Off The PCT

As I said on the post when I tried to turn comments back on but did not, er, sorry, I could not get enough oxygen under exertion again on this second essay of the Pacific Crest Trail. Extreme exertion, to be sure, but for this old frame, extreme exertion occurs at three thousand feet, in the heat, carrying a load uphill.

I saw many others with heavier packs doing fine. Once upon a time, I was one of them. That style of outdoor experience is, for me, it seems, no longer available. No. I was panting and dizzy, not fall-over dizzy, not yet, but that was next. I have trained to recognize all the many dangerous symptoms my body gives when it nears the specific failures of various organs or systems of organs. “Atrial fibrillation” is the phrase of the day. In my case, oxygenated blood is getting remixed with un-oxygenated blood, and un-oxegenated blood is getting remixed with oxygenated blood due to a valve on my heart that opens and closes at asynchronous, “not in time.” times.

If you want to get an idea of what that feels like on a hot steep hill with a pack, try that first. Get at least twenty-five pounds on your back, and chug up a hill in the sun.

I won’t say “any,” but very many can not only do that, but do that all day long. On that tough trail, I saw them. You might be one! I expect that barring a “lightning strike” of some kind, a good many of them will walk all the way to Canada.

Now though, add this:

While moving hard, still breathing though your nose of course, always trying to do that, at the upper cruising limit pace though, now hold your breath.

How long can you go? Three steps? Fifteen? Sixty?

That was what it felt like when my heart started fluttering. I felt no chest pains other than the exact same ones you might feel with a crashing heart. What “pain” my heart felt was completely endurable for me, but I am not my hart, and my heart is the weakest link in my body’s chain of living in its stream. If I am to use it to communicate to you, then I cannot pull steep hills with a pack in the sun, for if I do that with my body’s current set of physically dangerous conditions, it will die.

I kept looking back at the distances I was going from rest point to rest point. We all have ways we measure space around us. I played lots of outside sports. In the US, those are on football fields. Often they have tracks around them. One gets to know sizes by three hundred yards and quarter-miles very well. Three hundred meters is a little bigger than three hundred yards, and a half kilometer is a little longer than a quarter-mile. You see what I am saying though? I was looking back and trying to estimate like that, in that measure of space. I saw the space collapse.

In one stretch, after I rested and knew myself well fed, hydrated, all that, I saw that distance shrink from a half-mile to fifteen feet, and that happened in under two hours.

I am pleased to report that my muscles, bones, joints, gastrointestinal tract, liver, spleen, et al, were up to the task. They could have made the journey, but of the “noble organs,” as was once a phrase, this heart and lungs are a bit broken.

I am not quite sure how to get them all stronger. I do not know my future limits. I am sure I can get stronger. We will see how much that is.

Meanwhile, remember! Plans fail! Purposes remain. It was my purpose to use the experience to create great art. I have some exciting stuff in the works!