The beginning.

I wrote this several nights ago when I stayed awake until two a.m., strung out on caffeine and an unresolved never-ending to-do list and the knowledge that soon a progression of events would lead me to the border of Mexico with nothing but a pack on my back, a few friends, and a very long walk ahead of me.

Today if all goes well I begin walking from Mexico to Canada! 2,600 miles and some change. I won't be posting every day because unlike the vast majority of hikers, I do not have a smart phone. But when I have time I'll stop in libraries and hostels and I'll be sure to share my photos and stories then. One of the easiest ways to find out when I've posted is to "follow" my blog by using that option at the top of the blog. (Mom & Dad, if that's too complicated just bookmark this page!)

Thanks to all my friends and family; I feel so lucky to have you spread throughout my life. To everyone who shared with me small bits of kindness this winter; it was an extraordinarily lonely season but it taught me that the people I know are wonderful. Thank you for the letters and meals and visits and emails and gifts and offers of couches to crash on. You might not have realized it, but all of you got me through a really tough time. I may not always be around, but know that I think of all of you far more often than you might think.

Love,

Moss

“You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!”

Another reason to walk.

These are flowers from my great Aunt's garden. She loved her yard, and she loved her home.  I lived in her house for a year after she decided to go into assisted living. Not long after she moved she decided that it was a mistake, that she missed her home and she wanted to go back. As a family we had all come to the conclusion that assisted living was better for her; at home she'd be completely alone, unable to drive, with the possibility of hurting herself on steep narrow staircases. And so we gently avoided mentioning home to her. We dodged her suggestions of visiting it and we attempted to sidestep her complaints about her new life.

When I came back from the Appalachian Trail she had just suffered a fall and was sick. Her face was bruised and her nose swollen, but she was in good spirits. We had not seen each other in 6 months. I was shaken enough by her appearance that I cried. At this time it slowly it became very evident that she was never going to live on her own again. Her mind was changing and both mentally and physically she was becoming weaker.

She was so incredibly proud of the things I did. She told everyone she knew in that housing complex about my adventures. Every time I visited, she wanted to show me off. Once she cornered the director in his office and had him sit and chat with us about what I had accomplished. I am ashamed to admit that there were many times I thought about visiting her but postponed it with excuses. I liked seeing her, but it was tedious and mildly embarrassing being shown off to everyone.

 I didn't see her all that often this summer, fall, and winter; when my mother and aunt began emailing me health updates I knew that she was sick and that her mind was failing in more obvious ways, but it never occurred to me that when I next saw her, she'd be gone. My aunt who had always been so proud of me looked me in the eyes and failed to even recognize me, as we stood in a hallway gazing at women who drifted like unmoored ships in wheelchairs. I struggled to hide my tears and eventually gave up, standing behind her wiping at my eyes. I felt guilt at not spending more time with her sooner and an overwhelming sadness at the people around her who were shells of their former selves, some of them complete vegetables, unable to move, unable to feed themselves, staring blankly at nothing. These are people who unknowingly embody the antithesis of how I feel when I hike. I'm crying again as I type all this. It's trite but true: life is short and precious... so do what you love while you can.

I went back and visited my aunt again before I left and she was much better than the last time I saw her, even responding with her usual dry sense of humor at my prompting when I told her I was about to hike again. 'That's nuts!" she said. I'm so glad she was just having an off day on my previous visit, but it hurts to know that she will be irreversibly different in six months when I come home. I wish I didn't have to anticipate that. But I know that I do.

So you want to send me a mail drop...

hurray! By all means, please do. These are a few of my favorite mail drop things:

Loose leaf tea (I'm carrying a really light metal mesh tea ball for steeping, which I'm pretty excited about but I have a feeling there won't be many tea shops along the way.)
Starbucks Via instant packets (or coarse ground coffee I can brew in the tea ball!)
Magazines of any ilk (especially National Geographic.)
Chocolate.
....Or really any sort of candy that also contains sea salt.
Fun Facts.
Healthy food stuff. (Interpret that however you like, as long as it tastes good.)
Really, really really good non-supermarket beef jerky.
Sample sizes of hair conditioner (...if you mail me this I will love you forever. Unconditionally. HA.)

