June 22, 2025

Rainy Pass to campsite below Cutthroat Pass at NOBO mile 2599.5

5.2 miles 

My heart skips a beat when the sign comes into view. “North Cascades Scenic Highway – Rainy Pass Picnic Area.” The base is stone, emblazoned with a metal Forest Service logo. The mountains behind it are jagged and snow-flanked, rising dramatically into the foggy cloud layer as if to proudly ask, “Remember me?” And I do remember them, in my body as much as my soul. It was this spot two years, nine months, and one week ago that I last stepped foot on the Pacific Crest Trail. 

This morning Andy and I woke groggily at the trail angels’ house where we were staying in Seattle. We’d both flew in last night—his journey much longer and crossing more time zones than my delayed evening flight, but I’m still discombobulated from having just been in Japan—and the thought of moving is tough. But we’re revived by breakfast, coffee, and conversation with Mark, Sally, and Mona, the latter a visitor from Switzerland. The trees outside their kitchen windows are a thick green, the sky stereotypically overcast. It doesn’t take me long to snap back into the headspace or the trail, staying with hospitable trail angels and swapping PCT stories over coffee and oatmeal. I feel eased into this world again, lowered into the to the warm bath of trail life. 

Mark takes us to REI where we can get some last minute supplies. Even seeing the massive Seattle flagship REI makes me feel things. The last time I was here, it was to buy a bag to check my non-carry-on-able gear home in and so that Jumbo could binge American backpacking supplies one last time. I feel echoes of 2022 follow me as I walk inside, probably not for the first time this week. 

I have to treat myself to a Poshport meal or two, of course, and I couldn’t seem to find my headlamp at home, so I have to spring for a new one. Andy trundles off to pick up his order that he sent in, because of course he thought to do the most time-efficient thing, and of course I’m lollygagging in the dehydrated dinner section like a kid in a candy store. I’m debating whether I need to bring an additional meal to the Peak Refuel chicken coconut curry I already have (food of the gods, that), and as I’m gazing at the Backpacker’s Pantry Pad Thai with Chicken (my second favorite), I hear a voice say, “I heard that one’s pretty good.”

For about half a second I’m thinking, “Why is this random man talking to me?” And then the identity of said random man clicks and I’m squeezing him and squealing uncontrollably. Rob, aka Tribute, who lives in Tacoma, agreed to drive Andy and me to the trail today, and here he is making his standard casual entrance. He looks basically the same, though with a shorter beard and longer hair. Time collapses in on itself again. We chat, beginning our manic multi-hour catch-up, as I try to decide which headlamp to buy (settled on a rechargeable Black Diamond, as a treat). After my manic run through the maze of the store to a restroom, I meet the guys outside. Mark takes a photo of the three of us. 2022 calling. Its hikers have returned.

We thank Mark and exchange “see you later”s since we’ll be staying with him and Sally again after we return to Seattle on the 29th. Then we load our stuff into Rob’s new Subaru and hit the road. Andy hasn’t resupplied yet, so we make a pit stop at the WinCo. “This is the cheapest grocery store around,” Rob says. “Remember going there in Bend?”

The memory snaps into focus. “Oh! Yeah! Is that the one where they have that like…” I’m gesturing and trying to find the words.

“The bulk food section? Yeah.”

“Oh, I fucking loved that place! Hell yeah! They even had tiny Tabasco bottles in there!” 

It’s just as magical as I remember, and I exert impressive self-control by only buying only dried hummus mix, a few pink and white animal crackers, and three giant gator gummies, one for each of us, because they remind me of the King Gizzard gator. And they look delicious. 

We drive for a little over an hour. The highway ends and scenic backroads begin. Mountains become sharper in the distance. Trees become thick, tall, life dripping green with oxygen. A person can breathe out here. Rob, Andy, and I banter and recollect and tell trail stories. “Remember when…” “That one time in the desert…” “I can’t believe that…” I’m howling with laughter within minutes. 

We stop in a little town called Darrington to have lunch and beer at River Time brewery, which is another very PCT activity—sitting with my tramily in trail clothes drinking a beer somewhere near the PCT. Echoes of 2022 again. I chow down on my chicken pesto sandwich and hazy IPA and feel groggily, happily full. 

The road gets windier and begins to climb in elevation as we approach the North Cascades. The Skagit River appears, gleaming turquoise greenish as it cuts through the rock. And then we’re passing Ross Lake. Another skip of the heart. That trail by the dam, that evening before the end, wedging one tent where the tent did not want to be wedged, among brambles and rebar, and the next morning taking a boat to the edge of the country so we could say we got to Canada. Which we did, but it wasn’t the official northern terminus. That’s why Andy and I are back now. To really finish what we started. To close this book, so that the next story can finally begin. 

