When I hiked most of the PCT in 2019, I rocked a bright pink bandana for much of the desert. It was a small ode to my own queerness — a personal symbol. It also helped to keep sweat out of my eyes. Little gestures like that — a bandana, a little nail polish, dangly earrings — have become vital for me, a person who often has trouble deciphering how or what they feel. 

Thru-Hiking and The Body

In my PCT ‘19 journey, my relationship to my body was front and center. I had often felt that I lived in my head. I played some sports when I was younger and was pretty good at soccer. Even when those experiences were good, and they often were, they came with anxiety and the feeling of being an outsider. I nursed an unhealthy conception of my body probably my whole adult life, stretching back into my teens. My weight and appearance consumed entirely too much of my thinking, regardless of how I looked.

What the PCT gave me was a context in which it was absolutely vital to listen to what my body needed rather than what I wanted it to look like. It allowed me to dissolve those patterns of thought into simple, physical action — to shed some baggage and just walk.

Courtesy of Mitch 'Tumbles' Collins

 

I fed my body as well as I could. My feet calloused and my mind softened. By the end of my 1700 miles on that trail, I did not feel so detached from myself. It was easier to be grateful for how far my body had taken me instead of attacking it for not looking right. It was easier to listen. Where had all that self-hatred come from?

After the PCT, I moved to San Diego. Within a few weeks there, I got a haircut and regretted it terribly. I had lost all that beautiful hair growth from the trail and resolved to grow it back. 

Gender-Expansive

In 2021, as I was preparing to hike the CDT, I knew in a way that I wanted to sift through my relationship to gender. When I say, “knew in a way,” I want you to understand better what I mean. I mean a suspicion, a hunch about myself that I couldn’t quite admit to, even when alone. As if speaking it aloud or writing it down would be like stepping off a ledge into freefall, would make it real. It was like when I was walking home from the bus at some age in high school and asked myself, “Am I gay?” To which I quickly responded no, then put the thought away until I was nearly done with university.

 

Courtesy of Mitch 'Tumbles' Collins

 

It felt like something I needed to do to stay safe within my own head. It took me years and years of denial and education to be able to “come out” even to myself. Call it a condition of growing up in Christian schools or call it a condition of being queer in this world that is ours, but it’s a negotiation I still make.

After the CDT, I did eventually identify as… well, I’m still deciding on the best word for it. I like genderqueer, I like nonbinary, but I recently heard the term “gender-expansive” on a podcast, and that resonated quite a bit. In any case, I started using they/them pronouns and asking my friends to call me Matty rather than Matt. It was an acceptance of the fact that I have often felt out of place in male circles or in my male body or under the label of what our culture describes as a “man.”

Inherent in that admission is a truckload of questions. Do I identify with womanhood? Do I want to transition physically? Who can I share this with? Who will understand? I don’t necessarily have those answers. I am still gingerly feeling for my place in the world.

 

Courtesy of Evan 'Dash' Armorer

 

I should mention my trail name, as given to me at Lake Morena campground in the first couple days of the PCT. It is Twain. It came when I jokingly said to another hiker, “You’ve gotta let the pace find you,” and he responded, “Oh, I’m gonna find Mark Twain in heaven and tell him you said that.” His eyes lit up and he suggested Twain might be a good trail name. Being a writer, liking the simplicity, I took it.

When I told people my name, then, all the way up the west coast and then again up the Continental Divide, they would say, “Like Mark Twain?” I would give them a coy smile and reply, “Or Shania.” It always got a laugh. As I’ve become more comfortable with my identity, I’ve begun to tack on, “Because Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” at which my queer friends laugh especially hard. I also like “Twain,” because linguistically, it implies a duality, a two-ness, as if I live my life “in twain.”

The CDT and Personal Transition

So, in 2021, I set out onto the CDT still using he/him pronouns. I had long, curly blond hair, a beard, and a straw hat from a San Diego swap meet that I was very excited about. I had ended up in an all-black hiking outfit, too. It wasn’t completely intentional when I was shopping, but it felt right when I realized it. I felt I was grieving in some ways. I was grieving my romantic relationship that had ended, everything and everyone that Covid took from us, and the feeling that change was too slow coming, despite a summer of protest in support of Black lives.