And best of all, letters. 

Here's a list of my mail drop addresses/ETA's. They are only for California right now. There will eventually be a few in OR and WA too. I did a really, really vague estimation of arrival dates for each destination. This means if you're sending me homemade cookies, they could be extremely stale by the time I belatedly arrive. (I would probably still quite happily eat them, though!)

I know I'm not being too presumptuous because I've had a few requests for mail drop information already... and at the least, now my mom has some good care package ideas! (Thanks in advance, mom... love you!)

PS: the Post Office will find me much more likeable if you label whatever you are sending exactly how I have it listed here.

Angela Zukowski c/o
Kennedy Meadows General Store
96740 Beach Meadow Rd
Inyokern, CA 93527
Please hold for PCT hiker ETA 6/1

Angela Zukowski c/o
General Delivery Independence PO
101 S. Edwards St
Independence, CA 93526
Please hold for PCT hiker ETA 6/6

Angela Zukowski c/o
General Delivery, Belden PO
14151 State Hwy 70
Belden, CA 95915
Please hold for PCT hiker ETA 7/2

Angela Zukowski c/o
General Delivery Old Station PO
12529 State Highway 44/89
Old Station, CA 96071
Please hold for PCT hiker ETA 7/7

2 years ago on this day:

I started an incredible journey. I'm now 3 days away from beginning another one. HOW LUCKY AM I?!

A PCT book review:

 My flight to San Diego is taking off in just a few short hours! I won't be around the internet for a while, but I scheduled a few more posts just because when you have a million things to do, clearly wasting time on the internet is a much better option. So you can expect regular posting right up until the 20th when I start hiking.

Other than skimming guidebooks for a few fleeting moments of inattentiveness, my sole research for this hike has been wikipedia (kind of pathetic, I know), the PCTA website (for just a few brief internet attention deficit moments), countless neurotic emails to friends and friends of friends who have hiked, and two memoirs. The memoirs were less for research and more because I enjoy reading fiction. I'm going to talk about the fiction now, rather than go to bed like a more sane person might do.

White's book reminds me a lot of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. It's humorous but tends to gloss over what I consider the most important aspects of a hike: the deprivation and degradation, and interaction with other hikers. Don't get me wrong - both of these authors mention these things (often in fairly entertaining passages of writing). But for some reason, I just feel that neither really digs deep enough. My other issue with the book is that I found myself really turned off by his somewhat cavalier attitude towards his then girlfriend/hiking partner. I was not a fan. If you've read the book, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it because I can't tell if my secret inner militant feminist man-hater is swaying my opinion a bit too much and I'm overreacting. I may re-read The Cactus Eaters on my hike and see how I feel about it after giving it another chance. 

On to the next book, Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Initially I was prepared to be underwhelmed. It's a book that has been well-publicized (I have seen two review blurbs in national publications already) and breathlessly touts the author's encounters with bears and rattle snakes. "BIG WHOOP", was my first reaction, completely unimpressed. The interesting thing is, only fifty pages deep into the book I already really liked Strayed and was completely engrossed. Have you read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert? Like that protagonist, Strayed is running away from a broken marriage and embarking on an adventure. However unlike Gilbert, whom I loathed with a fiery passion (please note that I absolutely loved her book The Last American Man and found her narrative thoroughly enjoyable there. I just found myself rolling my eyes at her repeatedly during her personal journey to self-realization, unfortunately.) Strayed is really, truly likeable even as she recounts a journey that, let's face it, is pretty selfish. She shoots heroin a week before departing for her hike. She cheats on her husband repeatedly before they separate and then divorce. And yet I feel nothing but interest and sympathy for her. It's an engrossing narrative by a strong writer and the love and grief she expresses is believable and powerful. Unlike the other two books I previously mentioned, this narrative has a raw and compelling background story that is interwoven with the trials and tribulations and adventure and humor of a long distance hike. This is a book I was planning on reading on the plane and then passing on, but now I really want to share it with my mother and friends. It's too good to just casually leave behind. Also, the NYT book reviewer admits to crying while reading it! I did not shed a tear, but I will admit that it was tough to put down.

