pct day 1 - 05/06/13

i left my friends in san diego feeling totally grounded and ready for my hike. it is quite a lesson in surrending to watch parents of four boys ages 8 and under. they are so selfless and surrender all of themselves to being loving parents to these four boys. i could not have asked for a better lesson in what is important before starting my journey. thanx to my extended family in san diego.

i took a train, trolley, and a bus and finally ended up in campo, ca very close to the us/mexico border. i walked down a dirt road and came to the wall/fence that is the border (i will begrudgingly stay away from politics) with an occupied and running border patrol car. the pics below are of the southern terminus marker and of me on the marker. i officially started my hike at 11:00 pdt.

the wonderful part of this first day is that it rained the whole day. i only had time to take my picture at the border and then it was a fine mist/light drizzle all day. i took this to be very auspicious that such abundant moisture was falling in such an arid place. because of the cool and refreshing conditions, i made it 14 miles in just 4 hours. i had a conversation with the divine when i started in the morning and basically said, "here i am, free and unencumbered. there are no strong egos around me to distract from all possibilities, so let me meet whoever else wishes to share satsang." (satsang is a sanskrit word meaning truth sharing). right as i finished cruising thru my first 14 mi i came upon a fellow thru hiker. my intuition told me to hike with her for a while and we ended up sharing a blissful satsang as we hiked the next 5 mi. i ended up at lake morena camground for the evening and got settled in my tent just as it started to rain for the entire night. blissful first day.

20.6 mi total.







- tribhu (tree-boo)