The John Muir Trail

Typically, when I go out about trying to unpack an adventure, I try to find pieces that were unique, that stand out. The Instagram moments of the trip that will awake a sense of awe and be relatable enough that the reader, that’s you, can relate to the experience without being there to feel, see, sense and be absorbed by that moment.

So how do I describe something that was so unique that each moment was amazing? How do I convey the overwhelming sense that this isn’t going to end and then what it’s like to take those last steps that get me back to mechanized travel and signify the check in the box of something we’ve dreamt about for years? And how do you describe something that most people haven’t and probably won’t experience in their lives?

I guess you start with the numbers.

14 days. 224 miles (according to Garmin). 39 ProBars.

No hot water. No booze. No steroids. No internet.

14 days.

Blown Away

And then you move on to the epiphanies.

Day 6. We’ve just finished climbing and have popped up above treeline. The trail stretches in front of me like perfectly manicured singletrack. As in, some golf courses could learn a few things about maintenance from this singlegtrack, it’s really that perfect. The line flows out in front of me drawing my gaze through the grassy valley I’m walking through leading me toward a giant granite spire and bordering a glacial lake. A scene that has unfolded before me every single day on this trip.

Day 6 was nothing out of the ordinary for the John Muir Trail. The reason I took note of this instance was that I recognized that we had been waddling through the wilderness for 6 days through countless scenes and vistas that would rip your breath away and I was blown away. And it wasn’t just that Day 6 blew me away, so did every day leading up to and following Day 6.

Most importantly, while recognizing that I had just experienced six full days of being in awe, the next eight absolutely lived up to the benchmark.

I was figuratively blown away for 14 days straight. Let that sink in.

Walking

We evolved to do this, to walk.

We haven’t had enough time nor the outside pressures to continue to evolve to our current set of environmental constraints. We should not be sitting behind a god damn desk for hours at a time only to jump in a car where no physical activity is needed to get from one place to another just to arrive back at home where we sit and watch tv for hours at a time.

Nah, we are walkers. Upright. Bipedal. Some of us, slightly stiff with a limp, but walkers.

Despite our modern obsession with doing the absolute least possible, we evolved to move on two feet, for long distances, essentially all the time. No where in our past would it suggest that sitting on a couch, then at a desk, then in a car, just to return to the couch, is a good idea. And yet, that’s what we do.

At some point hundreds of thousands of years ago, some primate stood up and it’s been a downhill trip ever since. Until fairly recently, it was our only way to get around. And now we call walking alternative transportation.

Nah, it is our mode of transport, everything else is an alternative.

Stoked to be here

There are three giddy, early twenties female hikers coming down the trail at me. They were only carrying a little bit of water and maybe some jackets. They were going downhill and had already summitted Mount Whitney, hence they exuded enthusiasm. They had done the thing and were headed back to Guitar Lake in awe of their accomplishment.

We were headed up. Unlike them, we were not camped at Guitar Lake and our route would take us to the summit and down the other side meaning we had our gear on our backs. The same gear we had been hauling for 13 days. The air was thin, we were somewhere between 12 and 13,000 feet. Based on the look they gave me which was somewhere between pity and subtle encouragement that it will be worth it, I could tell that I did not look like I was rockin’ it out.

As they approached, the typical niceties of passing hikers commenced. “Hey, how’s it going?” I asked. Their response was something that was appropriate. Again, the air was thin so I remember the looks on their faces more than the words they said, but it was something along the lines of, “It’s worth it, just keep going.”

After which they reciprocated, “How are you doing?”

I responded with what had become my mantra several days prior, “Just stoked to be here.”

One of them giggled and responded, “Totally.”

The interaction ended. They continued their journey down and I up.

Stoked to be here. It wasn’t just my mantra, it was the truth. I may have looked like I was struggling, it was physically difficult, but I was delighted to be at that place, in that moment reveling in the journey and that I was able to do it.

One experiences a lot of different things when stuck in the wilderness for 14 days carrying everything that you will need (which isn’t much, you don’t need that, trust me). There is pain. There is awe and there is a whole spectrum of emotions between. The experience is big and it is made richer by that spectrum. If you can’t enjoy every part of it, you are missing out on what the entirety of that experience is.

Ending

“She said we should write more stories about the times we didn’t summit.” said some random hiker coming back down Whitney Portal in the dark sometime before sunrise waking me up and starting our last day on the JMT.

Day 13 was a crazy long day. All sorts of vertical up and down making it to the summit, accidentally passing our planned campsite and then just trucking to try and find some place to camp. This left us camped just off the trail and pretty damn close to the end. We had no reason to hurry.

The morning started early. Day hikers hoping to catch the sunrise from the summit began passing our camp sometime around 2 am. Their conversations would jolt me from sleep and made me giggle more than once as I caught a snippet of their lives and imagined these people that were nothing more than a light and some words in the dark.

Sometime around 5, our typical hour of rising, our camp began to stir. We were perched on granite looking down into the valley. The sun had turned the horizon over the White Mountains orange and began its journey to peaking out on us as we sat above 10,000 feet. We readied our coffee and found ourselves, camera in hands, sitting on Mama Bear’s Z-lite watching the rays reaching toward us.

The end of any trip is bitter sweet. A couple days earlier, I began to have a nagging feeling that as the end neared, I would begin to miss things failing to enjoy the moments of suffering and awe because I knew the end was so close and that end became a desire that was stuck in my psyche.

Up to that point, the terminus of our hike was so far out that being in the moment, stoked to be in that moment was easy. I was living out a dream, finishing seemed so far away.

And then it wasn’t.

Our last morning was glorious. The sunrise was on point to celebrate our finish. We took our time enjoying the coffee, the company and the crack of dawn. Once we were well caffeinated, we begun breaking down camp for the last time. I took my time. I enjoyed pulling the stakes from the ground rolling up the tent and placing my gear in my pack like I had for the past two weeks.

The Knockers headed out. KB and I spent a few more minutes finishing up and taking in the view. We began our hike with zero urgency. As we dropped, I realized that the nagging thought that I was going to miss something was gone. I was in the moment feeling privileged to be finishing the final miles of the JMT and to be able to enjoy them without the need to rush to the car.

The closer we got to the bottom, the slower I went. Each footstep dragged me closer to the end. I was ok with the trip coming to a close, but I still wanted to enjoy each placement, each view, the fresh air, the interactions with other hikers all the way to the end.

As we stepped off the dirt trail and onto the brick signaling our return to “civilization,” I couldn’t help but start laughing. There was a young couple posing, doing a bunch of things I would characterize as weird while one of them shot video. This ended with the girl almost falling over and then trying the pose over and over again.

It was a perfect ending, as I enjoyed every second of it.

P. L. and R.