Carrot Quinn - Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

I'm on a ridgetop in the Mojave desert, and I'm trapped in a windstorm. The highway, my portal out of this nightmare, is in just seventeen miles, and I'm trying to hike, but the wind will not let me. I take a step and BAM BAM BAM! The wind hits me like a two-by-four, knocking me to my knees. I plant my legs a certain way and the wind changes direction, knocking me to the ground again. On either side of the trail the ridges fall away, into nothing. The wind, if it wanted, could blow me right off this mountain. The wind smacks my pack straps against my face, pushes my nostrils flat. The wind throws sand and grit at me. It's difficult to breathe. What are these, sixty, seventy mile per hour winds? I have never experienced anything like this in my life. The wind is a furious monster, bent on destroying every living thing. The wind has gone insane.

The trail climbs higher and the wind grows stronger. I stumble forward, one foot at a time. I feel angry at the trail, at myself, at the universe, at everything. I'm dehydrated and hungry, but there's nowhere to stop and rest. The only thing to do is keep moving.

Time disappears, and it is just me and the mountain, and the wind. I have always been in this windstorm, I think, as I fight my way forward. And I will always be in this windstorm. Up ahead, on a ridge, is a single tree. Someday, I think, I am going to be reincarnated as that tree. As punishment for every choice I've ever made.

Or as a reward.

Eight months earlier

I think I'm addicted to the internet. I've noticed a pattern in my life- I get up, look at the internet, make breakfast, look at the internet, work, eat, look at the internet, maybe hang out with friends ( maybe), look at the internet, go to sleep. I'm only really doing one or two non-internet things a day, working and eating, and the rest of my time, my finite time here on this great green earth, is spent looking at the internet. Even the sleep part of my day is kind of an exaggeration. My sleep is terrible. I lie down and I'm awake for a long time, listening to the sounds outside the window of my little trailer, the cats and drunken bicyclists making their way down this dead-end street. And is the earth green, anyway? I don't know. The earth outside my window is made of asphalt and noise and people walking around, not looking at each other. Who are these people? Why are they here? Why am I here? I wake up too early and get on the internet. There's a static in my brain.

***

We meet at the Cuban restaurant on Broadway. I ride my bike there in the rain and find her in the crowded foyer. She is tall and more beautiful than her photos online- almost impossibly beautiful, with eyes like literal gemstones and pinup model legs. Her name is Elle and she is driving from Austin, Texas, where she works as a dancer, to Washington, where she spends the summers fighting wildfires. She messaged me on okcupid- I'm passing through Portland on my way north, she said. You're cute.

We order beef tongue, plantains, coconut cake. I tell her about my life in Portland, feeling self-conscious and suddenly poor. After dinner she puts my bike in the bed of her massive pickup truck and drives me home in the rain, to the twenty-foot trailer in my friend's driveway where I am living.

I come to Portland often, she says. Maybe I'll see you again?

***

The party is chaotic, everything too loud beneath the bright overhead lights. There are dogs underfoot, the counter is clustered with sticky mason jars. The table has half-eaten loaves of bread and broken bars of chocolate. I'm drinking sparkly water with half a lime crushed into it and leaning against the wall, my sobriety almost painful. I am always sober. It's my lot in life. I don't know why, I can't explain it. At least not in any way that makes sense to other people. Alcohol makes me feel sick. Or, I don't like to be intoxicated. I can feel my clothing pressing into me- the collar of my shirt, the waistband of my pants. I feel as though I'm being smothered. The people standing next to me, who I know, who I've known for years, are passing a phone back and forth, watching a video or looking at a photo, smiling broadly, lipstick bright. I try to smile too, but I can't hear what they're saying.

Outside on the back porch Seamus is chain smoking and talking loudly about grad school, making declarative statements and flicking his ashes in the yard. Others are smoking too, the hoods of their sweatshirts up over their heads, jewelry glinting in the light from the kitchen window. I sit on the back step and look at the old-growth cedar that takes up most of the yard. There once was a giant forest here, the tree seems to be saying, and then they cut it all down. Now there's just a street full of buildings. And inside these buildings, what? Tea kettles, soup pots, drawers full of silverware. Tupperware, coffee mugs, metal ladles. Rubber spatulas and mixing bowls and pasta strainers. I close my eyes and try to catalog all of it.

***

In the morning, I wake to the sound of rain on the aluminum siding of the trailer and pull back the curtains to let in the gloaming. Outside all is gray save for the wet green of the grass and the rhododendrons. Hunger stirs me, and I fire up the avocado-green propane stove in my little kitchenette, cracking two eggs into a cast-iron skillet popping with bacon grease. I eat the eggs with leftover brown rice while looking at my phone. Something makes me laugh, but then the food is gone and I set the phone down and there is no feeling, just a disorienting emptiness. I can't remember what I was thinking about earlier. It's eleven o'clock and I put on my beaten sneakers and rain jacket and step down out of the rocking trailer, shutting the door carefully behind me. The rain is falling hard and I look up at the tarps that cover the roof of the trailer. No leaks, I think. No leaks .

Murphy is a big mutt with a thick pile of fur and he wags his whole body when he sees me, smacking up against my legs. We walk west through the quiet neighborhood streets, past the small school and the house with the classical music that's always playing, then north and east again, making a big loop. He pulls on the leash, stops periodically to take massive dumps, but I don't mind. Back at his house I pocket the pile of dollars on the kitchen counter and then walk around, looking at the things on the walls. Murphy's parents just moved here from San Francisco, a middle school teacher and a designer for Nike. Their house is a remodeled craftsman, huge steel fixtures in the kitchen and uncomfortably chic furniture in the living room. On the walls are framed artworks that I don't understand: crude drawings of peoples' faces and cartoon bears, masks and colorful garlands. A low table has a record player and some ceramic figurines. Back in the kitchen I open the cabinets, letting out the smells of the different foods there- tea, stale pepper, confectioner's sugar. I find a tub of salted caramel gelato in the freezer and eat a few bites, being careful to smooth the gelato with my spoon afterward so the intrusion is not obvious. Then I just stand, looking at the postcards on the fridge, feeling the sugar enter my bloodstream. The house is quiet save for the ticking of a cuckoo clock.