Day 157: A Fire in Between Us and Canada

September 6

Miles: 15.9

Mile Markers: 2625.2 – 2641.1

Miles to Canada: 14.7

Heat Acclimation: 34%

I actually slept pretty well last night considering that I had set up my tent right next to the picnic table where people stayed up until late in the night drinking, laughing, and celebrating. I just put my earphones in and listened to music and fell asleep.

Today I’m hiking about 16 miles, and then the day after that is only about 8 miles to a little lake which is where I’ll meet up with the trail family and will slack pack to the end of the trail, and then make the 30 mile hike back to Hart’s Pass.

My hip felt really bad this morning. I could barely walk again, and I took ibuprofen as soon as I woke up. There’s something seriously wrong with my hip. But I’m too close to Canada to quit. I’ll deal with that later. It still doesn’t feel real that the trail’s over almost over. I’m really sad, but I’m also happy that it’s ending. I can’t keep doing this to my body. As always, bittersweet.

I don’t really want to go back to the human world – back to living in a society where there’s this pressure to buy things that you don’t need, to always be working, always be productive, always caring about money, battling bureaucracy, paying bills, scurrying around. I don’t like that. I don’t want that. I want to stay here in the forest where I collect water when I’m thirsty, and sit down on a rock when I’m tired, and look at the stars at night, and jump in the rivers when it’s hot, and lay in the sun to dry off, smelling the sweet pine trees, listening to the wind through the leaves. That’s all I want.

I want to hold onto the magic of the trail as long as I possibly can. The people who pop up when you least expect them. The smiles, the knowing nods from other hikers in town. The laughing, the stories, the feeling of truly connecting. The people. It really was the people. The people were always the magic of the trail.

The first night I stayed in my tent, I thought about how I wasn’t like these people at all. I was different. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t belong. But I do. I am exactly like these people. I’m a thru hiker. I’m a real backpacker.

I’m only hiking 15 miles today so I’ve been going at a pretty leisurely pace. A lot of people have been coming southbound on their way back from the terminus, and I’ve said congratulations to all of them, and there’s been a mixture of happiness, sadness, tears, excitement. Each person seems to be in a completely different mental state.

Maybe an hour or two after I started hiking, Bodybag came up behind me and we took a break together. We both said how funny it felt to be able to just rest whenever we wanted since we were only hiking 15 miles. I took out a bag of candy and Bodybag kept eyeing it, so I offered her some. She would gingerly take one single sour patch kid, but then I kept seeing her looking at the bag of candy, so I kept offering her more candy, but each time, she would only take one piece, which was kind of funny. I have a whole other bag I told her, so she started taking more.

Bodybag got the name Bodybag, because she had a bivy tent that collapsed one night and she was too tired to set it up again so she just slept under the collapsed tent. There’s a photo where it looks like a legit bodybag, and you kind of need to see the photo to truly appreciate it.

At one point, I stopped to get some water, and a guy I had never seen before came up behind me. We chatted for a bit and I kept hiking. Shortly after that, I stopped to have lunch, and another hiker, Ibex was at the tentsite I stopped at. I asked if I could join, and then the guy from the river also came and stopped and we all had lunch together. We talked about what life would be like after the trail. It hadn’t really hit any of us yet. But it was almost over.

Just after lunch, I saw Marmot again coming southbound. It was so nice to see them again because that goodbye was probably one of the saddest goodbyes I’ve ever said on the whole trail, even though I just met them. It was the first goodbye that felt like a real goodbye on the trail. I tried to vortex them at my house with the rest of the trail family and listed out all the exceptional amenities at my house – flushing toilets, wifi, laundry, charging, a refrigerator, a dog. We decided not to say goodbye a second time. Just see you later. We’ll see each other at the tramily reunions anyway.

That means that Polka Dot and Mr. Emoji shouldn’t be too far behind so I’ll actually get to see them again too. And Happy Feet is up ahead. I felt some of the emptiness I had been feeling disappear with that realization.

It feels so easy to meet people on the trail. I didn’t feel like this in the beginning. I felt like I was so different, like I didn’t belong, like I wasn’t like these people, but now it feels effortless to meet new people to make new friends out here, and just as sad to say goodbye, even to people I barely know, to people I just met. I feel a connection to them. A kindred spirit.

