Why Hike the PCT?

I have been asked several times as to why do I want to do this hike. This is why:
It is obvious the physical fitness that one achieves on a long hike. Your body knows to become efficient during long term walks and hikes. Your body will compensate and adjust and become more efficient. After weeks of hiking, those miles will seem like nothing.
The Mental fitness also comes with a shedding of the stress and pressure of modern life. Self confidence and self knowledge grow with the journey, leading to a wonderful sense of well being and the feeling that anything is possible. All this works in combination of course.
Some of the attraction of this simple life lies in its immediacy, in the fact that you live only in the present or the very near future. What matters comes down to how far you will walk that day, where you will camp, where the next water is, where you will stop for a rest or a snack. With life reduced, literally, to walking pace, anything more then a few hours ahead is too far in the future to worry about.
Part of the pleasure of simplicity lies in the satisfaction of being self-reliant, of carrying everything I need on my back. It may be only a relatively short time between each resupply point, but for that period I am self-sufficient dependent on no one but myself. This is significant, too. On a long distance hike you are in control of your life. No external schedules or demands impose on your time; no one controls what you do and when you do it. It is up to you how you plan and carry out your hike.
The act and art of camping are important, too. There is a simple delight in creating a temporary home every day in a different place, in knowing you can make a comfortable, habitable space in a few minutes, a space where you can cook, eat and keep warm, and sleep protected from bad weather. There is also joy in the freedom of not having to reach a certain destination, in carrying your house on your back, able to set it down when and where you choose. Like they say it is not the destination but the journey. You also hike your hike.