After a night hike to the peak of Steven’s Pass, I began to simultaneously set up my tent, cook dinner and phoned a guy named Piper who my buddy Dancer had suggested would give me a ride to Leavenworth, WA in the morning. Who says males can’t multi-task?
It was late, but Piper picked up the phone and confirmed he would meet me at the bottom of the hill at 9AM the next morning. We didn’t talk long, but I felt sure that it would be fun talking to him the next day.
I wasn’t disappointed. Piper turned out to be a man of many interests and talents. He told me about his career training pilots from all over the world to fly Boeing jets. I was briefed on his adventures as a wilderness guide in British Columbia, and he described the many beautiful lakes that I had rushed past in the last two days.
But it was his job as a PCT Trail Angel that had really captured his interest the last couple of years. I say “job” because Piper was working full-time helping out PCT hikers. He’s the main man shuttling hikers to and from Stevens Pass to Leavenworth and other places along this stretch of the trail. North and south of the pass, just about every PCT hiker has been helped by Piper or knows someone who has. And what we most remember about him is the gift he gives to each and every hiker: A song played on his flute.
Next year, Piper will reverse roles. He plans to hike the PCT himself starting from Campo early in March and heading north. God speed, brother.
After a tiring, wet hike down from Pinchot Pass, George and I decided to make camp early near the Woods Creek bridge. The sun made a surprising appearance, and I took the opportunity to dry gear and catch some Golden Trout for dinner. After this feast, I found a granite bluff overlooking the forest for my evening yoga and meditation practice.
For Bhakti yogis like me, a goal of meditation is to build relationships with the Supreme Being (Bhagavan) and others. Usually, my meditation is not particularly dramatic. Krishna arrives for a friendly chat, sometimes Saraswati plays a tune, Ganesha takes care of a problem on his cosmic Helpline or I just sit quietly with my own atma (soul). But this evening a very bright wave of energy struck me right in the heart, and from there branched out to my whole body. I felt like I was glowing while completely at peace and ecstatically happy. Sorry, my language skills don’t come close to describing the experience. This pulsing, radiant energy continued for some time, and I identified it as pure Love in a form that I could see, feel, touch, and taste.
And then an image of Jesus appeared just in front of me in a seated, cross-legged position. He told me that what he was giving me were the energy waves of Unconditional Love. It turned out to be the answer to a prayer. In this blog, I’ve been writing about my mission to understand and practice Kindness, Compassion and Unconditional Love. And here was Jesus right in front of me giving me a taste of it…pretty darn cool. After a while of receiving this bounty, Jesus asked me if I’d like to send some of that Love energy back to him. I gave it a try. At first, what I sent was weak and intermittent, but gradually I improved. My biggest challenge, however, was staying focused. Often, I would lose the moment, as my mind veered off to some other subject. Jesus told me it didn’t matter. All I needed to do was practice to sustain the exchange of Love. I asked if he was here as my tutor, and he agreed. Apparently, part of my curriculum in this lifetime is not only to have an intellectual understanding of Unconditional Love and to practice it, but to be able to feel its energy.
Over the next several days of meditation, Jesus returned to tutor me. I got better at the practice. It occurred to me that it would be helpful to give myself a physical cue to remind me to practice this new gift. Inspired by what Krishna taught in the Bhagavad Gita (Chapter Four) I began a breathing exercise to help me quickly reunite with the taste of Unconditional Love. I inhale to breathe in Love and exhale to share it.
For several months now, on and off the trail, this breathing exercise has helped me to remember how to experience this ecstatic Unconditional Love. This has helped me to extend the feeling longer as I build up my Unconditional Love muscles. Sadly, I’m not living up to the goal of always remembering and never forgetting. That may take a while. And honestly, it’s a lot easier to experience the ecstatic feeling of love than practicing it in my everyday interactions with people.
