East Sooke, Again

I needed to do the hardest hike, the one that kills me even now, Coast Trail end to end and back, because I got some big news this week, life-changing career news, and I will share it soon, but happiness is exhausting and I needed to blot it out with body exhaustion because it’s a lot, man, the feelings right now, so I did it, four hours and fifty minutes, soles crunching clothes dripping like I needed, and in the dry creek bed just before Parkheights I said to myself that I think I am starting to push back against the narrative that most of our impulses and habits and tendencies are wrong or bad or unhealthy or unhelpful

The sky was gauze-y grey and cool and I took voice memos for the first two hours and then pocketed the phone and crunched along the trail in silence and solitude and thought about nothing really in particular because that was what I wanted, while I got more and more and more and more tired and my hips and my back started to ache more and more and more and I wanted that, because new things bring new energy, and I will never not have a certain sense of my body as gummed up by energy, collecting in the corners of muscle and bone and liver like grime and I want to sweep it clean by burning it to nothing

And I suppose I could have berated myself for that because I know it sounds like an Unhealthy Thought (™) of the kind we’re all supposed to be having so many of these days, but honestly, I think it’s a completely sane response to life changing news and a crashing surf of new thoughts and possibilities, and compared to other release valves I am going to beat myself up not at all for hiking the coast of Vancouver Island until I am not clean exactly but clarified.

Time: 4:50:00
Difficulty: Hard
Elevation: 800m (constant up and down)