tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55222912896287680072024-03-13T22:35:07.603-04:00Trees and Cheesea blournal.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-14814447079243570582013-06-09T14:42:00.001-04:002013-06-09T14:42:36.239-04:00Holding BackWhile I ran toward the marker of my last mile today, I saw something white and shiny up ahead, and the following dialogue went through my head: White and shiny stranger: "Ahoy there, are you running the road today?" Me: "Yes, I made a loop with Rudsboro and Old Dana." Stranger: "Nice, that's an easy one, we just finished running up the mountain. You should try it sometime."<br />
<br />
I actually created people waiting to judge me up ahead, and I thought about how satisfying it would be to wish them a good day and call them Judge Judy or something clever like that. When the shine came into focus as a Chrysler SUV, and there was no one to voice what I do judge myself for, that I have never run up the mountain I live next to, I was disappointed. The opportunity or me to say the right thing at the right time presents itself infrequently. Because I'm nice. And slow with the comebacks. But this was different: imagined judgment and the succeeding sorrow for the disappearance of my Judge Judy all occurred in my head. As it had many times before.<br />
<br />
Then it came to me. This dialogue was me talking to the mean little voice that's inside all of us: you know, the one who says 'Why try?' Many writers have named this voice, and many books have been written on the subject of silencing or harnessing the voice for good. It's called the Gremlin, or the Demon, the Inner Critic, or just negative thinking. I imagined a dialogue because it created an arena where I could tell off the mean voice.<br />
<br />
I'm writing a book, so this voice has become a frequent visitor to my writing desk. The first time I recall giving it a sentence, I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. "This is too hard; you'll never make it." Which was funny to echo around in my manic brain because I was high on endorphins and already certain that I would, indeed, make it. But there was that message. A little Gremlin. Condemnation from my own anima. Judgment. When everyone hiked faster, I gave it volume enough to voice "You aren't strong enough." Never once did I believe the saboteur, but I didn't think to silence it either. How could I, if it were me?<br />
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Now that I sit and type and choose words to share my story, I was lucky enough to learn some exercises that silence and dilute the power of the Gremlin. My favorite is early in the process, while creating content, which is the whole fruit.<br />
<br />
I am not allowed to delete.<br />
<br />
I type and type and overshare, describe to my heart's content, lay down the thick skin of my exposition, write background for every scene and setting, and juicy stuff the pith bleeds onto the page, when the tension and my vulnerability weave into my scene like a brilliant scar, I am not allowed to omit for fear of retribution or judgment. Maybe it won't make the final cut, but that isn't coming for months. When the content gets revised, edited, peeled to the pith, then I'll employ a different exercise. Because the Gremlin will change again to hold me back.<br />
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My friend, the life coach and my teacher, the writing coach inspired the other exercise, which is to listen to your body. At every moment with any experience our body is reacting. If we can read our body language, we can discern the creative voice from the negative one. It is well named as exercise. It requires presentness. So if I struggle to choose the perfect word rather than using five common ones, finding myself at the dictionary and thesaurus more than at a new page; if I sit and struggle to choose a topic; or write about tension without thinking about my reader and my expression of tension; most likely the Gremlin is urging me to hold back.<br />
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The message is in my shoulders or jaw or my fingers not moving. If it weren't silent, it would be saying "You're not a good enough writer to pull this off" or "This subject isn't interesting after all, maybe do something different" or "Don't share that feeling, they will think you are weak." My reaction is to tense up, or freeze the flow of words, or do something else altogether. If I can remember to be present, and listen to my body, I can hear those sentences, I can loosen the tight hold on the fount of my creativity.<br />
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The creative voice, my writing coach reminds us, only opens doors. She likes to emphasize that to write a book, you are not safe. So what purpose does this Gremlin serve? It protects me from defeat or embarrassment and judgment while preventing triumph and accomplishment. Write it a letter, she tells us, and propose a treaty. Acknowledge its service while prohibiting its meddling in this endeavor. Thank it for keeping us alive as children and helping us to avoid trauma, and then dismiss it as a trusted advisor in adulthood. <br />
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So as I finish this post, thinking about the difficulty of the chapter I'm about to write, how vulnerable I must be to accurately write it, and how it will welcome judgment upon me, it occurs to me that this post has been my unfriendly treaty letter. And that the only judgment I have ever been sure of is my own.<br />
<br />
Stop holding back now.<br />
<br />
Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-24179984245646521382013-04-02T15:05:00.004-04:002013-04-05T10:49:33.870-04:00Day 1 and Changing MindsetsMonday is usually my Sunday, so it hasn’t hit me yet. Tomorrow, I would have driven to work. Although it would have been nearing the end, the day would have felt normal. The routine comforted me in its consistency, while the apprehension of an end remained distant, like the expectation of a full moon, or the onset of spring. Inevitably, there was an end, and it would be unfamiliar. When it came, like a microburst lifting buildings from their foundations, we adapted. I swallowed a new reality and it numbed my insides.<br />
<br />
Today is Tuesday, and it is my firsday unemployed. I crave being occupied, but not in the employer sense of occupation. My struggle with being present can be explained with a visual concept of time that the Aymara people of South America utilize. In their visualization of their world, as time passes, we create memories of the past, and yet the future remains dark. The movement of bodies through time in the Aymara visualization is backwards, with the future behind us, and the past vivid in front, fading from view as we continue backwards into the future.<br />
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When I used to imagine my self in time, there is the sprawling epic of my past behind me, and in front is an empty path, and an open future, which clears of fog as I approach and fill it with new memories. And today it occurs to me that this visualization is as asinine as it is narcissistic. The better image would be Times Square, where I shoulder check my way through a world that carries on with or without me, where my path is only there if I walk it. Not that a busy tourist attraction is relevant to my choice of path in life. The point is that the Aymara have invented a palpable perspective on our life through the lens of time. Because the open road cliché is entirely disappointing, which brings me to my current test of presentness.<br />
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For me to be present, to be undistracted by future plans, comfortable in current circumstances, and rapt in the moment of my surroundings, I must be able to take a long lunch. Simple as that. The opportunity to gab on with friends or keep on reading a book, to enjoy another round or course or both and linger, luxuriously in that afternoon, would be taken if I were present. Which is why my test is clueing me in to what is wrong with my lifestyle that has prevented so many long lunches (the exception most recently being The Parish Café on Boylston with Kristen last summer): too much. If I took my next week and queued up all my plans (and remember that I am unemployed as of today) so that they filled the path I was walking backwards on, I would bump into people and places and obligations so often that I would have to slow down (another lesson that should be learned) and step carefully so that each plan is a welcome addition, and in between I can enjoy the gap.<br />
<br />
So let’s recap: we are all walking backwards into the future, which appears before us as we enter it, which is not blank or waiting to be filled by our internal locus of control and imagination, but a symphony of billions of players seeking their own long lunches. When I imagine a mood or mindset that settles me in to the moment and sits down for that lunch, it must be surrounded by fewer plans and expectations, so that there is room to linger, and not so many tourists to shoulder check my way through.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-17105365528329140372013-03-27T16:01:00.000-04:002013-04-05T10:51:34.321-04:00March 25, 2013 or The Closing of the GoatIt occurred to me today that I’m in a bit of a crisis. In one week, I’m going to lose my job. For over two years this job has come before everything else that is important to me, with a few triumphant exceptions. During this tenure I have gotten my first gray hairs, constricted to the bowels of a nonagenarian, unlearned how to relax, adapted to so much daily stress that I avoid adventure. Boring! So now, it’s going to end. This is something I want.<br />
<br />
The next months are the third time in the last ten years that I have quit and leapt into the big blank future. The first time was the end of a bad relationship and I hadn’t really grown up yet so that had to happen fast, which led to the most memorable year of montage material. The second time was after I realized that living in Boston required a meaner disposition and an indelible belief that I was not skinny enough, so I quit, moved my stuff into my parents’ garage and hiked over two thousand miles in almost 6 months. That turned out to erase the belief that I needed a 9-5 job. While my pride waned and my relationships blossomed, there was a year in there, living in my parents’ basement (they told me they liked having me there), when I was getting a lot of it right. But I wasn’t writing, and I had decided that was the most important thing, in the long run. Right then, of course, it was too much fun to spend all my money on visiting my friends who had moved to many interesting places.<br />
<br />
So when a job that sounded like a real grown-up position became available in another state, I excitedly applied after considering it for exactly three hours, and planned to work full time running a store that was losing money, using all my spare time to write a book. The futility of that plan took a while to settle in. Confession: I still haven’t swallowed the futility of getting the store to solvency. In the mean time, I was settling in to a sweet little town and the apartment of my dreams. It’s tacky to say, and in a blink two years were gone, but somehow there was a lot of blinking, and a lot of not memorable months. I want to edit what I wrote before, about settling into the sweet little town, because that didn’t happen until over a year in. I always loved my apartment, and the little mountain in my backyard, and my landlords, who as deaf farming seniors, were the ideal combination of generous and oblivious, but it wasn’t until I dated a local womanizer who claimed to know everyone that the town actually seemed like an interesting place to explore. I can admit dating a womanizer because I didn’t really believe in them before he stopped calling. I thought it was a character type screenwriters use to advance the plot. So there we have it.<br />
<br />
Seven years would be more accurate than the ten I wrote above. And this weekend my store closes for good. When I am at work that inevitability causes me stress, but here at my computer I am free. I spend most of my time at the store, however, and in the last two weeks noticed that when I’m not at the store, I am pacing my apartment eating cake and watching countless episodes of the two sitcoms that make me laugh out loud. Some books fit in there, too, I’m on a Nora Ephron binge at the moment, if you couldn’t tell, but what I recall, because I am mean to myself, is mostly the television shows. So when I absolutely could not motivate myself to go on a run, or even a hike, which is right out my back door, today, the anniversary of the day, four years ago, when I started hiking the Appalachian Trail (and it still thrills me to think about how I started walking, wearing an old raincoat that was no longer waterproof, in the pouring rain, in Georgia all by myself, and I thought, I will not stop walking until I’m in Maine. All I have to do to get to Maine is to keep walking every day), because nobody can make me do something I don’t want to do, I am really that stubborn, I wondered whether all my out of character couch potato behavior has to do with being in crisis. It makes sense, doesn’t it? In a week I will have no job, no health insurance, but a great apartment and a car. In a week I will be where most citizens consider a bad place, a place to try to get out of, a place that is not as good as a job that gives you stress exzema or gray hairs when you’re 30, but a place that I surely crave.<br />
<br />
What it comes down to, every two or so years when I get into this transitional period again, is that I really have no desire to do anything but be a friend and a daughter and a sister, and hopefully a writer. I get that this is America, and we have capitalism, and I can’t keep my apartment by being really nice and clean. So what now? I really believe that what has kept me on the couch for two days is this impending toss up of all my order. Do you know I crave it? I can’t wait for the new stress of being unemployed, letting go of the other stress. I dream about sleeping until 9 and running an impressive number of miles and then typing the rest of the day and then deciding to make beer on a Tuesday. Money shmoney. So this is a crisis. I am in crisis mode and my medicine is Parks and Recreation. In one week everything changes. I can’t wait to be unemployed. But this must be a crisis. Or maybe mercury is in retrograde. I heard that’s a thing. Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-69051916260819033072012-05-24T21:14:00.002-04:002012-05-24T21:14:25.021-04:00GloamingWhen the orange coals of sunset settle on the horizon, I look east. The winds tickle the apple tree, revealing the bright undersides of the leaves, impressing the illusion of sunlight. The clouds are so low they appear painted. Purplish grays waft like stretched dough into the dull sky, just perceptibly blue. Above the coals a crescent moon dazzles like a glinting needle. There is a raucous of spring peepers adding cries to the winds' whispers. A gust lifts the iron siding of the sugar shack, and it rattles, heavy, slow, and thin. A horse snorts in answer to each breeze that circles the farm. The air still smells like new life, the breath of infant plants. It smells like ozone, today's rain, the lilac blooming across the lawn, and electricity. The wind reminds me of time passing. I can make out pink, one stroke of color fading into the colorless cloud to the north. The pink will not last. And suddenly I am awake, and among it all. Tonight the clouds are not moving. It is calm, despite the approaching storm.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-5463343834025720482012-02-25T23:20:00.002-05:002012-02-26T10:25:43.751-05:00Walking in Waterfalls, and a Whale's BackBrigid and I set out around 1 to drop her car at Lincoln Woods on a Friday. I listened to Robert Randolph and the Family Band to get pumped up. Just as her car turned into the massive parking lot, two text messages shot from somewhere in Massachusetts to my phone, and in a finger snap the service was gone. When she parked I glanced down to read the messages. A personal note from a good woman I should call more often, who became a friend as I was leaving another place, remembered the ripple effect during our short time enjoying one another's company. She told me that her dedication to quitting smoking was directly inspired by my thru-hike. If I can decide to hike 2,200 miles one spring, she can choose to overcome an addiction. Then she thanked me, some two years to the day since she'd had a cigarette. <br />
<br />
