Losing my mind in the Siskiyous

no signal

Note: This is a post I drafted in the summer of 2023 but never got around to finishing. Many aspects of myself have changed since this happened (I’ve since done maaaany solo trips), but I wanted to post this as a marker of where I started. If you’re looking for life updates, stay tuned for the next post.

In late July, 2023, I went on a one night, solo backpacking trip. I had realized that, despite being a serial inviter and group trip planner, I’d never actually planned something just for me. Part of this was driven by having recently read The Fountainhead, and feeling an urge to prove that I acted out of some innate drive, rather than for other people. So, using a family vacation to Southern Oregon as a launching pad, I planned a brief getaway to Siskiyou National Forest, a mountain range that spans the Oregon/California border. I was looking forward to a fairly chill hike, where I could spend some time with my thoughts, disconnected from the outside world.

I was also looking forward to reading a book I’d had for a while but never gotten around to: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Persig.

The hike in was pretty, albeit uneventful, and around 1:00 PM, I crested a slight hill and set down my bag to admire the tranquil, crystal-clear mountain lake that was my destination. This moment, however, was spoiled by the discovery that my idyllic mountain outpost was corrupted by a terrible taint: on the near side of the lake, there were a collection of tents.

Devil’s Punchbowl

I paused briefly, considering my options. I could head back down the trail and look for a different campsite. Or, I could stay put. I decided to remain where I was, and not to let the other campers bother me — after all, it was ridiculous to demand perfect solitude when in nature. I set up camp, took a brief swim in the lake, and then sat down to enjoy my book.

But, as soon as I sat down, a nagging worm inside me asked a question:

“Are we really going to settle for this? You came all this way to be alone, in this huge wilderness, and you settle on a place that’s 50 feet from a group of noisy rednecks? It’s still only early afternoon — you can do better.”

Thus begun the process of losing my mind.

I packed up my bag and began my search for a better place to chill. After spending around 30 minutes climbing up some loose rocks, I made it to a small, mossy overlook, a few hundred feet above the lake, and out of earshot of the tents. Having finally made it to my perfect spot, I resumed my book.

But once again, a few pages in, the worm reappeared.

“Yeah the view is nice, but this is too far from the water. You’re not going to want to spend the night here. You should find your final campsite, and then you can unpack, set up camp, and truly relax.”

So, now unable to enjoy the mossy overlook, I set off back down the hill.

This cycle of events continued several more times.

First there was a spot next to a creek, which had a pool that would be perfect for a solitary swim (I was looking forward to skinny dipping). But there was no view of the valley, and this slight failing itched at me until I could no longer focus on my book.

Then, there was a place on the edge of a cliff. It was perfect — a valley view, a creek to refill my water with, and perfect isolation. I even went so far as removing my cookware and eating my dinner (a packet of Trader Joes Madras Lentils over rice. But as I looked out over the valley in the fading light, I realized the trees in front of me would partially block the view of the sunrise the next morning. A tiny imperfection, but it grew, and it grew, and for the fourth time, I packed up, and left to find a new spot.

I was fully aware of the mistake I was making, while I was making it. I kicked myself for not letting myself just settle and chill, then kicked myself for kicking myself. For being so obsessive about finding the perfect place to watch a sunset. My peaceful getaway was turning into a neurotic episode as I repetitively packed and unpacked my backpack. There was no escape.

I eventually settled on a campsite on top of a hill, right next to the trail. It was alright, I guess. It definitely wasn’t better than The only reason I stopped was because the sun went down. Book barely begun, I fell asleep.

Learning how to chill

This was a fairly bizarre short circuit. If you didn’t know me, you could easily just chalk this up to me being a perfectionist. But this doesn’t capture the full story. Instead, this is an example of what happens when I try and improve things I can’t measure.

The reason the perfectionist explanation is incomplete is that when I’m with a group of people, even if I’m nominally “in charge”, this doesn’t happen. The second other people become involved, I become a decisive, direct leader. In my social circles, I generally tend to be the guy who plans things, and I have a reputation for running fun, successful trips.

The real reason this happened is I don’t (didn’t?) know what makes me happy. I’m pretty good at predicting what makes other people happy, but once I don’t have others around me, I lose my strong decision making metric, and end up in a signal-less void. To use the analogy of the multi-armed bandit problem, I kept pulling levers, and kept getting NaNs, so kept exploring until some external constraint (the sunset) made me stop.

I think that for those who don’t have it innately, developing this sense is one of the best things you can do for your overall wellbeing. It’s surprisingly easy to go through life without learning very simple things about yourself, like what types of activities you find relaxing, or how you like to do your work.

So consider a trip to the Siskiyous.

Addendum: Zen

When I first wrote this post, It was supposed to be a meditation on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the book I brought with me on the trip. Sadly, I wasn’t able to fit it into the narrative, but I wanted to spend a little time on the book, since it did influence a lot of the thoughts on the trip.

I blamed the short circuit on a personal lack of romantic quality, which I understood to be a subconscious filtering heuristic for what is good and what is bad. When describing motorcycle maintenance, Persig states that “you have to have some feeling for the quality of the work. You have to have a sense of what's good. That is what carries you forward. This sense isn't just something you're born with, although you are born with it. It's also something you can develop.”

If you haven’t developed your sense of quality, you’re lost. This is the fundamental difference between the individual and the group. Groups of humans are robust, and can self-correct without a strong individual instinct for what’s right. But an individual is fragile to being led astray, and without a strong internal filter, it’s hard to make progress on anything. Your mind wanders, and gets lost in the signal (objective reality) and the analysis (subjective reality).

Or at least this is how I interpreted Persig’s definition, and I think it’s a nice characterization of my problem, so I’m going to use it. I’m not sure how accurate it is to what he was trying to say — Pirsig famously got fired from his job, lost his wife, and went clinically insane trying to prove that you can’t define Quality.