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Pacific Crest Trail 2016

I’m not sure what words go here. I don’t know that they exist. I’m not sure how best to describe the experience I had on the Pacific Crest Trail. It is like a dream now. It’s that deep humming, that pulse — sometimes faint, sometimes stronger — to the rhythm of what living truly is. It keeps inviting me to dance. It is both magically dynamic yet securely static. It’s fantastically challenging in the simplest of ways.

On October 24, 2016 (5 months and 21 days after my start at the Southern Terminus in Campo, CA), I completed a continuous foot-path of over 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada along the PCT. I became “giggles” in the process. I became happier, more confident, and so utterly at peace. Still-in-motion among the eternal wisdom of nature. Moving along the crest of pure inspiration.

The people I met, the feelings I felt, the thoughts, the sights, the scares, the climbs, the scrambles, the wild-things, the falls, the trailblazing, the fords, and the crossings…oh, and the joyous glissading!

A part of me, it will always keep. For that, I am thankful.









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moon-rises to come

Since January of 2015 (around the time of my first post) I lived in my tent on Isla Mujeres, Mexico and became a PADI Advanced Certified Scuba Diver; got lost in the streets of Sevilla, free-camped in Granada, and volunteered on a tiny farm in the mountains of Orgiva, Spain. I lived with the Rainbow Family in Portugal, took a 64 hour bus ride to Romania, spent time in Bulgaria and Greece, stopped off in Hawaii, and flew home to my birthplace of Sacramento, California, USA sometime in May 2015. Including my time in Central and South America, I was away for 11 months. I was a rapidly changing human. And I was broke.

My father opened his home to me for 3 recuperative months before I set off for Orcas Island, Washington in late August. I volunteered at Indralaya (a Sanskrit word loosely translated to “home for the spiritual forces in nature”), a Theosophical retreat that will forever remain close to my heart.  In October I ferried back to the mainland to make my home at the Green Tortoise Hostel on 1st and Pike in Seattle. Seattle is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, and with a $15.00 an hour minimum wage it seemed a good place to make what I need in order to get where I need to be (where that was, I had no idea at the time). My job at the hostel is to work in the kitchen. I work there 3 days a week in exchange for a free bed in a room with 7 other trade-workers. In my off-time, I am a cheesemaker. I began working there around the first of January. A vegan cheesemaker.

Ten hours a day to culture, and cook, and pack, and mill, and salt, and press, and break-out and package 60 lb blocks of cheddar. It is the hardest I have ever worked. Well worth it. I will continue on, 7 days a week until May 2, 2016 when I will board a plane for San Diego.

On May 3rd 2016, “at first-light”, I will start the first mile of my 2,660 mile solo journey from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail.

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this is about exploration

This is about exploration. This is about regeneration. This is about constant change. This is about fear as fuel.

In the interest of anonymity, I’ll call myself Palomita (a name given to me during my stay in the Ecuadorian Amazon two and a half weeks ago because my birth name proved to difficult to pronounce).

I resigned from my profession as a Civil Servant for the State of California just over six months ago. My reasoning: a burning need to travel; that and a harrowing fear of becoming fixed in a mold of routine, commercialized contentment.

So. What else could I do but cash out my savings and buy a one way ticket to Guatemala City, Guatemala?

This blog is about this journey…one that will hopefully never end. This blog is about embracing fears, challenging convention, discovering the creativity within yourself (and others), challenging EVERYTHING, discounting nothing. It is about the beauty, magic, and wonder in life as perceived by the individual.

Mostly it is about trusting in yourself and the direction of the wind. To be physical with life. To be bruised by experience, and kissed by exaltation. To take in what the world is sending you, apply your essence, and send it back out as art.