Fortunately, my tutor is patient with me, and is always there to help when I remember to ask. I haven’t always had such a close relationship with Jesus. While I grew up in the Christian religion, the churches I attended never really gave me a taste of him. The rituals, dogma and culture of religion never spoke to me. However, that changed when I began to pray when I was in my late teens. Prayer helped me to develop a more personal but still weak relationship with Jesus. Later, I studied texts like the Sermon on the Mount, and this helped me to intellectually understand his very revolutionary message of Love…often far different than what the church had to say about it. When I became a yogi, I began to experience this kind of ecstatic connection first with Saraswati and then with Krishna. But this is the first time I’ve had this more in-depth relationship with Jesus. I’ve always said a thank you to Jesus during my daily prayers but didn’t really have an energetic attachment with him. Now I do, and I’m very grateful to call him my tutor.
I thought I was a bad ass for staring down a mountain lion at Peavine Creek on the Pacific Crest Trail. But then Sati rolled out their story faking out sidewinder rattlesnakes with rope and then jumping over them in three-foot wide box canyons in the Escalante Wilderness. That forced me to go to the time in Nepal when a Tibetan monk held a knife to my throat. Melody countered with their adventures para-gliding from the Uluwatu cliffs in Bali, Indonesia. I reached back several decades to the story about when my pack busted and I nearly drowned crossing the Waimakarere River in New Zealand. They both shared their adventures jumping off peaks in the Sierras in their para-gliders. And that was before we finished the first bottle of wine and the lemon and saffron chicken dish that Melody had prepared.
Captain Melody on the river
And on it went through dessert. We had a great time. Melody and Sati are educators and family friends who now live in Mount Shasta. I fortunately found them at home, and they generously agreed to be my trail angels for the night. They had hiked 700-miles on the PCT, and they knew exactly what hiker trash like me needed: A shower, a good meal, a change of clothes while my laundry dried and a trip to the grocery store.
Yikes
They gave up para-gliding a few years back because they were taking too many risks, so instead they are now leisurely rafting the rapids on the Klamath, Rogue, Snake and other western rivers.
Bad Ass Trail Angels that cook like…angels (PakDave & Sati)
The next morning these two adventurers were off to the Klamath River for a shakedown trip with friends. I put on my pack and headed towards the Trinity Alps with a full belly, a treasure trove of new stories, and warm thoughts of good friends and BAD ASS TRAIL ANGELS.
You ever heard of Ridgecrest, CA? Not me, even though I’ve lived in California for many decades. But I visited this desert town twice this year while on the trail. And both times Pancakes (Laura) made the experience memorable…plus I gained weight thanks to her home cooking.
The folks at TC Outfitters in Kennedy Meadows connected me with her when I was looking for a ride after walking 700 miles from Campo.
Pancakes offers reasonably priced rooms for PCT hikers, and she knows exactly what hikers need: Shower, laundry, groceries and best of all a hearty breakfast featuring sausages wrapped in her signature “pancakes.”
Pancakes has spent her whole life serving people. She’s raised many foster kids in her loving home in addition to a few of her own and adopted ones. In her spare time, she cooks up lunch and dinner for veterans at Ridgecrest’s American Legion Hall.
Pancakes & Pak Dave
From Ridgecrest, it’s possible to hitch or take a bus to Bakersfield or head south to the Los Angeles area. But the town itself is interesting. Ridgecrest is home to more PhD’s per capita in the country, mainly physicists and math wizards who work at China Lake Naval Weapons Station. They in turn help attract businesses like Red Rock Books which houses all the classics, plus big sections of science fiction and high-level math puzzle books.
I’m slow, so walking 25 miles a day takes me at least ten hours, plus another hour for lunch, breaks, socializing with other hikers and stopping to take in the views.
Most of my mornings are devoted to wildlife watching because the bears, deer and other critters are still lurking about. Around 7am they go to bed, and so I start belting out my morning prayers.
Lyell Creek, Yosemite just before dawn
I usually don’t see many other hikers on the trail in the early morning, but occasionally a hiker, perhaps freaked out by my chanting, warily passes me by. However, most of the time PCT hikers don’t notice because they can’t hear anything but the music blasting from their ear buds.
Many people have asked me if I’ve ever felt lonely hiking solo for five months. Never. That’s because I feel like my family, friends and other beloved beings are hiking right along with me. It’s what I’ve been learning in the practice of Bhakti Yoga: Chanting or singing the names of your loved ones and the deities that you cherish is a way of invoking them. It’s like my morning prayers are a chatty gathering around the breakfast table.
