A tour de force

Sometimes, painful choices must be made. When I returned to the United States, I could have gone straight to Washington to meet up with Sugar Daddy (from VITO), walk for about ten days, and reach the terminus together.

However, since I had come back to hike in the United States, I made the decision to complete the final section of Oregon that I couldn't hike last year. I'll likely arrive a day after my friend. It saddens me, yet I believe I couldn't have chosen differently. Sugar Daddy herself has spent the past month retracing the sections of the trail she had to miss. She gets it. We both wanted to be purists, and this ambition had to take precedence over our reunion.

Few hikers have given as much to the trail as Sugar Daddy and I have. We persevered for hundreds of kilometres despite the injuries and exhaustion. Back on the trail, I averaged 40 km on the very first day. I covered over 200 km in 5 days, but I don't think it's enough to catch up with my friend. As I leave the Sisters, she wrote to me yesterday and will precede me by a day.

As I head towards the monument, I feel like I've fulfilled my commitment: I've walked and loved almost every kilometre of the trail, every day. I've covered all the miles available to me, and even more. I've met wonderful people, seen bears, slept under the stars. I reminded myself every day, including the day of my accident, how lucky I was to be there.

There will still be those 5 km in northern California, between two roads and lots of power lines, but I almost take pleasure in thinking that I have this tiny part of the PCT that my feet have not yet touched, asking me "Shall we start again?"