August 15

This morning, while tying the laces of my shoes, I wondered why. Why do I keep putting on these shoes? I've come this far, why do I still feel compelled to strive northward? After the stark desert, the alpine peaks, the endless forests; why I am not fully sated, why do I still feel the need to see more? Over one hundred days now and I am still full of wonder, I have no desire to quit, my heart races with anticipation about the imminence of the northern Cascades -- the rugged struggle, the glaciated terrain, the bad weather. What fuels this obsession to walk this far? How is it that I love this so much? Why do I endure the daily pain, the ache of bone, the bottomless hunger, the taped feet, the drain of missing my home? Is it the need to feel at home in this world, to settle into these places that suspend us in awe and to be reduced in size by the bigness of these landscapes, to be made microscopic by the deepness of the valley? To break out of these little selves. I don't know. Sometimes, the land is not always the best companion -- the hills refuse to speak, the trees give back vacant stares. But still, I put these shoes on every morning and I keep putting in the miles. I don't know. At night, I untie these shoes and lay my head on the rocks. To befriend a landscape, with the discomfort it throws upon you, with the person who you encounter yourself as when striving across the sunburnt slopes or when risking your life on a high Sierra pass.

I heard rumor, over a hundred miles back, about a lake perched in a bowl, hidden above the trail, below the sentinel of Russian Peak, a secret lake. We found it on the map and from the trail climbed straight up through a complex jumble of boulders. I could see the rim above me, where the lake would be sitting in its stillness, and I climbed faster in anticipation. My final steps had me peering over the rim to see no lake at all but a knifes edge instead, met by a vast opening and views of more layers of mountains disappointment. So, we scrambled across this narrow ridge, slopes falling to either side below us. Boulders and more boulders, complicated routes, jumping and hoisting. Eventually, having only moved a mile in two hours, the lake appeared far below us in a shimmering bowl. We had drastically overshot our target. Descending down on huge granite blocks, similar to gymnastics, swinging on tree trunks, leaping down, smashing manzanita with our falls. Now, after a nap and dinner, salamanders and dragon-fly births, the sun turns crimson and the air goes tight.