Thru hikers often talk about having a “why”. Why are you hiking? Why do you keep going? Why would you feel the need to hike 2,650 miles? Why?
I have always been an athlete – I grew up as a competitive figure skater, I did ballet, played soccer, lacrosse, went snowboarding, skiing, kayaking, hiking, biking, running, swimming. Being active is so ingrained in my identity that when it was taken away from me, I felt like part of me died. I won’t even get into the details because honestly it’s just convoluted, complicated and it makes me angry at this point to explain the depths to which I have been failed by the US medical system. By health insurance companies that denied claims and doctors who refused to run basic labs or imaging that would have given me a proper diagnosis decades earlier, having been misdiagnosed with things that I didn’t even meet the diagnostic criteria for, and given treatments that I didn’t need, for problems that I didn’t have, in ways that almost killed me.
When I was in high school, I went on two backpacking education programs and went backpacking for two months at a time. For context, backpacks back then were freaking heavy AF. There were so many times I had to keep chanting to myself “one more step, one more step, one more step” just to keep going. But I always knew that if I just pushed myself to keep taking one more step, I’d eventually get to my destination. When I was training for marathons, I kept telling myself the same thing, “one more step, one more step, one more step” all the times I thought I couldn’t bear to keep going, but you can always dig deep enough to take one more step.
In October 2019, I became half paralyzed, and it was probably the darkest and lowest point of my entire life. I had a very rare type of migraine that has the same symptoms as a stroke and I had to spend months afterwards in all sorts of therapies to regain use of my right side of my body, vision and ability to balance, to speak properly, to remember basic words. I had surgery on my neck and about 400 injections into my cervical spine. There were so many times I thought about giving up, because there’s only so much physical pain you can take. But some part of me wanted to live, some part of me wanted to keep going, some part of me couldn’t let go of the fact that I was an athlete. Athletes don’t just give up, they keep training, they keep working, they keep their eyes on their goals, they just keep taking one more step.
I had to move 3,000 miles away to the complete other side of the country to finally get a proper medical team, a proper diagnosis and treatment plan, and it took so long to get the answers I needed, to fix the damage that was done by careless and medically negligent doctors. It was the sum of many “one more steps”, but after five years, I’m finally in a place where I can do the things I want to do. I can backpack, I can run, I can dance. I can feel like an athlete again.
So, what is my “why” for hiking the PCT? I think, simply, because I can. One step at a time.
If you are enjoying this blog you can subscribe here to get email updates! If you are really enjoying the blog, please buy me a coffee and help me on my PCT journey! ☀️