Okay, that last paragraph may seem weird to some of you. You may even think that it’s a bit delusional. I’m not asking you to buy into it. But it’s a Vedic tradition that’s thousands of years old with a long line of teachers and books defining the practice. I’m still a rank beginner.
It’s interesting that many of my fellow hikers take other paths to experience something similar. For example, a very large percentage of PCT hikers eat Psilocybin mushrooms to help them enhance the trail experience. They may be searching for the same place of being connected with the earth that we are walking on, the Gods they worship and, most importantly, their real selves.
I’ve never tried these magic mushrooms. Maybe eating them invokes a similar experience to what I have with Bhakti yoga, maybe not. For me, the key to whatever path you choose to build relationships with other humans and spiritual deities is intention. Do you have a philosophical concept of what you’re looking for, or is your intention simply entertainment? Come to think of it, you can enjoy these spiritual relationships and be entertained all at the same time.
But for me, it’s been helpful to be grounded in a Vedic philosophy that’s been written down and practiced for such a long time. It’s helped me to understand what’s going on during these intense energetic experiences, rather than just being wowed by the sensations, and that helps deepen things even more.
Note: Interested in Bhakti Yoga, see my teacher’s website at GitaComesAlive.com
The first thing I noticed about her was that she carried a very big knife. That’s unusual for a PCT thru hiker because a knife like this weighs more than a pound, and that’s a commitment for folks whose entire pack might weigh a total of 15 pounds.
Her trail name is Forager and she’s from Kentucky. Louisville, I think. I met her just once at a fire station in the San Gabriel mountains in far east Los Angeles County which allows hikers to sit in the shade and use their water spigot. This qualifies as an oasis in our book. Everyone was relaxed, having fun and resting for the next stretch of desert walking. Forager was doing yoga.
She engaged in some yoga positions that looked very painful, but she advised me how to do Pigeon pose using a picnic table without rupturing my butt muscle. When I found out her name was Forager, I asked what she had found to eat. “Not much in the desert,” she said. “I’ve found some plantain, miner’s lettuce and herbs like sage.” She was keeping the knife for the trail ahead which would yield more bounty. As she talked, she continued her yoga. I asked if she had a specific practice. She answered that she did Ashtanga Yoga every day, and had gone to Mysore, India to study with her guru.
It blew my mind a little that this country girl from Kentucky not only practiced yoga, but was adept at one of the most challenging asana practices. If you’ve ever tried the Mysore style of Ashtanga yoga, you know how hard it is. Certainly, more challenging than the hot Bikram yoga that is the heart of my practice. Also, you should know that Forager owns a pet pig which follows her around like a dog when she is home.
This was the first and probably last time I’ll ever meet Forager. She and her trail sisters were headed down to Santa Monica for a day at the beach before returning to the trail. Me, I had another 8 miles and a 1,500 foot climb before my day ended.
I know this will sound stuck up: but if someone from Louisville knows how to forage for her food, practices Ashtanga Yoga, learns from an Indian guru and keeps a pet pig, somehow that gives me hope for the red state of Kentucky.
You can’t blame it on old age or lack of experience or not doing my research. But it took me more than 45-years to make the leap from hiking with boots to tennis shoes. Maybe I’m just a slow learner.
In 1978, I bought a new pair of heavy, leather hiking boots. (Salomon). That’s what you did in the 70’s. The first trip I wore them was in the Trinity Alps with my buddy George. He wore tennis shoes. Within hours those boots gave me silver-dollar sized blisters on both heels. Might be showing my age with the reference to silver dollars. But trust me, it was five-days of hiking torture.
Two years later, I carried those heavy treds through the south Pacific and southeast Asia before arriving in Nepal. I had worn them in by then and didn’t get blisters. But the trail around Annapurna was wet and snowy. Every night I put my boots by the fire to dry at the Nepali homes we stayed in. Didn’t happen. Every morning I put on soggy boots. One night a Canadian woman was at the same tea house as our group. She had worn Keds crossing the nearly 18,000-foot Thorong La Pass, and they were soaked from hiking over snow and ice. However, the next morning her tennies were warm and dry while I laced up my cold, wet Salomon’s. I may have cried.
Over the next decades, I continued to hike in boots which were now lighter and easier on the feet. When it came to the footwear to choose for the PCT, I decided to stick with boots for the first 700-miles in the California desert instead of the trail runners most PCT hikers wear. Bad decision. My feet and legs hated me for the blisters and shin splints that resulted.