My eyes brimmed over with pride and happiness and guilt. Brigid was throwing her stuff into my car and we were headed for the mountains. The sky was all blue and the air clung to the late summer sun, commingling with the brisk September breeze. I told Brigid about the message, moved to share the generosity of my friend's words, surprised as I was for receiving credit for this remarkable accomplishment that I was fully aware was all hers. We marveled at dedication and the drive that moves us to do grand and difficult things. And I wondered if maybe that is a part of our great bond, that we can say we have accomplished grand and difficult things. <br />
<br />
I turned off the highway, onto Gale River Loop Road, which exists for parking lots at trailheads. The road was dirt in perfect New Hampshire condition, like a swept hearth. There were four cars in the first lot. We shared a little disappointment. We repacked our packs and took off. It took a quarter mile for two things to happen: the disruption of fear that I forgot to lock my car, and that little voice to warble messages of my inevitable failure. The trail followed a rising ridge populated by birches, oaks, and certainly ashes, for the familiar jagged leaves settled across the entire forest floor. We conversed easily over heavy breaths, sucking in air to balance the strain on our legs, unaccustomed to our heavy packs. I think about my muscles at the beginning of a hike, twisting and fibrous, tightening and flexing to maintain movement. When they are sore, it feels like cords wrapping my body securely, and I appreciate when they first talk to me, as though the strain and sweat from the backpack grant them voices so that we converse with our work, marveling at the stretches and contractions that walk me through the forest. <br />
<br />
Brigid and I packed a tent each, just in case, a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, dinner, snacks, breakfast, lunch, extra water bottles, warm clothes, extra clothes, treatment for water, gloves and a hat, a map, a book, toiletries, a stove, a pot, a spork, a pack cover or garbage bag, rain coat, and camp shoes. Our bags weighed over twenty pounds. It was the end of September. We were leaving the lowlands and did not know what sort of weather would blow in at our backs.<br />
<br />
For the walk up Garfield, the air was calm and cool. Our favorite topics are friendships and relationships; we can spend hours revisiting memories to make sense of them, to celebrate them. I remember little waterfalls, stepping over streams, and counting the people we met along the mountain: two groups heading north, which accounted for two cars in the lot. One set of women we had seen just a few weeks previous hiking Chocorua, but they didn't make the connection. At the top of Garfield a rock garden settled around the granite pate, punctuated by raggedy firs just below the peak. A manmade structure sits on top of the bare granite. All that is left is the square foundation in concrete. The wind up there above treeline is intense. We are the wind's only obstacles, and we are a poor match. A storm was inching ever northward. I became cold, fearful, interpreting the clouds as settling darkness. Brigid reveled in the gray. She seemed to see through the clouds, staring out at the Pemigewasset woodlands and their untouched topography. Still, I urged us onward, and we descended to our packs, and to camp. <br />
<br />
The first clue I saw for camp was a small rocky outcrop, where the granite stood straight up to form a ledge at the trail, and to the left a small bench marked a memorial. If we had the cooperation of the autumn sun that afternoon, I've been told the view would have been arresting. Instead we walked to the water source, where two men were surprised to see us. The gentle expression I interpreted from the older man's eyes suggested Lucy from the Wardrobe, upon seeing Mr. Tumnus. They did not return our greeting; when we passed and returned them their solitude perhaps their tongues loosened again. <br />
<br />
Anxious to secure a site to rest, I accelerated. The caretaker emerged from his canvas tent, a student honed from a summer with his books among the trees, and he directed us to the campsites available. As we followed his recommendations for sites 6 or 7, we passed the new shelter. This palace smelled of hand-sanded hardwood and stood, freshly erected that day, as the most beautiful shelter in the Whites. I do not exaggerate: the donor called for a new shelter for aesthetics alone, as the original one lacked functional flaws. Two Y shaped trunk segments were built into a front corner of the structure and halfway across the opening, giving the shelter three and a half walls. Brigid and I drooled as we passed it. When we dropped our packs at site 7, the quiet gentleman and his companion, perhaps a son, appeared and chose the adjacent tent platform. Their awkward presence tipped my decision: we would sleep in the shelter.<br />
<br />
We devised a plan to bribe the caretaker while changing into warmer layers. After a protein bar we gathered the goods for water. With arms full of bladders and empty bottles, my Katadyn filter hanging from my right index finger, and cookies safely stored in the right pocket of my Micropuff, we walked up the path toward the water source. Ahead of us the caretaker appeared, lanky and comfortable. He greeted us politely and offered to postpone our paying him once again. I pincered inside of my left pocket with two of my free fingers for the folded ten, five, and one to pay him for our night in his territory, and he thanked us for exact change before generously telling us an entertaining story about the other campers paying with large bills and the difficulty of making change on top of Mt. Garfield. This was obviously the right moment, with us in his favor. <br />
<br />
"We were wondering, can we could bribe you so we can sleep in the shelter tonight? We have cookies." I fished out the broken treats from the other pocket with my pincer fingers. Like a kid in charge of his parents' hot tub he smirked,<br />
"You don't have to bribe me, you are welcome to stay in there tonight." He accepted some cookies. As we passed by him he turned and added,<br />
"You don't have to filter the water you know. Here and Guyot have the cleanest water in the Whites. I never treat."<br />
<br />
Brigid knew I was a tent fan, but there was something about that shelter. I went from not caring about sleeping in it to writing off the night as a bust if we had to pitch tents. The storm approaching from the west probably played a role, too. So we did a little victory dance. While I plodded along in crocs to the water source - a beautiful clear stream shooting out of brilliant moss, a great sign for direct, naturally filtered, mineral-rich water - memories of the terrible cramps of parasites making a home in my guts conflicted with the caretaker's suggestion. There are two reasons for not filtering water: lethargy and trust. <br />
<br />
Over the course of the last 24 hours, the forecast went from sun to storm, first unlikely to inevitable. I foolishly believed inevitable would turn around again, but by then hope was futility. A third and bad reason is impatience. Also, the first day with a pack on is a hard day. <br />
<br />
Back at the shelter, I was possessive. I didn't want anyone else to be the first to stay in the new shelter, so I suggested we bring all of our gear in behind the front wall, so that anyone passing would not think to stop and stay in the brand new shelter. This plan went very well until the rain started and we were sitting on the floor, legs dangling over the edge, eating our tuna and Pasta Sides casseroles, when a light began bouncing along on the south side of the trail. The hiker who asked us nicely whether there was any room left in the shelter, to whom we responded that we were the only two inside, but the very first to sleep in it, was polite and conversational. While I brushed my teeth, rain spitting onto my shell from under the eaves, we discovered that we had met on the Appalachian Trail two years ago, probably in Virginia. He remembered my trail name, but we had only passed once, and not stopped to chat. The world seemed very small and it was comfortable.<br />
<br />
In the morning we tried to wake up early and it didn't work. When the caretaker had heard our plans for the next day he had warned us that a trek of that length would take us most of the day and maybe part of the night. The only way to be safe was to start by 7 at the latest. We had a very nice breakfast with our shelter companion, in which he cooked and I ate too many Pro Bars and Brigid boiled water for oatmeal to become superhuman, and then hit the trail around 8. <br />
<br />
The light mist was tolerable, but within three miles the trail, Garfield Ridge approaching Galehead Hut, becomes a river in the best of times. The night before contained a great burst of a storm. The thunder seemed to shake everything outside save the shelter, and the lightning continued unabated for hours. It rained a lot. It rained new rivers. The trail is a waterfall at times, and it was nerveracking. During those first miles, the rain started to spit a little more so I put on my pack cover and helped Brigid with a garbage bag for the same purpose. When we spied the first waterfall, it conjured the memory of falling down one two years prior, when Ewok caught me tumbling over the slick rocks. There was nothing for it this morning, we were going to get soaked or fall. This is scary stuff. You know the moment at the top of the roller coaster, when you're about to rush down the slope, and the ride pauses just long enough with a little shudder of a jolt to make you question why you've chosen to get that high up? The queasy adrenaline of uncertain ground pulls at my gut and unsteadied my confidence- 'you can die at any time.' <br />
<br />
We descended a very steep rock wall carpeted in rushing water wearing twenty pound packs. Again I cursed the AMC for never moving the trail, as dangerous as it is. And not only dangerous, but terribly not fun. It's always wet. The trees and roots lining the trail are heavily used, exposing bare twisted wood beneath bark, pulled out of the well-watered earth. My shoes filled up. I stopped to ring out my socks. Then we went on ahead, unsure of our pace.<br />
<br />
The clouds overtook the mountains and it was really raining now. The few people we saw were on their way from the hut to the car, or caretakers at the sites. We skipped the peak side trails, because bagging without a view seemed a waste, and we were worried about losing daylight. At 11:30 we were at the intersection of Bondcliff and Garfield Ridge, with many miles to go. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. We weren't drinking much water. The wind was cold and everything was damp. Egressing the forest cover onto the alpine zone, we were exposed and exhilarated. The wind was whipping and we were actually in the clouds, so that our path was still and the rest of our world was moving. <br />
<br />
The climb took on a sharper pitch, which warmed our damp legs. Like ocean waves breaking the clouds split against a slope just a few hundred feet away. These are the Bonds, muddled brown and slate in our dull light, grand shoulders flexing out of the gray clouds. Then it disappeared. Farther south another shoulder broke through, and so it continued, a peep show of West Bond. Ahead of us the trail followed the apex ridge of Bondcliff. We marveled at the dropoffs on our sides, and the brief glimpses of brilliant green forest below. Out of the storm just ahead, an awesome rocky spine sliced white, and the gigantic whaleback rose and shrank us. It appeared like a serpent surfacing, offering its back for our safe journey. I think we laughed then.<br />
<br />
The trail south to the car meanders an easy grade for about ten miles. I wanted to be the hiker who dilly-dallies and absorbs every moment to make sensual memories. But I went as fast as I could instead. We dipped back below treeline and hurried, racing the clock we didn't have. "It was one of those days," Brigid recalled recently, "when the light was so weak because of the weather, that it could have been 1 in the afternoon or it could have been dusk, and we wouldn't have known until it got dark or didn't." Well it didn't. The dayhikers coming toward us to see the new bridge and the old bridge destroyed by Irene stared at our soaked finery. I don't think we greeted them really. They carried umbrellas. We were speedwalking by then. The last hours, who knows how many, were spent discussing how we will feast and the alien concept of warm and dry. Warm and dry is not always possible. At the car, we changed into the extra layers left behind. Brigid turned the key: 4:45.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-13935293294498033762011-09-07T20:48:00.011-04:002011-09-07T22:22:45.011-04:00The Long Trail, long overdue.August 29, 2010 (Journey’s End Camp)<br />
<br />
Welcome home to me. LT day 1 (or T minus 1). Met great guys, with good people, ready to kick some mountain ass!<br />
<br />
August 30, 2010 (Jay Camp)<br />
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And what a welcome it was! I’m so sore. Energy is good, except during the huge climbs, when I can only count on my endurance. My back is sore, my feet started to raw, I stink. Overall, I dove in head first to a new trail and it couldn’t be going any better, unless there was more water. So that challenges my planning. Camaraderie is good: three is a great number for independent long distance hikers, because there’s usually someone to talk to if you want that, and no one to get their feelings hurt when you want to be alone. MudD is the common thread, and he handles that with ease, and ever so slowly Derek and I understand each other. I know my brain is still scattered and I’m still impatient. Soon, the woods will slow my mind, ease my step, and simplify everything else.<br />
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August 31, 2010 (Tillotson Camp)<br />
<br />
Great hiking day. Hard. But rewarding. Lots of peaks, including Haystack, in under 12 miles. My mind wanders while I hike, tumbling and exploring at great speed over many subjects and concepts, admiring friends and pondering trysts, examining how once inside the green wild I never seem to connect to anyone outside of it. On the days to come, I hope my mind wanders into better catchy songs (I had “Fancy” by Reba McEntire, or actually, two lines from “Fancy” stuck in my head on replay for hours today “I might have been born just plain white trash but Fancy was my name / She said ‘here’s your once chance Fancy, don’t let me down’”). Charlie Brown is at the shelter- just hearing him harshed my mellow- I knew from his voice he was lonely, talkative, and not interesting. I decided that that assumption shouldn’t have such power, so I gave him a chance. Let me play it out for you.<br />
<br />
With a few remaining miles to the day, and for all of us, barely any water, we took a long break at the first stream in hours. A serene babbling brook in the lush col between two mountains, there was plenty of good seating and a deep enough stream for all of us to pump at separate pools. After filling my camelbak I pumped a liter into my nalgene and added a nuun electrolyte tablet. I chugged the cool mountain water, the best water on the planet (I swear, it’s all about the water, that faraway look backpackers get when you talk about one of their trails, they may say it’s the memories of the people or the views or the exertion, but it’s triggering the trace memory of drinking water filtered out of the land, pure and clean, exquisite), while we talked about our sore muscles and the heat. I know the power of the heat by hydration best: on a day like today, when you sweat so much you smell the liquid fat excreted through your pores, when my eyes fill with sweat if I blink too slow, and then drip drips off of my chin, when I drink a liter of water in under five minutes, hoist a 25 pound pack onto bruised shoulders, and start walking without getting a cramp, that’s when I make a mental note to chug another liter once in camp and again after dinner. That is heat. With that heat comes immense gratitude for the dependable water source at a shelter. Expecting that water was ahead very simply determined that we could continue to live out here. Rumors of water scarcity met us via Northbounders. I dissected the rumors and examined them like a detective. A hiker could lose all credibility for false water information. <br />
<br />
And so, full of water but most comfortably so, I was dawdling into camp, with a happy spring in my step, singing “Fancy,” surprised to see the privy first and the shelter roof next, I thought ‘oh joy of joy I’m done for the day! And what a glorious day it was! Tonight my friends and I will dine with a view over the northwoods landscape, and discuss our highlights, our frustrations, and rest easy on tired bones.’ Then I hear the voice. <br />
<br />
