[pct-l] visual memory of the trail

[mardav at charter.net (Marion Davison)]

Jeffrey J. Olson wrote:

>
> I'm wondering what you all feel when you repeat a section of trail, or 
> the whole trail?  When you start the climb up from the San Joaquin 
> River to Emigrant Meadows, and you've done it twice, what's going 
> through you?  What does looking at slideshows, over and over, do for you?
>
>
We are major offenders when it comes to repeating pieces of the trail.  
We have been hiking the PCT between Trail Pass and Phipps Pass since 
1992.  We never do the same hike twice, but we keep finding our way back 
to favorite places....Island Pass, Iva Bell Hot Spring, Marie Lakes, 
Lake Virginia, Evolution Lake, Forester Pass, while thoroughly exploring 
all the connecting trails...Kearsarge Pass, Bubbs Creek, Big Whitney 
Meadow, Granite Pass, Paradise Valley, Desolation Wilderness, Emigrant 
Wilderness,  Kern River, etc.  Anytime I see a video presentation of the 
PCT I sob all the way through the part from Whitney to Tahoe. 
While I am in the mountains I experience frequent moments of ecstasy I 
call "bliss attacks".  I choke up, tear up, heave many happy sighs. 
It is possible to totally love the PCT without having thru hiked.  I've 
read the list daily for at least five years (except in the summer), 
worked several trail projects, used the local PCT that is 15 minutes 
from home for hundreds of miles of llama-conditioning hikes for the last 
8 years, give my financial support to the PCTA, and have attended 4 
ADZs.  The PCT is my backyard, my home.  Some people call me a hanger-on 
with no right to an opinion, but that won't change a thing about my 
feeling for the mountains and the PCT that opens them up to me and my 
way of wandering in the freedom of the hills.  The PCT is not a 
once-in-a-lifetime ultimate experience for me;  it is my daily life. 
If it weren't for the local volunteers that keep working on the PCT, it 
might not exist for the people who fly in.  I wager that Pete Fish and 
most of his regulars aren't thru hikers either, but where would you be 
without them?
llamalady