September 5
Miles: 15.6
Mile Markers: 2609.7 – 2625.2
Miles to Canada: 30.6
Listening to: Jon and Roy – When You’re Gone
I woke up this morning and got up to get my bear bag, and I could barely walk. My hip hurt so badly. I hobbled over to the tree where my bag was hanging to get it down. Fuck.
It hurts really badly when I stop for a while, but I think it will feel better after some ibuprofen and Tylenol. I think as long as I consistently take it, I can finish the trail and then take my ass to the hospital as soon as I get home.
Sometimes when I trip over a rock, or I step on my leg just a certain way, the pain comes back really badly, and for a while. So I’m trying to step carefully with each step not to irritate it. Walking on loose rocks is even worse. Every step is unstable, and that hurts both my right hip and my left ankle. Where I camped last night. I’m only 43 mi to the border. I’m so close. Nothing is going to stop me at this point.
My ankle and my hip definitely need more imaging and medical care because they’re not okay. A few years ago, I had about five rounds of prolotherapy and platelet-rich plasma injections into my cervical spine ligaments. It was probably about 700 injections into my neck total, and what it did was to help strengthen and heal some of the ligaments. Ehlers-Danlos is a connective tissue disorder where the body just doesn’t produce good connective tissue. A lot of the ligaments in my body are just too loose, and after a pretty bad car accident where I had whiplash, my ligaments were injured, and over time it got to a point where I couldn’t hold up my head without literally holding it in my hands. I had what is called cervical cranial instability (CCI), where C0/C1 was moving too much, and causing all kinds of problems for me. I had severe vision and balance issues, crippling migraines, including hemiplegic migraines which left me paralyzed on the right side of my body. I saw Dr. Squires in Seattle. She was amazing, and she did all of the PRP/prolotherapy rounds where basically they take your blood, put it through a centrifuge and separate out the platelet blood platelets and then they inject a type of sugar and the blood platelets into the ligaments, which causes an immune reaction and a scarring of the ligaments which tightens them and then the blood platelets do something to help heal it. They also injected ozone which also just brings more oxygen into the area. It’s really painful both during the procedure and for a week or two after.
This helped me a ton though. I genuinely thought I was dying prior to doing PRP, and it helped me enough that I could start to make a lot of progress in physical therapy. Some of the other issues went away as well, like the nervous system dysfunction got a little bit better. My level of pain decreased as well. I was beginning to have degeneration in the spine because it was misaligned, and I had several bulging discs made worse by the laxity in my cervical spine. I had severe cervical kyphosis, where the cervical spine loses its curve and actually starts bending backwards in the neck, pulling the brainstem out of the skull and compressing the spinal cord. Anyway, I’m doing much better now.
This is all to say that I hope that maybe I can do this in my ankle as well, and hopefully that will help with some of the instability. I don’t know what’s wrong with my hip though. It sort of feels like a labral tear, which I have in my other hip, but I have no idea. It feels worse than that though. I wish I was already a physical therapist. That would be very convenient right now.
For as many hikers as I saw in Stehekin, I’ve really seen very few people out on the trail today which is weird. Although even with this injury, I’m still hiking at a decent pace. I really have gotten quite fast since I started hiking with the tramily, but I think even before that, I was already a decently fast hiker. I just didn’t know it.
It’s just as well that I’m not seeing people, because seeing people means more goodbyes, and I hate goodbyes. I don’t really know why I’ve always hated them. It always feels horrible. I’d much rather just disappear.
The trail came up out of the forest and up 3000 feet along switchbacks that crossed over a mountain range to a more desert-y valley. There were lots of loose rocks on the side of the mountain. Unfortunately the views were limited due to the smoke, but it would have been really beautiful otherwise. It was a little bit cooler today thankfully, and the smoke created a haze that blocked the sun and made the light look like it was dusk, all day. It was a little disorienting as to the time of day.
I didn’t see a single person until lunch time when I took a side trail down to a spring, and saw a man who had camped close to me last night. He had left an hour earlier than me this morning, and I had caught up to him. I didn’t want to disturb him, so I ate my lunch upstream next to the spring and just hung out there for a while. I really miss the tramily, but I’m enjoying these lower mile days where I can just stop and rest as long as I want and not worry about what time I’m going to make it to camp, and not worry that it will be dark by the time I get there.
I hiked 18 miles yesterday and today I’m doing about 16 which is pretty good considering that my leg is a disaster. As long as I keep a steady stream of ibuprofen and Tylenol, it’s not horrible though.
I do think that having chronic pain out here is actually a strength of mine, not a weakness. I’ve seen numerous people with the same injuries as me get off the trail much sooner. But I’m used to being in pain everyday. Something in my body always hurts on a level that most people would be in agony, but it’s just normal for me. I disassociate from it, compartmentalize it. I don’t think about it. It’s just there, all the time. Sometimes I talk to it though.
My physical therapist gave me a book about pain once and the book suggested that you talk to your pain to actually say thank you. Thank you for letting me know that something’s wrong. I’ll attend to it. Thank you, but you’re safe now.
