Walking the nine miles into British Columbia after the PCT formally terminates at the border monument was a laughable length of time to process what my next move was to be. In so many ways, I’d been saying goodbye to the trail for the entirety of Washington, where my regrouped companions and I had together chosen to hit the brakes. We were still early, by most standards, and even though trail traffic had considerably increased with the inclusion of SOBOs and section hikers, most of our routines were shaped by isolation. Each day that month we were passed by quick folks who had started later than us but had kept up the pace going it alone. Each day we nodded them on. I had opted to hike the last three days alone without telling anyone and honestly, without a thought in the world about it. At Manning Park Resort, after hobbling from dry sauna to jacuzzi for two days and in between glasses of Scotch with Rabbit, we recounted stories as if we had survived a war together, echoing sentiments of loss and bittersweet victory. One final hitch, and Rabbit was dropped off to reenter the States on foot at a border crossing nearer to Manning Park. Amir, Campo, and myself discharged, reluctantly, at a Starbucks in the very heart of touristy downtown Van. My week in Vancouver as a pedestrian (mostly) was exactly the jolt back to reality that the circumstances warranted. To be on foot in a trail town, trekking poles in hand and covered in dirt, is a non-threatening experience. Any ugly glance or shred of adversity a hiker experiences in a resupply town is typically met with blatant, even explosive disregard. Admittedly, there is an arrogance can be exhibited when a hiker descends into a quiet community to raid their shelves, shower themselves in beer, and loudly acclaim their superiority for having accomplished the last stretch with more tenacity than their peers. This is altogether not commonplace, but it is indicative of a “worst-case” social scenario while in a trail town. However, to be a smelly pedestrian in a place where no one knows who you are, and furthermore in a place where the housing crisis lays its blows heavier than anywhere else in North America, is an eye-opening experience, offering any individual traveling by foot a front row view of the future of class warfare in the developed world. Vancouver has historically been a refuge for the homeless due to it being the only place in Canada one could realistically reside outdoors 365-days a year. Now and especially in recent years, the sidewalks of East Hastings host hundreds stricken hard by Fentanyl, The Opiate Epidemic, mental health disorder, and a society that has all but forced them out. (This is not the place for statistics) Vancouver, if you haven’t been, is the most strikingly beautiful city I’ve ever seen both in landscape and in architecture. It holds a vibrantly progressive international community (both a blessing and a curse when you consider black market influence from China). It boasts the highest cost of living in the continent, steepest prices for gasoline and food, and the most savage housing market. The gentrification of my favorite cities has long since been an expensive (but convenient) thorn in my side. Vancouver offered something much broader than the usual “local versus newcomer” contention. Blatantly apparent in Van was the sense that our current model of urban development is a truly dismal cycle of greed and harm that is happening every instant on an enormous scale, at the likely expense of someone you may love. The friend I was to be visiting took me down to East Hastings where he had been at work operating a safe injection site for these drug users - the last line of harm reduction to countless individuals flirting with the void, arguably the fringes of the fringe, and on the very front line of it all. Acting as modern-day Florence Nightingales with Narcan kits, they monitor the conditions of those incapacitated day and night, offering a compassion and earnestness that echoed themes of our human-to-human trail encounters, only with the volume turned all the way up. I am here, you are here, how can we possibly harm each other? For context, we had just exited the Northern Cascades, a swathe of the northwest that I will forever hold closest to my heart. And before that, the Glacier Peak and Goat Rocks Wildernesses, where I attained what I can best describe as my final hiking form in both body and constitution. To bounce immediately from zen paradise to a bustling urban hell was the only way I could assimilate myself back into a culture than I would at least briefly have to participate in. Some folks need solitude for this rehabilitation, but I often feel so alone in my head that social interactions allow me a welcome pull back into reality that I neither actively avoid nor am very proud to admit that I need on a constant basis. It’s a method I’ve found of recovering on the go, in situations that can drain an introvert to no end and in environments that allow no space for growth. I spent time with new friends, wandering during the days while they went about their routines, only phoning them to make plans after sundown when I would eventually wind up at a loss for ideas and spent from being crammed onto buses and traincars. One of them laughed for days on end at my inability to leave the city, after listening repeatedly to my declaration, "Okay, this is it. Just drop me at Commercial Drive station and I'm out!" I spent one final afternoon as a hiker, lounging with Amir on Jericho Beach, who had holed up in a nearby hostel with Corne one final day before his flights to Tel Aviv and eventually home. We had sandwiches and beer, reveling in a whirlwind of memories until we both were sound asleep against a driftwood stump, our only company being the ocean roaring in the foreground and a small army of rabbits occupying a nearby blackberry patch. I found it only appropriate that the first hiker I met on the bus from the airport to the US/Mexico border, some five months ago and as different men entirely, would be the last one I’d see, almost three thousand miles north in a country that neither of us were from.
Amir flew home to Israel, and Corne to The Netherlands. Campo had returned to the States and Rabbit had been in Seattle for days, procrastinating his own return home to New York. There was a PCT event happening back in Cascade Locks, on the Columbia River in two days. I was still on foot, in Canada.
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