Where it begins?

Canterbury 25-Jan-2022

It’s that time again, just a couple of months left before my PCT journey will hopefully begin. Will I complete the trail? Or perhaps I will get injured a week into the hike and will have to bail or will I get mauled by a bear in the mountains :) Every story has it’s beginning but we rarely know the end, and that’s the beauty of it. I’m trying to lean into it and embrace the multitude of outcomes that might happen once I put my feet on the path of the Pacific Crest Trail. Getting out of the comfort zone became something I came to appreciate more over the years, it’s like an unexpected enjoyment of coffee flavour as an adult, when you thought of it as a disgusting drink as a child.

Speaking of children, aren't we more keen (and reckless) to take risks when we are young, often even without realising it? The sheer joy of doing something exciting takes over and we just have fun, rather than ponder on what can go wrong, and what’s the pros and cons of doing it. So part of this whole hiking exercise for me is to come closer to that ‘childish’ mentality. As George Bernard Shaw once said: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing”. There’s never a good time to do things like this, same way as there’s never a good time to die, but then again Kai Kairós and the circle closes.

In my head I’ve been standing at the PCT’s Southern Terminus on the Mexican border for the past 3 years. Back then I had all the permits and visas sorted, flights booked, most of the gear ready and most importantly I was in good physical and mental shape. It was 2019 and we all know what happened next. Today, even though the whole process is on the way and most of the essential things are sorted, I don’t feel as confident about it as I did back then. Maybe it’s due to the rite of passage through the lockdowns and isolations, something that can be built up again, I hope it is.

Then again with all the mental, physical and bureaucratic preparations, I’m already in a way walking the PCT.

I want to schedule hiking South Downs Way somewhere towards the end of March, to do a proper check on all the gear and my bodily abilities. Hike itself is meant to be a prettier cousin of my local North Downs Way I section hiked (and got injured along the way, which is another fun story that taught me a lot) this and last year. SDW is considered one of the better hikes in the UK. I will try to test my blogging skills during the walk to get an indication of how and when is the best time for me to gather thoughts, as so far I’ve been quickly abandoning any notions of writing things down, which I came to regret. Having evidence of what was going on in my head while being ‘out there’ becomes more of a priority for me, having a record I could come back to and ponder in the future would be great, especially from the time on PCT.

One thing I need to learn for sure is to let go of over organising my own thoughts in writing, and leaving them in a state of readable mess. As that used to stop me from writing and enjoying the experience of the hike at the same time in the past. I would dwell too long on what and why I was writing something, and then would come to a realisation that I’m wasting my time and should spend it on well.. hiking :) Finding this balance seems to be an issue for me, and hopefully I can work on it for the next couple of months.

Here's a cool underground style PCT map I found on reddit, it has all the major resupply points along the way, it can come in quite handy.