Finding My “Why”

“Hi, welcome to McDonald’s. What can I get for you?”
I replied with my standard breakfast order, “I’ll have two sausage egg biscuits.”
“So you want, uh, two sausages and two biscuits, uh, separately?”
I was suddenly surprised, so I attempted to clarify, “No, I want two sausage egg biscuits, the sandwiches.”
“Oh, ok, so you just want plain sausage biscuits?”
“No, I want egg on there too,” I persisted, trying my best to not get annoyed.
“Really?”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Do you want the meals?”
I thought I’d already stated this at least once, but I managed to calmly respond, “No ma’am, just the two sandwiches.”
“Would you like anything else?”
At this point I felt it wise to stop while I was ahead, “No ma’am, that’s all.”
Surprisingly, either because of effort or just plain luck, those two biscuits ended up being better than normal. I wish I could say that was the most eventful experience of my travels to the southern terminus of the PCT, but if I said that, I would be lying. Lying big time. That’s another story for another time, and since I haven’t even started walking yet, I’ll spare y’all the details.

“Why?” That’s probably the simplest question that I get asked, and yet the most difficult to answer. Why do I want to walk over 2000 miles? Why do I want to live in the wilderness for months on end? Why do I want to temporarily trade the stability and prosperity of “normal” life for the life of a nomad? What am I searching for out there? Why?

I’ve read that thru hikers should figure out why before they begin a thru hike. It’s different for everyone, but most former thru hikers say to really think about it and write it down. Then, hopefully, when you reach that inevitable breaking point when you don’t think you can go any further, you can read what you wrote and remember why you decided to do something that so few people decide to do. The point is, that the reason why someone initially decides to thru hike is typically motivation enough to finish a thru hike, even through great struggle. There’s got to be some profound reason or set of reasons for most people to embark on such a unique and arduous journey. The trick is figuring out what that reason or purpose is.

When people ask me why I’m thru hiking the PCT, my basic answer is that it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and that there will probably never be a better time to take six months off to do it. While that answer isn’t entirely wrong, it makes things way too simple. This is my attempt to determine my motivation for hiking 2650 miles through the wilderness of the western United States.

I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in May of 2020. I love engineering. It’s a perfect fit for my analytical mind and personality. The four years of school that it took to get that degree, however, were soul sucking. The unrelenting pace and towering expectations gradually took their toll on me. I always saw it as a challenge, but eventually, I became exhausted. twenty hours per week in the classroom along with sixty to eighty hours on top of that for homework and studying left me yearning for time. Time to relax, time to breathe. Time to accomplish something for myself (as opposed to for my career which I suppose is also technically for myself – but you get the point), but at the same time, savor the process of chasing after a goal. I need to finally have time to lift my head up while I’m chasing after something. I need to enjoy the view in the moment, not just dream about the view from the not-yet-reached destination.

I’m an introvert. Everyone who knows me can see that. Where others are energized from the thrill of this fast-paced world, I’m doing good to pleasantly tolerate this culture that tells us if we aren’t living at one hundred miles per hour, then we aren’t actually living. To be quite honest, I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted from the constant pressure to succeed in the manner that the world deems socially and personally responsible. I’m ready to back away from the world in an attempt to succeed in a different way. I need time to slow down, to observe, to think, to write, to truly know those around me, to experience the natural world we live in (and so often thoroughly ignore), to learn things that can’t be taught in a classroom, to live. It is my belief that the slower we live, the more we are able to experience. I don’t want to race through life, make money, be successful, and eventually die. I want to experience, in the rawest form possible, this world in which we live.

Just because I want to slow down, however, doesn’t mean that my engineering brain ever completely shuts off. I’m project oriented and goal driven. Ok, that sounds way too much like an opening line on a resume or in an interview. Let me try that again. If my brain doesn’t have something to work on, it gets bored. Even if, physically, I’m busier than I’ve ever been. I think that’s one of the ways I was able to effectively tolerate the stress and monotonous pressure of college. I was constantly planning this thru hike. Actually, I was constantly planning multiple journeys that I plan to complete in the next several years. Having something completely different to exert mental capacity on helped me manage the mental fatigue of calculating displacements and magnitudes and fluxes. Simply stated, I needed a project that was just for me, and researching and analyzing and planning for a thru hike was perfect. After all the energy spent on it (energy that arguably should have been spent on more engineering applicable applications), it would be disappointing to not go out and do it.

In the classic country song “Mountain Music” by Alabama, there’s a line that goes, “Swim across the river, just to prove that I’m a man.” Although I don’t place my self-worth or identity in my physical achievements, I still enjoy doing things that are hard for no other reason than because they are hard. There is something about pushing yourself to accomplish something for no reward that often results in an even greater reward. The days and nights that I spent running (but mostly walking) during the Vol State 500K last July taught me this. There was no reason for me to run that race. I was not competitive – my primary goal was to finish. There was no tangible prize – all finishers get a jacket, but we have to buy it ourselves. It didn’t bring about popularity – aside from people who have run the race and people who live in the communities that it passes through, very few have ever heard of it. Even fewer understand it. My reward, however, was internal. I was able to struggle to accomplish something that I would have never thought possible. I can always look back on those nine long days and remember that it was incredibly difficult, but I did it. I did it just to prove that I could. I see the challenge of thousands of miles of trail in the same way.

There is an inherent pressure in our society to make life as complicated, complex, and busy as possible. Taking time to think is unheard of. If you don’t know exactly where you stand on any given issue, you are labeled as uninformed, uneducated, unindoctrinated, essentially weak. If you aren’t an active member of your neighborhood association, a staunch supporter of your infallible political party, and somehow after all that still have time leftover for your local pottery appreciation club, you’re labeled as uncultured and isolationist. Now I’m not saying that these things are inherently bad (although the argument could be made on some of them). What I’m trying to say, however, is that when we fill every second of every minute of every hour of every day with these things that our modern society says we should be involved in, we often find ourselves exhausted, wore down, many times depressed. I have come to realize that, for me personally (and I would venture to assume that I’m not the only one this applies to), I am much happier when I am able to simplify. When I return to a primal, simplistic way of life, free from so much noise and distraction, I am able to recharge in a temporary escape or respite from this modern world. Please don’t take this the wrong way, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t think I would be happy living alone in the wilderness for the rest of my life, but a break from the world isn’t a bad thing at all. I have a feeling that six months on the trail will show me what I really value in this world when I return. Hopefully, it will solidify my values and maybe cause me to discover some that I didn’t know I had.

My final and arguably most important reason for taking this little walk is to experience the rugged beauty of creation. I’m a Christian, and believe that the world and everything in it has been intelligently created by God. As for myself, I feel the presence of my Creator most closely when I am in the wilderness that He created. He reveals his steadfastness to me as I walk through the forest and His love as I walk beside the rivers. I feel His power from the mountaintops and His peace in the valleys. The desert shows me that He is the provider and the lakes display His abundant grace. I want to walk through the incredible sublimity of this world He created, to experience it, but also to experience Him – to walk in communion with my God.

So these are my reasons, my purpose. Some of them may be flawed or misinformed in some way, but can you really know the purpose for hiking 2650 miles through the wilderness before you do it? Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe the reason I’m going out to the trail isn’t as important as the reasons I will discover along the way, the things I will see, the people I will meet. Maybe those will become the real reason I’m going on this journey. Perhaps the purpose of the journey is the journey itself and everything I will experience along the way. Hopefully that sense of purpose, both motivated by “why’s” that I can identify now, along with whatever other “why’s” I find along the trail will get me to that distant Canadian border, 2650 miles up the trail.

– Central Time