[pct-l] Options

Tue Apr 5 21:18:41 CDT 2011

One of the things rarely talked about regarding long-distance hiking are the 
inner changes that happen over time. Some of them actually cause strong 
hikers to leave the trail for good. Some are what the hiker came to the 
trail to find.

Nevertheless, what Jeff shared with all of us is but one of the healing 
side-effects of long-distance trail life. It has long been the objective of 
Mountain Education to help hikers achieve, not the physical goal of their 
hike, but, rather, the spiritual. Just stay on the trail long enough to let 
the spirit of the Wilderness steep into your soul and deception of 
civilization come screaming out. Do you want to know what to do with your 
life? What, really, are your priorities in life? Take a long hike and find 
out....

"Just remember, Be Careful out there!"

Ned Tibbits, Director
Mountain Education
1106A Ski Run Blvd
South Lake Tahoe, Ca. 96150
    P: 888-996-8333
    F: 530-541-1456
    C: 530-721-1551
    http://www.mountaineducation.org
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeffrey Olson" <jolson at olc.edu>
To: <Pct-l at backcountry.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 6:43 PM
Subject: [pct-l] Options

> One of the nice things about being in my late 50s is I have lots of time
> to plan, and lots of options.  I've applied for another faculty position
> in a warmer climate.  I'm not counting on it happening, so a month or so
> ago I got on Craig's Planner and laid out a three month trip (July
> through September) from Bend to Mt. Whitney.  I got the ok to take the
> fall semester off if I wanted, so that's hanging out in the wind.  If
> they want me back they'll pay my medical insurance...
>
> One friend has said he's interested in hiking the last month with me.
> Another would meet me for a week in Seiad.  My brother-in-law is primed
> for a week.  That's enough company to keep me from getting too far into
> my head I think.  Having done numerous long section hikes I am leery of
> hiking alone for too long.  I get a little crazy.
>
> I'm one of those people who can't listen to books on tape because what's
> happening in my head is far more interesting.  And left alone for too
> long, the paths I travel tend to get distorted with emotion.  I used to
> think hiking alone was the be all, end all.  I remember snorting
> internally when a young man hiking north shared he couldn't handle
> hiking alone.  He had a haunted look in his eyes, beseeching almost.  I
> was alone on a section hike, and he was seeking validation.  I gave it
> to him, but remember holding myself aloof.  What a jerk I was...
>
> My girlfriend and I were all stoked to hike for a couple months in 1994
> when a week before we were to leave she got a job she couldn't turn
> down.  There I was, all primed to repeat an experience we'd had a couple
> years previously that was the best hiking I'd ever done.  There is
> nothing like hiking with a partner/lover - nothing at all.  Some of my
> clearest and fondest life memories come from that trip...
>
> I took off from I-5 near Callahans and headed north to Canada.  I think
> I was still in shock and actually headed out to do the trip just because
> the momentum to do it - the planning - carried me along.  To be honest,
> I wasn't prepared to spend day after day alone.  I was part of the
> proverbial "We!"  And then I was alone.  Rip, tear, rend and shatter...
>
> About 10 days into the trip I was hiking on a flat section of the Oregon
> desert - that part that seems to go on for miles of sand and 50' pines
> and no undergrowth or water.  I was hot and tired and thirsty and hungry
> and realized that I'd been keeping "my reality" at bey since I'd found
> out Janey wasn't coming along.  I just flat out wasn't enjoying myself.
> Everything was stark, timeless, an eternal moment stretching outwards to
> temporal infinity.  Sure I'd lose myself in coping, in setting up camp
> or a beautiful view.  But the foreground moment was deep and weighty -
> portentous.
>
> It was about 11 in the morning and I was walking and hot and tired and
> thirsty and hungry.  I let out a groan, and then a soft scream, and then
> a huge ARGHHH.  I continued to walk.  Tears started coursing down my
> cheeks.  All I could think of was how lonely I was, how much I'd rather
> be hanging out with my friends and drinking beer or whatever.  I
> continued to walk.
>
> "I'm not having any fun."  I sputtered.  "I want my Mom!"
>
> I moaned and cried and blubbered down the trail.  I could feel the ten
> days of hiking and two weeks of being without Janey just come crashing
> through me in my sobbing.  I walked and cried and bawled and mewed and
> walked and made sure that no one was coming down the trail to see me
> like this.  There was a rational part of me watching me just break down
> emotionally.  But that was like 5% of where I was.  The rest of me just
> hurt intensely as I walked.
>
> I bawled in great gasps and hitchings of breath.  One foot in front of
