I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time thinking about food. And I work as a cook.

The last month or so has been a flurry of dehydrating foods (and buying them when I got sick of that–Harmony House has excellent vegan/vegetarian options), blending up a few different trail mixes (all with chocolate. Lots of chocolate.), repackaging fruit snacks and hot chocolate, and putting meals together.

As of now, I’m planning on having my point person send me sixteen resupplies over the course of my hike–though that number is still rough. I suppose it sort of depends on how much food I end up with after my fixed supply points are covered.

My friend Jessie stopped over for an afternoon beer and took the liberty of garnishing many of the pictured trail mix bags with little notes. They started off sweet and lovely–“Jessie loves you,” and “We miss you!” and slowly turned sassy, till the final ones read “you’re gross” and “I’ve already replaced you.” It’s always nice to get an ego check, and will be even more lovely to see her handwriting while I’m crying under a tree in the rain in the middle of nowhere.

Though some of my pre-packed resupplies will just contain food, others will have the next set of maps I’ll need, a new pair of shoes/socks, a restock of first aid and medical products as well as hygiene items like a couple q-tips and a little baggie of wet wipes to get the grit out from behind my ears before crawling into my sleeping bag.

Beyond food resupplies, I’ve been paying close attention to the water reports coming out of Southern California to give me an idea of what I can expect in terms of stream levels in the desert. Trail Angel and former PCT hiker Double Tap maintains the PCT Water Report–a website to which hikers can contribute information about a particular water source by email/text/voicemail if they happen to pass by. Two hikers (trail names Trauma and Pepper) completed the first successful winter thru-hike of the PCT headed southbound on March 1st. Their water reports have proven invaluable to my plans of what to expect in just a few weeks.

My mother flew out from Michigan at the beginning of the month to see me off before I leave (and possibly die), cart me around Seattle to help pick up items I wasn’t willing to haul onto public transportation (see above Costco picture), and take a little training hike along Eagle Creek in northern Oregon.

Not absent from my daily thoughts are incredible excitement and anticipation sewn together with nerves. Am I prepared enough? Am I going to run out of food or water? I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about the trail as some of my fellow hikers–I can’t rattle off the list of passes in the Sierra or major climbs in the San Jacinto–but am I enlightened enough about the difficulties I’ll face? Am I planning my resupplies too far apart?

As my departure date slowly edges closer (seventeen days, now), I find myself taking stock of where I am. I heard an interview on NPR with a neuroscientist several months ago about the nature of memory. She posited that as adults, time seems to slip by more quickly not because the hours and days make up a smaller percentage of our lives as we age, but because we enter routines. There is nothing new to recall on this day or that, no significant changes or events, and so they meld together into a week or a month or a year or ten years.

Jon Krakauer wrote that the core of man’s spirit lies in new experiences, and I don’t intend on wasting my strongest, healthiest years doing menial work to reach a non-existent goal. So this weekend I wandered more slowly through Saturday’s farmer’s market; I walked more deliberately through my neighborhood and along the waterfront to work, as if I could physically immerse myself in the little details of my life–the small parts that so often seem insignificant, but actually make up the majority of our day-to-day lives.

In the last year and a half I’ve cultivated a life in a new city, I’ve found a new and favorite hobby to which I’ve decided to dedicate a full five months of my life, I’ve met fascinating people and seen incredible things and experienced intense love and joy and gratitude. I don’t know what’s next for me, but I’m happy to wait and see.