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.
Saying thank you seems like such a small thing, but it can lead to a whole new way of living your life:
It changes your mood.
It changes how people react to you.
It changes how you see the world.
It changes how you see other people.
It changes how you see the earth.
It changes how you see the Supreme Being.
It makes you happy.
It makes others happy.
It sets you free.
Many years ago, when Felicity and I were writing a magazine article about the Maori people of New Zealand, I was impressed by their tradition of saying thank you to the fish they caught for a meal, to the trees they cut to build their house…you get the point. Saying thanks changed the whole equation. It expressed humility and acknowledged our relationship with the forests, rivers, fish and other natural resources we rely on in this life.
Big thanks to this big rainbow trout who returned to the Big Horn River that day.
We tried it out and guess what: Gratitude changes your mood…for the better. It helps you look for the light and blessings in your life. It makes room for what comes next: Kindness, Compassion and Unconditional Love.
Thanks to our Chicago family this holiday
Thank you!
And thanks to our North Carolina family.
Terima Kasih!
And thanks to Mother Nature for this beauty from the Knife’s Edge in Washington State.
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.
How important is the number 108? Here are just a few examples from an article that appeared in HimalayanYogaInstitute.com
The distance between the moon and the earth is 108 times the diameter of the moon.
The distance between the earth and the sun is 108 times the diameter of the sun
The Sarsen Circle Stonehenge has a diameter of 108 feet.
There are 108 double stitches on a baseball.
108 is “Nature’s secret code,” governing the dimensions of everything from the Great Pyramid at Giza to the iconic seashell called Nautilus.
Please add a comment if you know of other examples.
I’m told that ancient yogis believed that we could attune ourselves to the rhythms of creation by completing practices in rounds of this sacred number. More importantly, my teacher Jeffrey Armstrong, requires his students to chant mantras precisely 108 times. This is not terribly difficult when you’re sitting down in a quiet place and use a mala (prayer beads) which has exactly 108 beads. It’s much more difficult on the trail while maneuvering around rocks, roots, snakes, snowfields, landslides and being diverted by breath-taking views.
I worked very diligently trying to chant a mantra 108 times. I achieved a C- grade on this test by the time I arrived in Canada. I used my fingers to keep track from 1 to 10 but remembering whether I was on 50 or 60 or 90 often eluded me. That’s because a steep trail section required attention, I stopped to talk to a fellow hiker or my memory sucks because I’m old.
I’m not sure if I received the truly auspicious benefits from chanting a mantra 108 times, but I found belting them out did provide some specific benefits:
Shiva statue in our garden
Om namo shivaya om shakti ma: Asking Shiva for strength helped power me up those 2,000-foot ascents.
Tryambakan ya ja mahe….Also invoking Shiva, this medicine song helped heal aches and pains from shin splints, plantar fasciitis, blisters and other assorted aches and pains.
Om aing namo dewi Saraswatyai namaha. Invoking Saraswati helped me to listen more closely to the sounds and rhythms of the forests, deserts, and other places I wandered.
Om aing namo dewi Parvati namaha. Singing to Parvati helped me find peace when I was scared.
Om aing namo dewi Lakshmi namaha. A tribute to Lakshmi and all the mothers in my life.
The Nashringa mantra.. This invoked the mighty Nashringa, the incarnation of Vishnu as both a lion and a human to ward off evil spirits.
Jesus Loves Me..This simple nursery rhyme helped me communicate in a very powerful way with Jesus.
And many more. Because after all I hiked 2,200 freaking miles.
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
When a guy from southeast Minnesota makes a promise, you can take it to the bank he’s gonna keep his word. Take my young friend Soda Pop. I met up with him in northern Washington.
He seemed normal enough for a thru-hiker: Lean, long red beard. Hikes faster than a Porsche. But then something weird happened. He’s pulling stuff out of his pack one day at camp, and out pops what appears to be a volleyball. “What the hell is that?” I ask politely. “It’s a ball,” he answers. Did I mention that southeast Minnesotans are quite literal?
