Backpacker Magazine – May 2005

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Scott Williamson

To hike from Mexico to Canada and back, a man needs strength and speed and luck. He needs something else, too. If only he knew what it was.

by: Steve Friedman

Late summer in the Cascades is a glorious time. Long days, and lush flowers and torrents of water and plenty of time to think. You think about Patti and your mother and your damaged salivary gland and the man who shot you, the man in the hood, and how you'd like to teach kids about the wilderness, about how tree-felling is a young man's occupation and how you're 32 and you won't be able to do it for much longer and maybe you ought to really consider college. You think about beef and spinach and coffee, you think hard about those things. You think of the long days and nights talking with Kenny about how difficult it was to be true to yourself when you were surrounded by wage slaves and soulless corporations and creeping technology, and how you told Kenny that a man couldn't spend his entire life on the PCT, the important thing was to find balance in your life, and Kenny did his best and his best wasn't enough. You wonder how the man known as Mr. Beer is doing back at home in Sapporo, Japan (which is why he's known as Mr. Beer). You think about all the hikers you have met over the years--Hobo Joe, the homeless Vietnam vet who every few years scrapes enough money together to hit the trail, and does fine until he hits a town with a liquor store, then ends up in the county jail for a few nights; and Maineiac, who lives in Maine, and Walking Carrot, who loves carrots and Real Fat, who is really fat, and The Abominable Slow Man, who is astoundingly pokey, and the Leprechaun, who stands six foot eight.

The kid? He comes to you at the oddest times. In southern Oregon, you run out of water and hike 15 miles to a stream near Mt. McGloughin to refill your bottle, but the stream is dry and it's 15 miles until the next one and you're thirsty and in trouble and then, there, right on the trail, is a water bottle, 16 ounces just sitting there and you know it's cheesy, you know it's new agey, but you can't help it, you think about death, and life, the cosmic wheel and all that, and how even when someone leaves you, maybe he's not gone at all. You feel Kenny's presence then; you know he's with you.

You think about Michelle, who really is sweet, and supportive, and beautiful and all-around great, and you wonder if the two of you might ever get together again. And you think of Rebecca, in Maine, and the poem she wrote called "The Mandible Bullet," about the convenience store shooting. Rebecca was sweet, too, and you loved that poem, you wish you still had a copy of it. And you think about other former girlfriends, and how women are great, but relationships are complicated, especially when you have a goal, and maybe you're better off not exactly in one right now. And of course you think some more of Patti, whose trail name is Silent Running, which even by trail-name standards is weird, because she's deaf, not mute.

Women are tricky. Relationships are tricky. The trail is simple. You wake at 5:30 and by six you're hiking. You hike till nine o'clock and you stop for a 15-minute meal and then you hike till the early afternoon, eat another quick meal, and then you hike a few more hours, when you stop just to chop some garlic and to mix your dried beans with water, and you hike another few hours, and then you have dinner, a leisurely 30 or 40 minutes, and then you hike until it's dark. Every day, you hike at least 35 miles, and most days, you don't see a soul. From Crater Lake to near Tahoe--1,000 miles--you don't see anyone on the trail. You're alone. Days and days alone.

Why? Because you can't survive off the trail? Because things like steady work and marriage and a house fill you with fear, because the only place you feel safe is here, strolling through fields of golden yarrow and red maids and prickly poppies and yellow and white monkey flowers, sleeping under wheeling constellations? That's what Michelle thinks. To her, God is everywhere, but she's pretty sure you only feel Him--or Her, or It, or The Great Whatever--on the trail. Or do you do it because you love deeply and grieve deeply and sometimes you don't know the difference, and you're trying to come to terms with your friend's death? That's what Kenny's mom thinks. She didn't start to feel better about Kenny until she visited the rivers he rafted and the trails he hiked--all the spots he'd been happiest. She's sure you're on a journey of acceptance and healing.