Amiththan Sebarajah is a through hiker who's clocked over 10,000 km of long-distance hiking on trails in the U.S., Canada and New Zealand. But from the moment he started out, he realized he was an anomaly.
In 1948, World War II veteran Earl Shaffer hiked the 3,200-kilometre Appalachian Trail as a single continuous trek. He was the first. He said he did it "to walk the army out of my system." People called him "The Crazy One."
I suppose the origins of long distance hiking in North America is also a story of trauma and healing. Maybe that's why I am so drawn to it.
In February, I hiked the 1,300-kilometre Arizona Trail, which stretches from northern Mexico to southern Utah. It took me over 34 days.
The trail starts at the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Arizona. These borderlands — where border patrol agents are vigilant, where racism is weaponized — are contentious, uneasy places for brown-skinned people like me to negotiate.
But my friend Tyler Burke was with me for the first part of the trail, hiking with me from the Mexican border to Tucson, Ariz. Whether we wanted it or not, he was my insurance policy — a white guy who homeland security would surely assume belonged in the United States, even though he isn’t an American.
I strive to promote diversity on the trails, but I walk for other reasons, too. On the trail, I carry my trauma — my memories of Sri Lanka's civil war.
To walk is to remember, to heal. This is my therapy.
Tyler and I shuttled to the southern terminus monument at Montezuma Pass, along with another hiker. The three of us decided to slackpack — without our gear — to the border. Sandwiched between two white hikers, I got complacent and left my passport behind in the car. It was an unguarded border, and we hiked back to the car without incident.
But I wondered: had I been on my own, would I have been so nonchalant about my identification when approaching the U.S.-Mexico border?
Tyler and I slept through sub-zero temperatures atop Miller Peak on our first night. At dawn, we hiked down into a mesquite valley.
First, I saw only the sun-bleached remains of several children's knapsacks, a cartoon image of Ninja Turtles stood out in the desert drab. Then piles of men's clothing, strewn about: faded jeans, heavy shirts, worn out, grimy. I was angry at the sordid display — such disregard for leave no trace ethics, I thought.
Later, I understood migrants abandon what little they have brought across the border so that transporters can fit as many people as possible in their vehicles. Packed like sardines, they are driven into the unknown.
Tyler and I hiked out of the Huachuca Mountains, reaching a marshy dirt road with deep ruts. A heavy truck rushed by. I did not notice the green and white Border Patrol emblem until the dust settled. I reminded myself that this is not unusual. We were in border country, afterall.
We discussed the likelihood of the truck stopping for us, then realized we wore the uniform: expensive gear, loaded packs, trekking poles. My privilege gnawed at me.
It's then I saw it — a sign posted on a fence.
Ayuda Humanitaria (Humanitarian Aid)
Nunca es en delito (It's never a crime)
Retiren Los Cargos (Remove charges)
The surrounding area is desert, with limited clean drinking water. In the desert, water is life. Non-profit groups leave gallons of water to help the migrants crossing into the U.S. here. But border patrols have been filmed destroying those water caches. This sign was in protest to that practice.
We paused, contemplating the message, sighed, then moved on with heavy hearts towards Patagonia to find a hot shower and clean bedding.
A relic of a pickup truck pulled into a parking lot at the edge of town, kicking up a stream of dust. Several Mexicans climbed out of the cab, covered in desert grime. With reluctance, one of them approached us, spoke to me in Spanish, gesturing to a plastic bag. I didn't understand.
Tyler handled the conversation. We walked away with a bag of tamales for $20 US.
I didn't know if he had planned on selling his food. He probably just needed the money. It broke my heart.
Border issues are close to my heart. Perhaps it's because I still don't know what my dad endured getting to Canada in 1992 as he made his way through checkpoint after checkpoint to flee Sri Lanka.
Appa had gone into a rice cultivation business with Uncle Jinna and his son-in-law. Uncle Jinna's family was Muslim Tamil, and we were Hindu Tamil. Their partnership was breaking a tacit taboo, but they thought it would be strategic. They assumed, naively, they could be each other's insurance policy.
