Note: The following is an essay I wrote mid-May, the month before I was set to start my PCT thru-hike. I tend to mostly write about all the excitement of thru-hiking, but sometimes I have anxiety spirals too, so it feels only honest to include this as well. Sometimes, this is how it feels.

This is how adventure always feels.

But I forget, and so it takes me by surprise when I dare to make big plans, and suddenly I’m full of doubt. There is so much to consider. So many questions nagging at the corners of my brain. What if this is the wrong choice? What if I run out of money? What if I can’t get everything ready on time? I’m really going to miss my friends and family — sporadic long-distance just isn’t the same.

I began to plan for the PCT months ago with the memories of previous adventures: excitement and nostalgia and wistful restlessness. But those things don’t come until later. Right now, it is me and the three dozen decisions I must make to get there. Me, and the uncertainty clawing at my chest, because I won’t know if I will be looking back on this as a good adventure until I am already looking back on it.

It was fun at first, the way I dared to dream and scheme and start down this path. And now I’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole, and suddenly there is no turning back because I have already given notice for my apartment, and for my job, and holy heck I am actually doing this. I have no choice anymore. I’ve made so many choices that now I have to actually follow through.

I research new gear obsessively. I track snow levels even though it’s way too early. I start crunching numbers over and over again, all while the dwindling countdown looms in the background, and I have to tell myself that I’ll somehow get everything done — I hope. I really frikin’ hope so. There is so much to do.

I don’t know why I’m so worried this time around. I’ve done this before. Why, this time, am I scared?

I’m afraid of upending my life after a year that was nothing but upending. I am scared that even though I love the wilderness, that I might find myself at odds with it. In this past year, I found comfort in the little things —warm beds and hot tea and all the food I can fit on my shelves — and what if I discover I don’t want to live without them anymore? Mostly, I am unreasonably scared that the trail has changed. The world did, this last year. I did. I’m afraid I’ll discover that one more thing has shifted under my feet.

I keep telling myself: I haven’t made a mistake. This is how adventure always feels. Big leaps into the unknown. Ambitious plans that may not succeed. I have chosen this uncertain space for myself, because I cannot keep away. I know that I crave security sometimes, with walls that are mine and a steady income. But what I crave even more seeps in around the edges of a comfortable life: new views, new stars, and new steps. Adventure and discomfort are too often synonymous, but they have good company: amazement and discovery and a world split open.

These moments of anxious preparation and doubt will not be remembered afterwards; afterwards it will all just be Adventure. This is part of it, though. This is how adventure feels.

Adventure feels terrifying, and intimidating, and new. And I, the person attempting to capture it, will also become someone new. I’ll be someone that a past version of me wouldn’t have dared dream about.

I won’t remember all this looking back, of course, because the new me won’t be intimidated by the steps I’ve already taken. Afterwards, I will gather up all my nostalgia and hair-raising stories and rosy photographs and I will say, “It was amazing! This is how adventure always feels.”