> the other, the constant - I'd stop for a emotionally for a moment and
> notice my rhythm, and just melt again.  I could feel my face screw up
> into an unattractive prune time after time as the wave of pain coursed
> through me, my body sliding down a washboard time after time after time
> sloughing off into sobbing and blubbering.
>
> After 10 minutes or so my sobs lost their shuddering depth.  I'd moan
> and catch my breath and inhale with little quavers and continue to
> walk.  I started taking more regular breaths that weren't as driven by
> my pain.  I'd inhale deeply and let out my breath.  Inhale and release.
> Inhale and release.
>
> I could feel the pain.  I could feel it just like I could feel the
> breeze caress my cheek.  I could feel my chest just expand and expand
> with it as I put one foot in front of the other.  Where only minutes
> before I'd been riding the crest of two weeks of denial I was hurting,
> now I was on the ebb tide, the pain flatter and morphing.  Morphing...
> It was changing.  I waited for the next wave to wind my guts into
> sobbing emoting, for an unexpected twisting.  A breeze now, a wafting
> thing outside of me - this pain.
>
> It wasn't sudden, but suddenly I found myself walking without touching
> the trail.  My body suddenly had parts moving in synchronous counterpart
> to one another.  I was light as a feather, riding a rhythm emerging from
> my exhausted emotionality.  I was dancing down the trail, my heart
> shining through every movement, every step, every twist of my body as I
> put one foot in front of the other.  I reveled.  Where only minutes
> earlier I'd been trodding with the weight of my pained world bearing my
> shoulders down, ever down into complex, dense emotion, one foot in front
> of the other, now I was leaping and cavorting within putting one foot in
> front of the other - walking down the trail.
>
> Cognitively I was awakening within an emotional space rare in my life.
> I was in harmonious balance inside the hiking.  I realized I was not
> having fun, that this trip was perhaps a bad choice.  But I also
> realized I was not a ping pong ball, a victim of my emotions, my choices
> driven by the depths of raw suffering.  I may not have been having fun,
> but dammit if I was going to leave the trail because I was overly
> emotional.  I was a "Man" - capable of feeling deeply without being
> driven by deep feeling to act irrationally because I hurt.
>
> What became apparent as the days marched on, was that my emotions rode a
> roller coaster.  I'd go down, and I'd walk.  I'd go up, and I'd walk.  I
> was this emotional being putting one step in front of the other to
> achieve the goal of continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
> Up and down, up and down - my day was so rich with feeling and the
> wonderings that come from unbridled freedom to just be.  Think about
> it.  How often are we able to just be in the moment, one after the next,
> with no external controls on anything???
>
> I knew I couldn't leave the trail because I hurt.  For the next 25 days
> I rode the tail of the emotional beast as I walked.  I think I became
> "healthy" during these 25 days.  I hurt deeply, intensely, and cried
> more often than I want to remember.  I also felt the exquisite rhythm in
> walking where I was part of a universe mostly invisible but light and
> palpable and threading through emotions grounded in an ecstasy I've not
> managed to experience since.  To fall so far down into an emotional
> gravity well and then find myself riding the crest of balance of all
> forces - all in a half hour.  Up and down and up and down, all the while
> putting one foot in front of the other hiking the Pacific Crest Trail
> north to the end of my hike.
>
> I did hike for 25 more days.  I got used to letting myself feel deeply.
> The constant, the center, the core of the most intense emotional
> experience of my 42 years was putting one foot in front of the other on
> the trail.  I took away a sense of "who" I was that I can't imagine
> finding anywhere else.  Where else can a moment to moment activity
> support such emotional exploration?  I am a child of the universe, of
> God, of Samadhi, of The Eternal, of Taku Ksan Ksan..
>
> The power of my emotions came from being released from the strictures of
> day to day life in the world.  My resolution was finding myself as the
> center within the amplitudinal extremes.  I was high and depressed -
> both expressing release from the norms that limit and define.
>
> "I" am the center of their coursing flow.  I continue to walk, to put
> one foot in front of the other.  I walk in the wondering realization
> that all of us walk in the grand adventure of living.
>
> And to think I very well might have 90 days this summer and fall to once
> again put one foot in front of the other and hike until my trip is
> over.  I'm excited and scared...
>
> Jeffrey Olson
> Martin, SD
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