The Wonderland Journal

Every day the trail is becoming more and more real to me. With each day that passes, I realize that the challenges I face now and the activities I love will no longer be on my agenda in just a couple of months. Soon, I won’t be working, cleaning the house, or going to the gym. I won’t sit with my cats. I won’t get to be with my friends here. I’ll be worlds away, living a life that is foreign to everyone in my little town.

I’ve already set my last day to work for April 17, giving me ample time to get my affairs in order without rushing before my trip. Everything feels orderly on paper — dates set, gear gathered, weekend hikes. But the emotional part of leaving doesn’t organize itself so neatly.

There’s been a poignant realization settling in: soon, I will be gone for six months.

Sure, it’s not all that long. But I’m 28 years old, so it feels like nothing and forever at the same time. By the time I leave, I’ll have been at this coffee shop for over two years and part of my gym community for a year and a half. I’ll be stepping away from my friends, my family, my cats — from a life that feels safe and intentional.

I’ll be gone, but life here will keep moving. My name will slowly disappear from the vocabulary of my coworkers, just as it does for everyone who leaves. My cat may lick a bald spot from the stress of my absence, just as she has before. My little nephew will wake on Sundays and ask, “Where’s Auntie Tate?” like he always does. Only this time I won’t be there, and he’s too young to understand what six months means.

The niece will grow taller.
The nephew will speak more clearly.
The kitten will reach his full size.

Time will do what it always does — it will keep going.

And then there’s my mom.

The person who has my back like no other. The one who would travel across the world just to sit beside me. She’ll be home with our band of cats while I’m gone. Sunday mornings she’ll be wrangling children alone, negotiating how many bows can fit in the niece’s hair and keeping the nephew out of the cats’ water bowl. I won’t be there to practice French vocabulary or take spontaneous wagon rides to the playground or pick out little Sunday outfits and have heated wardrobe consultations with a kindergartener.

Mom will cry after I leave. I know she will. There will be afternoons when the house feels too still and she reaches for her phone just to see the last photos I sent. The cats will lay on my bed and remind her of my absence every time she passes by. Six months isn’t forever, but it’s long enough to feel. Long enough for the absence to take shape.

And I hate that Mom has to go through that.

I don’t want her to be lonely. I don’t want to miss Sunday mornings or the sound of her clanging in the kitchen. Leaving doesn’t feel brave or adventurous in those moments. It feels like a piece of paper torn in half.

The house won’t stop functioning. It won’t collapse under the weight of my absence. But it will be different. And no one feels that difference quite like a mom does.

This isn’t the first time I’ve left home, but it is the first time I’ve left feeling established and confident in my life. I’m not leaving to run away. I’m leaving to say, “See you soon.”

What I want is to stay — to be with my cats and my family and my friends. I love what I’ve built here.

But growth has always asked something of me.

Stay, and I remain comfortable. Go, and I stretch in a way home cannot provide.

My growing pains this time are not about fear of the unknown. They’re about relinquishing control — about not handpicking the next perfect version of my life. They’re about willingly stepping away from something steady and trusting that what I love will still be here — changed, perhaps — when I return.

Yes, it will be sad to leave what I’ve built. But something ahead calls me forward. Adventure awaits, and I know it holds lessons I cannot learn from the comfort of my cats, from my coffee shop, from the rhythm of the gym, or from the child-filled chaos of the weekends.

Six months feels small compared to a lifetime.

And yet I expect the Pacific Crest Trail to feel like a lifetime lived in six months. There is so much good I’m leaving behind. There is just as much waiting to shape me ahead, in ways staying never could.