband that he is, he enthusiastically replied “Ok, lets do it!”
So we sat down and started researching what it would take to turn this dream into a reality. We watched Youtube videos (we reccommend Darwin on The Trail and Homemade Wanderlust) and read blog posts of hikers who had hiked the trail. We looked up all of the different options for backpacking gear and decided which pieces we wanted for our own kits, and opened up a savings account to start socking away money for the excursion.
Our original plan was to hike in 2020, and though we had saved up enough money and had all of our gear, we ended up cancelling our thru hike that year due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Things were very uncertain in April of 2020, and many of the small communities that are along the PCT came out with statements asking for hikers to please cancel their hikes to eliminate the spread of the virus, especially in those trail communities whose residents are primarily elderly and do not have access to much healthcare close by. Shortly after, the Pacfiic Crest Trail Association also came out with a statement parroting the same sentiments and asking hikers to respect the wishes of the trail communities and please cancel their hikes, which the majority of hikers did. Even though we were bummed, we felt like cancelling our thru hike was the right thing to do, and we were able to spend a lot of time doing self supported backpacking trips that summer and continue practicing on those trips and dialing in our gear choices.
Fortunately for us, we have one more window of opportunity to hike the PCT this year in 2021. Landon is in between his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs, and doesn’t have any obligations until Fall semester of this year, at which point we anticipate him having to leave the trail a little bit early to go to graduate school in Colorado, where I will join him shortly after completing the trail. I have been working as a travel nurse over the last year and completed my most recent assignment in March, which gave us about a month to travel home, see our friends and family, pack up for grad school, and prepare our resupply boxes for the trail this year. We are both very fortunate to have received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine and we are feeling much more optimistic about the safety of hiking the PCT this year, though we will still continue to wear masks in towns. As I write this, I’m sitting at the table in Landon’s Aunt and Uncle’s house in San Diego, where we’ve been resting for a week before we start our thru hike on Monday, April 19th (they’ve been kind enough to host us while Landon recovers from running 62 miles from his latest ultra marathon endeavor).
We are so happy to finally be taking this journey together and to be realizing a goal and a dream of mine for the past 10 years! It’s going to be an amazing adventure and we can’t wait to start. I’ll be posting here at least once a week writing about our experiences, and Landon might be convinced to write an occasional post here too. Feel free to comment below or ask us any questions at the bottom of this post! And thanks for reading and supporting us. Just 2,653 miles to go!