Okay! Let’s pull this rip cord and see what flies out!

It’s hard to explain why I, a 37-year-old adult with a house, pets, plants, a job and millennial dread, would chose to take a train clear across the country just to wear my house on my back and walk 2,600 miles from Canada to Mexico. I love where I live, I love my friends and family, I love my warm shower and my fluffy blanket, and my ability to stare into the middle distance for 10-15 minutes at a time while the bridge and chorus of Rock Me Amadeus plays on a relentless loop in the stereo of my prefrontal cortex. Why would I leave all of that behind to go be damp and itchy for 6 months?

I’ve done it before – I hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2013, and by the end of it my legs were like tree trunks and my body odor could kill a man at a distance of 100 feet. Before I left for the AT, I was in my 20’s living in NYC, pretending my life was Gossip Girl when in reality it was more like low-rent Sesame Street, if Oscar the Grouch was my landlord and Grover sold Evan Williams and loosies out of the bodega at the end of my block. It was beautiful and perfect.

I decided to hike the AT with the same process through which I make any decision: an idea occurs to me and either that idea gets stuck in my head like Baby Shark or it flits away in the dark of night never to be seen again. It’s like when I suddenly remember that sour gummy worms exist, and the notion of them takes up 10% of my brain’s RAM, running as a background app, until I acquire the gummy worms and black out until they are gone. Either an idea sticks or it doesn’t, and if it does, then I am helpless to obey.

Two years ago, my little brother (who’s half a foot taller than me) told me he was thinking of hiking a long distance trail, and wanted to talk with me about my experience doing the AT. In the midst of the conversation, I found myself in the company of an idea: hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with him. The notion was both friendly and menacing, like when I’m trying to sleep but my cranky old cat wants pets so he digs himself under the blankets and forcibly uses my hand to scratch behind his ears. I didn’t tell Little Brother right away, but let the idea bounce around in the Board Room of my brain, to see if it would take hold or disappear.

Here we are, two years later, my PCT thru-hiker permit and train tickets to Washington burning holes in my pockets.

I think this means that the idea stuck.

I’m starting off with Little Brother (trail name TBA), his phenomenal partner, both of my partners (Dumptruck and Toasty), and my buddy Whistle who I thru-hiked with in 2013.

Here’s the thing that you gotta know right from the get-go, dear reader: my feet will not touch every single inch of the Pacific Crest Trail. There are sections where weather or wildfire will make passage unsafe. My goal is to get from Canada to Mexico, largely via my feet, but if sections need to get skipped for safety, they’re going to get skipped. You can decide for yourself if that means I’m not a real thru-hiker, and that’s totally cool.

I’m gonna smell like one either way.

Love,

Thresher