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Around 200 miles into the Pacific Crest Trail in 2025, something changed. |
The physical difficulty had not disappeared. If anything, the opposite was true. My feet were sore, my legs were tired, and every day required a sustained negotiation with distance, weather, hunger, and discomfort. I was still carrying the same pack and walking the same number of miles. But the mental effort I had been carrying began to feel lighter. |
It was not happiness exactly, and it was not the dramatic euphoria often associated with the “runner’s high.” It was quieter than that. In fact, quiet was the specific quality of this state of being. Thoughts that normally competed for attention: plans, worries, judgments, unfinished conversations, imagined futures simply became less insistent. My attention narrowed to what was immediately in front of me. The trail, my breathing, the placement of my feet, the changing light, the next water source, that bird singing off to the side. |
I had experienced versions of this before. Summers working as a backcountry wilderness guard in the Flat Tops Wilderness had produced a similar clarity. So had long runs and ultra marathons. But the PCT made the experience more profound because the effort was not confined to a single workout or race. Walking day after day created a continuous physical condition, one that eventually seemed to reorganize what my mind considered important. |
The question I began to carry was simple. Where did the noise go? |
Was my mind becoming clearer because the trail gave me something meaningful to focus on? Was the physical effort changing my brain? Or was the apparent clarity simply what remained after less immediately necessary systems were temporarily turned down? |
The answer may involve all three. |
Modern life rarely requires my attention to remain in one place for very long. I often joke in my day job that I’m a single threaded man living in a multi-threaded world. And even when I am physically still, my mind may be anticipating, remembering, comparing, evaluating, or responding. The body can be sitting at a desk while the mind moves through a dozen unfinished tasks. |
On the trail, that fragmentation became more difficult to sustain. The environment demanded attention, but not in the abstract way that email, news, and social media do. The demands were concrete. Was the tread loose? How much water remained? Where would I camp? Was the weather changing? How did my feet feel? |
The trail did not eliminate thought. It made thought practical. |
Over time, the gap between what mattered and what did not became easier to recognize. A blister mattered. A storm mattered. Navigation mattered. Keeping up with my bubble mattered. The opinions I had been replaying from weeks earlier did not. |
This narrowing of attention is one reason endurance activity is often associated with flow. Flow, a concept developed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes a state of deep absorption characterized by focused attention, reduced self-consciousness, and a diminished awareness of time. The activity provides clear demands and immediate feedback. The body acts, the environment responds, and attention remains engaged. The noise is cut out. |
Long-distance hiking contains many of the conditions that can support flow. The task is repetitive but not entirely predictable. The goals are clear. Feedback is constant. Each step offers information about terrain, balance, fatigue, temperature, and pace. There is little need to invent a purpose for the next hour. The next hour is already intrinsically and intensely decided. |
But flow alone does not fully explain my experience. The clarity I felt was not always an intense state of concentration. Sometimes it was closer to an absence. Less internal commentary, less self-monitoring, less urgency to interpret everything. Sometimes just no thought or inner monologue at all. I was not necessarily thinking better. I was thinking less and experiencing the world more directly. |
A brain that spends selectively |
| Illuminated Clouds PCT 2025 |
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One possible explanation comes from the theory of transient hypofrontality, proposed by cognitive scientist Arne Dietrich. The theory suggests that during demanding physical activity, the brain may temporarily reduce activity in some higher-order prefrontal processes in order to prioritize movement, sensory processing, and immediate environmental demands (Dietrich, 2003). |
The prefrontal cortex is involved in functions such as planning, self-monitoring, decision-making, and complex abstract thought. These capacities are essential, but they can also support rumination and anxiety. The same mental machinery that helps us solve problems can keep us rehearsing problems that cannot be solved. |
Under conditions of sustained physical effort, the brain may shift resources toward functions that are more immediately useful. Maintaining balance, regulating movement, monitoring fatigue, and responding to terrain take priority over abstract concerns. In that context, a reduction in self-focused thought might feel like clarity. My experience would suggest that what it feels like is what it is. |
