Quotes & Sayings About The Pct

I hoped my solitude would help me reclaim my innocence, remember who I'd been, to find who I wanted to be. To become her. To love her, Deborah, Debby, Doll Girl, Wild Child, me, despite the irreversible truth that I'd been raped. I was learning again that I could trust myself and, also, I was seeing, other people. I was brave enough now to go out alone towards what I wanted, to trust that I was strong enough for it, to know that help would come when I needed it. It always came. — Aspen Matis

I'd made the arguably unreasonable decision to take a long walk alone on the PCT in order to save myself. When I believed that all the things I'd been before had prepared me for this journey. But nothing had or could. Each day on the trail was the only possible preparation for the one that followed. And sometimes even the day before didn't prepare me for what would happen next. — Cheryl Strayed

The night Junior stayed, my right to myself was taken from me in a way that had felt more final than ever before. Then the school had denied my rape - my word. The subsequent silencing and exile - misplaced shame - were the catalysts for me to finally break free of my mother's grasp and my voicelessness and do what I truly wanted, alone. I wished to prove myself as independent and valid and strong - to my mother, and to the world. I'd believed I had needed something huge and external that no one could deny was impressive, so I could show my family I was able - so they could finally know that I was strong.

Instead I had shown myself.

And it felt wonderful. — Aspen Matis

How fabulous down was for those first minutes! Down, down, down I'd go until down too became impossible and punishing and so relentless that I'd pray for the trail to go back up. Going down, I realized was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost. — Cheryl Strayed

I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it. — Aspen Matis

The PCT had gotten easier for me, but that was different from it getting easy. — Cheryl Strayed

The freedom of the woods lingered in me here; I felt lighter. I hoped to be changed by it, allow this seeding independence to root in my childhood Eden's soil and grow until at last it was undeniable. — Aspen Matis

My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn't looked toward it. I wasn't lost. I'd always known the way. If I'd only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared. — Aspen Matis

I was going to mean what I said, to be direct and firm.
I found my moleskin notebook and on the page behind the pages addressed to Never-Never and my family - two unsent letters - I wrote: I am the director of my life. — Aspen Matis

I walked home holding Tom's hand, not letting it go even as he tottered across a soccer field where there was nothing that could hurt him. — Aspen Matis

Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation. — Aspen Matis

Happy people have everything to give. — Aspen Matis

The way to self-love and admiration is to behave like someone whom you love and admire. — Aspen Matis

She was my mirror image, slightly distorted, flipped, older, larger, more able to coexist with a pack of men. I'd be their pawn. She was their queen. — Aspen Matis

death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End. — Aspen Matis

After all this time questioning whether I could trust myself, my instinct had proven right - I'd found a path in pathless woods. — Aspen Matis

Second - I'd take much better care of myself.

There were simple things I could do. I could start with my poor feet. These little two feet carried me each day for miles and miles, steady and flexed, tired and aching from constant daily pounding, bruised scratched and sometimes rubbed red-raw, my weight pressing and pressing them. I decided now that each night in my tent I'd massage them. I would knead them with lotion because they always ached, and at the end of thirty-mile days they burned - and it would be luxurious - something I could have done the entire way because I had been carrying sun lotion but had never taken the ten sacred minutes to do for myself. — Aspen Matis

Until 2008 the mosquitoes on Cape Hatteras were the worst I'd ever experienced. That would all change once we stepped foot into Sky Lakes Wilderness in southern Oregon during my second thru-hike of the PCT. The Oregon snowpack during the previous winter had been well above average, which left lingering snow in the high country that summer. P.O.D. and I had been on a faster pace than I had in 2004 on the PCT and we ended up being in Sky Lakes Wilderness about 3 weeks earlier which was theoretically about six weeks earlier considering the timeframe of the snow melt. Long story short, we showed up during the peak of the mosquito season. The mosquitoes in Sky Lakes made those in Cape Hatteras look like lazy houseflies. It was beyond brutal. We were lucky to escape without requiring a transfusion. — Lawton Grinter

As difficult and maddening as the trail could be, there was hardly a day that passed that didn't offer up some form of what was called trail magic in the PCT vernacular - the unexpected and sweet happenings that stand out in stark relief to the challenges of the trail. — Cheryl Strayed

He hadn't treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn't found it yet, but I would find it soon. — Aspen Matis

But I couldn't say any of this yet. No one answer felt it could contain anything close to the truth about her. My thoughts of my mother were wild chaos, I didn't know how to tell him we'd been enmeshed for as long as I could remember. — Aspen Matis

She taught me only how to need to be taken care of.

I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions - to earn my own trust. — Aspen Matis

And the idea of light unexplainably produced out of nothing was haunting, it shook me. A flat drab mountain could produce its own light, no one in this whole world knows why, and if that was possible then of course there must be other things that seemed impossible that weren't, and so anything - great and terrible - felt possible to me now. — Aspen Matis

I walked, floated, lighter - forty miles, my biggest day yet. I'd lifted the burden of guilt and shame off my body. I held my new hard-won wisdom, the gift three months of walking in the wilderness had carried me to: compassion for my younger self - forgiveness for my innocence. — Aspen Matis

I don't remember having one conversation with my dad in the three days I was home, but looking back at my journal, I see I wrote about him. I scrawled about how I heard him telling my mom that I needed to go back. I was unhappy; he thought the hiking was better for me.
I wonder why he told these things to my mother, nothing to me.

