Pilgrim

I think it was the evening of my birthday, while Mom and Paul and I were at dinner, that I first heard my mom say, "When you go hiking." Not if, but when. Until then, the whole concept of walking the PCT for the summer felt like a thought exercise that took place almost exclusively inside my head, not too dissimilar from those thought exercises in which I produce a brilliant creative work and live in a castle by the sea filled with rescued cats. Something to dream about. All of a sudden, there it was: when you go hiking. She said it, not me. You're going.

And so far, that seems to be the trend. I broached the idea, and now everyone around me is more convinced than I am that this summer I am going to walk 2650 miles, from Mexico to Canada, along the rocky spine of the western United States. I guess that after you've announced to your friends and family that you're going to Antarctica, nothing surprises them.

The truth is, I'm terrified.

But the more people I tell, the more real it becomes, and the less monumentally terrifying those 2650 miles appear. It's like casting a spell, the reality reinforced with every repetition. So far, the reaction to this mad scheme both horrifies and heartens me: hardly an eyebrow raised. Of course you are. Once I'd decided to quit my job on the bread line, I spent a looot of time in internal monologue, reasoning to myself that this year is my opportunity to hike---my Scout is dead, my lease will be through, my job has no hold on me, I am young and healthy and untethered---and having worked up all of these good arguments nobody wants to hear them! They're just going along with it! Does nobody realize that I am OUT OF MY FLIPPING MIND?

Or maybe you've already concluded, as I have, that I must do something--so why not this? Mom and Dad--acknowledging the letter, if not the spirit, of my thanks-giving plea--delivered a staggering token of their faith and support to my bank account for Christmas, as if to say, "Whatever you do, do it RIGHT."

Bearing that in mind, and because April looks a lot closer from this side of New Year, lately I've devoted a lot of time to reading handbooks, gear reviews, trail journals, gear reviews, planners, gear reviews, tutorials, and more gear reviews. Incredibly, hikers obsess more over their tools than cooks--one must whittle an entire lifestyle into a package that can be carried across three states on foot, and this provokes a lot of conviction, with concomitant heated debate. It's overwhelming to read, to listen to. But in the process of plodding through this, gradually a kind of order emerges from the chorus of opinions. A kind of plan.

I'm still trying to formulate a explanation for why I want to do this, as opposed to anything else---producing a brilliant creative work and living in a castle by the sea filled with rescued cats, for instance.

I'm not really sure. Nobody can acquire a degree at a liberal arts college without brushing against the subject of pilgrimage: in literature, religion, art, history, it's everywhere. Why people go, where they go, what stories they tell, what symbols they bear. As a person always on the move, the topic interested me.

When I was in Spain, my class visited a number of monasteries and cathedrals in Burgos and Leon that were decorated with scallop shells. It's a recurring icon across northern Spain. Our guides told us about the Camino de Santiago, the wayfarers that pursued it, and the seashells that they carried. The shell served countless metaphorical functions in art and stories, but above all it marked one as a pilgrim (as opposed to a vagrant), and when affixed to a house or other edifice it meant that one could find help and hospitality within. Of course there's a whole commercial enterprise that's built up around the Camino as well. Plenty of tourist traps. But the salient point was people still do this. They still go on pilgrimage. Even godless heathens like myself. Someday I would love to walk that road, from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela.

As much I'd like to identify as an pilgrim, however, some important distinctions get in the way. Pilgrims embark on their journeys with a specific destination in mind: Mecca, Jerusalem, Lhasa, Canterbury, the Ganges. These sites have existed for centuries and were built on geography and sets of beliefs that have nothing to do with me. Furthermore, once they've reached their destination and found their redemption (or not), pilgrims go home again. I am, by comparison, a godless drifter---or perhaps irrevocably American.  This country pays homage to the spirit of what it holds sacred with a very different set of pilgrimages: the Appalachian, the Continental Divide, and the Pacific Crest Trails. The trail itself is the destination.

The first I heard of any of them was when I was working at Two Fat Cats in Maine. A man came into the shop to buy a large cake, which he intended to deliver it to his daughter and her friends, who were thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, and he wanted me to write across the top, "Katahdin or Bust!" Intrigued, I asked him about Katahdin, about them, about their quest. After he'd left, I commented to my friend Sue, the principal cake decorator in the shop, that the Appalachian Trail sounded freaking awesome. Sue said she'd heard a lot about it, living on the east coast, and had always wanted to try it someday. We made a pact that we would go together---someday.

That was probably in August 2008---by the end of that month I'd left Maine and moved on to new adventures. Years later I picked up Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and rekindled the fire---then went to Antarctica, where I sat through a fellow galley-rat's presentation on the AT's heretofore-unknown-to-me western sister, the PCT. It sounded EVEN BETTER. Wilder. Drier. A pilgrimage from Mexico to Canada. States I had once lived in, names that sounded vaguely familiar, and a landscape I had never experienced--something about it was meaningful. I let the seed of that idea take a long time to germinate. And here's a crazy thought: all I have to do is fly from here to San Diego and walk back again. Mom and Dad can pick me up in Canada.

I am planning to go on a long and difficult walk for five months because...it just seems like the thing to do. Because...it's terrifying...which is another word for wildly exciting.