Courtesy of Mitch 'Tumbles' Collins

 

The CDT was a hard trail in a lot of ways, and personally, I spent much of it in a haze. Entering a thru-hike full of questions won’t necessarily ensure you end up with answers.

When I think about what happened with me and my gender identity on the CDT, it isn’t a straight-forward narrative of confusion followed by revelation — few, if any, experiences of queerness are. What I see looking back is myself being partially freed from our cultural construction of manhood.

I wouldn’t quite describe a long thru-hike as an experience completely separate from society, but it consists of many, many hours a day walking alone. It’s active meditation. It provides an open space for the mind to unfold. The influence of our culture looking at me, my body, my mannerisms (even if they’re forced,) and calling me “man” was not so powerful. If a male identity is something I was given by society, whether or not I liked it, my thru-hiking self was at least offered reprieve from having that definition thrust upon them over and over again.

 

Courtesy of Mitch 'Tumbles' Collins

 

Perhaps my experience was more of a reaching-toward that freedom. There is power in the simplicity of being a body walking north. There is power in being perceived by the trees, the rivers, the air … rather than a sidewalk full of strangers. There is power in singing as I go, as if I were in a different body with a different voice, or the same person in the same body with this voice, my voice. There is also a crash-landing back to earth in my eventual return to town, in the parts of our culture we bring with us out onto the trail.

While hiking, I made a personal transition. I let go of the “manhood” I had been clinging to. It felt nice to return to being “Twain” instead of “Matthew.” It felt good to watch my hair grow even longer.

Finding Home Again

The social part of my transition has come afterward, and with more difficulty. I left the CDT still using he/him pronouns. I didn’t tell my trail family what I was feeling or experiencing, and I am just starting to tell my actual family now.

Part of me resents having to make the social transition at all. Isn’t it enough that I know? It would be easier to keep it to myself and not have to tell anyone. But, then comes the dissonance. When you speak to people who you love and there’s this thing on your mind and you maybe want to tell them but can’t bring yourself to do it, it eats at you.

 

Courtesy of Mitch 'Tumbles' Collins

 

It’s helpful to not put pressure on myself to “come out” in a traditional sense — I’m picturing a big party where my whole family is there and we cut into a cake that says “I’m Genderqueer/Non-Binary!” Rather, I describe it to my friends and loved ones as a part of myself that I share when I feel able. If I feel safe with someone, or if they make the space for me to talk about it, I’ll often happily let them in.

Actually, it was my queer community back in San Diego that helped usher me more into myself when I returned. I was slow to make the shift with pronouns because of negative stigma. I felt in a way that I had to “earn” they/them pronouns by changing my appearance or my clothing. After I talked through it with a friend, I settled into it more. Pronouns are a great way to communicate these big ideas in a small way.

I find joy in making small changes to my appearance, too, on my own terms. Long hair, mascara, nail polish, and such things outwardly express and validate my internal self. While these visual cues don’t define my gender identity as I understand it, they help me to quiet the dissonance and communicate the difference that I feel. It’s an anxious process, though, if I’m honest. I still feel pressure to look or act certain ways with certain groups of people. I can feel the occasional questioning eye on me, even when I only alter my appearance in the smallest ways. But, my experience thru-hiking allowed me to approach my own identity with patience. A culture with messed-up priorities is the one rushing me toward those answers. I am happy to take my time.

 

Courtesy of Hillary Hunter

 

I’ll leave you with a final image. At the top of my last climb before Canada on the CDT, on Pikuni land in Glacier National Park, I stopped and saw the land beneath my feet and the journey I had taken in their fullness. I felt completely at home in the world, in nature, in a way I never have. It was spiritual (for me it always is).

I looked up at the rocky crest above me and the valley below, and I belonged. My body and my soul belonged. The part of me that never quite felt like a man belonged. The part of me in community with my sisters, my mother, and my grandmothers belonged. The part of me in community with my father and my grandfathers belonged. I was who I was — a person on earth, regardless of any language.

 

 

Matthew Kok is an essayist, a poet, a traveler, and absolutely in love with the world outside. They are currently operating out of Manapouri, a little town in Aotearoa–South Island, New Zealand. You can find them curled up with Stormy the housecat or cooking up big, elaborate breakfasts late in the morning. You can also find them on Instagram at @matt.kok