“You guys must have just started, eh? Yeah, I did the whole trail myself, the wife is picking me up on Wednesday, I’ll be taking my time to finish, you know, might as well make it last, am I right? See, guys my age, we aren’t out here for the exercise. No sir, we’re here to get out of the house…” And I stopped listening because I knew the boys were there, they were ahead of me, and they would be smiling for someone else to be doing the talking, but I was not interested in this man. I heard in his voice, his tone and his easy sentences the hum of a recorded tape, a worn repetition for a lonely man with little to say. These guys are all the same, I practically said out loud, instead let escape a loud sigh, just feet from camp. He waits for company, the captive audience of tired hikers, to pontificate all his predetermined sentences and stories, jumbled together without form or connection, using us for our ears but never really caring about our parallels, our shared footsteps or histories. They’ll ask you a question, sure, but they’re waiting to give you their favorite answer. And then I paused. I walked in and greeted my friends and coolly introduced myself to the man who had not yet ceased to speak. An older adult, he was wearing shorts and crocs, and his eyes were full of me. He had the hair of a snorer, so I pulled out my tent and looked for a flat area in the piney clearing on the other side of the trail. The courage and confidence that comes from pitching my tent is hard to describe. Like these gentlemen who miss something long gone, I am guilty of nostalgia, when the reenactment of my routine mitigated my tension and reminded me of one great lesson of the woods: not all people are as they seem. And so, when Charlie Brown walked over to watch me pitch my tent and talk to me, I listened.<br />
<br />
“So you’re hiking with those guys, eh?”<br />
“Yup.”<br />
“Yeah, I did the whole trail myself, the wife is picking me up on Wednesday.”<br />
“That’s exciting.”<br />
“Yup, I started the 6th of August, and let me tell you, it’s been a hell of a trip. You think you’ve been working hard, the miles to come are, heh, well, because you’re a lady I’ll watch my tongue, but you’re looking at pretty bad trail.”<br />
“You didn’t enjoy your hike?”<br />
“Of course I enjoyed my hike! What are you thinking? I’ve been thinking of what I’m going to do next year. See, out here I haven’t met many people. There’s my buddy Andy, he should be getting here soon because we were in town together two days ago and I lost him in town and so I’ve been waiting for him to catch up, he’s a younger guy, you know and so it should be no problem for him but I haven’t seen him yet and figure it’ll be tonight that he catches up, but anyway, lots of people going your direction, from time to time I get a shelter to myself of course, but that’s why you go out here, right? To be alone. They say it’s hard and it is, now, I also carry a lot more than you young kids but let me tell you something you should know: Don’t go to the grocery store hungry. That’s something to remember. I did that in Johnson, had to unload all this extra food outside of town, see, because I bought too much. So don’t do that. That ground doesn’t look too flat right there. What did you say your name was again?”<br />
<br />
Well, maybe he has some good stories at least. Stay positive. <br />
<br />
And eventually he walked away. At dinnertime he gave us the gift of a fire. Then he started talking about doing the PCT.<br />
<br />
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about doing that next year.”<br />
“Do you go off on a long-distance hike every year?” I asked.<br />
“No, not every year. I did the AT in 2003, and I’m finishing the LT now, so, no, this has been it. My wife doesn’t really understand, she’s supportive you know, let’s me go from time to time.”<br />
“Oh.”<br />
“But I think for next year what I’ll do is go out there and my wife can follow me in an RV. I can hike and she can meet me at all the roads and have water and food ready.”<br />
“Wow, that would be really nice of her.”<br />
“Well, that’s why you get a bride.”<br />
I scoff. MudD and Derek are both suddenly consumed by their food.<br />
Charlie Brown laughs at his reflection, his fortune, and leans a little closer to the fire and myself. The low flames danced and cast a shadow into his smile lines.<br />
“That’s why you get a bride!” <br />
“Oh, is that it?” I finally manage, an attempt to freeze over the fire between us.<br />
“She doesn’t really understand why I do this, you know? She doesn’t like this sort of thing, ‘why do you want to live in the woods?’ she asks me.” <br />
So maybe I was right after all.<br />
<br />
We also met some very nice older ladies, and I found myself cutting them off with my own observations. I need to slow everything down.<br />
<br />
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September 2, 2010 (Bear Hollow Shelter)<br />
<br />
I totally forgot to write last night! It was a big day, 15 miles, which I felt pretty good for most of. And we went swimming in Belvidere Pond, which was my highlight. At Corliss Camp, we ate and swatted mosquitoes, then looked into the woods until Derek’s friends Shelly and Anastasia met us with cokes, snickers, and energy. <br />
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Today was terrific! Almost 3 miles per hour! And Laraway Mountain was so beautiful, a steady climb, I felt terrific, and it has a lookout that was a great rock outcrop, hazy but good view, where we took Backpacker cover shots. The name of the mountain is beautiful to my ears, I exclaimed to the boys, with the emphasis on the first syllable, the word floats off your lips like a soft breeze: laraway. They were very polite. <br />
<br />
We were in town by noonish, resupplied wicked efficiently, then hung out at the library, where I got the shits and spiraled into a deranged headspace. <i>Is something wrong with me? Did I contract giardia? How? That could take me off the trail if it persists. Just like Hellbender and Stud the Dud in Colorado</i>. Then we went out for pizza and beer with Shelly and Jamie and Alyssa, Biscuits’ (Derek has a name!) friends. <br />
<br />
At the restaurant, I happily guzzled a pint of local brew and ordered far too much food. Oh how the prideful fall, when I expected to eat not only my deep dish heavily cheesed vegetable pizza but help my friends with their doughy charges, we were all left with the heavy leftovers to carry, on account of our shamefully small bellies. The light lost its warmth and a rain shower scuttled over town. Then it was time for a return to our trail. How foreign! The thought of leaving this quiet town, filled with happy pizza chefs and inquisitive camp counselors, grocer and post office down the road, for the winding corridor of protected woods, exposed lean-tos and rugged mountain passes. Then to be dropped off on an old logging road, sure we were in the right place but unsure of the condition ahead, rekindled a bold fear, the discomfort of intrepid travelers, who are at the mercy of more elements than most, with more than enough stubbornness. <br />
<br />
My pace slowed with the extra burdens I carried. The woods around us were green and lush, a dense undergrowth covering the forest floor below towering birches and oak, maybe? As though aware of their flourish in the purpling sunlight, ferns extended perfect fronds among cabbages and shrubbery. My pace seemed to tug at the hands of time, warping how far I thought I’d gone. The shelter was so far, so high up, beyond me ever beyond. Any restless joys from a luxurious day were imminent and due at the sight of a sign. Along the rolling green trail, restlessness resembled discomfort until that destination.<br />
<br />
Sign!<br />
<br />
Tonight we’re at Bear Hollow Shelter. My shirt smells so bad. Bolt is here, his two companions just quit the trail. But he’s really cool. Looking forward to hiking tomorrow! I’m so strong!<br />
<br />
September 3, 2010 (Taft Lodge)<br />
<br />
Probably the hardest day, but I feel great now! I go back and forth, feeling strong and able, or fantasizing about a slight enough injury to take me off with pride intact. I think about my trip to California and regular life- things I crave and what I don’t. That means, I suppose, that the trail is getting inside me. Which is good. Just north of here the trail decided to take on a most impressive angle, requiring trail crews to build almost a mile of rock steps taking these dainty and impressive switchbacks up the beginning of Mansfield. We were in no hurry, and I could hear the boys sweating enthusiastically above me on the stairs. Every quarter mile or so they would sit, and open their ziplocks of skittles and munch. I did the same and gladly, as we have accepted the candy as our most favorite crutch. Like Pavlov's dog I salivate at the sound of opening ziplocks, with that little question mark bubble "skittles?" materializing above my raised eyebrows. <br />
Tourists with daypacks passed us and my pride sunk.<br />
<br />
Kevin, the caretaker here, is really nice. He passed around the whisky, yum! I’m loving everyone I meet. All good news!<br />
<br />
September 4, 2010 (Buchanon Lodge) <br />
<br />
14.2 today, got the shelter all to ourselves. Ups are still so hard for me- I can’t go fast, I can barely go, and my muscles burn in protest. It’s been 6 days living in the woods, we’ve gone 80 miles, and tomorrow we’ll be a third done with the trail. I had a realization today, that I will finish the book, that I have the will (as this trail must prove!) to get it published. I should look into the website Biscuits told me about for a part time job. Looking at the trail book, at first thinking about how tired I am, thinking about being done, I almost started to cry- for mourning this trail. The miles we covered today included the famous Mansfield bust, from forehead to neck. Because we woke up at dawn, and on the scalp, waiting for clear skies was vetoed two to one. The mountain was covered in wispy fog and opaque, too, hanging heavy against the wind that blew an illusion at the summit: for all its blowing, the clouds still hung like paintings on the curves of our irises, these ethereal strands of milky gas. But did they whip! We had no view and didn’t miss it. The slick volcanic rock on the forehead demanded all of our attention. We traversed a rock garden lost in time or place. For all we knew the wardrobe had been the lodge, and we set out into Narnia, a landscape more fairy than modern. <br />
<br />
This is going to be interesting: over before I know it, I can tell.<br />
<br />
September 5, 2010 (Bamforth Ridge Shelter)<br />
<br />
I would have shit my pants today if the Richmond town park didn’t have a public restroom. Camping tonight, a little under 4 miles from the summit of Camel’s Hump. Today I lost track of the boys, they took a scenic view I didn’t notice, and just flew into town. Then they weren’t there. I’d asked some guys at the shelter 2 miles back if they’d seen them, who said no, and I knew that must mean I’d passed them but I couldn’t believe it. So I texted MudD and moseyed along, found a spot to sit and sat. Then he called.<br />
“Where are you??”<br />
“I’m at the road, didn’t you see my message? Where are you?”<br />
“At the road? We went by the road!”<br />
“You went into town?”<br />
“No, we checked the road and went back to camp.”<br />
“You went back to the shelter?!”<br />
“Yes. We were so worried. I thought that guy with the stupid dog killed you. I was sure.”<br />
<br />
So they were 5 miles back. He sounded pissed and relieved. They ran to where I was waiting, and we went into town, where I purchased enough food for 5 days, which turns out to be what I need, in addition to a quart of fruit puree. I ate an apple and drank the green goodness while we packed our bags. Then we went to the Bridge St Café, and I ate a bacon cheeseburger with two eggs and toast. Then we walked to the park and I talked to my parents for a while, until I realized I needed to, as Snarl would say, make boom boom. Panic seized hold, nearly, as I walked past families with small children playing in the playground, laughing on the swings, running across the open green field, the stone building looming towards me, a storage facility, or maybe, just maybe, a public restroom that could maybe, just maybe, be unlocked. I walked up to the building, aware of my exposure, planning an embarrassing and disastrous plan b. The cattails at the edge of mowed park? The café there, no it’s not open! One house after another on the same street? It must have a restroom. But! Would it be locked? No! Hooray! I said that out loud: ‘Hooray!’<br />
<br />
The hike to here was beautiful and steep in parts and ambling in others. My pack is heavy with high protein food, but I’ll manage, and regardless of my shameful pace, I sang and made excellent time. I really like this life, when it all comes down to it, but I’m excited to channel the goodness that comes from living simply- my calmness, lack of rushed speech, eye contact, confidence, assuredness, presentness (I was totally in the hiker zone today. The trio hiking pack we are allows hiking alone every single day. I treasure this time, and wish I’d had more of it on the AT)- excited to channel it into my life back in Mass, imbue my routine with these efficiencies, simplify my life with these lessons. Because this backpacking must be the thing in between things. It cannot be the main thing. I look forward to making my other lifestyle better. Now I have to get an LT AT tattoo.<br />
<br />
100 miles tomorrow!<br />
It just occurred to me, getting into my tent, that as an adult, since I was 18, this tent is the only shelter I’ve considered home- loved as my own, looked forward to for privacy, slept well in, whatever home means to me, this is it. Whatever am I going to do about that? <br />
<br />
For now, sleep in my home.<br />
<br />
September 6, 2010 (Birch Glen)<br />
<br />
Hard day. I struggle to find reason in these miles. Maybe today was grueling for all of us, but I worry our morale is in trouble. MudD was tired today, which doesn’t help- I’m concerned about Biscuits because he’s quiet (is he a quiet guy or upset into silence?) and I’m expending my energy in making the miles. My brain as leader is suffering. I’m in the odd limbo between presentness and mania. Or maybe not mania, but hyperactivity. The minute after I stop moving I’m smiling and joking and can form sentences. But not the minute before. My mind is slowing, slowly. There’s a powerful nagging that wants to be done already. I don’t care about the miles after the Long Trail Inn (except thinking about telling someone whether I did the whole thing or quit). MudD and I talk about the Inn whenever we talk. We certainly need a day off. Maybe after a zero we’ll be refreshed. Yes, that must be. Refreshed and ready to do the easier miles. Hooray! Oh, Camels Hump today. Gorgeous.<br />
<br />
We got to the top before 9 am, before the tourists, after the clouds had undressed the summit, leaving a hard wind and a gorgeous view. I made a bagel, cheese, and sausage sandwich sitting behind a large rock for cover. We took some pictures, looking cool against the wind, standing tall with the gray spine of the Green Mountain Range winding behind us. <br />
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September 7, 2010 (Battell Shelter)<br />
<br />
Much better day. Went only 12 miles over the Lincoln Ridge, morning was raining. Tomorrow is our biggest day yet, over 16. Then Thursday we’re going 20. I’m thinking of calling Bob to see if he wants to do Trail magic Thursday. I’m hungry. The family who’s staying here at Battell is eating tons of food in front of us, my stomach is going to start rumbling. What’s better about being supported? I would feel ashamed with all that assistance and smelling of Tide. Anyway, these new plans will put us at the Inn by the early afternoon, which will be the beginning to a much-deserved day and a half off. Sunday starts biggish days, just 17 or so after a big Patrick breakfast. I’m counting on the last days to fly, because the most interesting section may be done. Or, I can hope for a little heatwave, to make all the ponds more attractive.<br />
<br />
Something happened to morale today. It was exactly what we needed. Today we laughed and made jokes and giggled and played games and smiled to each other. Maybe it’s all changing. Maybe it was too hard- because we all fell or hurt ourselves today, and it was the best day in a week. Or maybe we’ll be miserable with our huge miles forever. We’ll see.<br />
<br />
September 8, 2010 (Sucker Brook Shelter)<br />
<br />
Gah. 23.6 miles today, because it was cold. Originally, at 16.2 it was going to be our longest day yet. Then it was 12:30 and we’d gone 12 miles. And it was so cold. The temperature couldn’t have been higher than 60 with strong winds from Hurricane Earl, so taking a break wasn’t really an option. We knew that we had to keep going to stay warm, and when we were done we’d be ready for bed in our sleeping bags. Or, rather, ready for nothing but bed. So someone, can’t imagine who, haha, suggested we go another 7.7 miles. No matter how little I wanted to hike over 20, I knew he had a good point. The day was chilly enough that we wouldn’t get dehydrated (there was literally one spring after 5 miles) so we went. And it was smart, because the original plan was for Boyce Shelter, where the water was dry. So we descended into Middlebury Gap and my knees ached, then we climbed Mt. Worth, which I was done with long before it was done with me. <br />
