Stuffed into a side pouch in my backpack was a small set of wireless earbuds. I hadn’t felt the need to use them much for most of my PCT journey thus far, as I either had been hiking with a friend or was surrounded by the awe-inspiring mountain peaks and alpine scenery of the High Sierra. In Northern California, however, my surroundings sometimes became monotonous with the trail leading through unending pine and fir forests interspersed here and there by a small meadow or open ridge. I started spending an hour or two each day listening to audiobooks, starting with the short book “Why Buddhism is True” by Robert Wright. The title is somewhat misleading, as the author mainly focuses on looking at the practice of mindfulness meditation through the lens of evolutionary psychology.
At camp, I put some of what I learned about the evolution of human emotion into practice as I discovered what appeared to be a tick (but was in reality probably some species of small beetle) crawling up the sleeve of my shirt. I have long had an irrational fear of ticks, at one point even indulging in self-medication to ward off any chance of an imagined case of lyme disease. Naturally I freaked out and brushed the bug off as fast as I could, then frantically searched the rest of my clothes before running into my tent to hide in case there were more of the tiny creatures.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep while in this state of panic, I took some deep breaths and tried to take a step back to examine my fear from a place of calm. Eventually I decided there was nothing I could do after searching my clothes and body for ticks, and resolved to not worry about it until the following day. It worked well enough that I was able to lay my exhausted body down and drift off, images of the eight-legged monsters flashing only occasionally through my dreams.
Russell on the Road 