“There it is!” Rob announces as we arrive at the Rainy Pass sign. He parks the car and we rearrange our items into useful configurations. Andy doesn’t have extra ziplocks so he just shoves his couscous and Kraft Mac and cheese into his bag like an amateur. About three whole minutes go by and then he’s ready to go. I’ve just opened a bug wipe and have to pee again. Kidding me? I guess it’s past time for me just to accept that I’m chaos incarnate and Andy is an efficient robot.

We walk over to the entrance of the PCT where I last set foot on this magical ribbon of dirt. There used to be a blaze on the wooden sign there—I have a photo of me hugging it and puffy-eyed from crying—but someone stole it, or maybe it fell off. The back of the sign still has one, though, and I touch it. Hello again. 

I unzip my fanny pack and root around in it until I find what I’m looking for: a little glass bottle of pebbly dirt. I took this dirt from this exact spot on September 15, 2022. I’m returning it now. I close my eyes, trying to channel the headspace of that day and that moment. Sadness, loss, grief at the end of the trail, but also gratitude, strength, and a heart bursting with love. I wouldn’t want to go back. I don’t want to be in that moment again. But I honor the version of myself that was here on that day. The sun comes out. I uncork the little bottle and tip its contents onto the ground where the PCT meets the trailhead. “I let you go,” I whisper, to no one and everyone in particular. 

And I don’t feel sad, like I thought I would. I don’t cry, or feel melancholy, or wistful at all. I feel happy and light. We take multiple configurations of photos at the sign, hug Rob and thank him for the ride—he’s not able to join us for the actual hike, unfortunately, but it was great to spend a few hours catching up anyway. And then we’re crossing the road, walking up the other side, and hiking again. 

“We’re back!” Andy proclaims as we walk up the gravel to the trailhead.

“We are SO fucking back!” I echo. 

The trailhead leads into the actual PCT, the blaze on a sign next to a path leading into the woods and up a hill behind trees. Andy gets, uh… excited to see the trail symbol again.

Soft soil path strewn with pine needles and twigs. Rocks here and there. Enormous trees. I take a deep breath and smell that sweet Washington mountain forest smell. Like a giant air freshener, as Rob said. Like a high quality candle, like incense in a holy moment, like every good thing worth living for. 

The trail works its way up an incline. Forest breaks and gives us a view of the mountains every now and then, and every time we stare like we’ve never seen mountains before. To be fair, we’ve never seen this particular view of these particular mountains before—neither of us went north of Rainy Pass, and it is completely new territory even though it’s a trail we both know well. I stop and take off my jacket before long, and I spot wild paintbrush as I stand there drinking water. I point to it, offering no explanation, as Andy slowly figures out what I’m excited about. 

“Oh, I thought you were pointing to an animal. I should have known. Paintbrush!” he mimics my excited call from the desert. 

“They’re my friends!”

It is the best kind of homecoming to be in the northern conifer forest with a friend. We talk as we hike, my breathing heavy. I packed for eight days and the weight of this food is no joke. I walked a lot in Japan but not with a pack on. My trail legs are a distant memory. Still, with breaks, water, and snacks, we prevail. 

“Do you have a favorite day, or a day that stands out clearly in your mind, from the PCT?” I ask Andy at one point. 

He considers for a moment. “It’s hard to narrow it down. Every day was so different, wasn’t it?” 

We bandy about some possibilities. The day that stands out most to me still is Three Sisters day in Oregon. All the wildflowers gleaming like a visual orchestra in the Easter-grass-green meadows, the obsidian sparkling in the sun, each of the three mountains with their totally different spirit, laughing to the point of tears while shoving gummy worms in my face. But there was also the Whitewater day where we sat in the creek, and Goat Rocks, and my birthday on Forester Pass, and the long day over Lassen. Andy offers the zero day in Idyllwild as an option. 

“I loved that day,” I say, recalling. “Breakfast at the Red Kettle. God, I ate so much food there. All of us staying in that one room, playing Slaps and Never Have I Ever.”

“Ordering pizza. Walking around town.”

“Yeah. Good day.”

“It’s strange that we talk about it like memories,” Andy says. “Like, we wish it were still that time.”

I think for a moment. There is part of me that does wish this. I loved that day. I loved pretty much all of those days. They’re bathed in this golden sheen of frozen perfection in my memory. I hold them on a pedestal and yearn for them. But I’m also content now. Happy to be here on this micro-journey in the mountains with my original PCT friend.

“Well, some people say that time isn’t linear, and that everything is happening everywhere, all at once.” This is one of my favorite and most comforting trains of thought. “So if you subscribe to that, then really, we are still there. And we always will be.”

Andy smiles. “Yeah, that’s true.”

We are there in Idyllwild, but we are also here as the trail starts to switchback its way out of the treeline and over some snowy patches. The wind picks up; by the time we start to see the crest of the hill it’s downright chilly. 