<br />
A mountain meandering along an abandoned ski resort, the trail took us over wooded ridges and tops that felt like peaks every time, rustic and brown like a hermit’s neglected back yard. Following another mile of ridge-walking over densely packed pine forest we observed another rise, and then another. Somehow the trail seemed haunted, the firs were so close on either side the path was shrinking, fighting against the shade and the isolation of old Mt. Worth. When the descent began, we still didn’t know if another rise would appear, but all I could think about were my screaming feet. My feet trembled and ached and throbbed with the impact of thousands of steps. I knew I was lucky nothing else bothered me, that tomorrow my feet would be fine, if a little angry. The irrational fear of a thru-hiker is that they have lost the trail. Where intersections are poorly marked, confusion is possible. However for most hikers, when you think you’ve gone far enough, and there’s no sign of an expected landmark, you imagine ghost trails that trick you into following a ridge walk with no shelter, or an old logging road without water, and sometimes you turn around to check whether you missed an intersection the map just happens to leave out, and at the very least you worry and check the map obsessively. <br />
<br />
Pulling the elevation profile out of my pocket, delicately unfolding the sweat-logged paper, I checked how far we had going down. It looked like a few jagged miles. This could not be right. Worrying for Biscuits, who must be quite concerned at how long this is taking, I would call every ten minutes or so, ‘we’re knocking on the door, getting closer, I can feel it.’ The path kept going, like there was no shelter to mark, like it had disappeared or the book was lying and I realized I was half-crazed and quite loopy. And starving. My water was running out. I could tell by the lightening of my pack. And then he called up to me ‘sign!’ and my body burst with relief and began to pump the tiredness through my veins. Down a short side trail to a small shelter, and I ‘caw-caw’-ed to greet MudD, who was pumping water. Water. I had rationed tiny sips every 5 minutes for the last 8 miles. ‘How’s the source?’ I managed. ‘It’s gorgeous!’ He smiled back. <br />
<br />
Relief. Going through the motions: unpacking the bag, changing into warmer layers, eating a protein bar, setting up a bed, gathering bladder and nalgene and platypus, pumping water, preparing to cook dinner; these were interrupted with giggles and strange comments that I have no recollection of speaking or whether they were at all funny. MudD made some comment about me being weird. Whatever dregs of caloric energy were keeping my limbs moving and brain completing complex tasks were not familiar vapors. These were the death rattles of exhaustion merging with heavily processed protein supplements. And a body in starvation mode inviting a liter of cold mountain water. I felt strange all night. My feet screamed until the wee hours of the morning. I laid silently in my sleeping bag, aware only of the pain and that I was not asleep. But of course, I nearly was. <br />
<br />
The boys compared their blisters that night and I passed around the iodine. The plan for tomorrow is 20.6, and a morning hike into Killington. Wow.<br />
<br />
September 9, 2010 (Rolsten Rest)<br />
<br />
1 year anniversary of finishing the AT- and it’s bittersweet. Not because of the time, or that I’m missing something out here (in fact, I’m happy to be acquainted again with this ‘otherness’ which gives perspective on my life back home). I just miss it. If I were done with the book it might be different. <br />
<br />
Anyway, it rained all day. The only vista that stops my near-run (fighting the good fight to prevent hyperthermia) is that brilliant green of a moss bed drinking the rain and creating its own light source of color. Otherwise I just go. And fast. I’m filthy with mud. Yesterday I saw a fisher! I was wet and cold for most of the day. Then after lunch I put on my tunes and flew! Listening to Yeasayer made me happy, and gave me new energy. We did over 23 yesterday, almost 21 today. I was so tired when I got to the shelter, but the terrain got so much easier that my feet aren’t screaming at me. Tomorrow is the Inn at Long Trail. Can’t fucking wait.<br />
<br />
September 10, 2010 (Inn at Long Trail)<br />
<br />
Laying in a bed under covers. It’s not ‘til you get close to the way things were that you realize how far out you had been. I love being on my own. I’ve made a new friend, Roxy (what a kickass name), and befriended two sisters who are here grieving their mother and reconnecting. They bought me and MudD and Biscuits a round and I talked to them about hiking and gave some advice about a hike tomorrow. These women carry themselves with the comfort of a favorite couch with perfect ass-grooves. They can settle themselves into new territory with the assurance of vulnerable kindness- a quality from which few people react recoil. I admire their open demeanors and ass-groove confidence. <br />
<br />
Even the guys here at the Inn remembered me and called me a celebrity. I’m near tears swelling with happiness. I just don’t get into these kinds of situations when I’m home- like I’m not proud enough of what I do to put myself out there alone. Maybe. Which is why I think I’ll call AJ tomorrow and tell him that I’ve been thinking on the trail, and have decided to try the adult world again, and if I had a choice, it would be working for him again. I’ll do Hanover, whatever; I’m ready for change. Wow. I can’t believe this might happen. Might. With my luck he’ll have already offered it to someone else. <br />
Sleep time.<br />
<br />
September 11, 2010 (Inn at Long Trail)<br />
<br />
What a day. Talked to Natalie, Erin, Bob, and AJ and Ash. Natalie helped me with my resolve to accept a job from AJ and AJ told me there is no job for now. But, there will be a job, and we’re going to talk about it when I get home. I was disappointed because I got so pumped up about moving and a job and my own place and being close to Brigid and having friends visit me. But this will be a good exercise in patience because if I can get the job it is worth waiting for. It would be a hell of an opportunity for me and it’s likely a place I could make my own. It’s lucky this happened while I’m on trail. I’m so much bolder and more confident. 6 days left in the woods. 106 miles. I have so much to look forward to.<br />
<br />
September12, 2010 (Clarendon)<br />
<br />
You just can’t beat being back on trail! Got a stomach full of noodles, a brain full of plans (tag sale, building cabinets and a new kitchen table, seeing Anju, etc) and a body fresh and strong. I felt terrific today. We’re going to finish early. The rest of the time at the Inn was splendid, besides losing my underwear. Tom O’Carroll sang such luvly songs, ones I must buy once home: Long Black Veil, Caledonia, Dirty Old Town; and find other music with the ten penny and that amazing goat-skin drum: bodhran. The Seymour sisters are wonderful- they just loved me, happy smiling women off to have a good time, boisterous, friendly. <br />
<br />
Then today I proposed we change the last week around and the boys were willing, God love ‘em. I’m so in charge, and I’m good at it. Looking forward to everything!!<br />
<br />
September 13, 2010 (Lost Pond)<br />
<br />
19.4 miles today, felt great except the climbs. Started in the rain, saw a deer, had a good hiking day, not much to report. Into Manchester tomorrow!<br />
<br />
September 14, 2010 (Green Mountain House, Manchester)<br />
<br />
Exhausted. Because it’s almost 11. Beth and Bob came into town for dinner and they’re slackpacking us tomorrow. They seemed excited, hoping for the same magic as last year. I dominate the group because MudD and Biscuits are so quiet, and the energy never elevates the way it could with a big group of folks like ‘Sota and Fly-By and Ahab. Not that I wanted to recreate the magic. But I think they miss that flavor that they got as angels to Joker’s Merry Men. Anyway, done Friday, into Boston Wednesday morning. There’s plenty to look forward to! I’m ready to be done with the trail, even though there aren’t any other ways of spending a day I can think of that I like more than hiking all day. That may be significant.<br />
<br />
September 15, 2010 (Story Spring)<br />
<br />
Interesting day. Ate 2 donuts and a muffin after a slice of pizza for breakfast, hiked way too fast in the beginning of the slackpack, so my left foot screams now all day. Had a blonde moment at a yellow left turn sign and went a half mile out of my way, then backtracked to keep up. Felt much better climbing Stratton. I love going up and over mountains. That’s my favorite. Then Beth met us after 17.5 with Gatorade, chips, cheetos and beer. I ate too much junk and felt terrible- after 3 miles or so I vomited orangey goop. Gross. Then I felt terrific! Old section hikers were at the shelter, just 3 but they took up the whole place with their shit. I made a full meal despite the junk food binge/purge, and ate while the light faded to nothing. Time for sleep. I’m ready to be done I guess, I was in a pretty terrible mood for most of today. Hopefully a full night of sleep here (it can’t be much past 8) will restore my smiles.<br />
<br />
September 16, 2010 (Melville Nauheim)<br />
<br />
Changes noticed and absent:<br />
-instinct to multitask remains<br />
-ability to multitask gone<br />
-calm in public settings<br />
-eye contact easy across board<br />
-lots more patience, aided by better attention span<br />
-as I read Comfort Me With Apples, it occurs to me that writing, the outdoors, and food are my three great loves (not including people).. And, if I can help it, I would like to backpack at least 3 weeks a year, not split up, to stay in shape and challenge my body and restore my mind.<br />
p.s. I hiked my own pace today, found it to be happiness-inducing, and tonight I’m positively gleeful in the woods.<br />
<br />
Having a hard time- well, fighting the urge to go to sleep. Want night to last.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-74033987377830725192011-04-11T22:40:00.006-04:002011-04-18T21:23:28.933-04:00Mount Cardigan - March 20, 2011When we made the final turn onto the road that led up to the Lodge, the top of the rise was so washed out that a line of hoodoos seemed to block our way. Driving over the crest, they gained a dimension and stretched into rows of ruts, dug out from the backcountry ski season. The car tires found valleys of milk chocolate frozen mud, and onward we jostled slowly and with much bumping around. At the top of the hill, as far as the road would go, parked trucks and Subarus appeared along a field. So, there are a lot of people hiking Cardigan today. I looked up at the bluebird sky, the expanse of glacial blues interrupted by a few wisps of edelweiss white. The snow gleamed in the early afternoon sunshine. Ahead, bare trees and evergreens filtered the glare in the old woods. There was still a chill in the air, but the sun warmed our skins to feel like upper 40s. <br />
<br />
The Lodge was open. An older gentleman walked with a dog in the front yard of the property; he watched as I talked to myself about snowshoes. The number of cars in the lot on the first day of spring, the rutted road, an AMC Lodge erected smack-dab at the trailhead, indicated a packed trail. As I decided, possibly out loud, on wearing the Microspikes, the man with the dog was glaring into the sunlight, possibly looking away to the mountain or quickly away from me. “Hello!” I called. He gave a greeting with a certain finality about it, and turned. When Brigid returned from the Lodge she saw my choice of traction and agreed. “The trails are probably pretty packed. The Lodge was nice inside, with pretty new windows.” <br />
<br />
Brigid had scribbled a quick map of the few trails up to the mountain. “My friends around here say it’s a rite of passage, your first climb up Mt. Cardigan.” The beginning of our approach was a singular trail. Then a Y introduced options. One route, Cathedral Forest, took a meandering 3ish miles to the top. The other trail, Holt, jumped to the top in a surprising 0.8 miles. “We can take our time up Cathedral Forest and then scoot down the Holt Trail. There was a sign inside the lodge that Holt is pretty steep and iced over.” Thinking about the thick spring air through the forest and a rocky top full of tourists, I agreed. The trailhead began an easy sweep along a stream, ascending slightly with the natural rise of the mountain base. We chatted about easy things, friends and family. We met one couple at a stream crossing, smiling from an accomplished summit. I’m liking this state- a date during the day is a hike. We proudly agreed that snowshoes would have been a burden over this icy white road. Then the sign at the Y. <span style="font-style:italic;">Holt Trail is Icy and Steep</span>. “Brigid, if the trail is really steep, I would rather go up it than down. Cuz if you’re gonna fall, it’s better to fall onto the mountainside, than off of it. Then we can go down the nice easy trail. We’ll have plenty of time. But if there’s an icy section, it’s really better to go up.” <br />
“Ok. That makes sense.” <br />
<br />
After we turned onto the Holt Trail, the conditions changed suddenly. This route obviously got less traffic. We hiked on softer snow, sometimes postholing a couple feet. Hooray! As usual, the mile we had hiked had awoken the, I don’t know what to call it, reserve power, hardwired habit, woodsy spirit, which makes hiking supremely calming. The mere act of walking in the woods releases the stories of the AT, the memory of power and strength and ability, which my muscles revert to- it’s the corny version of muscle memory. When I’m hiking, my body is happy, simple as that. “I’m so happy!” I told Brigid. It was true. I was happy. <br />
<br />
Almost a half mile later, I was wondering when the trail was going to get steep. With not much more than a quarter mile remaining, as far as I could tell, we had most of the elevation to go. The rocky pate of the summit rose above the trees like a balloon held out in front of us. The trees ahead appeared darker, and as the trail rose ever slightly, we could see an abrupt change in pitch. Scrawled in the snow was a message, an arrow pointing ahead to three squiggly lines, stacked atop each other. <br />
“What does that mean?”<br />
“I have no idea.”<br />
“Didn’t you guys have code and stuff you wrote to each other on the trail?”<br />
“Not really code, nothing more than an arrow. But we didn’t have enough snow.”<br />
“Oh, yeah.”<br />
“It’s probably telling us this is where is gets icy and steep.”<br />
“We’re going to find out.”<br />
<br />
And just like that, we were scrambling up a very different trail. The ice stuck like glass leeches to the pitted rock face, pointing their slick foreheads to the heavens. The slope of the mountain had taken on an expeditious grade. The final 0.4 miles of the Holt Trail account for 1,000 feet of elevation gain, but we didn’t know what was coming. The snow seemed to grow out of the ice like a fungus, and hikers before us had settled footholds into the mushy bits. While the trees lasted, the refrozen steps carried us up, as rungs on a ladder. <br />
“I am so glad we’re going up this” was about the least expository statement I uttered. A discussion of footholds over the varying thickness and softness of ice eclipsed the easy conversations during the ambling section of the approach trail. We could pull on the thin conifers growing out of the nooks for extra leverage. Climbing steep terrain is like doing long lunges with acrobat arms: our stride was steady until it wasn’t. The few times I postholed, near the base of a larger tree or in a patch of sunlight, the snow swallowed my entire leg. But that only happened a couple times before I learned better. Then we had a conversation about tree holes and that skier who just died out west. Bring a Buddy was more broadly apt in winter than we had previously considered. I had broken a sweat. Our words were scarce and important. After a couple hundred feet, the trees opened up to the final climb- a sort of forehead. The mountaintop ahead of us was rock patchworked with snow and alpine mosses. We were getting beyond steep- the snow and ice covered the natural rock stairsteps, leaving a smooth silhouette at an angle I would never want to descend. Footholds required handholds for stability.<br />
<br />
“I guess we know what those squiggly lines mean now.”<br />
“Yeah, future reference: squiggly lines on top of each other mean slick ice.”<br />
