The Mountain Takes: Part 1

He set out to finish his father’s dream. But there’s more to the Pacific Crest Trail than any forum will tell you.

Campo – First Ashes

I stood at the southern trailhead of the Pacific Crest Trail in Campo, California. My pack was heavy with water, gear, and a small bag holding my father's remains. His last bucket list trip, the one I couldn't give him before. I crouched at the trailhead, pulling the bag from my pack. The ashes shifted in my palm, held together only by thin plastic. The steady breeze was barely noticeable on that pleasantly warm April morning. There would be plenty of warmth on the first leg of this trip. The moment loomed, waiting for me.

I struggled to hold back tears as I spread a small pinch of ash onto the dirt.

As the ashes disappeared into the earth, a wave of dizziness hit. My vision blurred, and my chest tightened. My heart pounded, unpredictable and sharp against my ribs. I wondered what my body was preparing for. Something terrible?

Just silence.

For a moment, I didn't realize I had stopped breathing.

"Stop it!" My father's voice cut through my thoughts. "You're almost 26 years old. There's nothing to cry about."

I clenched my jaw, sealed the bag, and slung my pack.

The wind died. Not gradually, but in an instant, the world's breath cut short.

The PCT waits.

Mojave – Infinity and Frailty

I stopped walking and looked out over the LA Aqueduct. Miles of empty earth stretched before me, cracked and lifeless. The last stagnant remnants of moisture drifted into the empty sky.

I was about halfway through this stretch of the Mojave. There was no shade. No escape from the sun, the punishing heat, the endless, flat, barren landscape. Some people find beauty in it. Not me. Another thing I never understood.

I pulled out my father's remains. The bag sagged along the edges of my palm. I expected grief, but instead, there was only a dullness. A sense of uselessness.

For a moment, as I gripped the bag, I remembered my father helping me reel in my first fish, the excitement in his voice as he guided my hands. Just for a second, I could feel pride, almost joy.

"A suckerfish?" he scoffed. "We don't eat those." I could still feel the full weight of my failure.

The wind brushed against me, dry and unfeeling, whistling across the sand. How long had it been since I saw someone? At some point, I passed someone on the trail, but I couldn't picture their

face. I couldn't picture any face.

The tears rolled off my chin.

The scorched earth swallowed them, like it swallowed everything here.

"Nothing you do will last."

I took a pinch of his ashes and held them in my hand.

"Why are you crying? Go to your room if you want to act like that."

The wind swept my father up immediately, enveloping him in dust. Than—he was gone. Part of the endless flat.

As if he never existed.

For the first time, I felt like the void was staring into me.

Kennedy Meadows – Homecoming

Kennedy Meadows. Pop 200. Elev 6,427. The most famous sign on the trail. A place where hikers stop, arms raised, grinning through exhaustion. A moment to celebrate the climb. My father would have never taken a picture here.

Still, this place meant something. He talked about it often. The gateway to the Sierras.

I always felt most at home in the mountains. Here, I almost forgot the dessert. The heat, the emptiness, both replaced by peace.

For the first time in weeks, my shoulders relaxed. Maybe this was what I had been searching for.

"You are so dramatic."

The voice came sharp, just behind my ear. My stomach clenched, a slow, aching pressure

spreading through my chest.

"Why?"

The trees spun around me.

"Listen to me, son."

Forester Pass – Death in a Winter Wonderland

Forester Pass, 13,153 feet above sea level. The highest point on the Pacific Crest Trail. Up here, the world felt thin. Judging.

A scream!

A woman's scream does not belong out here. Painful. Desperate. Piercing. The sound broke the silence, echoing off the cliffs like something alive, twisting in every direction. Stalking me.

There was the scream again. It bore into me, stopping my lungs, squeezing my heart, and pulling me forward. It felt wrong, not just in the way an injured voice feels wrong, but like a voice from another world.

I ran.

At the summit, I stopped.

No woman.

A mountain lion lay in the snow, ribs pressing against matted fur. A body eating itself. Something had twisted the creature's hindquarters. It looked gruesome and deformed. It was alive, but soon to be part of the cold.

A predator shouldn't be here. Not like this. A wounded hunter, helpless on such a popular stretch of the trail. Something about it felt… placed. Placed for me.

An intrusive thought gripped my soul. I was being tested.

My throat tightened. My ears rang. My vision tunneled until there was only the broken beast before me. My father's voice rose up, unbidden.

"What are you doing?"

The lion snapped at me, face now blurry. Soon, it gave way to my father's face. I froze. Shame. Fear. The weight of his disappointment was crushing.

"Kill it!"

My hands trembled. I couldn't move. The past rose up like bile. The weight of things forever left unsaid. My father's voice, louder now. Angrier.

"Fine! I'll do it myself!"

"You can't!" I shouted, the words breaking from me—the mountain heard.

The mountain threw my words back in a dozen directions. Mocking. Twisting them. Not mine anymore.

The lion snapped at me a second time.

The mountain froze time, waiting to pass sentence. The lion's body trembled beneath my hands. It screamed. Desperation given sound. I pushed. A final, awful yowl. Then the crack of bone on rock.

The world fell silent.

I stood there, breath uneven. My hands shook as I pulled the small bag of my father's ashes from my pack. I let a handful fall over the same cliff. A few specks fluttered down to the lion's fur. I let myself fall backward into the snow.

Sonora Pass – Marked by the Mountain

Tuolumne County. The end of the High Sierra. This pass should have been a transition, a milestone, but I felt nothing. I was nothing.

My father's voice pulsed through my mind. I couldn't hear my own thoughts anymore.

"I never thought I'd want one of my kids to join the military, but it might be the only way for you."

I swallowed against the rising nausea. The stark silence of the mountain mirrored the emptiness inside of me. Or had the mountain marked me, carved its cold into my soul? I had changed, but I couldn't put my finger on how. The mountain was why.

The wind howled through the pass. Or maybe the sound was inside me.

Flickering.

The edges of the pines pulsed, blue, green, shifting. Just for a second, I thought I saw movement between the trees. But when I looked, forest. Just the faint memory of something that was never there.

"You are too emotional."

I roughly ran my hands over my face. Trying to feel. Trying to silence his voice. My heartbeat was too loud. My breath too ragged.

"You've never tried."

I sucked in air, but it wasn't enough. The cold burned my skin, but my body was sweating. My head throbbed, my vision a lie.

"Give up."

I spun, barely thinking, and slammed my fist into the nearest tree. My knuckles tore against the rough bark. I pulled back, blinking at the blood dripping into the snow. The blood drew jagged lines through the snow. The snow pulled back in terror.

I exhaled.

Finally, I felt something.

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Part 2 of The Mountain Takes drags us deeper into the wilderness, farther than most would dare go.

The Mountain Takes: Part 2 - J.A. Evans SpeculatesEvery Tuesday I share a polished story for free. Paid subscribers also get the raw early drafts, short essays about what went into them, and the occasional experiment that probably should have stayed in the dark. If you want to go deeper into my head, bring a crucifix.

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