I wonder if overhearing his approval encouraged me to finally fly back to the trail. Maybe. Maybe my father's faith in my walk - in me - made me feel strong enough to leave. His actual words, as I wrote them in my notebook, were, "She's an adult now, she can do what she wants. It doesn't mean she's not selfish." He almost understood. — Aspen Matis

There were so many other amazing things in this world. They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn't know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn't crying because I was happy. I wasn't crying because I was sad. I wasn't crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9,760 days that had come before them too. — Cheryl Strayed

For all my life, I had been passive when faced with dangers. I was stunned as I swam to find that I had, for the first time in my history, asserted myself and been truly heard - respected. It felt monumental, I was buzzing with adrenaline. It was as if I'd become someone else entirely.

I had escaped a kidnapper. It finally felt real. My body unclenched tension in the balmy pool.

I was proud of the strength I'd found. I was the one who asserted he take me back; I caused him to listen. I was no longer a passive Doll Girl, trapped. This was me learning I could trust my voice - I'd used it, and it finally worked! I was triumphant. This escape showed me: I had grown, and grown vividly. — Aspen Matis

I wrote through darkness, vividly seeing: my passivity was not a crime; my desire to trust was not a flaw. — Aspen Matis

In a world where we seem to be beset by a trend towards 'manualising treatment modalities' the person-centred approach stands and says NO, that is not the way forward. — Richard Bryant-Jefferies

My mom used to tell me, "I don't like my mother, but I love her. — Aspen Matis

I'd begun at the soundless place where California touches Mexico with five Gatorade bottles full of water and eleven pounds of gear and lots of candy. My backpack was tiny, no bigger than a schoolgirl's knapsack. Everything I carried was everything I had. — Aspen Matis

I saw now that bad men existed who would take advantage of any weakness and insecurity they found when violating a victim. I saw it was not my fault; I did not choose to be raped or kidnapped. But now I was learning how to protect myself from the predators, to trust my No and my instinct and my strength. I was learning I was not to blame, I couldn't prevent men from trying to hurt me, but I could definitely fight back. And sometimes fighting back worked. — Aspen Matis

In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly - even though I'd been empowered to have my old college finally address my "horrific trauma," make me finally feel heard, this event would never have happened had I not first given myself my own voice, the permission to call my rape rape and not shame. In telling, I forced the school that silenced me, that minimized my trauma, that blamed me for the rape, to finally respect my voice and give me the platform they should have given me in the first place. I did not need the school to call it by its name; I did it myself, and they listened. I was the powerful party that brought the closure and empowerment I'd hoped, in first finding their invitation, that Colorado College would bring. — Aspen Matis

So much of being able to hike the PCT depended upon mind control: the stout decision to move forward, regardless. — Cheryl Strayed

I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself. — Aspen Matis

I once thought that the Pacific Crest Trail Association used these trail registers to track the progress of individual thru-hikers and make sure that they are not cheating by skipping parts of the PCT. But I learned that is not true. The main purpose of the trail registers was to show me how many people were in front of me so that I could feel slow and inadequate. But I could also learn the names of the people that I would pass so that I could freak them out by calling them by their trail name before they could tell me what it is. Some people write witty things in trail registers, like "Out of food. Stalked by bear. For the love of God please help me." I get a lot of laughs from reading trail registers. When — Libby Zangle

I knew with certainty now - I could say no, and he would stop. Above all, I felt the fierce beauty of the choice. I knew now what it was that had held me from falling into my desire to be with him fully: I first needed to make sure he was a man who would respect my 'No. — Aspen Matis

And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade. — Cheryl Strayed

I'd loved books in my regular, pre-PCT life, but on the trail, they'd taken on even greater meaning. They were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear. When — Cheryl Strayed

The entire time, he'd only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn't the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn't have heard me. He'd never responded, not by stopping, not with his words. — Aspen Matis

Though I was starved for contact, I didn't stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other. — Aspen Matis

I reached into my pack and held something small in the fist I made. "It's a pocketknife," I said, enunciating each letter. I was asserting myself, I'd snapped out of something; he visibly snapped out of something too. I saw it acutely in his dropping posture: doubt in his movement. I said, "The truck works."

And so it did. — Aspen Matis

Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. — Cheryl Strayed

It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction. — Aspen Matis

Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless.

But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no longer willing to permit this silencing. Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing - able - to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed her to help me, to take care of things for me - and to save me - but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it. — Aspen Matis

The PCT had taught me what a mile was. — Cheryl Strayed

Already, this little-walked gigantic trail through my country's Western wilderness held in my mind the promise of escape from myself, the liberation only a huge transformation could grant me. This walk would be my salvation. It had to be. — Aspen Matis

I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Leaving Paul and destroying our marriage and life as I knew it for the simple and inexplicable reason that I felt I had to - that had been hard as well. But hiking the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard. — Cheryl Strayed

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly. — Aspen Matis

My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child. — Aspen Matis

It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn't simply walking - that I needed to begin respecting my own body's boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me.

