Note: everything you read here is from my journal. I wrote in my journal at all times of day and night during my journey on the PCT – from 3 am, when something woke me in the night, to 12-noon when the beauty of the world sparked reflection within myself. Some reflections I’ve kneaded and molded to sound poetic and comprehensive. Other passages I left exactly how I wrote at the time, leaving the words preserved as memories.
I’ve organized them here with the title card, “Where Do We Belong” because the general theme is fluid with these thoughts. I hope you enjoy them.
If you find yourself turning up your nose or thinking this post is way too out-there, maybe a little hippy, stop what you’re doing. Leave your computer immediately. Lace up a good pair of hiking boots, and take a walk in the woods.
Then, come back and read with eyes fresh from the nature perspective. Things may become a little clearer. 😉
I have heard people say that returning to the mountains feels like returning home. I understand the concept of this sentiment, but never truly related to it. I don’t feel home on top of a mountain. In fact, I mostly feel wobbly.
However, I’ve come to understand on a physical level the returning to home feeling.
Being amongst the trees feels like home to me. The pine and cedar scented moss covered earth. I do feel home among the trees. It’s an unlikely familiarity. I was raised for half of my life in a desert town, and the other half on a tropical island.
As I walk through the northern forests of California the familiar safe scent takes me back to an unpredictable place. I remember a trip to Minnesota I went on when I was about 6 years-old, and then 10, and then 12, and my last trip at 19. I recall how much this place I’d never been felt homey – like familiarity untouched. For a long time I had this profound urge to live in Minnesota. I told my Dad, who was born and raised there, how much this place felt like home to me. I was a child, still I remember using those exact words, “this place feels like home” but I didn’t understand why.
I think now, as crazy as it sounds, it was the trees.
Prior to my first visit I couldn’t recall seeing anything quit like the trees I saw in Minnesota – aspen, cedar, white pine. It was the trees, even then… the trees calling me home.
I wonder about humans’ innate gravitation to the forest. I think of my ancestors. As a white woman with European roots I would be ignorant to assume my descendants don’t hold culpability in stealing land from native inhabitants. This is a reality that cuts my connection, a deep severance which I remain aware. I want to be apart of this place, work with nature, not against her. I want to belong to a place that never should have been inhabited by me to begin with. My non-native roots feel spliced.
I hope we can learn to recognize our faulted history, our ancestral connection to the disembodiment of this country and this land. One day perhaps, we can repair the damage we’ve caused by acknowledging and changing continued practices that damage Mother Earth and her native people.
The land, this earth – is a pulsating life-force with communicative vibrations beyond our comprehension. I am grateful to witness, in this one fleeting life, the parts of which I understand.
The farther we remove ourselves from witnessing the wild world – the golden specked stones and twisted marble bouldered walls; the life cycles of trees passed and regenerating, fallen maroon leaves and forest floor coated in pine needles; the uninhabited-by-human habitats of the forests – the further we go, the more disconnected we become.
With disconnection we lose our sense of belonging. We can’t bring together the inner-workings of our being with the outer workings and natural movement of the breeze, valleys, or streams.
But once the distance between the wild of the world and the wild of our soul closes in, the primitive and instinctual energy flows into one, and you recognize that you do belong here.
June 15, 2022
Perspective.
Perspective is a strange thing. It still ties me up sometimes; the way my perspective changes from one day to the next. Sometimes 3-miles sounds like nothing – easy even. Other times, 3-miles is the longest distance in the world.
Tonight I lay here, in the cozy cocoon of my sleeping bag, listening to the sounds of many frogs. The croaks and clicks and grunts of constant communication. A language I do not know. If I was a braver girl I would put my headlamp on or search for them by the light of the moon. I would love to see just one. I am camping alone tonight (no other hiker’s tent near mine). I sleep so much better than I did the first week outside. The frogs are comforting. I am nervous about bears to be honest, if a bear wondered close to my food I would prefer to just sleep through it.
I mostly feel safe.
I hope that my spirit speaks loud enough for the earth to understand. I will do no harm here – not to a beetle or an ant, or a flower on the path. I watch every step. I am careful. I hope my energy radiates through these mountains and she embraces me in her safety; in the knowing, I am an observer. I am here to appreciate every detail of this earth from the deepest level of my being. Perhaps in her knowing, I can be blanketed in protection by the earths spirit.
I hope this is true. In a strange way, it feels true to me.
One response to “Where Do We Belong? | Reflections from the Pacific Crest Trail”
This is a great reflective writeup of your time on the mountain. Your spiritual connection to the earth is warming. I hope to read more. Thanks for sharing.