Quotes About Challenge

When I believed that all the things I'd been before had prepared me for this journey. But nothing had or could. Each day on the trail was the only possible preparation for the one that followed. And sometimes even the day before didn't prepare me for what would happen next.

And so I walked on. It took all I had to cover nine miles a day. To cover nine miles a day was a physical achievement far beyond anything I'd ever done. Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart. I saw no one, but, strange as it was, I missed no one. I longed for nothing but food and water and to be able to put my backpack down. I kept carrying my backpack anyway. Up and down and around the dry mountains

Going down, I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.

you're going to have to get on that horse and ride into battle like a warrior.

It's reality. And reality is what we have to accept, like it or not.

It was exactly like attempting to lift a Volkswagen Beetle. It looked so cute, so ready to be lifted—and yet it was impossible to do.

slices to the very heart of the hiker's volition,

I wasn't even thinking, What have I gotten myself into? I was thinking only of moving myself forward. My mind was a crystal vase that contained only that one desire. My body was its opposite: a bag of broken glass. Every time I moved, it hurt. I counted my steps to take my mind off the pain, silently ticking the numbers off in my head to one hundred before starting over again. The blocks of numbers made the walk slightly more bearable, as if I only had to go to the end of each one.

La vera sfida è vivere.

How could I carry a backpack more than a thousand miles over rugged mountains and waterless deserts if I couldn't even budge it an inch in an air-conditioned motel room? The notion was preposterous and yet I had to lift that pack. It hadn't occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to.

me back and the bull that would take me forward. And so I walked on. It took all I had to cover nine miles a day. To cover nine miles a day was a physical achievement far beyond anything I'd ever done. Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart. I saw no one, but, strange as it was,

God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch.

there was the actual doing it, quickly followed by the grim realization of what it meant to do it, followed by the decision to quit doing it because doing it was absurd and pointless and ridiculously difficult and far more than I expected doing it would be and I was profoundly unprepared to do it. And then there was the real live truly doing it. The staying and doing it, in spite of everything.

Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again.

As if the answer to that question held the key to my success or failure at this—the hardest thing I'd ever done. I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I'd ever done.

Oregón! —exclamó, y casi me dejé arrastrar por el júbilo de su voz, casi me llevó a creer que esos 320 kilómetros eran coser y cantar, pero de sobra sabía que no era así. Para mí, todas y cada una de las semanas en el sendero habían sido un suplicio. —Oregón —admití,

I came up with another reason to bolster my belief that this whole PCT hike had been an outlandishly stupid idea.

when I removed my first aid kit from my pack and opened it up, all of my Band-Aids blew away.

Kennedy Meadows

At foot speed, the Sierra Nevada seemed just barely surmountable. I could always take another step. It was only when I rounded a bend and glimpsed the white peaks ahead that I doubted my abilities, only when I thought how far I had yet to go that I lost faith that I would get there.

It was the thing that had compelled them to fight for the trail against all the odds,

There wasn't a day on the trail when that monotony didn't ultimately win out, when the only thing to think about was whatever was the physically hardest. It was a sort of scorching cure. I counted my steps, working my way to a hundred and starting over again at one. Each time I completed another set it seemed as if I'd achieved a small thing. Then a hundred became too optimistic and I went to fifty, then twenty-five, then ten.

My feet? Well, they were still entirely, unspeakably fucked.

I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I'd ever done.