Moving forward, I wanted rules.

First - when I felt unsafe I'd leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I'd been bitten - the violation. If I wasn't interested, I would reject the man blatantly. — Aspen Matis

I began to lust after our conjoining life. — Aspen Matis

By the way," I said, "I wanted to tell you - about why I decided to hike the PCT? I got divorced. I was married and not long ago I got divorced, and also about four years ago my mom died - she was only forty-five and she got cancer suddenly and died. It's been a hard time in my life and I've sort of gotten offtrack. So I ... " He opened his eyes wider, looking at me. "I thought it would help me find my center, to come out here." I made a crumpled gesture with my hands, out of words, a bit surprised that I'd let so many tumble out. — Cheryl Strayed

Aside from marrying my husband and having my children, hiking the PCT was the best thing I ever did. The hike very literally forced me to put one foot in front of the other at a time when emotionally I didn't think I could do that. — Cheryl Strayed

I got an abortion and learned how to make dehydrated tuna flakes and turkey jerky and took a refresher course on basic first aid and practiced using my water purifier in my kitchen sink. I had to change. I had to change was the thought that drove me in those months of planning. Not into a different person, but back to the person I used to be
strong and responsible, clear-eyed and driven, ethical and good. And the PCT would make me that way. There, I'd walk and think about my entire life. I'd find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous. — Cheryl Strayed

Weren't things that blazed dully past. They were long, intimate straggles of weeds and clumps of dirt, blades of grass and flowers that bent in the wind, trees that lumbered and screeched. They were the sound of my breath and my feet hitting the trail one step at a time and the click of my ski pole. The PCT had taught me what a mile was. I was humble before each and every one. — Cheryl Strayed

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.

The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men. — Aspen Matis

I felt like I belonged to an ancient tradition of all young people given this same task of finding their own ways through to the futures they wanted for themselves. — Aspen Matis

I hated my inability to explain my life on the trail to her and my mother's inability to comprehend. I hated her consistent need to know the list of different foods I'd eaten that day. I remembered how she'd asked me if I'd had a good dinner in the same phone call when I'd told her I'd been raped.

I considered, tomorrow night, not calling her. — Aspen Matis

Fire is not essential. Fire is warm comfort. From fire, cultures are born. — Aspen Matis

If I wanted to go to bed at ten o'clock I did. If I wanted to go to bed at six p.m., I did. I woke at sunrise because the new sun lit my eyes. The sun was my clock; my body my pace-keeper. I started walking when I wanted, kept going until precisely when I wanted to stop.

When I was tired, feeling like stopping but wanting to persist, I'd listen to Blood On The Tracks. — Aspen Matis

I doubted I could survive in the woods without these very basic things to help me. It seemed like a tremendous leap of faith to forsake the tools I'd always been told I needed. And yet leaving college to walk was such a massive leap of faith already, and nothing I'd ever trusted and believed in seemed true any longer. — Aspen Matis

The PCT would lead me to an otherworld, through the sadness I felt here, out of it. — Aspen Matis

Most of the people I met on the PCT passed only briefly through my life, but I was enriched by each of them. They made me laugh they made me think, they made me go on another day, and most of all, they made me trust entirely in the kindness of strangers. — Cheryl Strayed

I had feared this end, wondered where I would go from it, from the moment I first stepped on this footpath in the desert. But I found I was not afraid of reaching it now. I was happy. I hadn't found every answer for where I was going, but I now had all I needed to take these next steps. I knew I would do what I needed to become a writer now. — Aspen Matis

I didn't know what I would do. There was no way I could survive. I stared at my damp tent ceiling, feeling the frigid air against me, the frozen ground against my bottom, so cold my bare skin burned. I needed to get to the next trail-town, Mammoth Lakes. There was no one here to save me now. — Aspen Matis

I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love. — Aspen Matis

I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen. — Aspen Matis

In fact, because I liked him so badly, I needed to continue on my course. I was finally becoming the woman I wanted to be, and she was whom I needed to show Dash - and myself. — Aspen Matis

My beauty and independence were new for me. They brought me pride and satisfaction; they changed my sense of possibility. I felt awake in my body. Living in the woods, building my little shelter each night, a silent shadow, drifting in and out of mountain towns, a ghost, I was entirely self-reliant. On the trail I had persisted despite fear, and walking the Pacific Crest had led me deeply into happiness. I felt amazing now. In this body that brought me twelve hundred miles, I felt I could do anything. — Aspen Matis

From that unremarkable gap in dense northern forest, I could finally see clearly that if I hadn't walked away from school, through devastating beauty alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, met rattlesnakes and bears, fording frigid and remote rivers as deep as I am tall - feeling terror and the gratitude that followed the realization that I'd survived rape - I'd have remained lost, maybe for my whole life. The trail had shown me how to change.

This is the story of how my recklessness became my salvation.

I wrote it. — Aspen Matis