“Must be.”<br />
We learned quickly- avoiding the sunny spots and big trees after my adventures in leg-swallowing snow, watching for exposed rock where the snow and ice couldn’t stick, using the established footholds until, sadly, we spotted deep handprints dotting the edges of thigh-deep postholes. The route was compromised. So we zigzagged across to shade, then back to bare rock. About fifty feet up two figures were scooting down the sunned ice. We had left the trees and they were among the sparse alpine shrubbery. I wondered whether they were having any fun. The climb ahead struck me as needing some ropes and anchors. The warning bell of ‘we might want to turn around now’ rung dully in my hyperactive brain and ceased. My brain in the middle of a climb wants to solve puzzles: safety was a priority, sure, but the challenge was surmountable. We stayed to the side of their line of descent. I thought, gosh they could get some serious momentum going down that way. When the two, who were a man and a woman, likely on a disastrous date, reached their first tree higher than his head, they ceased to scoot, sat down, and tried to smile. <br />
<br />
“Oh, okay” I shouted politely, weighing whether to explain that mountain etiquette gives the right of way to hikers going down. They sat precariously in the sliver of shade, holding the sapling, squinting up at us. Looking the dude over I saw cheap softshell pants and a thin windshirt darkened with moisture, traction no better than Get-a-Grip studs on his sneakers, and fancy sunglasses. The lady was looking into the distance but not at any mountains through her fancy tortoise-lensed sunglasses. Maybe she was traumatized from the terrible adventure, but at least she had on a hardshell jacket and thicker pants. Brigid whispered to me as we dug our toes into grainy stairs, approaching them, “they don’t look local” and when I attempted to describe the trail they were descending into, there was little response. Instead, the guy asked “is that Lake Winnipesaukee?” I looked at Brigid.<br />
“Umm, I think that that’s Newfound Lake. Because the two are both southeast from here, right? Newfound is first and farther, past those hills, you can see Winnipesaukee.”<br />
“Uh, yeah okay, and is that ski mountain over there Whaleback?”<br />
“Well, that’s way southwest, and this one is pretty close and more south, it’s probably Ragged Mountain. Yeah I was thinking it was Ragged Mountain before, it’s pretty close by.”<br />
He lowered his arms, thinking, and raised to point again “Oh, so what about that big mountain right there, is that Mt. Jackson?” I followed his point, which found a lonely mountain speckled with snow like powdered sugar, rising high above the other peaks in the range.<br />
“Oh, well, the presidential range is farther away, and it has a tree covered summit.”<br />
“Could it be Mt. Cube?” Probably not, but it was worth a shot.<br />
“Mt. Cube is farther west,” Brigid corrected.<br />
“Oh, you’re right, when I saw it a few months ago it was pretty substantially covered in snow. I bet it’s Moosilauke. And look at that white range way out there, do you think that’s Mt. Washington?” I asked.<br />
“No, it’s too close to be Washington,”<br />
“Of course, there’s nothing on top, silly me,”<br />
“But it actually might be the Franconia Ridge.”<br />
“Beautiful, look at that.”<br />
The couple seemed to be respectively seething or disinterested in our corrective geography lesson. So we wished them safety and caution, and kept making our stairway to Cardigan. <br />
<br />
Within another fifty feet, handholds were necessary again. I would grab edges of refrozen ice lifting off the rock, or pockmarked grooves in the softer ice or palm the curving rock. Then we left the blazed trail. It followed a hump of ice smooth as metal, shaded by its precipitous pitch, where without real crampons and an axe, we would be walking on water. So we stepped laterally into the shade, looking for another route. Brigid took ten extra steps while I attempted to scurry up a nodule with an icy base and sunny top. My first slip pulled my right leg down a few feet on glassy ice to remind me to be careful. Steadying for a moment, I lifted a foot to a flatter node, tested some ice for a right hand grip, and pulled up on an edge. I wished I had an axe just then. My left foot was next. Alpine moss covered the node I chose for it, concealing the reliability of my foot placement. With a crunch I scrabbled the gnarl with the teeth of my Microspikes, and called to Brigid-<br />
“I’m afraid of hurting the Fragile Alpine Zone Species!” <br />
“Our elevation isn’t high enough for the protected species, you’re ok!”<br />
But I wasn’t. Surveying this slippery base, I determined that climbing the nodule would be closer to bouldering and therefore unattemptable.<br />
“Uh, Brig, this way isn’t gonna work. How’s yours?”<br />
“I think I got it, come on back this way.”<br />
I paused. From here I had to pivot my right body left, where I had a tentative foothold on my front leg and a right handhold, so that to step forward would cross my legs and turn my hip into the rock. Briefly, I was nervous: the jump of adrenaline in my gut quickened my inhale, the raw exhilaration of presentness soothed my exhale. Then I looked across to where Brigid was inspecting her climb, and maneuvered my right foot to be perpendicular to the mountain, twisted my front body to face the rock, and holding steady with my two hands swung my left leg into a crunchy spot. Sashaying across I reached Brigid’s nodule, where she nimbly climbed, appearing to almost glide up like a spider. <br />
“I just sort of spidered up, using all my limbs! That was awesome!”<br />
“When we get to the top, we have to high-five!”<br />
“Yeah!”<br />
But I wasn’t exactly sure how to get up there. Again the nervous surge reminded me I was not on a soft plane but a hard hill, that I should be careful. My fingers were burning from holding the ice and my palms were red. A vision of a swinging axe connecting to ice offered the same false relief as the sleep-deprived imagining a pillow. Then the puzzle mode kicked back in. The handholds were infrequent and rarely bulbous enough for a secure grip. The ice was not soft. How had she done this?<br />
<br />
I breathed for a full minute, just leaning against the rock. <span style="font-style:italic;">There is no rush.</span> Then I decided to trust my strength. I took my left foot six inches above the right and chewed into the ice. I felt around the shaded rock, granite-like but fairly even, and cupped a wide ripple. Expecting to lose grip, I pulled, isolating my steady leg, my left hand on snow, and the muscles straining along my right arm from the cup down my side, and pulled my right leg up another six inches from my left. Amazed at the machinery of the movement, my left hand quickly found another hold across the flatter part of the rock and pulled my torso up with that arm, my right now splayed on the leveling surface of the platform, and my right leg, evening out my hip. When I could lean onto the rock and use the weight of my shoulders and chest to anchor my body and raise my legs, my hands felt like epoxy on the Kinsman Quartz Monzonite. The chance to fall was overtaken. We had found a new route. The summit was less than a hundred feet up. It was still too steep for a high-five. <br />
<br />
Using our new spidering skills, we scrambled up the remainder. When we could walk, we crunched up to the fire tower. I wanted the first person we saw to say ‘Wow! Did you just go up the Holt Trail?’ but no one was nearby our route. Our own glory had to suffice. There was enough.<br />
“So, I think it’s safe to say that what we just did was called free climbing. Most people would have wanted ropes and an ice axe and all that for what we just did. That was intense, maybe not very safe.”<br />
“Wow, really? That’s pretty crazy. I was thinking that, when I had to shimmy up to find a new route, whether it was actually safe. I trusted my Microspikes, and I felt strong, wow.” <br />
I wondered about all those cars in the parking lot. Where were all the people? Did we miss them on the Forest trail? Look at this 360 degree view! I expected all the traffic of Camel’s Hump up here. But the wind, it carried the frozen edge of the mountain cover, and it came from all directions. On the first flight of stairs to the tower, a shed blocked the whipping wind enough for a sit. We had sweated through our baselayers, so we put on our spare outerlayers. In exultation we passed around twizzlers and cheese and drank water, grinning with our summit. <br />
<br />
A young high school couple appeared, and judging by the Vermont Camo flannel/wool jacket, he at least was a local. He pointed to each peak in the distance and named them. We had been right, about Moosilauke and about Franconia ridge. Nothing else that kept a snowpack like that was close enough. The distant ridge looked like bleached teeth, incisors jutting out of the gumline of tree-covered mountains before it. <br />
<br />
Brimming with accomplishment, adrenaline, and the bitter taste of knowing that we were lucky as well as strong, we marched down the mountain. Cathedral forest was beautiful, bright, and well-packed. The trees stood apart for lush spring and summer groundcover, and sunlight spread through spaces left by the fallen leaves of autumn. Serious negotiations receded for easy conversations with the regular recurrence of the yellow blaze. At the Y, approaching the balloon’s string on our hiking map, the unhappy couple appeared. They were not jolly. We smiled and greeted them, reported on the mountains he had requested the identification of and failed to inquire about how they made it down the mountain. Slowly, was the answer we didn’t have to ask for, and probably the only one we could have gotten. In an awkward intersection, Brigid and I took the lead and the unhappy couple agreed on a short break. If this was a date, it was probably the last.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-51810359478897638682011-04-11T22:39:00.001-04:002011-04-11T22:40:37.585-04:00Oh Neglected Blog Part IIIn the last 8 months, I have not been writing, for reasons you don’t care about. Now, I have decided to begin again. Call it spring cleaning of all the words stuck inside my brain. As an exercise for habit and practice, I will be posting about every hike I take in the next few months.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-57717488646976541112010-08-10T17:02:00.007-04:002010-08-10T22:36:49.748-04:00There was Hair in my Mouth and Glass in my PantsA dinner passed in easy time, old friends telling stories in a nostalgic haze of eating after a day in the Rocky Mountains. We knew each other best as hikers, who had shared a trail and destination, where identity was simply behavior, while our journey kept from time to time in parallel pace. <br /><br />Now Will and I crossed the small-town street corner and encountered his friends who were walking towards us, a rambunctious group of high-spirited men, who headed to dinner after a how do you do. Distracted by the energy of friends and charisma of creative men, I unlocked the car. The passenger side was arranged for the single traveler, me in a nutshell, so I made room for Will. A pinkish dusk settled over the little valley. The lateness of the day dulled the contained landscape of a narrow riverbed meandering the floor between brown, steep mountainsides, which lost depth from the meager reach of the sun. The road that wound with the river rose above a small pond, hugged a blasted hill that was now more of a cliff, and we shared the view of a town with more wild amongst it than civilized. We chatted amiably. We savored the view. We were satisfied. The road turned to avoid a jutting on our right. Compulsively I checked the speedometer again to see my speed below the limit. I took my chapstick out of my pocket, removed the cap, applied it, put the cap back on, and slipped it back into my pocket, keeping one hand on the wheel. At this moment I remember, my easy state of mind was prideful for my chapstick-while-driving skill, until Will exclaimed in a loud voice. <br /><br />He had spotted what appeared then at my window: this tall scruffy elk whose eye caught mine in surprise, a sentiment I shared with the animal, which cranked up to shock as the vehicle and the creature collided. I heard a pop. A million tiny balls of shatterproof glass appeared in the air about us. Will's voice deepened with fear as he spoke ‘oh my god’ after an object flew into the car before our bodies. I slammed the breaks. I brought my hands from the wheel to my head. <br /><br />That was three seconds. <br /><br />I drove the car to the side of the road. The elk lay on the ground behind us. I reached into my mouth, fingers searching for the foreign pieces I felt on my tongue, and tweezed out pieces of glass and hair. My back was scratched from all the glass between me and the seat. There was more hair in my mouth. Disaster. Death? Irresponsibility. The hairs were thick and musty and carried a coat of the woods and wild dust of the valley.<br /><br />Our eyes focused. The car was full of glass and hair. Will reached down to his feet. As he lifted the sideview mirrow, he said ‘I thought this was the head.' I apologized for what felt like recklessness. I should have seen it. I should have stopped. Will managed words of comfort. Shivers of guilt and stress crept through my shaken hands, holding the wheel, into something like purpose. I had to fix the car. ‘Let’s find somewhere to get this fixed.' I put the car in first gear and made a u-turn to return to town. The elk was gone.<br /><br />Will said nothing that I heard. The responsibility settled on me, the car needed shelter overnight so the bears and raccoons and skunks didn't find it and make a nest or rip the interior apart in search of the trail mix that I spilled a week ago between the emergency brake and the driver's seat. If it was too late for repair, I must drop off the car at a garage. The first sign Will read was Auto Glass Repair. The doors were locked. In the parking lot, next to a family restaurant, I called AAA for a recommendation. Will picked the hairs from my fleece jacket. Then his face formed concern as he picked behind my left ear. There must be a cut, I realized, from the impact, and I couldn’t feel any pain, until he picked. It must be bloody. Then I saw the tick between his fingers. ‘You should seriously check yourself tonight, I already found two on me.’ But I was explaining to Tom at AAA that I did not need a tow, the car worked fine. Tom seemed confused at my call then, and volunteered to check on approved mechanics near my location. 'Of course, nothing will be open now.' How strange, I thought. There wasn’t a thing in a twenty-mile radius. I hung up. <br /><br />Then we surveyed the damage and I took pictures while Will texted his friends. Inside, glass and hair had found their way into every crevice, every wrinkle, into my clothes and pockets and into the to-go container from the restaurant, but I didn’t check that until the next morning. The mirror was gone, there was no window left except a rough corner where a little blood congealed near the roof among the tiny shards stuck to the doorframe. On the ceiling, two ticks clung to the upholstery, dead from the impact or distance traveled. I continued to apologize to Will, to communicate my embarrassment, my shame, which he calmly alleviated. Slowly the shock was wearing off. Then I realized how that tick had come to stick behind my ear. Will reminded me then that it was past 7 on Memorial Day and all the businesses were closed. Tom's comment made sense. ‘Oh, well we better just park it at your camp tonight and I’ll get it fixed in the morning.’ He nodded in agreement; relieved I had finally come to that most rational of conclusions. <br /><br />Back at camp Will helped me tape plastic to the door for a makeshift window and I talked to my insurance provider. Then I lost at monopoly. In the morning, just after dawn, I was awake.<br /><br />The story ends happily. I got the car fixed and insurance covered it. I still blame the elk.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-38408104457033049522010-05-18T14:42:00.003-04:002010-05-19T23:52:23.151-04:00Brimming with love, and bliss sits a little closer byBusy as I was at Trail Days this weekend, I only took the time to write down the two sentences that sum up my weekend anyway:<br /><br />I'd forgotten the love. <br />How much more it is than what I've known.