Reentry from a parallel world

It's been a week since we came home from finishing the Pacific Crest Trail. At first, I felt like a stranger in my own house. The dog sniffed us for a bit before recognition clicked. I walked through the halls and into the rooms, opening closets to peer at all this stuff, my stuff. I laid out the contents of my backpack on the carpet and stood to consider it. I was intimately familiar with every single item — its feel, its weight, and how to clean it. This was the entirety of material things I interfaced with for the past 5 months, and it all fit neatly on my back. I turned around to look at the house, its mass hovered — so much stuff to check, fix, clean. I had a sense of slow suffocation, fumigated by superfluousness.

I began opening drawers and cabinets, gathering items we don't use or love into a giveaway bin. I tore apart my closet, examining every piece of clothing and sorting them into wanted and unwanted piles. Shoes no longer fit, my feet having gone feral and wide. I cleaned out half-used bottles of creams and serums, old makeup — I hadn't washed my face for 5 months let alone apply a night cream.

We took a walk down our neighborhood street to reacquaint ourselves with our dog, this place. Some neighbor put a fence up, another had their baby, but overall not much had changed. Everyone was siloed in their little den, behind walls and schedules. Connecting with people requires coordination on this side of reality. We reached out to close friends, announcing our arrival. Upon meeting, we exchanged comforting hugs and gushed about our experience, but there's only so much to be shared with words.

They asked if we were relieved to have the comforts of home, and I paused, confused at the question as my gut answered, "no". For those who haven't thruhiked (the majority of people), this is challenging to understand. They look at you like an astronaut who has returned from an unknowable place, in awe of your feat. But to me, it was just a long walk in a parallel universe.

I loved sleeping on the ground and bathing in the lakes, waking with dawn and eating perched in the dirt. Nature became my home; I didn't want to leave it. Sure, sometimes I'd crave a hot shower. But once my clothes were laundered, hair washed and I had enough food, I left town with urgency. Towards the end, I wanted a break to recover physically, but emotionally I wasn't ready to go back to the "real world".

The concept of a "real world" is maddening. Trail has taught me that this is a subjective phrase which should be defined by where you feel most alive. Since being home, I've operated in a dissociative haze — distracted, sore, and bombarded by tasks. My limbs have a kinetic buzz from the juxtaposition between continuous movement and now static rest. Like a working dog, I can't sit still — I deep cleaned the whole house and started a painting project.

Today, I got out of the house on a short hike and with each step up the granite blocks, the anxious pulse faded. I sat down on a slab above a lake and watched the wind sketch patterns across the water. Suddenly I wept, overwhelmed by grief in recognizing that this was my "real world" — the wilderness.

Embarking on a long distance trail — waking with the light and feeling the weather and eating berries off bushes and walking all day with a tight-knit group — comprises the essence of human existence. It is the way we are wired to operate. Modern living invites artifice, adding layer upon layer of unnecessary complication onto us as homo sapiens. None of it is necessary, and yet opting out seems impossible. Our true needs are quite simple, and somehow we've all forgotten this in favor of mortgage rates, car payments, tracking apps, and streaming services.

I finally tasted a version of how I'm supposed to live, in tune with my biology. It didn't take effort to feel fulfilled, joyous even. Sure, I experienced a spectrum of emotion, but on the whole I was free of anxiety, my attention span lengthened and my sense of faith in the universe grew. Back here, it seems I need to wage a tactical battle on my environment to cultivate a modicum of presence. The screens, the apps, the noise — it's so captivating. And those maladaptive habitual channels — scrolling, searching, checking — easily refill despite the drought demanded by thruhiking.

A tender sorrow stirred with the recognition that the tables have flipped. On trail, wilderness is the comfortable default — stimulation is reduced to birdsong, wind, temperature, communing with others. Town was the overwhelming aberration. Now, I have to escape normality to seek out wild places. My center of gravity has shifted back to a space enclosed by walls, sequestered from nature with every comfort and convenience a click away.

I have an acute awareness of the conundrum. I can't stay on trail forever, although I met some wonderful souls who try. There has to be a balance between wild freedom and domesticity. Coming back from this experience, my task is to find peace with that tension. I have an opportunity — while the portal to the parallel world of thruhiking remains cracked — to rewire "regular life" to better align with how I felt on trail. As I deep clean my house, fix the broken stuff, and pour a bit of love back into this space, I am trying to approach it with the same level of patience I had when starting a 14-hour hiking day, or sitting at the base of a big climb — one step at a time.

On the descent from the lake, I walked off trail a ways to sit in a flat spot on an overlook. My dog relaxed next to me, sniffing the air. I noticed how nice a campsite this would make and marked it on my map. Strong winds were picking up, whistling over the ridges and through the forest. After a time in silence, I got back up and took a few hobbling steps. My physical body is still reckoning with ~2,700 miles despite 10 days of rest; my soul will digest its lessons for the rest of my life.