The word “hypofrontality” can sound more definitive than the evidence warrants. It does not mean that the prefrontal cortex simply switches off, nor does it prove that every experience of mental quiet during exercise has the same neurological cause. The theory remains a useful framework, but it is better understood as a hypothesis about shifting priorities in the brain than as a complete explanation. |
Still, it offers a compelling biological way to interpret what I felt. Perhaps my mind was not becoming more powerful on the PCT. Perhaps it was becoming more selective. Honestly, that’s a relief. |
The trail created an environment in which some forms of thought were useful and others were not. The body did not have unlimited metabolic energy, and neither did the brain. Attention had to be allocated. Immediate physical demands won. |
A human brain is not only heavy but metabolically expensive. Although it represents only a small portion of total body mass, it consumes a substantial share of the body’s energy at rest. Research on brain metabolism has shown that the brain maintains a high baseline level of energy use even when we appear to be doing nothing (Raichle & Gusnard, 2002; Raichle, 2006). |
That energy is not spent only on deliberate thinking. Much of it supports ongoing internal activity: remembering, imagining, predicting, monitoring, and constructing a sense of self. The mind continues working even when there is no obvious external task, and even when we’re zonked hours after hiker midnight. |
Long-distance hiking changes the body’s energy economy. The demand is not merely intense; it is repetitive and sustained. Day after day, the body must walk, repair tissue, regulate temperature, manage pain, and find enough fuel to continue. Under those conditions, the distinction between necessary and unnecessary activity becomes physically meaningful. |
It would be too simple to say that the body “turns off” thinking in order to save calories. The brain is not a collection of independent switches, and the mechanisms of mental fatigue are complex. I like to imagine a rush of thought bouncing between millions of interconnected neurons. Prolonged exertion can alter attention, motivation, mood, and decision-making. It can also make abstract concerns feel less urgent than immediate bodily needs and that is definitely part of what I experienced. |
The result may resemble a kind of energetic honesty. When resources are limited, the mind becomes less willing to spend them everywhere. |
On the PCT, I could not sustain the same level of mental dispersion that was possible in my ordinary life. There was not enough attention for every worry. I didn’t choose to stop worrying, I simply couldn’t any longer. |
The familiar explanation for exercise-induced euphoria is the release of endorphins. Endorphins likely contribute to pain modulation and mood, but they may not explain the full range of experiences associated with prolonged exercise. More recent research has drawn attention to the endocannabinoid system, including the molecule anandamide. |
Endocannabinoids are involved in pain regulation, stress response, mood, memory, and reward. Because they can cross the blood-brain barrier more readily than many endorphins, they have been proposed as important contributors to the positive emotional effects of aerobic exercise (Fuss et al., 2015; Tantimonaco et al., 2014). |
In one study, moderate-intensity running increased circulating endocannabinoids and was associated with reduced anxiety in participants, whereas comparable walking did not produce the same effect (Raichlen et al., 2012). This does not establish a single chemical explanation for the state I experienced, but it suggests that exercise may alter the brain’s response to stress and discomfort in ways that are more nuanced than simply producing pleasure. |
What I remember most from the trail was not feeling intoxicated or ecstatic. It was the sense that the usual volume had been turned down. Pain remained, but it was integrated into the task. Fatigue remained, but it did not necessarily become a story about failure. The body was working hard, yet I felt less burdened. |
Perhaps that is one way to understand the distinction between a high and clarity. A high adds something. Clarity may remove something. |
The wilderness guard and the ultra runner |
The experience was not unique to the PCT. |
As a backcountry wilderness guard in the Flat Tops Wilderness, I spent long stretches moving through landscapes where the pace of life was determined by terrain, weather, daylight, and the needs of the work. The wilderness created a similar reduction in mental clutter, although the physical effort was distributed differently. Recovery time was more available and I was a lot younger too. |
There were long patrols, difficult climbs, repetitive tasks, and the responsibility of paying attention to the land and the people moving through it. The work required alertness, but not the constant social and informational responsiveness of ordinary life. The environment supplied a set of immediate priorities. It also removed many of the distractions that make it difficult to distinguish urgency from importance. |
