My campsite last night was about a mile past the junction with highway 49, just outside of Sierra City. I woke up to noises twice. The first was in the middle of the night, when I'm pretty sure a bear came snooping around. I heard a noise that was a cross between a grunt and a snuffle. I have heard deer make similar noises, but the sound of rooting around, combined with heavy footfalls made me think bear. It began about 30 yards away, but before long began to recede into the distance, so I fell back asleep. The second time I awoke to the distant sound of early morning road construction on highway 49.
I began the day with a 2400 foot climb up the south side of the Sierra Buttes. The ease with which I made the climb led me to conclude that the fundamental nature of the PCT challenge has changed. The trails are no longer difficult, but I am finding it more difficult to stay motivated. Out here I can now crank out 25 miles, almost without effort, which makes it hard not to get lazy. Success in the long run still requires discipline, which is tough when you have to simultaneously force yourself to get hiking and yet force yourself not to hike too much.
The Sierra Buttes are a dayhiker paradise, so today I met many people along the trail. The first encounter was with two women who asked a lot of questions about my trip. When I explained what I was doing one of the two got goose bumps (she actually showed me). When I talked about the people I had met she began to tear up. Maybe there is something universal in this type of experience, and perhaps it does some people good to hear about it. Later I ran into a large group with many of the same questions. One of the women in the group gave me a granola bar to help on my travels. I ate it with lunch and was extremely happy both with the taste of the treat and with the kindness she had shown me. Finally, I ran into a group of dayhikers who told me that the young man with them also had a dream to hike the PCT. I offered what little wisdom I had before wishing them a good hike and moving on. I must say that these social interactions really perked up my day. As I hiked on I stopped briefly to take a picture looking back at the buttes.
The topic to mull over today was religion. I read a book called Walk Across America a while back. The book I am reading now, a sequel titled The Road Unseen, is about the spiritual side of the author and his wife's travels. He is a born again Christian and, though I am not Christian, I can still glean some wisdom from the book. I thought about how everything in the story seems to be part of a higher plan, or in obedience to the church or God. I thought a lot about the experiences I was having and how I would classify them. I am agnostic, mainly because I believe mankind can never know the ultimate truth about God, life after death, etc. I guess I choose to believe there is no god, at least not in the sense of a sentient being. I don't call myself an atheist because I recognize that it is a choice and that I could be wrong. Anyway, to me a belief in God means a belief in preexisting order. The experiences I'm having would be a search for that order. On the other hand, a world without gods is a world of chaos in which I am free to create order. Sure it can be scary, and I realize that the order I create has no meaning outside the context of my own experience, but it is simply a matter of preference in regard to how I view the world. After all, Descartes had it right. Je pense donc je suis (forgive me if that is not quite right, I've never taken French). Cogito ergo sum, or "I think therefore I am." Some philosophers say it is more accurate to say "It is thinking," as in "it is raining." Regardless, we only know that thoughts are occurring, beyond that we can't be certain. And as long as I am creating my experience from the ground up, I might as well believe what I like. Besides, at the end of the day it's what you do with what you perceive, not how you perceive it that matters.
I had a lot more on my mind with the topic of religion, but I won't bore you with details. Late in the day I met a through hiker named Chimichonga, who is a pot smoking law student from DC. We chatted away the last few miles, and the he toked up as I cooked and ate my dinner. He moved on to try to catch some friends, but I decided to call it a day. I had been so caught up in our conversation that I accidentally made it 32 miles.
