[pct-l] Adjusting after the hike, missing trail life

[Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com]

I know everybody is in pre-hike mode, but I thought I would report in  
on a post-hike topic.

I find it hard to adjust to the modern world since my hike. A lot of  
the nice people I have met (like Shroomer, Tarzan and Zelda) all  
hiked last year. I know some of them feel like me now, but it's been  
the year-before-last for me. That is much too long. I still miss the  
trail!

I think about the trail a lot. How can I get back on it again? It  
occurred to me I was going about this wrong. I may get to do another  
long hike next year, but you never know. I may never get to do one  
ever again. Is there another way to survive?

I realized I'm so lucky to live in Santa Barbara where we have trails  
so close to town. Dozens of them. Many of them lead into the  
wilderness with backpacking camps along the way. I made a big list of  
camps I could hike to in an afternoon with the idea that I could  
leave work early on Friday and go to one of these camps and be home  
by Saturday afternoon and still have a bit of a weekend leftover. Or  
I could just go on Saturday, come back Sunday and take my time. I  
went to one of them yesterday.

It was really nice to spend some time back out in nature again. Doing  
something like hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, where you spend months  
living in nature, is hard to recover from. I think about the trail  
every day. It took me about a year to get used to our dry backcountry  
again. But then I was out there on my local trail and darn it if it  
didn't remind me of hiking around Agua Dulce! The sights and the  
smells. All the memories just flooded back. Boy was I happy!

I can't get used to "regular" life. The commercialism, the  
pointlessness, the destruction of beauty, simplicity and the natural  
world at every turn. I missed being the secret little wood nymph I  
felt like I was on the PCT, living in the forest, peering curiously  
at this modern world of machines and noise, then fading back into my  
forest home in relief where I could be alone with my bird friends. I  
really miss it. That's who I really am. I felt that again on this  
little overnight trip. The clarity of my thoughts returned and I was  
simply happy.

This may be what some of you are in for after this hike. Trying to  
adjust, missing trail life. Not all of you, but some of you. Good luck!

Diane