Adapting: A Needed Thru-Hiking Skill
Thru-hiking means always adapting to weather, fire, trail conditions, injury, and many other factors. Sometimes it means taking an alternate route, sometimes it means taking a few days or a week off the trail. Covid-19 is presenting hikers with difficult decisions that none of us could have been prepared for.
After submitting my resignation from my job, and my evacuation notice for my apartment, after scheduling movers and a storage unit, after booking travel plans and a hotel for my first planned rendezvous with Molly, things began to unravel. Travel restrictions were extended, stay-at-home orders were expanded, and considerations for the health and safety of trail communities made a thru-hike seem not only irresponsible, but reckless.
It was Monday morning, my last day at work was supposed to be Friday, and my hike was planned to start a week later. With no time left to wait and see if things got better, I had to act. Being ordered to work from home, I set up a conference call with my boss and asked if it would be possible to rescind my resignation. Three days of suspense followed as I waited to hear my fate. When word finally came that I could keep my job, the wheels immediately went into motion to undo everything else I had arranged for the hike.
Fortunately my landlord didn’t have any other tenants lined up, so I could stay in my apartment. I hadn’t needed to make a deposit for the storage unit or the movers, so it was just a matter of cancelling those. Greyhound sent an email saying they were allowing cancellations, but getting through their call center proved impossible. The shuttle to the Southern Terminus run by the CDTC was cancelled, but knowing that organization will struggle without shuttle revenue, I converted my shuttle fees to a donation. One remaining knot to untie is the hotel I booked for Molly’s visit. It’s devastating to have to call and make this final cancellation. Not only does it feel like ceding my dream, but I worry about the viability of the small businesses along the trail without hiker and other tourist cash streams.
For now, it is a harsh adjustment to think that rather than being out in the mountains, enjoying nature to the fullest, I am behind a computer, stuck inside. For the near future, it could get much more dire. So many casualties of the virus have already lost their livelihoods, or even their very lives, that it feels like a very privileged position to have only sacrificed my hike so far.
Still, I’m optimistic about hiking in 2021.