We are more than a speck of carbonic flesh flung upon an unimportant hulking mass of earth. Within each of us is the godhead we so desire to know, or as may be the case, wish to forget.

How fabulous down was for those first minutes! Down, down, down I'd go until down too became impossible and punishing and so relentless that I'd pray for the trail to go back up. Going down, I realized was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

I close my eyes
and I can see a better day.
I close my eyes
and pray

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.

The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.

I walked home holding Tom’s hand, not letting it go even as he tottered across a soccer field where there was nothing that could hurt him.

I don’t remember having one conversation with my dad in the three days I was home, but looking back at my journal, I see I wrote about him. I scrawled about how I heard him telling my mom that I needed to go back. I was unhappy; he thought the hiking was better for me.
I wonder why he told these things to my mother, nothing to me.

I wonder if overhearing his approval encouraged me to finally fly back to the trail. Maybe. Maybe my father’s faith in my walk—in me—made me feel strong enough to leave. His actual words, as I wrote them in my notebook, were, “She’s an adult now, she can do what she wants. It doesn’t mean she’s not selfish.” He almost understood.