The final challenge

I can’t be sure if it truly will be the final one, but this is yet another test the trail throws at me.

I’ll go back to hiking on Wednesday afternoon, or by Thursday morning at the latest. I’ll start alone, though I’m likely to meet other hikers on the same route. I’m making a great effort not to decide to stop here because I’m convinced I’d regret it if I didn’t walk even a single day in Washington. I no longer care about how many or which miles; I just want to say I’ve hiked a piece of the PCT in this state. This might sound crazy: I don’t even care about reaching the Northern Terminus. Wasn’t that the reason I decided to walk for five months? The answer is: no, it never was. It’s always been something else: it’s the goal I set at the beginning, in April, when I last looked at the twin Terminus at the Mexican border.

I know that repeatedly saying I lack motivation sounds like a childish whim. But it’s the plain truth. Perhaps being completely alone and relying solely on myself for everything is weighing on me more than I thought. The real problem is trying to make plans based on my current emotional and mental state—an entirely unreliable prediction. I’m heading to Portland tomorrow, planning to explore the city and run some errands on Tuesday, but I know I’m postponing the moment when I should be walking again. It would be so easy to say “enough” and organize my return, but I can’t: I’d regret not trying, not trusting myself, and finding a fear I thought I’d overcome.

There’s another phenomenon that happens when you’re in the city. The city is dispersive, fragmenting everything, including the most solid groups of hikers. You feel lonely, as if you’ve lost your family, abandoned. I don’t like experiencing this kind of loneliness.

I still vividly remember the day my father accompanied me to the airport on April 4. When he said goodbye at Milan-Malpensa departures, he told me, “When you’re tired, come home.” He didn’t say, “When you reach the end.” When you’re tired, come back home. I’m quite tired now; I think I’ve experienced all I was searching for, learned more than I expected, and I’m sure I’m bringing home invaluable experiences, new skills, and greater awareness. I’ll continue, reaching this close to the geographical end of this journey just to tell myself I did it again, that I set a goal and achieved it. Not that I need to prove anything to anyone, but I need to make this effort too, to reach this point and be able to say, “I can really go home now. I want to go home.”