Sometimes that helps. Sometimes the pain goes away a little bit, for a little while. It always comes back though. I hate when I go to the doctor and they ask how my pain is on a scale of 1 to 10 because for me, my baseline is about a six. That’s a good day.
People who don’t have chronic pain don’t understand what that’s like. They don’t understand how you can function and be in pain, but there is no alternative. Either you function, or you don’t. Either you keep living your life, or you don’t. Either you keep living at all, or you don’t. Those are the only options, and it’s not really much of a choice. So anyway, that’s why I’m still on the trail despite having tendon pain in my arches that has brought people to tears and brought them off the trail 200 miles in. That’s how I’m still here with my ankle that I have to tape and wear an ankle brace in order to walk. That’s how I’m still here with whatever is happening with my hip, that’s how I’m still here with the stomach pain, the headaches, the general pain. That’s how I’m still here.
I guess I’ll say thank you to that pain. I’m still here because of you, my forever companion. You’ve been with me every single step of the way, so thank you.
It’s pretty smokey today unfortunately. I’m missing out on whatever the views are but that’s okay. I really am ready for the trail to be over. I’m walking these miles and I’m enjoying it for what it is. Maybe someday I’ll come back and hike these miles again when it’s clear, but maybe not.
The only other person I saw today was a guy sitting on an exposed switchback. There was a tiny bit of phone service but it really didn’t work. He told me that it was better up on the ridge, but it wasn’t. He had come southbound and told me that there was trail magic at hearts pass which is where I was planning on camping. Tonight he was finishing up some last sections of his thru hike from last year so I told him congratulations and he said I was the first person to tell him that.
Last night I was sorting through my food trying to figure out which meals to eat at lunch versus dinner and I realized a few things about the way I was packing and I just had this thought to myself about what to do differently on the next section. Oh, on the next section, I’ll do this on the next section. I’ll do that and I realized that there is no next section. This is it. This is the last section.
I don’t need to save my plastic bags, or ration anything at this point. There is no next section. I am sad of course. But I’m also very happy for this to be over soon. It’s weird having such strong feelings both ways. Bittersweet.
The day I spent with Happy Feet by the river, we talked about who we had become on the trail. How different we were from the way we used to be, even from the way that we were on the first day of the trail, and I said that I wanted to hold on to this version of myself and she said something like You can’t though. This version of you only lives on the trail.
I’ve been thinking about that for days. That version of me only lives on the trail. This version of me only lives on the trail. When I go back to my normal life, my next life, I’ll have stressors like commuting, traffic, school work, homework, exams, the logistics of life. I won’t be the same. I won’t be spending all day walking, thinking about water, or where to sleep. I’ll think about my schedule, what I have to do that day, my to-do list, paying bills, finding a job. I can try to hold on to me as I am today, but I know parts of her will disappear, and hopefully be replaced by something else that’s positive. I don’t want to go back to trying to manage my anxiety the same way that I used to. I want to hold on to this more carefree version of myself if I can. I hope I can.
Approaching Hart’s Pass is a burn area where a fire went through a few years ago, and hikers weren’t able to actually go to the terminus, which had to have been unbelievably disappointing. But the trail is open now, and I’m walking through it. I’m now only 30 miles to the border, only 30 miles.
As I’ve said before, the actual linear distance between Mexico to Canada is about 1400 miles, and I will have walked over 1,400 miles on this hike. I may have not hiked the entire PCT, but I will have walked from Mexico to Canada and I’m almost there. 30 more miles.
The day I started the trail, I had not yet gotten my student visa approved. I had applied, but I didn’t get approved until around the time I was in the Sierra a few months later, so the concept of walking to Canada meant something a little different to me then than it does now. But I’m walking home in all aspects. I walked to Washington, and now I’m walking to Canada to my new home.
The tramily isn’t too far behind now. They’ve left Stehekin and I told them that I saw Bodybag and that she was going to join us at the terminus and they were super excited. I don’t know if that counts as a successful vortex, but I’ll take it.
When I got to Hart’s pass, saw Frank, body bag, a few people I met in Stehekin, Shade, the fighting German couple, Baraka, a Dutch couple I have leapfrogged the last few towns, and Super Glue. Two trail angels were there, Legend and Ace, and they made us tacos, margaritas, and gave us beers. Some people were coming from the terminus and some were going.
We celebrated the people who were done, we talked about the end of the trail, going home, adjusting to life back at home. But it wasn’t until I was laying in bed that I realized that the trail was really coming to an end, and I wouldn’t see many of these people again. I wouldn’t be out in nature like this every day. I wouldn’t sleep in this tent every night. I wouldn’t drink water from mountain streams every day. I wouldn’t coexist with the many animals, insects, plants, and trees. I wouldn’t spend every day on the singular goal of walking to Canada, because I will have achieved that goal. It will be over.
For the first time, it became real. And it became heartbreaking. I’m not ready for it to be over, no matter how many times I’ve said that recently. Can I keep living on the trail, and just not have to do the hiking part? Can I keep all these people with me forever? Can I save myself just the way I am right now? I don’t want to say goodbye to any of it.
I think the floodgate is open now. My chest hurts, and it feels like my heart is actually breaking.
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