<br /><br />This is an easy statement to misunderstand. I do not wish to undermine other love, from my family to my older friends. The "more" is not that it's better, but that it is expressed, intact, without the interruption of insecurity, embarrassment, or sexual innuendo- well, mostly, on that last one. <br /><br />When I attempt to explain the difference between town life and trail life to my dear ones who have known only the former, I tend to fail. Because I've built up the latter to be this other dimension, operating free of certain rules that we take for granted as easily as gravity. And yes, I've talked about it in terms of another dimension, as Narnia- and it is using this analogy that is striking or disturbing, because this world of ours in the woods is not the stuff of myth: indeed, its reality makes it more potent. However the myth makes it inaccessible, as it should be. There is still an otherness we cannot put our finger on, trail family. <br /><br />In school I studied socialization and the impulses, processes, and incentives that make behavior, and the utility of rules and praxis that bind a culture. Needless to say, then, the culture of life in the woods remains fascinating, inviting of analysis. There can be no real vacuum for humanity, but as a control, the woods come closer than a lab. Except the control is no control, it is advantaged with what E.O. Wilson called biophilia, the "innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other organisms," and the reason we as a species, as animals, find peace in nature. So my struggle to treasure the trail and live in town is abstract: my division of these two arenas, two methods of lifestyle I have experienced, is unnecessary.<br /><br />Reading those lines again, I realized how the sentiment, written in bliss and gratitude, could cause others hurt- they are not belonging, they are less than. I considered an entry without inclusion, merely referring to the words. Then I understood: it is not the quality of the love, but the channel and delivery. For example, I know my parents better than all my trail family, yet that does not make the sentences false. When they visited me on the trail, the channel, the delivery of expression was unimpeded. That's the difference then- my reflex to dull what I want to convey (saying 'love ya!' instead of "I love you dearly" or holding back on a compliment) is assuming honesty makes me vulnerable; a reflex that is either abandoned at the outset or washed away with the passing of every blaze. Did I ever tell my friends every time I saw them how much I cared for them and why I treasured them in my life? No. Does my trail family? Yes. Now I do, and now I try to make that a part of this town life. <br /><br />It seems there's a lot of stuff going on all the time. But there really isn't. And letting go makes room for bliss to settle down close by, so that as I sit here, looking out the window to a green meadow, where a Japanese maple with its brilliant plummy leaves stands offset to the kiwi-colored wall of leafy oaks behind it, and the plummy branches move in concert with the lush kiwi branches, sharing the breeze and moving like arms waving, I am brimming with gratitude, love, and blissful, because I had forgotten how to wash away the stuff that interrupts the honesty. And I am able to wave back sincerely.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-74973408258328565522010-04-08T22:00:00.003-04:002010-04-08T22:56:52.828-04:00Just another day on the road.Eyes on the road. Windows down, warm wind twisting through the car. Bright sun shining, song with a gentle beat got my lazy right foot tapping. The open road ahead, my arm resting on the window. Can't help from smiling. Sway with the ease of it all. Green signs point north south and east. Yellow lines stretching on for miles. Power lines sag and taut, out in the country, they lead back into town. I drive past their direction, out into the spacious solitude of wild. Trees with little buds, grass greening on the shoulder. Hills rise and grow, mountains tower around me, inviting peaks and granite slabs to climb. Cars and trucks pass me by, somewhere to be. At the moment, I got none but the road ahead, heading west.<br /><br />Clouds swarm and pass, storms can't go as fast as me. Roll up the windows, turn down the music. Listen to the rain. Watch the lightning stretch from night into earth. Reach the darkest center, keep on going. Skies lighten up ahead, keep on, find the sun. Roll down the windows, let the springtime in all around me. Smell the moistened ground, the living flowers, smiling again. Tap out a new song, sway with the pounding drumbeat, sing a few lines, look around. Trains thrumming next to the highway, numbers for the hobos to follow, share the straight line for a while. Turn away from the mountain, into a col, a blasted valley, look out to the north and south, new places to find. Someday I'll ride a horse across that plain, someday I'll climb that mountain, follow the ridge, a subtle crest of rock on top of everything as far as I can see. Look back to the road, open gray track to follow, wave to the truckers, watch the dusk take the light away. <br /><br />Turn on the lights, take a drink of water, turn up the volume and watch the quiet sunset. Noiseless pinks and oranges cover the treetops, paint the sky, streak glare on the dusty 18 wheeler sides. Stars appear through the moonroof, moon shows up next, out the passenger side window. Clouds carrying the sunset thin out, cooked into oblivion. Enter the gloaming, take a last look at the shimmering asphalt, the sky is eaten by stormy sea grays and purples, brake lights glow alone along the horizon. The road empties out, everyone going home to dinner. <br /><br />Historic district at the next exit. 3 miles to company, food and drink. Always that hesitation- drive all night? Miss the prairies and the hills, the grazing elk and the colorful landscape. Signal right and take the turn. Road narrows into streets, yellow lines splinter and buildings light up a town. Choose a pub with an old sign and a couple of tables. Park and grab the map and a book. Take a seat at the bar, order a draught and a menu. Greet the proprietor, ask for the kitchen's best, about their town. Take a sip and let the locals stare and sit down nearby. Let them drink you in and ask about that weather. Use your manners, don't eat too fast. Share some stories, refuse hospitality and get a water. Thank the cook and buy someone a beer. Spread out the map on the bar, varnish in layers as many years as the town's been around. Choose. <br /><br />Let the engine turn, pull out and get some gas. Follow the business route back to the highway. Horizon spreads, buildings make a landscape in the rearview mirror. Next exit, no services. Just truckers now sharing the road. Pick the beat up on the stereo, sing for good digestion. Brown sign says state park 10 miles. Make some noise, shout and whoop for a song or two. Call a friend and wish them well. Signal right and turn, shut off the stereo. Old pavement hums under hot tires, birds whipper, the night smells like dewey heat, cool and full. Brown sign points to camping. Keep the lights on, pitch the tent, pull out the sleeping bag, a book and a headlamp. Close up the car, pocket the keys. Snuggle into bed, read a few pages, click off the light. Breathe out, push out the air and the day, breathe in stale nylon and open night. Just another day on the road.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-27379462709454675182010-03-27T12:53:00.005-04:002010-03-27T23:25:22.090-04:00Stranger Freedom (or, My Flat in Bismarck)Around noon as the sun was finally beating the cold of the morning, my front driver's side tire popped. Now, I've never experienced driving with a flat before, and it wasn't the first possibility to pop in my head, but just as a friend had once assured, "if you get a flat tire, you'll know immediately something is wrong." The dashboard went haywire as I pulled over. <br /><br />The next hour went like this: lying to AAA, calling my father to ask him to lie to AAA, realizing that plan will end in being fined for AAA fraud, getting my name into the family plan, and calling AAA and telling the truth. <br />"Hello, this is Henry how may I help you today?" <br />"Well, Henry, I need to ask you a favor: I have a request for road service suspended, which is in my father's account number, and that was just getting too complicated. Can you change the request to under my number?"<br />"Hmm, well, can I ask you whether you are at the vehicle?" <br />"Yes, I am!" <br />"Well, alright then, I suppose I can do that for you, but only for you." <br />"Thank you Henry!" <br />"But it has to be our little secret, ok?" <br />"Deal." <br />"Is there anything else I can help you with today?" <br />"No, that was it, thank you so much, have a great day!" <br />"I hope you have a better day." <br />A few minutes later I was outside unscrewing the spare from beneath the trunk when Mike showed up. A simple, kind man of few words, he set about helping me before he called to verify my membership. I paced around the van and glimpsed peeks of his worn hands gripping the tire iron, knuckles strained against the resisting rust, and I pretended not to hear him gasp with each rotation. The spare, once on, looked like a pitiful understudy burdened by lack of pressure. <br /><br />Ten minutes later I strolled into Tires Plus of Bismarck. I caught the gaze of an older man with margarine-yellow hair slicked back like a plastic ribbon, who was standing at a podium and made no effort to welcome me. To his left, two younger men and two computers were waiting at the counter. Jason and Jonas stood alert as I talked back and forth to each, making eye contact from one to the other.<br />"Hi, I called about twenty minutes ago, I got a flat tire and hoped I would be able to get a new one today."<br />"Yeah, we can help you with that." Jason responded.<br />"Oh phew! I was worried no one would be open today, thank you guys so much."<br />"We are the only place open today."<br />And as Jonas took over my case and I joked about getting all weather radials on sale, Jason watched me, like there'd be a test on it later. I set my keys on the counter, walked outside, sat on the curb to make a call. When I stood and slipped my phone into my pocket, Jason walked out the door into the bright Dakota sun.<br />"Let's see if we can figure out what tire you need, and I'll check availability." We walked slowly around my vehicle. I pointed to the sagging spare and noted that it would be kind of them to inflate that one. Jason turned, a look of mirth about his smoke stained, ovular face.<br />"Oh you think that tire needs air?" He shook his head. "Yeah, maybe just a little,"<br />"So what brings you to Bismarck all the way from Massachusetts?"<br />"I'm picking up a friend who moved to Montana from Massachusetts a few years ago. I told her if she ever wanted to move back east, I'd pick her up. So here I am in the family van, ready to fill it up and drive back."<br />"Why would anyone want to leave Massachusetts? There are so many trees!" Jason was obsessed with trees. Whenever he planned a trip, destinations with lots of trees held some serious sway. Whether he was going to be ATV-ing somewhere or taking his bike out somewhere- he's crazy about off-roading, he said- the places he went and the roads he took with the most trees were the favorites he mentioned. Thus, with an eager, nostalgic flare, he started talking about biking to Massachusetts, and the lush forest roads of the southeast.<br /><br />After he stubbed out his cigarette we walked inside and he informed Jonas the size of the tire. I filled half a styrofoam cup with coffee. I meandered. Jason found me. "Got enough coffee for you?" <br />"Yeah, but I shouldn't have any more, I don't like to drink coffee after noon, keep it working like it's supposed to, you know." Again that mirthful shock.<br />"What? I need it all day long, I can't tell you how much coffee I drink. Pots."<br />"Yeah, my brother is the same way. He can drink coffee after dinner. I can't do that, I'll be awake til 4. This" I pointed at my cup, still a quarter full of the old, burnt brew "is dangerous. I don't know when I'll get to sleep tonight."<br />At that the conversation lost slack and he wandered off.<br />Jonas and Jason turned to the workshop and I entertained myself around the strip mall for an hour. At my return, Jason wanted me to see Gary, who was working on my tire. He escorted me to the back, where a guy who wore that look of stressed concern so many mechanics like to wear around young women, said to me "well, we got the new one on but the others are looking pretty bad, too." I brushed it off, used to fear mongering. <br /><br />Back at the waiting room it occurred to me this could happen three more times during the road trip. I found Jason: <br />"What do you think about the other tires?" <br />"They're cupped, you have four different tires on that van." My brow furrows to take in this interesting information. <br />"Hmm. What does cupped mean?" <br />He pointed at a handy illustration on the wall of tires with chunks of tread missing in different places. "The tread is wearing out in different places and at different stages because the tires are all different. You're going to start feeling the vibrations of the road."<br />"Will they last another 3,000 miles?"<br />"Yes. But the vibrations are going to drive you nuts."<br />"Well I can handle nuts over another three hundred dollars."<br /><br />So I sat down and took up reading, or looking at, a Parade magazine. Jason walked over. I kept my eyes on the magazine. He shifted his weight from left to right, then walked away.<br />I read about a few celebrities and their troubles, let my mind wander to all the people I needed to call, wondered what the weather would be like for camping around the Montana border that night. Should I drive all night along 90 with the truckers? Would I miss the Painted Canyons? Then Jason's shoes appeared next to a picture of Kristen Stewart looking stoned. This time he said:<br />"Sara, do you want us to put that tire back in under the car or just slide it into the trunk where it was?"<br />"Uh, can you please put it back under the car? I would but it's a little rough with all the rusted bolts." <br />He casually extended his arm, took ahold my bicep, "yeah, I think we can take care of that." <br />"Hey, I'm ripped, you don't even know!" I retorted at a decibel over my inside voice. He stepped back in mock threat, then doubled over, his head dangled by his waist, ears just inches from that coffee cup in his hand. <br />"Ripped, she says! hah! Oh the boys are gonna love that one."<br />And then he walked to the counter, "you hear that? she's ripped!" I walked to the counter. <br />"Dude! I just walked over 2,000 miles, you better believe I'm ripped." He looked at me, and asked<br />"Driving? I'd, I'd believe that." And I tell him-<br />"I don't think I've driven as far as I've walked, recently. I've been hiking for six months, I did the Appalachian Trail. I am ripped." <br />"I believe you must be!" And with that a shift, closer to familiar.<br /><br />Jonas reached out his hand to shake: "I don't think I could do that. I'd like to shake your hand."<br />Baffled and flattered, I blustered "oh there are shelters and privies along the way, it's impossible to get lost on, too."<br />"Well, maybe I could do that."<br />Jason turned to me, determined: "next time you do something like that, I would love that, next time you do something, you call here and you ask for me and I'm going to come with you." <br />"Sure."<br />Then he talked about walking down from St. Louis through the wilderness, about two and a half weeks, doing a couple hundred miles, living off of the earth, no trails, just hunting and living in the wilderness. And I could tell it made him real happy to think about that. And he said that if he could, he would do that all the time. Just build himself a house in the middle of nowhere, enjoy the deafening silence. I was impressed and smiled big, but we'd lost Jonas, so after some comments on the agreeable nature of quiet, I walked back to the waiting area, sat down and went mum.<br /><br />A few minutes later he was back.<br />"Do you like country?" I didn't know whether he meant music or the area, so I asked and it was music. And I thought okay, gotta play this careful, because he wants me to like country, I can tell that.<br />"Well, not really, I like the older stuff."<br />"You don't? I'd of thought you would like bluegrass at least."<br />"Oh, I do, I thought you meant, like, uh, Big and Rich. I very much like bluegrass, and the old standards like Willie Nelson."<br />"Yeah? That's great." Despite how smoothly the rest of the conversation went, I couldn't stop myself from wondering why he would ask such a question, settled on his regimented method of eliminating women from being a future Mrs. Jason as the only possibility. Or maybe he was bored and making conversation. He continued: <br />"I grew up in western Missouri in the Mark Twain Wilderness. Every day, I sat on the porch with my mother and my grandmother, and we would play bluegrass together, every day, all afternoon."<br />"What instruments do you play?" With that question a smile.<br />"I played the banjo, the door-bow, the piano, the ukelele, slide guitar, and fiddle."<br />"Wow! What's a door-bow?" He told me. I don't remember. Something about a slide guitar is sitting, a door-bow is standing, fixed to a door. Or something entirely different.