On September 12th, 2010, Smokey and I woke up to another rainy Washington day. As we went through our morning routine we kept saying, "Well, this is the last time we'll pack up our tent on the PCT... This is the last time we're going to eat breakfast on the PCT... This is the last time we'll wake up and hike together on the PCT." It was a feeling of incredulous disbelief. Could it really all be coming to an end? After living as we had, in a routine of hiking and living in the wilderness, it didn't really felt like the border was waiting at the end of the days walk. Winding through the final ridgelines with the rain and wet fog closed in all around us, we kept looking around every corner for some sign of the end only to find more trail and more rain.
Hiking out along a shoulder ridge we heard the loud guttural laughter that only comes from an open and old Southern soul. Out of the mist the figures of three hikers appeared, sitting taking a break in the cold. Two Georgian PCTers who had hiked the trail in the 70's were there with their nephew, hiking the last section to the border. They were out reliving their old trail memories and were happy to swap stories with us about our journey on the trail. The fondness that they still felt for their hike was beautiful to see, that they still treasured all the precious memories they'd made. They were impressed with how hard we'd been hiking and later even woke us up by knocking on our tents and calling out, "hey badasses!" The respect was mutual. There are only a handful of people in this world that can truly understand what we'd gone through to make it here, to the last day, and those are the people who have gone through it themselves.
As we got ready to move on, saying our goodbyes, the loudest and most jovial of the two--appropriately named Happy--asked me, "Are you going to cry before or after you get there?" To be honest, it hadn't even crossed my mind that I might cry. We'd spent so long trying to tough out every aspect of life in the woods that crying seemed like a rather foreign emotion. He told us his story: "I cried when I got there. I was walking in and all of a sudden the enormity of everything I'd done hit me all at once and I just broke down in tears right there at the end." We turned to go and what he said seemed to open the gates, all the things that I'd been pushing to the periphery of my mind in order to stay focused on hiking came rushing in. As we hiked the last few miles, waves of overwhelming emotion kept hitting me every time I looked up to scan the trees for the border swath. When you tell people that you have hiked 2650 miles, the number seems unbelievable to them. But that's because they're think about the distance all at once. While you're actually out there doing it, you take it one day at a time. You wake up, you hike your miles, you go to bed, and wake up ready to do it again. Twenty, 25, 30 miles at a time, you slowly chip away at the miles, never really paying attention to how little a 30 mile day is in comparison to the whole. Every day you hike as hard as you can and eventually you get to a point where you are prepared mentally and physically to just keep doing that. Whether you were hiking 2000 miles or 10,000 it wouldn't matter. Each day's miles would seem just as possible as the next. When, after 4 and a half months of hiking, you are standing there looking at the end, that's when you realize that all of those days have added up to this--you are steps away from finishing the PCT. When we finally came around the last corner with the border stretched across the valley below us, it hit me all at once. We did it!
Holding back the tears at that point wasn't even a possibility. It was a feeling of accomplishment unmatched by anything I have ever experienced, coupled with the knowledge that it's all over, that this beautiful and simple life in the wilderness was ending. It was a moment of such bittersweet triumph to know that this day we'd been working for all this time was finally here, but a part of you wished it wasn't. So, Smokey and I stood there for a few hours in the rain, soaked to the bone, celebrating, saying our goodbyes to the trail and the life we'd come to love. We both knew that this was a time in our life that we were at our strongest and when we left it we'd leave a lot of that behind. When it was time to go, we turned around and walked away from the trail like kings exiled from our beloved kingdom.
All my life I have searched for a real and meaningful connection to this world. In school, in the cities, on the rails, in the bars, I have constantly sought something that would bridge the gap I felt existed between my soul and my life in the cynical world of mankind. To know the wilderness as a word, to build it cerebrally in your head like a castle in the clouds, this is as close as most people ever get to the idea. Living as we did, making our home in the wilds, you begin to see and feel the wilderness come alive. I hiked to the edge of our world, to the farthest reaches of man's law, and then beyond into the dominion of something else.The PCT provides the opportunity to see these forces in action, shaping the physical world into a neverending source of beauty, tragedy, life and death. All the while, the unseen, the unwritten, the unrevealed lingers in the back of your mind exposing the poetry and magic which underlies it all, showing you that the mystery is there but never giving it away. With this understanding, there is nothing left to do but to humbly lay yourself out before it and know that you are blessed simply to be a part of it. The idea that man can or will ever control it fades from a sense of destiny to a cruel joke.