The mountains here are just so Washington. Big trees, kind of remote feeling, cold. “It’s giving Washington,” I say, apropos of nothing.

Andy turns around. “Did I say something like that on the trail? Like, ‘that’s so California,’ or something?”

I remember. “Yeah! You would be looking at a valley or something and stop and be like, ‘See that? California. All California.” We laugh. It’s weird how these little memories are surging back. Strange how so many things happen every day when all you’re doing every day is walking. Like the removal of all the annoyances and decisions of everyday life paves the way for inside jokes and very specific memories. 

A little while later I stop again for a moment and survey the valley, the clouds rolling in, the tops of trees bowing in the wind. I raise my arms up, poles out, feeling the breeze and the earth and the small moment in the river of time. 

“This is what life is for!” I exclaim. “We have free will! And this is what I want to do with my one wild and precious life!”Andy’s laughing at me, but I know he agrees. 

A few switchbacks later, about a mile from our camp spot, I tell Andy I have a song stuck in my head and that I’m going to listen for a bit before we finish up. The newest King Gizzard album, Phantom Island, came out a week ago, and one song in particular keeps rattling around in my brain: “Spacesick.” Today is “Spacesick” day in the Gizzverse because it starts with the lines “June 22, what I wouldn’t do for a meal with you.” I put in my headphones and the music fills my ears. I don’t exactly zoom on this one because this pack, as I have mentioned, is damn heavy, and these legs are damn slow, but I do dance a little and let the world and the music fill me as I savor the feeling of being on trail again.

This album is beautiful, but also a little sad. A lot of the songs are about the guys in the band missing their partners and kids back in Australia, and struggling with trying to balance their love of music and touring with their love and yearning for their families. The conceit of “Spacesick” is an astronaut turning and turning in space, thinking only about having a meal in a shitty diner with his partner back on earth. I don’t relate to the sentiment exactly, but something about the visual of floating, being somewhere beautiful and yet still missing the simple things, resonates. And past that, this album was recorded with an orchestra and the music itself is rich and layered. They’re touring with an orchestra in the fall, something they’ve never done before, and I cannot wait to see it.

Gizz has released seven albums since I left the PCT. Omnium Gatherum, with “Magenta Mountain”—still my favorite King Gizz song to this day—came out over three years ago. I measure my life in this band now. They’re a gift that has brought me such immense joy in belonging to a creative and eccentric community, and that gift is a direct result of hiking with Jumbo on the PCT. So as “Spacesick” ends, it feels right to switch over to the song that started it all.

Look past the dying trees, beyond waterless seas. Atop the horizon, adjacent to the sun, give my word that it’s there: Magenta Mountain. Jagged peaks dotted with snow in the distance, cold wind slicing, sun peeking through clouds. It is a privilege to exist on the same planet as this place, this trail, this music. Slow step by slow step, note by note, I make my way up the hill. I’m a little bug. I’m a tiny train. I am the mountain of which you dream. That of which I have dreamed has resided in me all along. 

I’m not thinking about 2022 as I walk. I’m not wishing I were still there or, on the flip side, wishing I could change things about that hike. I’m just walking, man. I’m just here, and fully here. That’s the way the way is made. 

I meet up with Andy and walk up the blue blaze to the camp spot we had selected on FarOut, but it’s very exposed and cold so we opt to go back down the trail for a lower, less windy, albeit still exposed one. I struggle and wrestle with the rocks in the ground of my tent space and take ages to get set up. I’m not in the groove. Where do I usually put my electronics bag again? Where did my brush go? I inflate my brand new sleeping pad and lay there for second. I hear a frustrated sound from near Andy’s tent and look through my mesh to see him standing there in his rain pants with a giant rip in the crotch. 

“All I did was bend over!” I’m chuckling as he struggles. Then he moves again and they rip down the seam in the bum. “Come on!” 

“Are those the Frog Toggs?” 

“Yeah. They’re not even mine! Hollie didn’t want them so I told her I’d buy them off her.” His girlfriend is on the PCT in California right now, and apparently the source of his defective pants. 

“I’m sorry I’m laughing,” I say, “but that’s really funny.”

A while later I finally get my items together and meet Andy outside for dinner. It’s very cold and windy by now and I struggle to even get my stove lit, but Andy helps in between eating his already cooked mac and cheese, and eventually I have chicken Pad Thai in a bag and my god, even though I’ve only hiked five miles today this could still be the best thing I’ve ever eaten. It tastes just as good now as it did that first night in the Sierras when I thought I was going to pass out and roll down the hill from hunger. 

We don’t stick around outside for long because it is seriously cold and we’re both exhausted. I finish up, throw my stuff in my tent, and hunker down for the night. My sleeping bag is a little light on the down in certain places now and I am freezing and awake for most of the night, but hey, I’m in the mountains on the PCT again, and there’s no where else I’d rather be.