It’s been over 60 days since I was brutally honest about my anxiety with y’all. For the first time I’ve admitted my weakness and mental defects to complete strangers on the interweb. I felt like after 60 days it was wise for me to sit down by the pool and reflect upon how I feel now.
It surprised me, but someone I went to high school with reached out over Instagram back when I posted and actually thanked me for posting that. They said they’ve been reading my blog and that their struggle was very similar to mine and my post hit home for them. They just always assumed I was crushing it in all aspects of my life. I had zero anxiety in high school when we were friends, was a 3 letter varsity athlete, I was popular, had girlfriends, worked iron work, was handsome, and graduated like 6th in our senior class without honestly trying…. Basically how instagram makes it seem right? Living in the perfect world.
That message crushed me to be honest, but it also motivated me to keep getting stronger for my self. It also made me say wow we’re in this together even if we’re alone. I’m not the “only one” from Medford who’s fucked up. Which believe me, there’s a bunch of em.
To the person who reached out. Thank you and keep fucking slaying it. Enjoy your trip to Japan. Eat a ton of sushi and if you ever need to reach out I’m always available to text or call (cell service permitting).
Really though for me personally, not even for the blog I said I need to reflect. I just spent the last 3 weeks off trail CRUSHING the national parks, but it really wasn’t a break. So now finally a day to just do nothing.
I started this blog purely for me, initially I wasn’t even going to share it with anyone outside my parents and 4 best friends. I just wanted to document my memories for my future so I can remember what XYZ area was like or when so and so did something funny. But this journey is a journey not only to hike and have fun, but as I do it I realize it’s also to challenge and improve my self mentally and physically. Something my Ex use to say often I needed to do. I take the easy way out of things? Surprising?
To tweak some things about my self that I have hated in my past. As people started reading my blog I got more and more feedback and requests to keep it up. People enjoyed it. Not only are people interested in me hiking, and the beautiful scenery but I’ve learned they are also interested in me.
Now at day 68 of sleeping in a tent it’s time to reassess mainly my mind, but also a little bit of my body and my anxiety to see if it is getting any better or worse since being on trail, and not having normal day to day life issues to deal with.
At a quick glance I would say the things I feared prior to this trip about this particular trip haven’t gone away. Have I learned to accept them, or just not care “as much.” Yes, 100%. Hitch hiking has become something I don’t fear or care about at all. Yes I still get car sick, but I’m working on that. And that’s a totally normal phenomenon which I don’t think is “mental”. I’ve had some hitch hikes that when we’ve gotten to town I’ve said wow that was flat out dangerous. My mind processes that realization not into fear but into questions of should I have gotten out? “be smarter Chris” no reason to have your trip ended because of a car accident.
The fear of weather? I’m at the point I’ve said fuck it. Throw it at me and I’ll simply bitch and complain the entire time if it sucks. Pains temporary. Do I have the proper gear? Do I know how to use it? Am I going to die? Ok let’s go to battle then!
One thing I have not gotten over is the “Pre game jitters.” I get nervous every time we leave a town day and get back on trail. Why? I’m not sure. I did it as a kid with hockey games too. As I think about it at night maybe it’s because I’m re entering the “unknown” part of my journey. I try to tell my self you know exactly what’s coming each time.
What’s coming? Most likely 20+ mile water carries, rattlesnakes, freezing cold to blistering heat and the usual 5,400’ climb of elevation where your heads pounding. If I’m totally unlucky I’ll see a mountain lion or an avalanche. What’s to fear? You know exactly how things will or what will go wrong. Feelings like this at this point in my hike at mile 750 I thought I’d be use to. They should be second nature to me by now. Living in my tent is what I know now. I have actually forgot how my bed at home feels. My tent is my home and I carry it everywhere.
There are many like it but this one is mine.
Managing emotions has been fun, besides for random moments the urge pops up, I’ll say the times I cry the most are when Im alone in my tent writing my blog. The downtime is when it all catches up. When you can rethink it all. Emotions such as gratitude, fear, loneliness, and hope fill me up most as I type. Weird to me hope makes me cry but I guess it makes me feel normal, to look forward to something. To hope for easier conditions or better scenery.
My blog post about my birthday. I think I had tears in my eyes the entire time I wrote that post. Wolf Slayer and Seven you two are fucking awesome people. Thank you for giving me an amazing birthday and it was amazing to hike the first 550 miles together. We formed a bond I didn’t think we even could, and I loved every fucking minute of it.
I am extremely grateful I can even be out here, grateful to be fortunate enough to save enough money to take the year off. I can’t count the number of times a day Seven and I say to each other “ hey man how fucking lucky are we to be able to do this.” Personally I don’t think it’s luck, we worked hard, planned, saved, and fucking hustled to get here. But I will admit luck does play a “small” part of it.
I’m grateful for my parents keeping my shit together back home. My car, my boat, my mail, on top of keeping their own lives together they’re still running mail drops and shipping resupply packages for me. I don’t say it enough but I can’t thank you two enough for the help. My entire life too not even just during this thru hike. The amount of bullshit I’ve been thru in the last 5 years I can only imagine y’all have worried about me. Last year they were worried I was bailing entirely. For example last year I was doing my visas to move across the world to New Zealand for work when I was head hunted by an engineering company. I ultimately stayed due to some bad health news in the family.
Im super grateful for the trail. With all the talk and politics going on the trails in actual jeopardy. Wildly negative comment, it probably won’t be here in 10 years from now between wild fires, over use, private land closures and again political bullshit. I’m grateful I get to enjoy it now when I can.