The mindset of long-distance hiking plays a huge role in forming this intimate bond with the wilderness. It begins as a matter of necessity. If you are hiking 20-30 miles a day it is only practical to start cutting as much weight out of your pack as possible. It is a long process of evaluating what you consider to be essential gear and what your level of comfort will actually allow you to endure. The pack you started with, overloaded with the excesses of our worldly lives, dwindles away item by item until you find yourself 100's of miles away from civilization with nothing in your pack but a sleeping bag, tent, and a few days of food. Everything you thought you couldn't live without has been sent home, given away, or scrapped and your changing mentality has allowed you to feel comfortable without all of these things. We were hiking 150-200 miles out of packs that were hardly bigger than a school bookbag. We'd constantly encounter hikers who were doing 20-50 miles with packs that were as heavy as 60 lbs--they would stop and marvel at how we were able to survive with what we had. One group of hikers we met two days from the end of the trail actually called us out, telling us that we were naive and unprepared and that we weren't likely to last through the night. They were each carrying extremely heavy packs, 4 gallon jugs of water between the two of them. Smokey and I were each only carrying an empty Gatorade bottle. They were almost angry about this. "What the hell are you guys doing out here?" The answer is, we live out here. There's a reason we're not carrying water: we're in Northern Washington and we're crossing 30 streams a day. We drink the water where we find it instead of hauling gallons of it down the trail because we're afraid that we might get thirsty. Even if we do run out of water, we both know with complete confidence that we could easily hike 20 to 30 miles without a drop and if you can't find water in that time, you have no understanding of the woods. The truth is that people enjoy the wilderness, but they fear it. They go there for a vacation from their busy lives, guarding themselves against it with all their expensive and unnecessary gear. On the trial, we learned to embrace it. We went into the wilderness and made it our home. When someone on a weekend hike tells you that you can't survive without some piece of gear, and you respond, "Well, I just hiked 2000 miles without it and I could do another 2000 more" it clearly comes down to how confident you are in your abilities, whether you feel the need to cling to things or are able to let them go. So, as we went along, stripping down our gear until our packs were around 20lbs and we could move freely and easily through the woods, there was a direct correlation to our relationship with the wilds and each article we left behind. The more you could embrace discomfort, deal with it and over come it, the more the wilderness was revealed. You can't hide behind your gear when you don't have it, so you up the ante on yourself and put the burden on the strength of your own soul to endure.
So that's how we took on the challenge of this trail, intimately and personally. We depended on our own strength to keep pushing, to keep hiking hard and by the time we reached the end living in the woods had become so natural that it was hard to even picture going back home to all the plush comforts of daily life in our society. It all seemed so excessive. The miles, the landscapes, the adventure, these are obviously all things to hold dear but the most valuable experience of the trail was the opportunity to know the wilderness and to know yourself without all the interference of the senseless hustle and bustle of our times. The simple existence of man in the wilderness where the hardships make you stronger, the discomfort makes you appreciate every simple beauty in life, and the opportunity to just BE is an incomprehensible gift.
In conclusion of this whole experience I'd like to thank the trail for everything it has given me, a debt I can never repay. To all my friends and family who followed along and stayed interested while I was so far away, your support means everything. To everyone that donated and helped to make the fundraiser for the Wildland Firefighter Foundation a success, thank you, your faith in me and in this cause is truly appreciated. To everyone I met on the trail, every one of you was an inspiration and made this trip so much more valuable by being a part of it. To my main man Smokey the Beard, couldn't think of a better person to have shared this with. We will share this bond for the rest of our lives--we'll be 60 years old, drinking beers and still retelling the same old stories about this hike. Lost and Found, I love you buddy and was so stoked for you to be out there with us.
Be Goodness,
Clay 'Woodward' Jacobson
