I've gotten used to life as a tumbleweed. I drift across the landscape, scattering little pieces of myself before the wind carries me somewhere newer and more unfamiliar. Setting down roots was never an option: if I ever stayed one place longer than the other, it was because I hit some sort of obstruction, rather than stopping on my own volition. An object in motion stays in motion.

In that sense, leaving my current home to spend five to six months backpacking is the most in-character thing I can do. Hell, I already did it on the Appalachian Trail four years ago. But something about the Pacific Crest Trail feels different in a way I cannot anticipate. Indeed, as I draw closer to the southern terminus in Campo, I feel as though a large fragment of myself will not be coming with me.

A Land for Lunatics

I write this riding in a car through the southwest, watching the desert landscape rapidly evolve before my eyes from the high Colorado Plateau to the burning lowlands of the Sonora. The desert has had a unique appeal to me; hell, I did choose Arizona as my new name. It's beautiful, of course: even the interstate highways are flanked by alien rock formations bleached by milennia of sunlight and wind.

On long stretches of highway I find myself overcome with a strange sensation, the kind that makes you want to scream into a canyon and collapse into the brush. A lethal dose of vulnerability injected into the thigh.

In the desert, I am the center of a panorama in which I cannot hide. Like the rocks and sand, I am exposed, at the mercy of sun, wind and storm. The Gods are watching my sorry ass.

Of course, the exposure will only feel more intense when I trade the comforts of a vehicle for a twenty pound backpack with no climate controls. Hiking the PCT isn't hardcore commando bullshit (despite what some braggarts might say), but thru-hiking does trigger some base survival instincts. Your only concern is getting to point B without running out of water or getting bitten by a snake. It’s at times liberating and at times anxiety-inducing. But no matter what, it will kick my ass.

The Trail Commands Transformation

The amount of training I have or haven't done is irrelevant: the first few days on trail are gonna be a shock. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, there's just no easy on-ramp from the so-called real world to the trail.

You cannot enter the trail without exiting a changed person. Athletes and greenhorns alike have been humbled by the Pacific Crest; there's a reason why people still read Cheryl Strayed.

As a trans woman, I'm plenty familiar with changes (I mean, I did just get my nuts cut off back in March). I chose to hike this trail because I grew dissatisfied of the life I had in the midwest and wanted a new challenge. I have been to both the desert and the west coast before, but never immersed myself to this extent.

I cannot predict the effects the PCT will have on my mind and body, but even if I leave it stripped bare and raw, I will leave reborn. Again.

Smell You Later

By the time I publish this, I'll be lying in a hotel bed in El Centro, too consumed by my thoughts to sleep. In the morning, I will submit myself to the mercy of the California desert and begin my long trek north.

I have been waiting for this moment for so damn long, and now I finally stand at the door. The southern terminus, standing in front of the unnatural Mexican border wall, beckons me. As I lack the perfect words to describe how I feel right now, let me keep it simple for now:

Here we fucking go.