Fear has been honestly the emotion I’ve managed the best. I don’t really feel like I get scared, I make a conscience decision if what I am about to do fits inside my skill set and if it does I grit my teeth and get moving. I will say I think listening to your “spidey sense” is valid. There have been some times for example where I’ve started to cross a ridge without my spikes on and have turned around to put them on. Why? Weird place to stop and decide that. Was it fear of death? Not necessarily, but maybe the fear of survival. Falling 1200 feet and even living all fucked up isn’t on my to do list.
When the spidey sense kicks in I take a minute to figure out why. What am I feeling? Weigh the pros and cons and then use sound judgment to make a decision. Most importantly stick to that decision. If I fuck up then hey I fucked up. Afterwards I do a battle assessment, same as I did when running engineering programs at work. What went right, what went wrong and what was in the middle. If I can improve something I do it, if I can mistake proof something I do it. If it was just above my scope of skills well then I re established my baseline, gobble up that fucking scope and get better. Brett Cate my old boss at BAE would lecture me all the time “DiFranco keep gobbling up scope!” Cheers Brett you were 100% right.
I would say the most scared I’ve been was on Baden Powell, I feel like I was dehydrated and fatigued that day and the 4,500’ of elevation gain to 9500’ in the snow got me good. Standing on the ridges saying even if I fell and self arrested my axe isn’t going to stop me in this slush made me jump between a fuck it just go mentality and a slow is smooth smooth is fast mentality. I’d rather take all day to live than die in a minute.
Pivoting to loneliness, it’s something I never usually battle at home. I love being alone, I will say this thru hike has pushed me to be as alone as I can be. With only talking to my parents or friends every few days and having no service to scroll bullshit there’s a lot of downtime to wonder what someone’s up to. When you pop into a town and catch up you watch your friends hit the bars, or go to your buddies bachelor party without you. This is an emotion that needs to be managed because you can surely feel left out. You can surely drive your self crazy being lonely. For me I remember that I’m not “missing” anything, and in reality if I wanted to I could spend the 1200$ and fly home, see everyone, realize I’m not missing anything and fly back.
Seven and I joke on miserable days “we are choosing to be here, we are choosing our level of suffering and worst case we will lie about how much fun it was after!”
It’s normal to be lonely, whether on trail or at home we are human. We crave social interaction and as reasonable as it is, I do miss that special someone back home. Her ability to put me in check with one sentence, or even make me smile with a short text to keep me going for a full day. Breaking up before I left for this trip sucked, but ultimately I agreed with it. Not realistic to make someone sit and wait while I chase peaks and travel the world for the year.
In my 20s I sat on the sidelines and supported an X crush her dream. For 5 years I did literally everything I could. Disclaimer, I’m not perfect AT ALL, but when we split up she threw it in my face I was “never supportive of that dream.” Although I disagree, I feel like today I didn’t want to ever feel that way, feel like someone wasn’t being supportive of my dream, or in my way.
Same mentality when moving around the country I say fuck it, like most shit in my life I’ll do it alone. Grit your teeth and power through, call one of your buddies when you need to. Cry it out when the times right. Now when I spend 20 hours a day alone with my nothing but my thoughts and mosquitos buzzing in my ears, just know I have had the time to analyze every conversation I’ve ever had at this point and I say support is great. But having the inner self strength to battle every single day knowing no one is going to help or save you builds fucking strength and character.
I get through those days by knowing this loneliness is temporary and I know there will be a time when I get off trail that I would kill for that solitude and silence I have right now. A joint and a quiet nap under a tree will be a thing of the past. The only people talking in the background are the birds chirping. A true double edged sword.
I already feel it in town when we take zero days. Cars ripping by way too fast as you walk shitty sidewalks leading into stores. I stood in line at Panda Express the other day and my blood boiled. There’s 7 items on the menu how does it take 25 minutes to order. Maybe more solitude is what I need. Maybe I just need to chill the fuck out? Maybe I’m right? I have no idea.
And lastly hope, I hope the rest of this hike I have perfect weather. I hope to see all my friends at the northern terminus and I hope to continue to have the physical strength needed to push through the miserable terrain and hot days knowing my goal is Canada. Hope is something I value the least to be honest. I personally don’t think hope is strong enough to get me there alone. But combining that hope with my end goal, that’s all I need to get laser fucking focused on making it to Canada.
To summarize my anxiety over the last 60+ days. I feel good mentally for the most part, the exercise has done my mind well. I have lost 7 pounds over the last 60 days and I feel I could spare a few more. My mind wakes up clear, not foggy, not stressed out and each day I have a clear goal of what I’m trying to do. Walk north, and keep walking north. Just get to the next water source. When you only worry about survival there’s really nothing else to bother you.
Outside of that my friends here and at home have noticed a shift, one in my facial hair and two do I care if I embarrass my self? No! A year ago I 100% did. A year ago I wouldn’t enjoy dancing at a wedding. Today I’m dancing in line, dancing on trail, dancing in the grocery store and smiling. Smart shop in Banning had the absolute fire playing on their speakers.
The comments I’ve gotten from my IG pictures are that I’m finally smiling again. And I’d agree, there’s a lot to be happy and grateful for.
Finally I’ve found a place I can truly act like my self and be the complete fucking weirdo that I am. A 36 year old from outside of Boston MA who’s now a homeless, unemployed dirt bag who has no desire to go back to a cubicle and no fucking clue what he’s going to do after this all ends…
But hey that’s 2026s mental health problem.
The Pacific Crest Trail 