I keep thinking about who I was when I started the trail, and how different I am now, and I think in some ways, I probably don’t even know just how different I am yet, but off the top of my head, I think I’m a lot more open and trusting, but also not willing to put up with people’s shit anymore. I don’t need to be liked, or even loved, especially if it’s not someone who’s treating me well. I will speak up for myself, and if they hate me for it, I don’t care.

I keep thinking about post trail life – what I want to take with me. I actually like only wearing one outfit each day, having all of my things in my backpack, not buying things I don’t need. When I was in Stehekin, there were a lot of people on vacation getting on the ferry and they had bags and bags and bags of luggage for a weekend trip or a week long trip, and it just seemed outrageous how much stuff they had. I don’t want that anymore in my life. I want to get rid of all my stuff. My plan is to rent out my house, furnished, but I want to get rid of a lot of my clothes. A lot of the little knick-knacks in my house. Just stuff that I don’t need.

I keep wondering if I even want to get an apartment in Victoria or just live in an Airbnb, especially for the first semester. If I don’t know if I’m going to be there in the summer, so should I just keep my life simple and not have to buy furniture? I wouldn’t have to buy anything. I’m not sure. Maybe I could get an Airbnb just for the first semester and then if I did decide to stay over the summer I could get an apartment then.

I’ve been making a mental list of all the stuff I would want to bring with me to Victoria, and the list is pretty small. My dog, my laptop, my passport, some clothes, some sports gear. But what else do I need? Nothing really.

I just passed a Dutch guy I met in Stehekin who had been hiking with Mr. Emoji, and even though I didn’t really talk to him that much in Stehekin, I stopped to congratulate him on the trail and we just had a really short but deep conversation about what the trail had meant to us and the experience of it, and how you could have a conversation like this with someone you barely knew out here, even though that would be unusual out in the human world. We said we’d miss talking to each other like this, truly connecting with other people.

The further I’ve hiked today, the more real it started to feel that the trail’s over, especially after seeing all these people coming back from the terminus. They’re done with the trail, and I will soon be done with the trail. The day after tomorrow, I’ll be one of those Southbound hikers coming back from the terminus having people congratulate me for finishing this trail. I’ll probably be really happy and really sad. I don’t know. It’s such a mix of emotions.

About a mile before getting to camp, I saw Polka Dot and Mr. Emoji coming down the hill. I was so excited to see them again because I was sure I’d never see them again. We said goodbye again. They walked off and I watched them go, and I heard Mr Emoji lamenting to Polka Dot, So many goodbyes!

I kept hiking up the hill. and saw Bodybag coming back down without a pack. I thought maybe she was coming back to get some water from the stream, but she said she came back for me to make sure I was ok and offered to take my pack. That was so sweet, but I was ok, it was only half a mile more.

I set up my tent before it started raining, and I was getting cozy in my tent after it started to drizzle when some other hikers were talking about a fire nearby. There was lightning and thunder and a tree had just been struck about a half mile away from us. A bunch of them walked over to the ridge to take a look. We could see smoke billowing out of some trees. One of the hikers reported it to Garmin.

We kept an eye on it for about a half an hour, and then the group of hikers that had reported it decided to pack up and leave. The fire was just below a ridge where the trail went over and at first I thought they meant that the trail was behind us but when they said it was actually in front of us in between us and Canada I started getting nervous. I want to finish the trail. I don’t want to end it here.

I hobbled over to the ridge to look at it myself a few times, but the wind was blowing away from us and there weren’t actually trees connecting up to the top of the ridge where the trail was, or to where we were camped. It actually seemed to be getting smaller, and it was raining, and I was tired and I was injured and I made a decision that I didn’t think it was worth leaving camp for, and Bodybag agreed.

A section hiker named Holy Moses had binoculars and he looked at the fire and he thought that the smoke was getting smaller as well. So we all stayed the night at the campground, but the other hikers packed up and kept moving. I’m probably one of the most safety minded people on trail, and I didn’t think it was worrisome.

I guess as long as we get up early and get past the fire we should be okay. I’m too tired. I’m going to bed.

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