Day 143 & 144: Faith

(Mile 2476 to 2490, Grizzly Peak = 14 miles, Mile 2490 to 2515, Red Pass = 25 miles)

Handstands for Hikers' Haven!  We loved this place.

(The bedroom tonight is on a ridge under a starry sky.  The moon is orange, the breeze is blowing, and the landscape is phenomenal.  Washington is beautiful.  The Sierras with less elevation and more room to breathe.)

A relatively smokeless sunset with a sliver of moon.  We also love Washington.

The letter in my last resupply box was about faith.  The faith it takes to do a trip like this.  I had never thought about it in that way, but today, I had fourteen hours of walking to think about how a journey on the PCT requires faith.

 A blue morning.  Accent due to smoke...

It's a little funny, but the first thing that comes to mind when I think of faith and the PCT is the faith that the PCT exists.  It may sound a little crazy at first, but I liken it to the faith of explorers.  I can imagine Lewis and Clark traveling across the country, never having been there, but having faith that they would eventually reach the Pacific Ocean.  Or our ancestors traveling in wagons from the East to the West, fulfilling their Manifest Destiny.  Even though it has been done, and there are endless maps and photos, when you stand at the Mexican border on the PCT, it is hard to truly believe a trail is going to carry you to Canada.  Along this line, too, is the faith that there will be places to camp and get water along the way. 

So, you must have faith in the land and the trail.  You must also have faith in people.  No one does the trail alone.  Oh, sure, we may travel solo and may even be self-supported, but even the most independent if us relies on others, for emotional support if nothing else.  And most of us count on others for much more.  We have faith in our resupply people, the trail angels, and our hitches.  We depend on the kindness of others to help us when we're in need.  We count on each other.  We count on all of you to cheer us on.  We believe people will support us, and they do.

Handstands for 2500 miles!

A beautiful sunset evening on our way to Red Pass.

In addition to faith in others, we must have faith in ourselves.  This is the faith in our ability to succeed and to make good decisions -- including the one to hike the trail in the first place.  This faith is probably the one put to the greatest test.  There are a million reasons to quit the trail and far fewer to stay on.  A wavering faith in yourself will send you down the reason to quit trail faster than you can decode PCNST.

And then there is the faith in the future.  This is the faith that things will work out after trail and while we are gone.  Without this, we could not leave our lives for five months.  When I first told my manager I was planning to hike the PCT, I told him I would be submitting a leave of absence request.  I also told him that I would be going ahead with my plans even if my request was denied.  Either way, we would need to find a replacement.  Many people thought this was crazy, the willingness to leave a fantastic state job.  I by no means wanted to.  But I knew I had to hike the trail, and I trusted that everything would work out somehow even if the job didn't.  Fortunately, I will not be traveling this path.

It was an amazing evening hike!

Grasshopper love.

All of this, the faith it takes to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, is really the same kind of faith it takes to follow any dream.  Pursuing our dreams requires nearly complete faith.  Falter and the dream begins to, too.  It is all too easy to fall off the path!

Maddog and a pack goat.  A father/son hunting party were using them to pack in gear.  Great guys.