On my next 500-mile leg, I switched to trail runners which gave my feet room to spread out, and finally I was rewarded with happy feet at the end of a hiking day. Why did it take me 45-years to make the change? Stubbornness makes me a slow learner.
It takes grit to walk 702 miles in the desert from Campo to Kennedy Meadows. There are long climbs up rugged mountains, rattlesnakes, cactus waiting to stab you, scarce water holes, rattlesnakes, blisters…Did I mention rattlesnakes?
But it toughens you up. Most people who complete the desert section, go on to finish the entire 2,650 miles of the PCT. It’s a challenge for anyone. My friend Bounce surmounted all of these obstacles, but he has one hurdle that no one else on the trail must face. Last year he was diagnosed with a debilitating disease that slowly causes his toes and feet to contract, like the hand deformity Viking’s disease. The doctor said over time he would lose the ability to walk. Bounce’s first question: Can I hike the Pacific Crest Trail? “Do it sooner rather than later,” the doctor answered. He talked to his wife and got the go-ahead to hit the trail this year.
Bounce is a quiet guy. He often camps by himself in the desert rather than at designated campsites. I had met him several times on the trail, but we had never really talked much until we both camped one night at Walker Pass. We shared a picnic table, and he told me about his disease, and the pain he endures every day on the trail. He was looking forward to seeing his wife and kids who were coming to meet him at Kennedy Meadows, a three-day walk from there. When he learned that I was one meal short on this stretch, he insisted I take one of his ramen packets.
I asked him why he wanted to walk the PCT. He said it had been a life-long dream, and intimated that it was a way for him to take back control of his body from the disease. He was willing to pay the price for his decision to hike, which was constant pain.
I don’t know who gave him the trail name Bounce, but it’s brilliant. Bounce is short for Bounce Back…from adversity. It’s an important mindset for all PCT hikers because we have lots of obstacles to overcome. Bounce is showing us the way with courage, determination, and a heart bigger than the Sierras.
I was sitting quietly on a logging road after my mid-morning break at Peavine Creek about a two day walk north of Burney Falls. I’m not sure what got my attention because I didn’t hear anything, but I looked up and across the road was a large mountain lion. A very large one about four feet long, plus a two foot tail and massive legs and paws.
He was walking down the dirt road to drink from the creek, and didn’t notice me. I didn’t want to startle the big fella so I moved slightly. That instantly got his attention, and he turned his head to directly stare at me. I met his gaze and we looked at each other for about 15 seconds. (It seemed much longer.) I don’t know what was going through his mind. Perhaps questions such as: Who is this smelly beast that’s at my watering hole? Is this guy a threat or a morning snack?
I entertained similar questions. Am I cat food? Should I take a photo? Am I really seeing this amazing creature? I decided to keep my phone in my pocket, and just stay in the moment and engage with this wild creature. He wasn’t at all worried about me, just curious. He no doubt has seen many humans in his woods, but I assume rarely has met one as unexpectedly as this. His gaze stayed steady and seemed intelligent.
It’s not the first time I’ve encountered a wild animal that is stronger and deadlier than me. I’ve also seen grizzlies and black bears at close range. I wasn’t particularly scared. In fact, I felt grateful for the experience, especially since he was just looking at me rather than hunting. In more than 50 years of backpacking, this is the first time I’ve seen a mountain lion. But you never know what actions a wild animal might take, so after a while (15 seconds to be exact) I decided to take the actions that you are supposed to do when encountering a mountain lion: Make yourself look as big and powerful as possible. So I puffed out my chest, raised my head and prepared to stand up. That was enough. The big cat turned around and silently loped off back down the road and into the forest.
I took a swig of the same Peavine Creek water that the big guy was seeking, and returned to the trail. From the way he loped off, it appeared that the lion didn’t want anything to do with me. Just in case, every few minutes for the next mile, I scanned behind me for signs that I was being stalked. Fortunately, the cat had other plans.
I’m heading back out on the trail on Wednesday. I’m packing a new gadget: Garmin Inreach which allows friends and family to follow my trek day-by-day. PM if you’d like to do so.