The rice fields were adjacent to jungles controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Sri Lankan Army camps and checkpoints surrounded the area. Uncle Jinna and my father often had to negotiate with both sides. The LTTE suspected them of spying for the Army. The Army harassed them, thinking their business was a cover for procuring supplies for the Tigers.
The Tigers inevitably confiscated our farm equipment for their war. At gunpoint, they took two consecutive harvests.
Appa's business with Uncle Jinna was a fatal error in judgement.
Nobody realized it then: my parents and Uncle Jinna's family were all on a hit list.
Tyler had two weeks of vacation time to hike as much of the Arizona Trail as possible. Thanks to a snowstorm, his trail time was cut short.
When he flew back to Ottawa, I returned to the trail, alone.
As I hiked, the only sounds were the soft thud of dusty boots on the hard-packed desert trail and the rustle of wind through a manzanita forest, when, suddenly, rat-tat-tat-tat... .
A white-tailed mule deer sprinted off in alarm. I was startled to hear the sound of high-powered rifles ringing across the desertscape. I ducked.
I consulted my notes: I was approaching my first 100 miles on the trail. There was a firing range nearby. They were shooting at targets.
That's how trauma works. It buries certain memories, hides them behind seemingly innocuous things, like gunshots ringing through the night.
In August 1990, things in Sri Lanka got much worse.
That night, armed men went to my Uncle Jinna's house in Kattankudy, a town near the city of Batticaloa, on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka. He was at the mosque, but his son-in-law was home. They shot him dead — in front of his children.
Then they went to the mosque, opened machine gunfire and tossed grenades onto men and boys at Isha prayers, killing an estimated 147 people, including Uncle Jinna.
I remember hearing the machine guns, grenade explosions. Then, within half an hour, the helicopters. The shooting started from above. It was night. We could see the tracer bullets like fireworks, raining down from the sky. Down below, someone returned fire.
Sound usually travels slower than light, so there was a kind of disconnect among the tracer bullets, the deafening sounds of the helicopters, and multi-directional gunfire. When it all stopped, the night was long.
The rice partnership was broken that night, amongst many things. We were forced to abandon everything: the rice fields, the land itself.
Nearly bankrupt, my father fled to the west. He came to Canada under a false identity, and claimed political asylum in 1992.
He sponsored us three years later. I grew up in Toronto, physically at least, far away from the war.
A Border Patrol helicopter circled above me at low altitude. I stood still.
Like gunshots, the whup-whup of helicopter blades means something else. To me, this is a Bell 212 of the Sri Lanka Air Force strafing the village, indiscriminate death from above.
I wondered what they were looking for...
I walked over 1,200 kilometres to the northern terminus at Utah through a desert sublime.
There was thigh-high snow, sage saguaro sentinels, rows upon rows of poppies in bloom, wild horses at San Carlos Reservation, and muddled memories from a distant past.
I spent the last night in Arizona at Page, in a motel owned by a couple from Gujarat, India.
I was touched when they told me they were proud of me for what I had done.
You see, "brown people don't camp," as a fellow hiker of colour is fond of saying with a bitter sense of irony.
In distance hiking, there is joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, humour and heartache.
The trail will give you moments of piercing clarity. There you learn to carry the weight.
The Arizona Trail was no different.
Amiththan Sebarajah is a distance hiker, recovering academic, and a collector of stories. A wise hikertrash once said: “All we can ever do is to say yes or no to the next step”.
Photographs: Amiththan Sebarajah, Tyler Burke, Brynden Bowley | Radio documentary: Amiththan Sebarajah, Alison Cook | Senior digital producer: Lakshine Sathiyanathan | Digital producer: Althea Manasan | Web design: Geoff Isaac | Web development: Geoff Isaac, Colin Prince, Rebecca Viegas
Audience Relations, CBC P.O. Box 500 Station A Toronto, ON Canada, M5W 1E6
Toll-free (Canada only): 1-866-306-4636
TTY/Teletype writer: 1-866-220-6045
It is a priority for CBC to create a website that is accessible to all Canadians including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges.
Closed Captioning and Described Video is available for many CBC shows offered on CBC Gem .
Loading comments…