Ultra marathons produced a different version of the same phenomenon. The effort was more concentrated and the physical intensity often higher, but the experience unfolded over a limited period. There was a beginning, the pre-race butterflies, a race course, aid stations, and a finish line. The PCT offered no comparable boundary. The same effort continued tomorrow and even when I took zeros my focus tended to remain on the next section of the hike. |
That difference mattered. An ultra marathon can push the body into a temporary altered state, what I called the mile 33 high. A long trail can make that state a way of living. |
The body gradually adapted to the repetition, but the adaptation was not only muscular. My sense of time changed. So did my relationship to discomfort, hunger, boredom, and uncertainty. The mind seemed to stop demanding constant novelty. Walking became both the method and the setting of attention. Boredom is actually a friend when you’re living on that side of the divide. |
It is tempting to describe this clarity as an escape from modern life. There is some truth in that description. The trail removed many of the inputs that normally compete for attention. It offered distance from obligations, devices, noise, and the social self. |
But “escape” is not the headline of this story. |
The clarity did not feel like leaving myself behind. It felt more like being returned to a simpler version of attention. I was not free of concern; I was concerned with fewer things and for the most part those things really mattered. I was not free of the body; I was more aware of it. I was not outside the world; I was in direct contact with one particular place. |
This may be part of why long-distance hiking can feel restorative even when it is physically punishing. The body is stressed, but the stress is legible. The next problem is usually visible. The effort has a rhythm and a consequence. Unlike many forms of psychological stress, it does not require endless interpretation. You’ll never find yourself reading between the lines of what the trail says. |
A difficult climb asks for climbing. A blister asks for treatment. A storm asks for shelter. The trail does not always make life easier, but it often makes the next action clearer. |
What the trail taught me about thinking |
I do not want to overstate what happened to me. This wasn’t an epiphany. The mental clarity I experienced cannot be reduced to a single theory or neurotransmitter, but it happened nonetheless. It may have emerged from the interaction of physical exertion, solitude, nature, repetition, sleep, reduced media exposure, meaningful difficulty, and the psychological effects of pursuing a demanding goal. Regardless it was the quietest my mind has ever been and in that moment it felt like a relief. |
The research offers possible mechanisms, not a final verdict. Transient hypofrontality may help explain the reduction in self-conscious thought. Flow theory may describe the absorption and immediacy of the experience. Endocannabinoid research may help explain changes in mood, anxiety, and pain perception. Studies of brain metabolism may illuminate why prolonged effort changes how attention is allocated. |
Together, these ideas suggest that the trail was not simply distracting me from my ordinary mental life. It was changing the conditions under which that mental life operated. |
After 200 miles on the PCT, the question was no longer whether I could think about everything. I knew I could not. The more important discovery was that I did not need to. |
For a while, the body took over the work of deciding what mattered. The legs, lungs, feet, weather, terrain, and water supply formed a hierarchy more honest than the one I usually carried in my head. |
And within that hierarchy, there was quiet. |
Sources for further reading |
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.
- Dietrich, A. (2003). Functional neuroanatomy of altered states of consciousness: The transient hypofrontality hypothesis. Consciousness and Cognition, 12(2), 231–256.
- Fuss, J., Steinle, J., Bindila, L., et al. (2015). A runner’s high depends on cannabinoid receptors in mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(13), 4116–4121.
- Raichle, M. E. (2006). The brain’s dark energy. Science, 314(5803), 1249–1250.
- Raichle, M. E., & Gusnard, D. A. (2002). Appraising the energetic budget of neural activity: Metabolic支? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(16), 10237–10239.
- Raichlen, D. A., Foster, A. D., Gerdeman, G. L., Seillier, A., & Giuffrida, A. (2012). Wired to run: Exercise-induced endocannabinoid signaling in humans and cursorial mammals with implications for the “runner’s high.” Journal of Experimental Biology, 215, 1331–1336.
- Tantimonaco, M., Ceci, R., Sabatini, S., et al. (2014). Physical activity and the endocannabinoid system: An overview. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 71, 2681–2698.
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