Sometimes the ending doesn’t arrive with a rush, it arrives quietly, and only later do we realize what it changed.
POV: It’s Sunday, December 28. You’re driving 100+ miles to hike 2.5 miles to a creepy freeway underpass to turn around and hike 2.5 miles back and drive 131 miles home.
The whole process will take most of your day.
The drive is mundane. There’s traffic. The hike isn’t pretty, outside of a few interesting sculptures along the trail. It’s flat, sandy, and frankly, a little dirty. You walk past power lines. Your view is the 10 freeway, cars racing by, freight trains continually passing, making really loud noises.
You reach the end of the trail, the freeway underpass, and you run underneath it, all the way to the other side. You have to make sure it counts.
I had seen this underpass in so many pictures and social posts over the years that it almost feels surreal to be there. Aside from my husband and my dog, nobody else is around. It’s off-season for the PCT. The bridge is empty.
I stand there for a moment and reflect in silence. Then I turn around and start hiking back to the car.
My reaction is muted, almost numb. It’s like the realization hasn’t hit me yet.
I had just completed a promise I made to myself seven years earlier. One that took me through long, waterless stretches of the desert, and up and over a mountain. One that required me to figure out all the mundane details, the ones that are harder to plan than you’d think, like where to leave your car and how to get between trailheads. One that led me from never having backpacked in my life to my first solo overnight trip in the desert. One that required me to push myself and make it happen, because no one else was going to.
It was my promise, after all.
When we get back to the car, I say out loud, “I did it.” I completed Section B of the PCT. I high-five my husband.
Then I’m silent.
I just sit quietly in the car, deep in thought.
By the time we get home and park, a new thought begins to blossom.
Section C is ahead…
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