This isn’t another story about the Pacific Crest Trail and how it greatly impacted my life through wandering alone in the woods to obtain deep reflection. My personal discovery and understanding of my path in this life came at 10:05pm, February 3rd, 2014 when my father passed away. This set-in motion a project that would consume the next two years of my life honoring the man that laid the foundation of my life, through the pain of his own. This led to my greater understanding of this truth in the days, months, and years to come.
Not really knowing with what, or how I was going to accomplish, or even achieve my grand goal of riding from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail, I quit my job as a winemaker and farmer where I was making more money than I had ever in my entire life. I was at the peak of my 10 years of growing grapes organically, observing the seasons and living within them, and making wine out of what nature and I had created in union. I set forth to honor him, and to possibly have the conversation with to whoever would listen, in the hopes to grow the community of people in this world that know of Ataxia, to tell them about what I have come to call “The Thief”. Every day that passed after his death was a new day that I was alive, and he wasn’t with me or us anymore.
By keeping my eyes fixed on what, and how I thought this journey was going to play out, I began to understand the importance of keeping a focus in the peripherals as to not miss the quiet voice of the universe that’s directing us on our paths.
I first began to tune into this voice the night that my dad passed. And over the next two years I would come to have a greater understanding of this truth, as I see it, that came to me on that night.
A great friend once said to me “ask plenty of yourself and from life, not many people do that. It’s easy to forget that for a short time we are clinging to a piece of rock hurtling through space. We have to grab hold of this precious time and enjoy it.” In the end when Ataxia took a stronger hold on dad he lost the ability to speak. I believe if he was able to talk in his last days, he would speak these very words, but instead when he passed away, his words became the stars, and through a constellation that I would forever relate to. One that tells a story of knowledge, love, balance, and obtaining what you want no matter how hard you have to work at it, regardless of the cost or struggle.
14 / Sport and Trail Magazine
To honor his father, Trent Peterson rode 2,659 miles from Mexico to Canada.
Trent rides to raise awareness and money for the Ataxia Foundation, the disease that took his father Gary Peterson's life.
The Wild In Us
“Ask Plenty of Your Self”
By Trent Peterson