“Got it,” I said. “But what’s it doing in your pack?” Soda Pop carries a bigger pack than most thru-hikers, about 70 liters. But even so this ball must have occupied about 30% of the pack’s total volume. That’s enough room for a lot of food, warm clothes, even a bottle of Jack Daniels.
“I promised to carry this ball to the Canadian border if I lost a bet I made with a friend in Cascade Locks,” said Soda Pop.
“Were you drinking?”I responded.
“Perhaps a little,” he answered. Two days later, Soda Pop bounced his ball back and forth between the US and Canada. Nice trick.
The lesson here: If a tall red-headed guy from southeastern Minnesota makes a bet with you to jump off the Empire State Building, please, just say no.
“That bear needs to be put-down,” said the PCT hiker after a night it wreaked havoc at Lake Gilmore in Tahoe’s Desolation Wilderness. That smart ursine climbed trees to collect hung food bags, poached trail mix from backpacks, and even entered a tent where a PCT hiker was using his food bag as a pillow. In other words, one very smart, very hungry and very aggressive bear.
“You can’t have bears barging into tents and taking people’s food,” the man said. I asked: “Did you bring a bear canister?
“They aren’t required here, and besides I don’t camp in designated campsite,” the guy answered. I suppose that meant, no. He didn’t use a bear can.
“And they weigh 3 pounds,” I offered. “Yeah, that too. And the odds of a bear taking your food are very slim,” he added. Let’s be clear, after many months hanging out with PCT hikers: It’s all about the extra weight.
I also did the math. There were 20 campers at Lake Gilmore that night, only me and one other person were exempted from the bear’s rampage, probably because he was too stuffed. I think that works out to 90% of the campers provided bear food that night. Maybe not slim odds.
There are a lot of inexperienced backpackers walking in the Desolation Wilderness who have no clue how to protect themselves from bears attacking their food. You would think that PCT thru hikers who have been on the trail for months would know how to do so, but amazingly they have convinced themselves that they are immune from such dangers, and that it’s perfectly reasonable to “put-down” bears that are causing problems rather than changing their own bad habits.
And I get it. Carrying a bear canister that weighs 3 pounds is 10% of your total weight if your pack is 30 pounds. For ultra-light hikers, that canister might be 30% of their entire pack weight. (Lots of advanced math in this blog.)
Saw this young guy on the PCT just south of Chester
But you aren’t doing yourself, other hikers or the bears any favors by choosing less weight over safety in bear country. That aggressive Lake Gilmore bear may very well be killed (put-down) for its behavior. Or it will teach its cubs that unprotected human food is a more convenient diet rather than eating the old-fashioned way by foraging on berries and other boring forest food.
Bottomline: The cost of peace-of-mind in bear country weighs 3 pounds.
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.
The PCT explodes your ideological bubble. You meet people from all different backgrounds with many different opinions about life, politics, hiking strategies and, most importantly, what to eat at the next resupply town.
And that’s a good thing because I’ve been living in my Berkeley bubble, reading the New York Times, Washington Post and BBC, and giving to Democratic causes. Because the stakes have been so high in the Trump era, I’ve grown intolerant of other opinions or maybe I’m just getting old.
That’s why it’s been such a gift to be hiking with my buddy, Moving Target. We have totally different views about politics, but we’re tight hiking partners.
Moving Target is a good man, husband and father. He’s a small businessman whose been running an auto repair shop in southern Illinois for more than 40 years. We share a love for nature. He can spot wildlife better than anyone I’ve hiked with. Below is one of the short videos he makes while on the trail. He also can identify birds from their tweeting and he’s an encyclopedia for the plants and trees we’re seeing every day.
A few times we tried to start a discussion about a political or social topic, but it was clear that there was a gaping chasm between our positions. In diplomatic terms, we had a frank exchange of views. I understood where he was coming from, but it was a difficult discussion.
But that didn’t stop us from being simpatico hiking partners, appreciating where we shared values and where we didn’t. It’s a good lesson to keep in mind, and not just on the trail. You don’t necessarily have to agree on politics to have your hiking partner’s back.
