Finding the PCT

I was sitting on the porch at a hut along the Milford Track in New Zealand the first time I heard of the PCT. I was with a French couple drinking some wine (a rarity to have on a multi-day hike but leave it to the French!) and when I brought up my time living in Asheville and along the east coast they asked about the Appalachian Trail. Though I had hiked on bits of it from NY to GA and camped all over the thing in NC, I had never hiked a substantial portion of it. And alas, I was moving to the west coast, to Seattle, to be near the mountains there so the Appalachian Trail would have to wait.

"What about the other trail, the west coast trail, the Pacific Coast Trail?" they had asked.

I was surprised that in all my time plotting foreign adventures on trails in unknown lands it appeared I had missed one that would soon be visible from my back yard. I had spent time on the west coast on little trails and all over Yosemite and the Sierras but I had never looked at the collective network of trails that formed a walking path from Mexico to Canada. And thus a new goal began to take shape. 

The thought of the trail festered in my mind. In the year that followed that porch chat the thought of the trail rarely left my mind for more than a few days. It was just a little idea that I couldn't shake. Could I walk that far? Is it possible? I spent that year trying to work near NY, when that failed I moved west via all the National Parks (and World Cup games) I could hit en route to Seattle. 

In the end, it wasn't all my time in the woods or my love of hiking that ultimately led me to commit to the trail. It was something that happened a few days after I got to Seattle. The upset stomach I had had for a couple days worsened and after 4 stubborn days of excruciating pain I finally stumbled into the ER and collapsed in a hospital bed with what I thought was a terrible stomach bug. Turns out I had pancreatitis among other problems, and the doctor told me bluntly that there was a 40% chance I could die within a week and there was nothing that could be done but waiting. This is how the worst hour of my life began. Two weeks before this I had been hiking in Glacier National Park in grizzly country feeling more alive than ever and now here I was crying on the ER bed. An hour later after more testing I was shown to have gallstones and the prognosis changed dramatically (and 10 days later after having my gallbladder out I was fine) but the mental impact remained. An hour is a hell of a long time to have to deal with potentially dying. And the doctor was a real bitch who tried exactly not at all to comfort me. Sitting there shaking, all alone in a new city and faced with not a lot of options I was shocked by how quickly everything could change through events I could not control. Those who know me well know that I've always lived my life as though it were a fleeting gift. I had never shied away from an adventure or change, but this new motivation felt heavier, it felt different. This was the first time I had ever been sick beyond a flu, and the first time I realized I'm not guaranteed all the time in the world to do the things I wanted. The PCT was the first item on the to-do list, so I finished my Jell-O and I started making plans.