STIll Working on Adding text to links: Consider the topics underconstruction
Push the envelope. Watch it bend."
drawn outside the lines of reason
as below, so above and beyond, I imagine
beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities
lets me see there is so much more &
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me,
"black then white are all I see in my infancy
It already had.
It already had.
We started loosing ourselves in the music, rocking back and forth.
We started loosing ourselves in the music, rocking back and forth.
"Reaching out to embrace whatever may come
Reaching out to embrace the random
feed my will to feel this moment, urging me to cross the line
withering my intuition leaving opportunities behind
over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind"
It became our anthem
"To swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.
to swing on the spiral,
to swing on the spiral,
to bath in the fountain,
to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty,
feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep,
to embrace my desire to,
to embrace my desire to"
And it echoed in my mind as a lay to sleep that night.
Spiral Out
Spiral out to our divinity
Dancing on the edge of what is perceived to be sane.
Embracing what could become pain.
We are leaping and just beginning to fall.
Spiral Out
With a rush like wind, emotions came flooding in
and I laid there wondering when I'd hit bottom
and whether or not I'd have the courage
to begin anew
He knew all the words.
I choked on my smile as I watching him fall deeper.
I looked up at him to blow the smoke in his face but
I took a long slow hit on the pipe Sal had handing me.
feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines"
withering my intuition, missing opportunities & I must
"overthinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind
"You know the first 700 miles is over and through desert mountains right?"
"Try tracing the whole trail with your finger! I get to about Lake Tahoe and I completely trip out!"
we can't bring ourselves to trace it with our finger?!!"
"Look at how fucking long it is!" Sal announced
He unfolded it and pinned it to the back wall of our flat
"Let's hang the map up so we can get a good look."
He'd had the day off.
I smiled and grabbed the pipe.
"Which one do you want to experience first?
reaching out with a freshly packed party bowl in his left,
He had the map in his right hand while
"Check it out." Sal says walking into the kitchen.
that had until this moment blinded me from the weight of our undertaking. Sal shocked me out of my dream,
The image stretched my imagination and popped the bubble that held the arrogance and naivety
paper that came with our official 'permission to launch' slip made it a lot longer.
I'd looked at it on google earth plenty of times and it had looked really long on google earth too but somehow putting it on one long piece of
I understood that it was so long that the people who wrote the guide book had split the trail into three separate books.
It had 500, 000 feet of elevation gain.
We'd have to average 20 miles a day to walk the whole thing in 150 days.
Less people had thru-hiked the PCT than had climbed Everest.
The trail was 2,660 miles long.
The movement of his hand caught my attention.
His finger pointed outright at the map.
His jaw open.
I'd never walked 100 miles in a row
"I don't even want to try," I said as I put my finger at the bottom of the map.
Campo, California; the first town we'd walk through.
Then I traced up.
Mt. Laguna, Scissors Crossing, Warner Springs
Warner Springs was our first planned resupply - 109 miles north of Campo
His eyes became really big adding emphasis to his outstretched hand now pointed at Lake Tahoe.
how are we supposed to walk the PCT if
"Hey Sal, maybe we ought to hit that pipe and...
realized that I wanted to take another with an added kick of haze and relaxation
Took a breath and
I stopped tracing.
and realized we we're insane.
and then I looked at the whole state of California
in comparison to the trail that distance was barely 1/25th of the PCT
the border of Mexico and San Diego all the way to Las Angeles on the hwy but
Getting to Warner springs would be like walking from
The most I'd done was 60 miles on the Isle of Skye in Scotland on a weekend trip during Uni abroad.
"Ha!"
His eyes were pointed to the floor
talking more to himself than to me
"And the Colorado Trail took ME 6 weeks to complete."
"And that's like 500 miles and change..."
"The WHOLE Colorado Trail"
"That's longer than the whole Colorado trail!"
"Do you know how far that is?!"
began stirring our minds in a deeper way and
in reflection to the 2,600 mile task we'd chosen
but this time the weight of the words
We'd listened to this song many times as we got dressed to go skiing
it began filling the room with that fine edge between terror and ecstasy.
The build up of Lateralus is slow and
He grabbed the weed pipe on his walk back to where we'd been standing at the map
He shifted through his iPod for a second before selecting Lateralus, a song by Tool
He replied silently by walking over to an old computer stereo that we'd hooked up to an iPod
before we even get to the big mountains"
"So you're telling me we're going to spend a month walking through the desert
Sal began to sing,
making space for both of us to accept the fate we'd chosen and begin believing that we'd finish.
The music had cut the energy in the room like a dagger
"We're going to walk the whole thing," Sal repeated reflecting back a new tone of confidence.
"We're going to walk the whole thing," I whispered, We're going to walk the whole thing.
staring at the map with more confusion than understanding
acting like monkeys who'd never seen a mirror before
we digressed into a laughing fit of hysteria before making our way back to the map in silent disbelief
According to the agreed upon rules, in order to hike the Pacific Crest Trail you have to apply for a long distance hiking permit. It just so happens that the PCTA sends you a map of the trail when you receive your Permit. I remember the day we got the map very well. I got off work late after a double shift. I was working as a costumer service agent during the day for the resort and washing dishes at the local steak house at night. The day we got our permits, my cousin Sal, who had sold me on the adventure, got to them first and sent me a text to let me know they'd arrived. It was very exciting. By the time I got home he'd already started partying and it wasn't 5 minutes after I walked in the door having just opened the mail that Sal came out of his room laughing with a copy of this map.
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(Past the trees please)
(Slowly up please)