A thoroughly necessary indulgence.

Yesterday I whined a little bit about the challenges and monotony of hiker food while leaving out the most important issue that I struggled with: nutrition. On my last hike, I started off very diligently attempting to eat dehydrated meals and dried fruit and protein powder and by the last 500 miles I was consuming nothing but junk food like Doritos and candy. It was a terrible diet and it was reflected in my daily exhaustion. I met a hiker in New England who I had blown past on my very first day of hiking in Georgia but hadn't seen since, and his exact words upon greeting me were "What happened? You used to be fast."

A balanced diet with healthy ingredients while hiking is incredibly difficult to maintain. You want food that is convenient to carry and eat, and often the options are limited. At many grocery stores the best you can do is a Nutri-Grain or Clifbar, and let's be honest, that isn't all that nutritious or appealing... which is why I am so excited that Raw Revolution has agreed to supply me with some of their product. Sprouted flax seeds and organic ingredients: these are a few of my favorite things... and when they come in the form of a raspberry chocolate bar well, things just don't get much better! This is a company that definitely knows the way to my heart!

I'm much more excited about my mail drops now. You can buy Raw Revolution products online and check them out on facebook. I'm looking forward to tasting all of their varieties soon, especially the organic greens superfood bars. Happy Friday! I have just days to get my act together before I fly to San Diego and hit the trail. I'm getting incredibly overwhelmed with excitement.

On mail drops:

I gave up on my mail drops with my departure for California looming mere days away. I hastily slapped down the lid on the largest of the boxes and walked away from the mess littering my parents dining room. There were good intentions involved with these mail drops. Great intentions, really. Visions of hemp hearts and 8 grain breakfast cereal and wholesome nutritious meals had danced merrily through my head until my incompetency and inability to pack and plan efficiently left me a defeated and broken woman, plagued by pouches of chia seeds, remorse and self-loathing.

 I am now going to admit something that I find slightly humiliating: I have been planning these mail drops for months now. MONTHS. For whatever unknown reason, I find it far easier to move bags of groceries from room to room than I do to finalize itineraries and determine amounts. These piles of oats and seeds and grains and berries have been moved from my car, to my room in New Hampshire, to the kitchen in New Hampshire, back into my car, to my room, back into the kitchen, in my car again to Massachusetts, to my sister's bedroom and finally to my parent's dining room and sun room, where they now remain, scattered throughout my parent's house in piles that are directly proportionate to the amount of despair I felt when attempting to divvy them up at the time. This is the albatross round my neck. Procrastination and packages. I couldn't even sleep in a bed last night, because it was covered in mail drop food. I have tried over and over to figure what exactly makes such a straight-forward task so challenging for me, but none of my answers are really adequate.

Yeah... that's a bed under there.

It is partially the knowledge that each ziplock bag full of sickly sweet vanilla protein powder will soon meld its nauseating fragrance with that of pungent dehydrated beans until it overpowers the taste of every other item in my box, partially just sheer unyielding procrastination, and partly the pressure-cooker of emotions that I submerge myself in every time I return home to my parents that is causing me to flail in a morass of unresolved planning and unpacked dry goods. Both hikes I imagined mail drops proceeding with good intentions and methodical ease and instead found myself overwhelmed with frustration and franticness at the last minute. I'm not a precise and methodical person. This sort of planning is not my strong suit. And yet somehow I find myself drawn to it, attracted like a moth to flame by the promise of order and preparation, which then inevitably turns to complete chaos.

On the brighter side of things: at least this hike I'm not attempting to pack up and move out of an entire house in one day.