<br />He must have the best memories of those musical afternoons; I could see this far-off glint in his eyes when he thought about it. It was very neat, I got a little glimpse. And of course I was impressed. We talked about bluegrass, and I told him about the concerts I missed on the trail, the places with bluegrass sessions every weekend or the concerts I walked by. He described how much he'd like that cabin in the woods. I told him it sounded lonely, he told me he doesn't get lonely. And there was safety in this disclosure, something freeing in knowing we wouldn't see each other again. Lying, even embellishing, served no purpose. By talking, we knew ourselves. The freedom we have when we meet someone, who is disconnected from everything else in our lives, and we're able to be completely ourselves, is this stranger freedom. With the people we love the most, sometimes we wish we had that stranger freedom. <br /><br />As I walked to the van, he opened the door of Tires Plus and reminded me to bring him along, on my next adventure.<br /><br />Once out of town, I watched the exits change from developed to "No Services," and realized my misfortune was perfectly timed: just an hour later my day would likely have ended at a hotel in the middle of wheat fields. And I wouldn't have met the stranger. So it was a good day, despite the flat tire.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-57428576480750881522010-02-07T01:10:00.007-05:002012-09-23T10:25:55.456-04:00Define HappinessThere are a number of ways to approach the question: how are you? <br />My reflex is a matter-of-fact 'good!' that elicits a surprised 'whoa, that was quick' retort from my best friends. When cornered with such a personal question, one we probably either don't ponder enough or ponder so much the state of your mind is less explored than the precision of your scrutiny, what reflex do you resort to? Is it the easy 'good' that you won't question, a mere initiation to the conversation about to be crafted? Or do you favor blunt despondency, you opportunist, you, and list off your ailments of the week, be it head, body, or both? Or, for those present and impervious to impulse, do you wonder, and ponder, and answer truthfully?<br /><br />Lately the quality of my happiness has fallen into question. By me. And 'quality of' serves an important qualification: I am a happy person, who sometimes wallows in bouts of geniality. To continue, then, happiness as I understood it defies definition, because it is so often trumped by a greater happiness. That is to say, what you once thought happy was, is only level 2 on a scale that now goes to 10 but could unravel further as the years wear on. (Sidenote: the opposite of this, the misery scale, tops out around age 14 and we steadily move down until wallowing in adult angst means nothing close to the end of the world. By that time we know the world cares nothing for us, and most people don't remember our name after meeting us. Oh I'm joking.)<br /><br />In my correspondence, in daily life, I've sensed a rift between the ease of frivolity and its authenticity. Meaning, I'm always affable, yet I'm not always aware when that's just reflex. However, if the action of smiling triggers nerve impulses that generate actual good feelings, couldn't the character of happy, as an act, prevent melancholy? Heh, this, dear reader, would be a good example of the precise scrutiny taking over the original question.<br /><br />And so, the awkward question. In the Lonely Planet USA guide, a few do's and don't's are offered to aid the foreign traveler in social situations stateside. One of the first is, be positive when asked "how are you?" Americans will ask, but will be surprised if you say anything beyond "good, thank you." This speaks volumes of our sympathy, and of our self-pity. Looking out the window at flurries of snow, in this easy life of mine, I am not burdened, and am aware that my characteristic ebullience on the trail was fleeting, like New England snow this year. Happiness, as I knew it just three years ago, well, this is it! Now I am hooked on that greater stuff, the lingering moments of elation after a rough day of hiking, once the boots are off. The mojo propelling you up a mountain as an endorphin buzz composes plans for a propitious future. The warmth of sharing love with friends who never shirk from honest expression. Or, what Rolf Potts describes as the "narcotic tingle of possibility" (Vagabonding), a phenomenon I had only known as when you think about winning the lottery and what you would do with the money and then for that split second forget that you haven't won yet. Now I know it as the surge in excitement when planning the next adventure, when you know you can make it happen, when the future opens into a great blank canvas, and anything is possible. That happiness. <br /><br />So how to make it last? Does it ever really last? I remember days on the trail when I was nervous about a mountain, or about a fellow hiker's feelings about me, or the difficulty of hiking after a bad night's sleep, and I remember plenty of moments during those days when a good view or a smile or a special dinner could turn it all around. String along hours of easy daydreams and passive appreciations as miles of beautiful trail are walked, bind them together with salient moments of triumph or frustration, and with alert reflections on contentment or jubilation, and this describes the experience of happiness. Is it zen detachment? No. Is it a constant euphoria so powerful that little else can be accomplished besides recognition of said euphoria? No. Somewhere in between, in retrospect, it's all happy. I'm amnesic about the pain. My memory neglects the woeful obstacles all eventually sorted out. Lasting happiness as composite recollection. <br /><br />The problem with this experiential definition is whether it can be applied to instruct in other conditions. We would have to deconstruct the trail life piece by piece to find which are responsible, which are building blocks of happiness. And we would fail, because we treasure the trail life as much for what is absent as what is around us. John Muir called the people stuck in capitalist doldrums "time-poor," carrying heavy coats that burden the journey instead of mitigating, what? its rawness, its immediacy? its caprice? I talked a lot about the rush of city life, the ubiquitous pressure to feel that you are late and behind, that you haven't checked off enough things on your list, that the car or person in front of you is holding you up... sound familiar? I went on the trail to walk that out of me. It worked. So now, what do I do surrounded by it again? Will it keep me from sustaining a new happiness? Can anything do that besides my own resolve? I don't know. But the news I hear from thru-hikers is a lot of missing the trail, and the only ones reporting regularly smiling faces are the occupied ones, working towards accomplishing something of pride and merit. <br /><br />Therefore, my only option is deconstructing the two lifestyles to find possible parallels. Like George Clooney's character in Up In The Air, I thrill at the prospect of successfully keeping everything I need in a backpack. In the great words of Tyler Durden, "the things you own end up owning you." So I purge stuff. I practice disconnect: even a calm life is full off-trail, so I mindfully choose what to care about. It gets easier as days go on. I try to do fewer things every day- not necessarily sitting around like a turd drying on the couch but choosing a few activities to give my all to- and do them without distraction or multitasking. The most obvious parallel is the one I struggle with most, because it is so close and yet I'm ill-prepared. Outside. It's beside me, I am not in it. After all this rambling, I know this: I walk out into the woods, find some quiet, lie back onto the Styrofoam snow, and absorb that quiet calm. All I needed was winter boots.<br /><br />This exercise grew out of a night of discontent. A few days ago I wanted to explore why I couldn't feel like I did on the trail. And it was a silly thing to read over when I woke up, because obviously I cannot feel the same living in a house. But something about the exercise lingered in my mind, like a challenge: how can I characterize happiness, when it is as diverse and subjective as the people experiencing or missing it? Obviously a futile process, it is the process that sheds light on the subject. We all know, the journey is the destination. I won't seek happiness, I will craft a lifestyle more conducive to calm and quiet and climbing mountains. Pretty simple really.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-993416974679717782010-01-21T10:41:00.006-05:002010-04-16T09:53:05.114-04:00A Look Back to a Punch in the Face, and HaitiA few weeks ago, when Haiti soared into the international consciousness (and out of the murky space where objects of denial are stored), my trip to East Africa was already on my mind. I'd been working on the website of a woman I got to know while there, who runs a touring company. She needed the language on her site translated from King's English into succinct, marketable prose. As I revised the blurbs and referenced my journal entries from two years ago, I was consumed with emotive memories of what I have since termed my 'punch in the face' cultural experience. It was the trip to the Genocide Memorial Museum in Kigali, Rwanda that colored a worldview just coming into focus. There isn't an awakening when you let in the people you have not seen before: when you just accept that there is incomprehensible struggle and pain all over the world for millions who have no access to that great ladder of opportunity Americans love talking about, that's merely when the empathy starts. It is one thing to know it. It's another to see it. To try and change it, to grow the ladder down, honestly it looked possible from the bottom.<br /><br />A few weeks before, we drove down a dirt road to a settlement in the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda. We were visiting a satellite of a nonprofit that offered classes in trades and mentors for the enrolled teens. Someone asked if we could walk around the village (all shacks and clay floors), but our guide said that the rivulets flowing in front of the homes, was sewage, and we would not be safe. Inside the open room of the organization's outpost, we sat on the floor and talked with the girls, most younger than me, all former sex workers. They were shy but kind, probably used to this type of strange visit.<br /><br />A few days before that, in the van driving through Kampala's unmarked streets, my friend noticed a woman at a rotary. "A woman with the signs of age wrinkling her face, gray on her head- but likely in her forties, such is the degradation from poverty here (see I am angry now, not sad) and she begged at the cars driving by, near a child no more than three asleep on the red clay curb, covered in grime and sleeping inside a diesel fuel quilt, under the midday sun. Then I hung my head lower, and grieved for my ignorance."<br /><br />The next day we drove past a small park with trees and a sunburned field. I noticed there were men lying all over the grass. "Prostrate, bending the grass beneath them, the men pulled their bodies to the earth with gravity. And they prayed, fingers to the dirt. Face down, they would wait longer. A single plea articulated from this position- take me back. From the tissue kissing the ground, cells parted periodically, abandoning the men for the hope of distant futures. As the men pleaded, resolving the body beneath them to earth, there lasted a moment of dissolve. Energized cells to unite terrestrial bodies, countless more granules of earth than cells of these men, which were deafening against the silent red clay, who wished to leave their years."<br /><br />I called it a punch in the face because it should hurt. It should leave a mark. It might even break something, just enough cartilage to heal differently. It won't make you ugly or anything, just altered, like you're seeing out of sharper lenses, smelling out of keener nostrils.<br /><br />Look at the globe, in terms of resources. Where are the puppet governments? Where are the occupations? Where have the British been? Now look at it in terms of genocides. And poverty. And natural disasters. Where does the aid go? When does the aid go? How long until we stop paying attention? We are a strange species, incredibly adaptable, and yet drawn to the status quo. Someone said to me yesterday, it's easier to be afraid than to learn. What do you do more?<br /><br />So when all of a sudden people started caring about Haiti on January 12th, I thought of Rwanda, and Yugoslavia. To those who devote their voices like ventriloquists to amplify the muted clamor of neglected populations, who watched as a disaster (regretfully common, actually, for this tiny nation, if not in this scale) catalyzed the media to bring microphones galore to the Haitian people, you must have been frustrated. Like the big red warning light was always on but no one else would see it until the quake. That's a bittersweet surprise, after working for Haiti and other forgotten countries, for it to be picked from the international cause lottery.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Suggested Reading/Viedos</span>:<br />"Mountains Beyond Mountains: Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer" (Haiti) By Tracy Kidder<br />"We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda" by Philip Gourevitch<br />"Bush Was Responsible for Destroying Haitian Democracy" Randall Robinson on Democracy Now! (<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/15/bush_was_responsible_for_destroying_haitian">transcript and video</a>)<br />"Confessions of an Economic Hitman" (Corporate, World Bank, and CIA involvement in international 'coups') by John Perkins<br />"King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa" by Adam Hochschild<br />TED Talk: <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/james_nachtwey_s_searing_pictures_of_war.html">James Nachtwey's Searing Photos of War</a>Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-11230196807377371572010-01-12T15:41:00.007-05:002010-04-16T11:05:32.667-04:00That Balancing ActToday I laid down on a table and let skilled hands hold my neck. They coaxed the spasm out of my muscle fibers, and the competing sides of my psyche into the diplomatic arena of my core. Together, my core, my pragmatism, my, for lack of a better word, wisdom, and her hands and careful words began to unwrap my resolve and thus, my energy, from its visceral constraints. With two words I felt skin, tendons, muscles, veins, bones dissolve into sand and spread across the table. No longer wound into a space, I was expansive.<br /><br />I can.<br /><br />A few minutes before I had confessed: "I crave the woods, that blankness, that silence. And yet I have all but avoided them. My body itches for escape. All I want, many times a day, is to see nothing but the interstate rolling out ahead of me. Or the trail."<br />"Why aren't you on the interstate right now? Why aren't you on the trail?"<br />"I have to be working. Because I don't have the right gear; I don't want to spend that money on the gear. I have to work to afford my next escape."<br />"How often do you need to escape? Listen to your body."<br />"I don't know, I wait until I have no choice. Maybe once a week would even be enough." My brain was stubborn, ignoring the pain in my neck, exercising my stamina for discomfort.<br />Then, as I felt my fingers become rocks off kilter with my body, weighted down by unfamiliar arms, the mischievous current of a plan negotiated the fibers of my body, gathering toward fruition. She waited for me to speak. Then, as though something inside me fell asleep and another part awoke, muddy patterns appeared behind my eyes. These unfocused black holes for the light shining in the window accompanied a blankness. My thoughts eroded, emotions receded, body weighted merely by gravity on the table.<br />"Wow. That was a huge blankness." She waited.<br /><br />"I feel the need to exhale. Like something is going to happen that will open my days, so that they are not constrained and defined and shrunken by obligations and routine and expectations but as open as the woods or the road. I'm waiting for something to happen, I'm practicing patience for the moment when I can breathe out."<br />"What do you think that will be?" Her fingers loosen, find new targets of pressure.<br />"I know it's something I have to make. Patience is a good exercise, but I think I have to make that exhale."<br />"You just answered from a different place. Let me ask you this. Can you balance your pragmatism, that you need to work now, with your craving for the woods?" And of course I knew. That was the thread of exhilaration, the plan whose course through me was unwrapping all the bindings of routine, the absorbed, artificial urgency of those rushing around me.