The Last Word On Nothing

The most tired joke of 2020, besides some variation of “has anyone tried turning it off and then turning it back on again,” is that time isn’t real. That’s because it’s not a joke, and also because I am very tired. I know I am extremely fortunate to work from home, yet I am also disoriented by the sameness of every day, punctuated only by moments I leave the house: bike rides, runs, or dog walks. Instead, the only measurement of time that feels real are the things that should have happened this year.

There was the reporting trip I was supposed to go on in March, my friend’s book talk in June, a bike race in Colorado in July. As the dates rolled by on my calendar, I imagined ghosts of myself following through on each of them: arriving at the Santa Rosa Airbnb I’d booked, hugging my friend in the bookstore’s basement event space, loading up the car to prepare for the two-day drive to Denver.

The one that hurts the most, though, would’ve happened tomorrow. On August 1, I had planned to begin hiking the Washington section of the Pacific Crest Trail. I’d planned my resupply points, spent hours on the phone trying to convince my family it was highly unlikely I’d be kidnapped on trail, run local trails on weekends to train — and just before the pandemic hit, my plans had finally felt real, and I let myself daydream about what life on the trail would be like. Lonely? Scary? Freeing? Boring? Sticky? Whatever happened, it would be very different from my usual life, and I was looking forward to a new experience.

This is where I stop to say: I know this is a champagne problem. I am gutted by so many things we’ve lost in these last few months, but most of all, the 150,000 Americans this virus has killed. I feel extraordinarily lucky to be alive at all, and these delayed plans are trivial compared to the many bigger issues at hand, or even just the many other events and plans others have had to ditch along the way.

But those caveats are also exactly what has held me back from really feeling my disappointment: there’s always something worse. Since the PCT Association emailed all permit-holders in mid-March asking us to cancel or postpone our plans, I have held onto a tiny, strange hope that things would somehow clear up, and it’s only this week that I’ve realized that’s actually impossible. The date will soon arrive and pass me by, and I can no longer rationalize away my sadness by thinking of everyone who has it much worse.

I’ve never grieved something that didn’t happen, and I have no idea how to do it, so I have found myself leaking emotion in strange ways. In April, I set up the tent I’d bought for the trip in the backyard and left it up for a few days. For a few weeks, I had convinced myself it was a good idea I’d put off some of my planning because it would’ve been for naught anyway. Last week, when my husband suggested we plan another backpacking trip, I burst into tears with a ferocity that surprised me, and had to sob it out until I was physically tuckered out from crying. (I consider this the emotional equivalent of when my dog farts herself awake and then has to zoom around the house because she doesn’t understand what startled her.)

If you’ve had to cancel or reschedule something that mattered deeply to you, this is for you. I propose we take some time to really stew in what would’ve been, and process the loss instead of pushing it aside. Today, I am letting myself imagine the hike I’d planned: I’m getting out of the car, pack full, and waving to my husband as I walk into the woods. At camp that night, I wonder why I’m doing this at all, and start missing my husband and dog. I imagine the new friends I’d meet, the mountain views, the trail angels, the satisfaction I’d feel when tagging the Canadian border weeks later. Maybe this will all happen someday, but it won’t start tomorrow, and that’s going to sting for a long time.

Photo: Miguel Vieira via Wikimedia Commons, the PCT near Cutthroat Pass