To The Woods - Day 5 - June 1, 2015

No field trip today on Day 5, but I spent the entire morning daydreaming and planning for a trip. We began the day by watching videos and readings from a book called Wild (which has recently been turned into a movie). Wild is about a woman's time spent on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and how she overcame her challenges, both inside and outside of hiking. One major struggle she had with her hike was her pack weight (70 lbs.!!). She used the pack weight as a metaphor for the daily struggles she encountered and had to live with from drug use to divorced to the death of her mom. Eventually, she picked it up and carried it regardless of the weight, just like the stuff she had to deal with on a daily basis. This hike changed this woman's life, helping her to focus on what's important. After finishing the hike, she remarried and is currently a mother of two and extremely happy with her life. One long hike can change so much.

This actually isn't the first time I've heard of the PCT. In the summer of 2010 or something I skipped out on a trip to the water park to watch and re-watch a National Geographic documentary on thru-hiking the PCT. Watching these people hike in such an amazing place for more than 2,500 miles inspired me to do just that. I still hope to hike it some day, and this activity was a nice reminder of that personal goal. The only problem is that it takes many months and needs to be timed just right in order to thru-hike the PCT, so I can't really be in school or involved with a job when (if) I do it. Since seeing the documentary when I was younger, I've always wanted to hike it just for the beautiful scenery and the removal from society, but the woman in Wild made an interesting point. She said that there are two kinds of people that hike the PCT; those who do it just because they can and to enjoy nature (my reason), and those that are looking for change in their lives. No matter which type of person you are, you will experience change in your life and you will feel more connected to nature.

We did an activity based off of packing for a hike like this. The woman from Wild's pack, Monster, weighed about 70 pounds and was ridiculously over-packed. The average pack weight for backpackers is somewhere around 20 or 25 pounds. Our task was to develop a list of supplies that we would take on a large backpacking trip while recording the weights of each item. This amount of supplies had to be suitable for however long we would be on the trail. This is my list:

I am going to be hiking the Colorado Trail from Denver to Durango starting in mid-Summer for 486 miles, taking 5 weeks to thru-hike it at about 14 miles/day.

Anything marked with a star can be discarded mid-trip, weather permitting. My total pack weight, including water, fuel, and daily food is exactly 30 pounds, a little heavier than the preferred weight of about 25 pounds. This research took a lot of time, in fact I had to work on it a little at home, as I researched each product and compared it to its competitors based on weight and functionality with no regard to price. In fact, the Hummingbird sleeping bag costs more than my pack and my tent combined, which is a little ridiculous. Obviously, if I were to actually plan a pack like this, the weight would be a little heavier as I would spend so much money trying to save weight. The rest of the day was spent doing yoga and watching Fly Away Home, a movie about a young girl helping geese to migrate for the first time by flying a light aircraft shaped like a goose. That itself sounds like a drug trip, but the movie was pretty good, heartwarming even. I look forward to visiting Eastwood Metropark tomorrow to gather some material for nature writing.