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Grant’s Journal

December 28

I meet the most ordinary people on hikes. Trader Joe’s cashiers, Uber drivers. They tell me they don’t want regular jobs because their real life is up here. They reject capitalism not as a philosophical principle but because they learned the secret nobody wants us to know: we don’t need it. Everything we need in life can fit into a fifteen-pound pack.

Hiking makes us feel like heroes to ourselves. We can do hard things. We can disconnect and focus on one step in front of the other.

I’m on the new trail in Indio. It’s not hard, pretty boring until you get to the badlands, but that’s when it starts to pay off. I walked through narrow slot canyons formed by tectonic uplift and time. The rocks are torqued and twisted like Silly Putty. I just climbed to the high point. From here I can see the Coachella Valley, the Salton Sea, and the San Gorgonio Mountain. I stopped to get away from a yammering group of hikers. Now I know why Hobie tells me to shut up—Hobie of all people. The only time that guy doesn’t say what’s on his mind is when he’s on the trails. I get it now. I’ve spent my entire career wanting other people’s words in my head. Now, with every step, I push them out.

Everyone talks about the same thing out here: their relationships—who they love, who they used to love. Who let them down. Who they want but shouldn’t. Who they don’t want but should. It’s where your mind goes for some reason. It’s where my mind goes, that’s for sure.

All these people sound crazy to me. What could they know about love? What do any of us know?

December 29

Thank god I can come here to escape being part of everyone else’s vacation. The horror stories I hear when we meet the new snowbirders who arrive at Le Desert and start random conversations… One guy, first thing out of his mouth—“How much snowpack you got back home?” They love to tell stories of massive blizzards, curling… an ice arena that collapsed under heavy snowfall. All we talk about is the winter we left behind.

Then there are the rental horror stories. The place that had only plastic silverware, no toilet paper, moldy carpets, rusty baking sheets. Barking dogs. That time their unit was double-booked, or they were scammed with a fake listing and the police could do nothing. The house that looked nothing like on Airbnb. Schlubby furniture with springs sticking out. Last-minute cancellation mishaps. The old man who died while swimming laps in the pool in the condo complex where they rented last year. Pulling open a dresser drawer to find a month’s supply of adult diapers. Some guy from Winnipeg told me they’d gone out for dinner, returned, and found their place had been broken into by members of a gang and the word ZEDA was spray-painted on the wall. “That’s when you know it’s time to go home,” he said.

I miss being around people who are living their normal lives.

I’d planned to go to Joshua Tree and didn’t feel like it. I’m at DeMuth Park watching pickleball games instead. I guess it does kind of look like fun.

December 30

I climbed Araby this morning so I could be back in time to take Gene to the Air Museum to see the first F-117 stealth bomber. Hard to imagine that being reminded of war days in Vietnam could be a break, but poor guy sure needs one. He’s not in great shape himself on top of taking care of Jeanie.

Talking to Gene about war pushed a memory loose. I was little, five or six years old. This was about a year after my dad died, and a few years before my mom met Stew. Too broke for a babysitter (too broke for bologna), she sent me to our neighbor George’s place across the hall when she wanted to hit the town. I thought he must have been a million years old, but he was probably close to the age I am now. He didn’t know what to do with a kid, so he put me in front of a pile of books and told me to read while he knocked off.

The minute his head hit the pillow I was out of there. At first, I’d go to the corner. Then the next block. Eventually I started to learn some shortcuts around the neighborhood. I made it as far as Great Falls Park almost a mile away, where I discovered the trail that led to the ruins of Matildaville, an old ghost town. All that was left was a tavern chimney and the corners of houses and some fence posts. I’d pretend the town was still there, and I was in charge of it, or I was a bad guy on the lam, or I was a war hero like George, returning from the battlefield. From there I’d walk on the bluffs by the Potomac near Mather Gorge.

Imagine if the girls were allowed to leave home by themselves at the age of six and hang out by a river that dropped over 75 feet in less than a mile. Anything could have happened to me back then—it already had happened, as far as I was concerned.

One day I saw a man—or I could sense him. He gave off this aura. When water is at the edge of the waterfall, it gets darker than the water around it. That was him, this swirling, kinetic, dark energy. He was sitting deep in the woods, cross-legged, staring into space. I thought he was meditating. It was foggy. Very early. Something was very not right. I walked closer and saw his eyes were opaque, like Milky’s eyes when he got old, when you could see yourself reflected in them.

“Hi,” I said. What a dumb thing to say.

He nodded very, very slowly. More like his chin dropped to his chest and he couldn’t lift it up again. I knew I had to run, but my feet felt like they were stuck in quicksand. That’s when I looked down and saw that he’d sliced his arms lengthwise from his wrists to his elbows. They hung open like flayed fish. There was a knife in his lap and blood everywhere, so much blood I could smell it from where I stood. I can smell it now, just thinking about it.

I felt his death. He was on that edge, scarier than any monster or ghost. I could have screamed or tried to get help, but if I did, George would find out that I’d left the house, and he’d tell my mom, and those days, who knew what she would do. So I bolted. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. I ran and ran and ran all the way back to George’s apartment. He was still snoring loud enough to shake the walls. He had no idea.

From then on, I stayed put. The next time I sat in front of a pile of books, I turned every page, read every single word.

I never, ever told anyone about that man, not even Kim. I bet she thinks she’s heard all my stories.

That experience left me with so many questions: Was I responsible for his death because I didn’t get him some help? Was what I’d done unethical? I’d prioritized my own well-being over his life. Say I’d saved him: Would that have interrupted some sort of divine plan? Was there a divine plan? He clearly wanted to die, look what he’d done to himself. It was his right to end his life, wasn’t it?

I was just a little kid, and I was musing about the morality around human agency before I’d ever even heard of Sartre.

That single event changed me forever. It was the moment I really started thinking. That was when I became a philosopher.

And this? This is when I stop being a philosopher. That event taught me how to think, and hiking is teaching me how not to think. I’m learning how to simply exist in the world with the wind between my ears, not a thought in my head. I need Kim, I do. But up here, I feel like I don’t need anyone. I don’t need anything.

December 31

Whoa. Thought Kim and I were finally finding our way back to each other. Now what?