How Will You Live Your One Wild Life?
If we knew how much longer we each had on this earth would it change how we live?
By Kayci Prevost, a 2025 FarOut Scout
Our time here is limited, yet we tend to brush it off as this distant event, believing that we’ll all live long healthy lives. No such guarantees exist here. My mortality was not fresh on my mind this year at the beginning of my John Muir Trail thru-hike, but it was by the end of it. I made plans to meet up with a buddy of mine who was on a separate monumental trek which landed him SOBO on the JMT for a section. We’d link up about five days into my trip and finish together on the summit of Whitney before parting ways.
Photo provided by Kayci Prevost
Photo provided by Kayci Prevost
The day before I met up with my friend, I intended to get close to the ferry to Vermillion Valley Resort (VVR). We planned to meet there on July 24th. I’d be taking the morning boat ride and he’d grab the evening. My itinerary on the 23rd was to get up and over Silver Pass and down to Mono Creek to camp. The weather was a little questionable. There were storms I could see in the distance and the clouds were somewhat threatening over the pass. I pushed up and over, and started my descent towards the creek.
On my way down to camp, I noticed someone sunbathing off to my right along Mono Creek and kept my eyes on the trail to allow some privacy. Then I passed two hikers, going in and out of their tent at the nearby designated camping area. I got a strange feeling from this scene, but I said hello to the campers and continued. Just a few moments later a helicopter appeared overhead. It seemed to hover over me, and I wondered if someone had gone missing or had been injured while hiking the trail. Then began the influx of worries about my friend.
Photo provided by Kayci Prevost
Photo provided by Kayci Prevost
I had not heard from my buddy the entire day. The last I knew, he had taken in a distraught PCT thru-hiker and agreed to share his hotel room with them before hitting the trail. My thoughts ran wild with the idea of him being injured or meeting his untimely death either on the mountain or at the hands of a weary traveler. I kept hiking, trying not to let my fears and anxieties get the best of me, but that helicopter kept bopping around. It momentarily disappeared a ways up the creek before reappearing on its way back out.
I sent an inReach message to my friend and kept doing the thing I came out here to do. I ran into a NOBO hiker coming off the evening VVR Ferry. He also saw the helicopter and had the same experience with it hovering over him. He shared that someone on the ferry spoke of a fatality at a lake. There were several lakes up at the pass, and I started to wonder if I was just so in my own world that I walked right by whatever had happened.
I made it to camp and finally got a message from my friend who was unharmed. We would meet up the following day at VVR. In the morning, while waiting at the ferry dock, I chatted with some hikers who mentioned the fatality. Someone had fallen on the rocks beside Mono Creek. I passed right by it. The person I thought was sunbathing was deceased. The two hikers I saw there had just attempted life saving measures to try and revive this person, albeit to no avail. This explains the strange feelings I had when I passed.
Hearing this was like getting the wind knocked out of me. I suddenly felt so incredibly stupid. Why hadn’t I realized what happened sooner? Why did it take me until the morning to put the pieces together? How dumb could I be? If I had figured it out earlier, I could’ve possibly helped those hikers or at least provided some support for them during some very difficult moments. I started to kick myself for not being more astute. After dwelling on this for the 45 minute ferry ride, I concluded that it happened the way it was always going to happen. There was nothing I could’ve done differently. Even if I showed up earlier than the two hikers, or if I recognized what had happened in the moment, it was unlikely that I could’ve done anything to change the outcome.
As planned, I met my friend when he arrived at VVR on the evening ferry. I found myself so incredibly grateful to have a hiking partner from that day on. Luckily, I have a very gracious friend who was kind enough to let me completely unload on him. I think he knew I needed it. In the following days while we hiked, my thoughts were on the fate of that person who was out here doing the same thing so many of us were. The harsh reality was that they would never finish the trail nor hike any trail ever again. There was a devastated family out there, who maybe had reservations to begin with about their family member hiking solo, who just received worst news of their lifetime: Their loved one’s life was cut short in one of the most beautiful places in the United States, doing something that they loved, and they would never see them alive again.
Photo provided by Kayci Prevost
Photo provided by Kayci Prevost
I tried to honor their life with every step I took, aiming to finish this thing that they didn’t get to, and the following is what I pondered the rest of my journey and beyond. Nothing is promised. Every single day is sacred. It doesn’t matter how skilled or proficient you are, accidents happen and no one is immune to tragedy. This sounds really depressing, and it is anything but. It’s an invitation to start living. We don’t know what our futures hold. Why do we walk hundreds of thousands of miles through inclement weather, difficult terrain, loneliness, heartache, physical pain, scary people or animal encounters, and logistical nightmares? Because we want to LIVE.
My friend and I summited Mt. Whitney together on August 3rd. There was a poeticism in the duality of the heartbreak of separating from this incredible camaraderie that we shared over our journey together, and the grandeur of this hallowed journey ending on such a pinnacle as the highest peak in the lower 48. This trek undid me in an unexpected way, and I can’t help but wonder, if we thought more intently about how fragile life really is, would we love others more? Make more time for them in our lives? Do things now that we were putting off until later? Finally prioritize ourselves? How differently would we conduct ourselves if we believed every action and interaction was sacred? Mary Oliver ends her poem The Summer Day with a question, a sort of call to action, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”.
Backpacker, thru-hiker, adventurer, human; our days here are numbered and the decision is ours alone.
Photo provided by Kayci Prevost
