This is a question I've been asking myself almost daily for the past 6 weeks. I've been preparing for my Oregon PCT trip since January but now that I'm less than a week away from starting, the heat is really on, as it were. The first few months of planning were fun, even interesting. Researching equipment, reading how other people have done the trip, trying out new gear, studying maps, staring at Google Earth endlessly. And dreaming and thinking - lots of that. That was January through May. Then in June, things started to get serious. I went on some practice backpacking trips, starting thinking hard about food, tried to winnow my stuff down to a reasonable weight. And then, six weeks ago, I started questioning my sanity. That's when things really started to get real. That's when the details started to matter - who was going to take care of my pets, how was I getting to the trailhead, how was I going to get home? My God am I really going to backpack 450+ miles? Across a whole freaking state? Am I really doing this?
So, the thing is, when you decide to do something like this you probably should have a pretty good reason to do it. I guess there are folks out there who do it because "it sounds fun." I am not that person. I think there will be fun elements but there's going to be a whole lot of "not fun" too. I know this, I have spent a lot of time outdoors doing outdoorsy things and the outdoors, while often beautiful, can be uncomfortable, irritating, exhausting, dirty, and dangerous. I'm no pansy, I can get dirty - I'm an archaeologist, believe me I know what dirty is. It's the other stuff. That's the stuff that can drag you down and keep you from going the distance. So what I'm saying, is you gotta have a darn good reason to gut it out when the chips are down.
I have two reasons. The first is kind of weird. I've wanted to walk a really long distance since I was about 9 or 10. I used to fantasize about walking (or riding a horse) from my parent's house in Carson City, Nevada to my grandmother's house in Harrisburg, Oregon (about 500 miles). I thought it would be a grand adventure. I just LOVED the idea of walking a really long distance. Where this urge came from, I have no idea. But the idea stuck with me for a long time. Things really started to coalesce when I was in college. In my French class, my professor showed a video on the Camino de Santiago. I was entranced. I didn't realize that modern folks continued to walk pilgrimage routes. The idea of walking from Paris to the Spanish coast sounded amazing and it renewed the old urge to go on a Long Walk.
So I guess, Reason Number One is that this is a Lifelong Dream. I've had this irrational need to walk a really long ways for a long time. I love the idea of using my body as a vehicle, as my mechanism for getting from one place to another. It's just amazing to me that I can just keep putting one foot in front of another and walk from California to Washington.
Reason Number Two goes back to the Camino de Santiago, or rather, pilgrimages in general. Walking across Oregon will be a sort of pilgrimage for me. I was born in Oregon and I want to see it from a human perspective and not just from a car speeding down the highway. Alongside all of this is the fact that my beloved Grandma Charity died last year. She loved Oregon. She used to ride the Oregon Skyline Trail in the 50s and 60s on horseback, so there's a sort of family tradition in trekking across Oregon. I'm dedicating the trip to her and I want to do the whole thing in her memory. I think on bleak days or days when I'm tired, remembering that the trip is for her will keep me going.
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