Camping in the forest
(Editor's Note: Chattanoogan Claire Henley started an adventure of a lifetime on the remote Pacific Crest Trail in April. Along the way, she had many adventures and found herself a husband named Big Spoon).
“When the road gets dark/ And you can no longer see/ Just let my love throw a spark/ And have a little faith in me.”
-John Hiatt, “Have a Little Faith in Me”
It was a known fact that the twenty-six mile hitch into Quincy was unlikely. No one traveled Quincy La Porte Road where the PCT crossed over it. It was a lone highway road, and a hitch into town was rare.
I leaned against the guardrail next to my pack while Big Spoon stood slightly in the road, listening for cars. It would be dark out soon. I felt dark inside over the fact that we were getting off the trail. It felt like the light at the end of the trail’s long tunnel had been blocked suddenly by a landslide. And now what? What would we do?
“Let’s make our way up to Alaska,” Big Spoon said as we waited for a ride. “That’s a place of raw wilderness where I’ve always wanted to go.”
I had also always wanted to travel to Alaska where the Northern Lights painted the sky and where whales roamed the icy sea.
“I like that idea,” I said. “But how will we get there?” The second I uttered these words, a blue truck rounded the corner and slowed to a stop in front of Big Spoon and me. The man driving the truck carried a full family load, but when we told him we needed to get to Quincy, he said for us to hop in the bed.
It took a total of fifteen minutes to get a ride on the road that had been deemed a near impossible place for a hitch.
“Things have worked out all along our way,” Big Spoon said as we sailed down the winding road in the back of a pickup truck. “That’s not going to end just because we’re off the trail. And we’ve learned a lot about how to get from one place to another these last few months. So if we want to get to Alaska, there’s a way for us to do so. We just need to use our heads and have a little faith.”
Forty-five minutes later, the truck dropped us off on the outskirts of town in front of a restaurant plaza. Because it was late, every restaurant was closed except Round Table Pizza. There weren’t many people inside the arcade-style pizzeria. Big Spoon and I grabbed a booth in the back and tried to figure out accommodations while eating our greasy pie. A multitude of phone calls let us know every hotel in town was full. I lay my head down on the booth as Big Spoon made a second round of calls. A few minutes later, I woke to Big Spoon shaking my shoulder. “Time to go,” he said. “Round Table is closed.”
Outside the restaurant, it was completely dark. We still hadn’t found a place to sleep and were about to walk to the park a half mile away to set up camp in a covert location. Then a young man holding a pizza box walked out of the Round Table.
“Ask him,” I whispered.
Big Spoon, who understood my request, politely stopped the man to tell him our situation and to ask if he knew of any place where we could stay the night. As it turned out, the man was an environmental scientist from Italy, living at the UC Berkeley Forestry Camp for the summer to research the carbon levels in charcoal leftover from wildfires.
“My name is Bernardo,” he said in a rich Italian accent. “And you may come with me if you like. The camp is not far from here. There are hot showers and much land for you to put your tent. I do not think the students will mind.”
That settled that, and moments later Bernardo was driving us in a dusty F-150 cluttered with field instruments to the Forestry Camp. Some Berkeley students were sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows when we arrived. Bernardo introduced us as the PCT hikers he met while picking up his pizza. This peaked the students’ interest who then invited us to join them by the fire. Bernardo left and returned with three Coronas. A Russian girl, whose name I dare not try to pronounce, offered us two sharpened sticks and the bag of marshmallows. I was tired–both physically and emotionally. And though all I wanted was to go to bed in order to sleep off my deep disappointment, it was a soothing distraction to sit by the fire and hear the array of young scholars discuss their classes and projects at the Forestry Camp.
It wasn’t until the fire died that Big Spoon and I left Bernardo and the students to go to bed. A community of one-hundred-year-old shacks made up the camp. We pitched our tent next to the dimly lit bathhouse, beneath the full moon. The moon spotlighted our tent as if we were on display. I buried my head in my sleeping bag to give myself some darkness for sleep.
The next morning, Bernardo stopped by our tent as we were breaking it down.
