My latest obsession. Should I?

Lately, I have been obsessively following a thru hiker who is currently hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  Sara who I have been following for a while now has done several Camino de Santiago Routes, the Appalachian Trail and the Annapurna Circut in Nepal to name a few.  I am enjoying the videos she's posting about her experiences.  She's often seen with another fellow hiker (trail name "Squish") who is posting some beautiful photos on his Instagram.  They are currently entering the Sierra mountains portion of the PCT which will be fun to follow along. Check out Sara's Youtube Channel and Squish's Instagram (Trailing Adventures) for cool videos and photos.

She is so upbeat, it makes me feel like I wouldn't mind sampling a "taste" of doing a section of the PCT.  After all, I have done "some" camping and "some hiking".  ☺

And then I watched this YouTube video on the World's Worst Backpacker on the PCT which I found pretty funny but also profoundly important in a "life lessons" kind of way.



For anyone who knows me I can get overly ambitious about things I obsess over and when I do I can disregard any logical reasoning that tells me not to do it. 

- I remember when I wanted to train and run a marathon when I had not even run a mile in my life.  I trained for 9 months, cried when I crossed the finish line and couldn't walk without pain for a week after but I finished it in under 6 hours (which was my goal).

- I wanted to hike up the Yosemite Half Dome and although I didn't cry on this adventure, I did manage to lose a toe nail.  But I did make it up the cables and to the top. 

- I walked the Camino de Santiago Frances Route.  I cried on Day 4 and had to skip a couple of stages but I made it to Santiago de Compostela with not one blister.

Now I wasn't born with a naturally fit body. And even after months of training, it was still incredibly challenging doing my adventures.  In his video, the backpacker identified an important mantra of the PCT hiker called the "Everything is a Blessing" mantra.  I found this amusing because I had the very same existential experience while doing the Camino de Santiago (Frances Route) in 2016. After realizing that I was not going to be that hardcore pilgrim who could walk 20 miles a day with their full pack and reaching Santiago de Compostela in 30 days or less, I accepted my situation and began to savor my experience more.  Rather than stressing about the difficulty of this long distance walk (which I was not prepared for), I decided to embrace the incredible journey that I was on and that everything that I was experiencing was a blessing.

Now, I've had some experience camping.  I've slept on a boat in a thunder storm and survived, rolled down a hill at Shasta Lake in my sleeping bag because I was fidgeting so much in the freezing cold temperature at night.  I even crashed into a bear at our campsite at Yosemite National Park.  Now, I have no intention of ever doing the entire PCT, but I wouldn't mind doing a section. However, since I'm afraid of bears and rattle snakes, should I even try. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm back on that Switchback climb up to Yosemite, contemplating my next steps.  Now, I'm not particularly afraid of heights, but this section scared me, because I felt like there was nothing to grab onto in case I slipped.  But isn't that life.  Sometimes we don't know what our next steps will be like or the footing we will have when moving forward.

Even though the Worst Backpacker guy didn't complete the PCT, he will have no regrets in his life.    We shouldn't be afraid of failure in our lives because whether we succeed or fail, what is most important is that we try to live our life to the fullest.  I'm not sure what my next adventure will be, but whatever it is I will look upon the experiences as a blessing.