The John Muir Trail
Before our wedding, my (now) husband and I traded ideas on how we wanted to celebrate our honeymoon. A tropical vacation didn't feel right, Europe seemed blah, and we landed on a lifelong bucket list item — to hike the 211 mile John Muir Trail.
Thru-trails get an ethic of their own. Most hikers walk southbound, starting in Yosemite Valley and ending at the summit of Mt. Whitney, the highest point in this contiguous states. We decided to travel Northbound, mostly due to permitting challenges.
Managing work-life puzzle pieces, we split up the journey between two summers, a 98 mile leg from Shepherd's Pass to Lamarck Col, and most recently a 133 mile journey from Lamarck Col to Happy Isles, Yosemite Valley. We have yet to tick the final section near Mt. Whitney, some year we'll get lucky with the permit lottery.
This might not be everyone's idea of a romantic getaway, but that's just the type of people we are. Spending time in rugged mountains is our love language.
A bit of history
The John Muir Trail nits together a North-South path straight through the High Sierra. Originally a network of ancestral trading, hunting, and shepherding paths of the Paiute people, who long knew the easiest way in, around, and through the mountains.
In the 1890s, explorers sought direct a North-South path and in 1915, official construction on the trail began with funding from the US Forest Service. 46 years later, after challenging construction over Forrester Pass and through the Palisade's Golden Staircase, the trail was finished — a memorial to naturalist, writer, conservationist, and founding member of the Sierra Club, John Muir. Muir played a huge role in the founding of our many National Parks and protected wilderness areas throughout the Sierra Nevada.
Reflections on trail
I take to the trail to awaken my reptilian brain. The brain waking and sleeping with the light, softening with repetitive steps, noticing sun rays on a lake or a raptor overhead. This brain moves through pain, ruminates in hours of quiet, or rather in the symphony of the alpine: windpipes strung across peaks, creaking Ponderosas, birdsong staccato. Everything is simple — I'm hungry, thirsty, nudging a blister with each step. My brain and body unite in with singular focus on forward motion.
We like to push big miles. For us, joy is found with a healthy dose of suffering. We always start the day saying, "lets see how we feel", and then 20 miles in, wrecked but smiling, we push further.
At night we lay in the tent and stare at our paper map, planning the next day's journey. Sometimes we lament, "How are we going to finish this", nursing torn up feet, bruised collar bones, and stiff quads. The weather is warm and dry, we keep the rain fly off. Sleep is swift, cradled under a crisp, meandering galaxy.
We keep only one phone on at a time to preserve battery. Every so often we snap a picture, but nothing can capture the ultraviolet clarity of these mountains. The trail is a roller coaster of sweaty ups and painful downs, from alpine tundra to sub-alpine krummholz forests to golden grasslands with lazy rivers, to deep canyons carved by rushing creeks. Surmounting countless high elevation passes, basins flow into basins, wide glacial valleys, and pristine lakes cradled by statuesque peaks. There are too many awe-inspiring vistas to capture, so the photos wane as the trip evolves.
The silence penetrates my cells, even on a week-long trip my nervous system rebalances. The modern day noise is like a sickening dream, so far away — the worry, the scrolling, the to-do lists, the performative social behaviors, the attention hijacking stimuli. On trail, I am truly unreachable.
The urges to fill time and space ease. After a few days, a deep contentment settles onto me like a weighted blanket softening sharp mental grooves. It is a state so natural for this human form and yet paradoxically alien for the modern incarnation.
Walking into Yosemite Valley, as the density of tourists correlates with elevation loss, we feel a wave of resistance. Finally sitting at a picnic table at Curry Village, munching on a long-awaited bag of kettle chips, we revel in the culture shock. I hesitate to turn my phone on, its power status like a dam against the deluge of habits waiting to flow.
Coming home
The mountains provide inoculation, but as expected the effects wear off. Back at home I try to bring some of the silence with me, resisting the urge to always have a podcast on, reading a book before bed, deleting and logging out of apps. Alas, synaptic paths are not so easily rerouted and soon I find myself back to a "normal" state — anxious, seeking, with fractured attention.
These long backcountry trips offer a stark contrast to modern day life, it can be painful to transition back. I gain clarity on harsh truths, that so much of life is a bullshit hamster wheel and our true core needs are quite simple.
I discuss at length with my husband how we can live a simple life while still participating in modern society. I have no desire to be an off-grid homesteader. I like technology, need community, and enjoy working (most of the time). Simplicity — of thoughts, habits, possessions, responsibilities — is like a territory to fight over.
Almost everything in our world drives a wedge between presence and hedonic reactivity. Society wants you on the wheel, always adding more. The notion of enough is heretical.
To keep the flame of presence lit when I come home, I need to vigilantly defend my attention, my neurotransmitters, my money, my time. I want to do more with less. For me, peace encountered in the mountains feels like true reality, everything else is just noise.
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