“I have work to do in the lab this morning, but I can drive you back to town at lunchtime,” he said then encouraged us to make ourselves at home. Big Spoon and I walked over to where the fire had been the night before and sat on a wooden bench. Bernardo brought out a tray of coffee, toast, and jam from the main lodge and set it next to us before leaving to go to the lab. Being that it was Sunday, the students were slow to wake. One by one they sauntered from their shacks and slipped into the lodge for breakfast. One of the students, a boy wearing sweat pants and smoking a cigarette, noticed our packs as he walked toward the lodge and sleepily asked if we were the PCT hikers he’d heard about from his peers.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. We used to be PCT hikers, I thought I could say. But before I did, Big Spoon said yes, we were. The boy was captivated and sat on the bench in front of Big Spoon and me to inquire about our trip. Pretty soon, another student joined the boy, followed by another, and then another. Before Big Spoon and I knew it, the benches were full with Berkeley students, and we were teaching a class on the PCT.
The students asked a variety of questions from what kinds of food Big Spoon and I ate on the trail, to how we went to the bathroom in the woods. One girl even brought out her backpack and all of her gear for Big Spoon and me to inspect, saying it was her plan to hike the PCT after she graduated. We ended up taking the entire morning telling the students everything we knew about life on the trail, from Trail Angels to trail names to friendships that were formed. We spoke on the beauty, the freedom, the hardship, and the humdrum days. We told the students how Big Spoon and I started alone, met, got married, and how we were now getting off the trail. All in all, we recapped our time on the PCT and passed on what we learned from that journey. It was a measuring of a milestone in our lives and a fitting event that brought closure to the trail.
“I admire your decision to step off the trail,” said one student.
“I think you should finish,” said another.
The boy in sweatpants said that just yesterday he hiked two miles up a mountain and, as of yesterday, had no desire to ever do that again; but now he was sure he would hike at least a portion of the PCT one day after hearing about our voyage. Near the end of the impromtu lecture, the same boy asked Big Spoon and me, “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from being on the trail?”
That was a big question, one that required time for me to think. Big Spoon answered first: “After college, I worked for the DOD for three years. I had a salary, benefits, and decent vacation time. People told me I was lucky to have this job so young. This was a job I could work until retirement, they said. They never took into account whether or not I enjoyed it. For me, the DOD was a great learning experience, but it wasn’t what I was passionate about. But because it was such a “great job,” I began to believe I was locked in for life; or at least until I turned sixty-five. Then the day came when I realized I could quit my job. I could quit my job, my livelihood, my identity. I realized I had the power to quit this job and pursue something I actually wanted to do, something I cared about and found meaning in. That was mind blowing to me. People told me I was making a huge mistake when I put action to my realization and turned in my two weeks notice. The ironic thing was these were the same people I would hear complain about their jobs every day. Why are we so afraid of change?
“Anyways, After leaving the DOD, I eventually wound up on the PCT. I wouldn’t trade my time on the trail for anything, but after so long, it got to feeling like a job that didn’t serve a meaningful purpose anymore. I had the same realization as I did at the DOD when I thought I could get off the PCT–that this trail didn’t own me. And that’s the most important thing I’ve learned from being on the trail–it’s something I’ve learned before and have learned again: I hold the power to make a change in my life when I feel it is necessary to do so. No one else can make this change for me. It’s up to me how I live my life.”
The students took several moments for Big Spoon’s words to sink in before turning their attention to me.
“What I have to say is, in a way, the second part to what Caleb said,” I began. I told the students how I was a person of structure. “That might sound strange coming from one who quit her corporate job to walk across the country, but it’s true,” I said. I lived for structure, balance, routine. It made me feel comfortable and secure. That being said, when I started the trail–a brand new life for me–I immediately began to create my own sense of structure on it. I woke at the same hour every day, walked so many miles before taking a break, and wrote at a certain time each night. As a thru-hiker, I learned I had to be flexible because things didn’t always go as planned. That was all well and good because that was incorporated into the structure of the trail. What wasn’t incorporated, however, was leaving the trail midway. In one day, by one decision, all the structure and routine I built for myself on the trail over the last three months crumbled. Now I felt lost and afraid. I didn’t know what I would do.
“All of this to say,” I continued, “I’m still learning the most powerful lesson this trail has to teach me. And that is that there’s a bigger picture for my life that I can’t always see. There’s a better path waiting to take me places beyond my wildest dreams if only I surrender my comfortable routine and trust in the higher plan.”
A higher plan it was indeed. For once Big Spoon and I left the Forestry Camp, instead of regaining our path for Canada, we set our sights on Alaska. That very day, we made our first of many moves to get to The Last Frontier.
* * *
Claire's first book on her adventures while living in Colorado can be ordered here:
http://www.amazon.com/51-Weeks-The-Unfinished-Journey-ebook/dp/B00IWYDLBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394801373&sr=8-1&keywords=51+Weeks