Quick thoughts on life-changes and the process of a not-yet thru-hiker preparing to head out on the Pacific Crest Trail

After several years of keen anticipation, I find myself less than three weeks away from departing on my first attempt at thru-hiking a long-distance trail. Along with my girlfriend and hiking partner, Kait, I’m headed out on the Pacific Crest Trail this summer, and I cannot capably put into words how joyfully excited I am to step foot on the trail.

It’s a strange feeling to finally put my departure on ‘paper.’ I’d originally hoped to write this in 2015 (but, as I realized later, fortunately that initial plan fell through), and have eagerly waited since September 2016 for our departure date to arrive. As we draw closer, I continually find myself lacking the proper words to describe how I’m feeling, so I fall back on continuously repeating, “so stoked!”

The last 10 months have been agonizing and invigorating, a cacophony of adrenaline, tribulations at work and the struggle to stay in the moment while awaiting the glorious start-date in July. Preparation has taken a front-seat to almost all activities, as we push to prepare for an undertaking that we undoubtedly will never be prepared for.

Amidst the many challenges and changes I’ve experienced while preparing for the trail, I managed injured my knee in a troublesome way while on a training hike in March. After some sort of knee trauma while on a fairly-tame hike, I developed a feeling under my kneecap akin to having some loose razor blades in there. The diagnosis: chondromalacia patellae (in layman’s terms, my kneecap is off-track and grinding on my femur bone with every movement).

The fact that there is no real cure or surgery to fix this condition became a daunting mental challenge for me, affecting me in a way I’d never experienced before. I’ve never had a debilitating injury, and the inability to walk without limping for 2 months wrecked my mental game severely. Never had I considered that I might not be able to physically do this trail, let alone not walk more than a mile in my life without agony.

Luckily, with dedicated rehab and attempts to reactivate my glutes and release my body from years of weightlifting and desk-job damage, I’m relatively pain-free at the moment. Already, the trail has been teaching me life lessons, despite not yet having started. Now, I simply will have to learn to listen to my body, pace myself in new ways and find a way to hike until I have finished the trail.

Kait has her own challenges for this trip, different from mine asides from the physical training and equipment prep. As she has worked through the challenge of putting career aside for 5-or-more months and the uncertainty of our lives post-PCT, she’s grown and challenged her normal mindset, and we’ve continued to mature our relationship as partners both on this hike and in life. I’ve read nothing but incredible stories about the after-effects of couples who rose to meet the challenges of trail life and made it to the end. I am incredibly excited to see the benefits we’ll reap as a couple in addition to personal ones.

The intricacies of prepping for a thru-hike are quite overwhelming, yet decidedly fun. From overhauling our current gear to align with an ultralight mentality (the lighter you go, the longer you’ll go), to nutrition planning and reading the history and issues with each of the resupply stops we’ll make, the legwork to get ready for the trail has kept us astonishingly busy over the past year. I am particularly excited to freely ingest 4000 calories in a day and still be losing weight. If the hike is anything, it will be delicious; after all, ‘hunger makes the best sauce,’ right?

This writing, much like my life and apartment currently, is disjointed and flushed with excitement. Appropriately, our journey starts on Independence Day, and I’m certain we’ll both find a new level of independence from comfort and regular society as we embrace the suck and push on through the 2650 miles. In just a few weeks, we become hiker trash (hiker talk for starving, dirty thru-hikers) and step out into the majesty of the West Coast’s best wildernesses. Lots of updates to come, but none so exciting as finally being at the starting point and being so stoked get going!

Owen Mullin, 2017. This article originally appeared on medium.com.