<br />"I can use my work to get the gear I need. I have enough time during the week to spend the time I need out in the woods. I can have control over my day just by falling asleep outdoors in silence, and waking as my body needs."<br />"Did you feel that?"<br />"It felt like my body let go and spread like sand onto the table."<br />"Your energy just became so expansive." With my eyes closed, a yellow light was radiating out from my heart.<br />"Where did that come from? The 'I can.'"<br />"My core."<br />"Good, now, what will give you control about sleeping outside?"<br />"I've felt my body want to change its circadian rhythm. I think I'm just craving silence. But sharing the house as I am prevents that change." As I laid there, a tear of relief gathered volume in the corner of my left eye. Her hands hovered over my skull, fingers touching the hood of the tissue connected to my spasm-ing shoulder. The pieces of my life I thought I might have to let go, the obligations I worried were sources of my stress, were not mutually exclusive with the blankness I crave. Sure, simplicity at the house I live in isn't going to happen, too many people who create clutter live here. But this isn't really my home. The trail was/is home, and nothing had earned that title since I was a teenager. The quiet calm of windy winter woods, the crisp vacuum of urban stimulation, could afford me something similar, if not identical to the trail. And those hours of solitude, that rest in the open air, that I have known I needed since September, might just balance out the rest of it. Because I also need to work, and play with friends, and write and write and write.<br />And then our time was up.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-58632865636625366592009-12-06T22:49:00.008-05:002009-12-11T22:13:50.436-05:00A Beginning<blockquote>March 25, 2009<br />Day 1. Rained all day. Still raining. Stopped at Springer Mtn Shelter, probably should have gone on to Stover Creek, 2.8 miles downhill, but there are a couple nice guys. One creeper, used to be a cop, goes by Spider. Harmless, should be. If the rain goes off and on tomorrow, I might hoof it to Gooch Mtn Shelter, 15 miles. Should remember to get gaiters and another layer for the Smokies. Anyway, Jim and Mofo are cool. Jim goes by Allegheny, nice older gent. But here I am, walking, feeling great. Nothing can stop me in my power.</blockquote>Hah. I walk up to the frontage of this strange 3-walled structure, peering through rain-impaired spectacles, at the three men standing around their packs. Here they are: the other thru-hikers. Hard not to look at them and think they're already better than you, getting there before, maybe even better prepared. But then a tall one of the bunch leans over and extends his face towards me "Hi, I'm Spider. What's your name?"<br />Red flag. Who calls himself Spider by choice who isn't a creeper? OK, he could be a climber.<br />"Sara" I had chosen not to name myself, in hopes that I might meet people who could draw out some core characteristic to cleverly name me, and also because I couldn't think of anything clever to name me.<br />"Are you doing this alone?" RED FLAG! The one question that everyone told me to lie in answer if asked, and the one time I agreed.<br />"Umm, I'm meeting people farther up north." Admittedly, I am an awful liar. Good enough to cut the interrogation short and walk into the shelter and climb up into the loft.<br /><br />The day began much differently than it ended. I woke up in a cozy bed, surrounded by embroidered matching pillow sets under a heavy comforter, looking out a window to a wet and gray morning. At Amicalola Falls Visitor's Center, I had blinders on. I couldn't find the hook to weigh my pack, I didn't see the displays of indigenous poisonous snakes, didn't find words to greet the other hiker who walked in as I was filling out my information in the logbook. Connie asked if I should have a picture of myself filling out the logbook. That seemed like something I'd want to remember, so she photographed me pretending to pen my information, wearing a big goofy wide-eyed grin. Then the Ranger asked if I had noticed the flier on bear activity around Blood Mountain.<br /><br />"Bear? No I didn't see that." The flier stated sitings around the mountain's Shelter, and gave a number to call if the animal was seen again.<br /><br />"Oh, I better write down that number, do you have a pen and scrap paper?" He obliged and I carried that post-it with me for the first week in my camera case.<br />Connie walked over to me, "Sara, are you going to hike up to the Falls? Because there's a road, I could just take you up there." Tempting.<br /><br />"Thanks Connie, but it's kind of a tradition, I wouldn't feel right about taking a ride now."<br /><br />"So are you hiking to the Approach Trail?" He was listening!<br />I nodded. The Ranger spouted his memorized directions.<br /><br />"To get to the Approach Trail, walk out of the visitor's center, go around to the left, take a left and follow the green blazes. When you see blue blazes, follow those until you get to the white blaze, you're on the Trail."<br /><br />"Thank you." I had retained none of that besides green. So Connie and I walked outside through one of the many exit doors (making the Ranger's directions all the more confusing) and she asked if I would like a picture of myself under the entry gate. Yes, that also seemed like something I would want to remember. The picture is of an awkward figure dressed head to ankle in black, with a small glimpse of a goofy smiling face visible under the rain slicker brim, and I appear to be making small fists with my all too eager hands. Connie had picked up my poles from the pack-weighing hook; I'd left them there in my over-focused, unobservant state of mind.<br /><br />Turning around after thanking and hugging Connie goodbye, I walked along the path that led straight up into the fog. I remember there being three paths to choose from, and I don't remember a single sign directing the way I meant to go. I turned around, pointed the way I saw another pack-laden hiker choose, and Connie and the hiker's father nodded and pointed that way.<br /><br />There were no blazes. I walked up the switchbacks, thinking, I'm hiking and I don't know where I'm headed because it may not be Maine but I'm hiking! I soon passed the other hiker, who I never saw again, gasping on a rock.<br />"I'm already out of breath. That's a bad thing, isn't it?"<br />"No, it's okay, you're listening to your body and taking a rest, that's good!" I smiled and bounded along. The steepness was not easy, certainly, but there was adrenaline pumping. The trail to the approach trail was supposed to be stairs, and this was not stairs, but I could hear water, and I was climbing, so I *must* be getting closer to the Falls. The trail emerged upon a gravel drive, where a civilian couple were descending. I turned uphill and greeted them, passing and forgetting them.<br />The blue blazes began at the Falls, which I couldn't see through the rainy haze that had descended on my ascent.<br /><br />My recollection of the trail up to Springer Mountain is not exactly fresh. Thinking went something like this: oh this is hard but it's going to get easier, and my shell isn't waterproof anymore, why don't my poles feel natural? left right, get a groove, left right. I'm doing it! I'm alone and will walk alone to Maine. I'm hiking the trail, I flew to Georgia and will keep going, won't stop til Maine, this is it this is it this is it this is it this is it. Oh my god a person! Talk to him, talk to him!<br />"Hi!"<br />"Hi, I'm mofo, are you hiking the Appalachian Trail?"<br />"That's the plan" I had months before that stopped expecting everyone I met to believe I would finish, and wanted to believe it was okay not to finish, so that was the answer I gave. "I'm quitting my job to hike the AT" or "I'm going to not talk to you for six months because I'm going to hike the AT" and when they asked "Are you going to hike the whole thing?" how could I say yes? "That's the plan" was all I ever managed.<br /><br />"Well you're embarking on an incredible journey. I hiked it years ago." We chatted some more as he waited for his friend Allegheny to catch up. He motioned that I should go on ahead. The rain drove on, I kept walking, wondering how fast, then all of a sudden I was at the top of Springer Mountain. I took pictures at the rock. I took a picture of the first white blaze. It was 2 in the afternoon. To go on or stay? My shell was obviously not waterproof despite the tech wash and dry, and I was colder the longer I lingered. I wasn't tired. But staying at Springer Mountain had become the beginning, a night I would share with so many legends before me. So despite the time, despite Spider, despite the other kids I glimpsed from between the loft floorboards going on to Stover Creek, I stayed and ate undercooked couscous next to Allegheny and Joe.<br /><br />Before I left for the trail, a number of apprehensions took form. The biggest one was that I would be mocked for not using my stove appropriately, thereby judged as not being prepared for the thru-hike. Strange, as I had had the stove for years. But that's the one that took.<br /><br />Leftover couscous weighed down my pack until Neels Gap. I made far too much, had tried to make less. And who undercooks couscous? So 5pm on the 25th found me laying in my sleeping bag, trying to sleep, racked with gas pains from the expanding grains in my belly, but I was on the fucking Appalachian Trail. And that's exactly where I would be for a while. How long? All the miles? Until October 15th? Somehow that night I slept.<br /><br />In the morning, I dressed in my clothes and wet jacket, tried to warm my icy fingers, gathered water (which I vowed never to leave for the morning again) and hit the trail before everyone else. Most I never saw again.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-46733262928879668232009-12-05T22:18:00.005-05:002009-12-14T10:44:18.810-05:00An Introduction<blockquote>March 24, 2009<br />The drive here to the airport was all nerves. It was a very nice hug good-bye to Bob, without tears, then I walked through the automatic terminal doors and was on my own. And I'm feeling good. So good. Through that portal, and the journey was mine. The nerves changed- more familiar, apprehensive of an adventure, rather than the nerves around friends and family, reminiscent of anxiety as a child- dread. I'm going to take all the nerves and visualize them as champagne bubbles giving me buoyancy and momentum to go ahead.</blockquote>I handed the Delta Lady my precious backpack, gleaming with shiny reflectors, stuffed awkwardly with all the finalists from my gear spread that had filled the floor of my parents' guestroom for the last week. The green Stop & Shop reusable shopping bag that was my carry-on held a book (Mountains Beyond Mountains), my phone, the Patagonia R2 fleece my friend Ash gave me, a nalgene, and a few more pounds worth of miscellaneous things that I somehow knew I must not live without in the woods for six months. These did not include three items that were imperative for a successful hike: lighter (illegal), fuel (illegal), chapstick (forgotten). At the gate I listened as my plane was switched from B2 to B8 and back again. I walked calmly, knowing how I was leaving all this commotion, determined to let it slide off my new resilient hide. I called Mariya, my god-sister, to tell her I was going to hike for a while, and hoped to see her in 8 months at Thanksgiving. Then they called my flight to board. Was this it? Was this no turning back?<br /><br />Off the plane I navigated the huge Atlanta Airport's walking boardwalks and tunnels and shuttles, Boston-speedwalking what takes most people 30 minutes in maybe 20 (I knew this because I remember a LED sign with estimated times to reach various gates and terminals). There were three things I needed to do before I called the woman who would make my thru-hike possible: pee, buy chapstick, buy a lighter. I spent $8 at the newsstand on Burts Bees flavored chapstick, and a lighter that read ATLANTA. I hoisted my bag onto my back, finding myself quite the badass (I was in the Atlanta airport on the 24th of March for Chrissakes, where were the other thru-hikers?? ), and walked out the terminal doors into the warm winds of the city proper.<br /><br />Connie M is the beautiful, poised, generous mother of my friend Trent. Trent asked me if he could hike the trail with me when I told him my intent (for the record, half the people I told asked me if they could accompany me and the other half told me I was crazy). Then a few months before I departed he decided to one-up me and join the Peace Corps. Yeah, you win, Trent. So Connie is incredibly and deservedly proud of her son, and somehow also willing to pick me up at the airport, drive an hour to her new home, make me dinner, leave me to think about the rain about to pound the region for a while (how long, I could never have guessed), and drive me the two hours to the trail early the next morning. She told me about her decision to move to a new city alone after retiring (I'd never gauge her a day over forty) served me a salad and heated up the stuffed manicotti she'd gotten for me because Trent was kind enough to tell her my (past) dietary restrictions. Ooh, fun aside.<br /><br />The week before I left for the trail I was a vegetarian, or, if you want to be technical about it, a pescatarian. So I knew I'd need a lot of protein hiking, and because I really, honestly, wasn't sure I had it in me to hike 2200 miles without significant interruption, and didn't want any sort of personal preference against eating animal flesh to handicap me more than whatever shortcomings I possessed but knew nothing of yet would inevitably challenge me. This is how my mind works. So I trained myself to eat meat again. I began with a simple chicken salad: combine a third cup of cooked shredded chicken with 3/4 tablespoon mayonnaise, 1/4 tsp curry, 1 tbsp golden raisins, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, garnish as desired. Then, because I didn't get sick from that (my iron stomach may have been an advantage in the next months), I moved onto some smoked turkey meat. I forget how I ate this, but really, isn't smoked turkey a forgettable food after all?<br /><br />Once before, I had moved to meat after a bout with mononucleosis left me too skinny. My roommate at the time was so elated at the chance to feed me pork he cooked up his famous collard greens and chicken 'n' dumplin's. My task was to stir the greens and watch the boil. The long handled, wooden spoon I used had a small indent, the kind of spoon you use to stir not scoop. No matter, the smell wafting from the pot, thick steam like flavored air gripped me like shackles and I stood stirring, scooping meager spoonfuls of thick stew, blowing and sucking the broth, like bacon water but better than any memories of bacon anything. I stood there an hour, happily sipping away, then feasted with my dear roommate. All night I laid awake as the digestion pains racked my body like angry, tiny seizures.<br /><br />Needless to say, I did not want to repeat that history. I started with the white meat for practice. Then, one day I was working at the outfitter I'm perpetually employed at (despite long breaks for travel and a move to the Big City), and decided it was time for beef. A burger joint had opened in town that got a nod from the Times Travel section, and was known for using responsible beef. So I walked in, chatted with the cutie behind the counter, telling him I hadn't really eaten beef in 8 years, so this burger was kinda important. On impulse, overwhelmed by options (dry-aged or grass-fed beef??) I ordered the eponymous Local Burger with sweet potato fries and sat down. Cutie brought me a double patty covered with bacon, mushrooms and cheese. Well, that was cows and pigs in one sitting. I took a picture of the thing to show my friend who never supported my non-meat-eating-ness how I had changed, and dug in. It was sublime. I returned to work. For the remaining three hours of my shift, as a dozen or so customers perused our store, my coworker liked to remind me that from her post some thirty feet from mine, over the alternative rock station on the stereo, she could hear my stomach twisting and gurgling like a baby discovering and tasting a new toy. But I didn't get sick. Back to Atlanta.<br /><br />After dinner, Connie invited me to watch "On Golden Pond" with her, as we had discussed how it struck her personally. Usually I would be up for a film, but something she had mentioned earlier had me a wee bit distracted: "Sara, I'm not sure you've heard the weather forecast, but it's supposed to rain pretty hard for the next four days."<br />Four days.<br />That's a long time without indoors. What do I do? I had selected the 25th as my start date because the flight on the 24th was the cheapest flight I found after the 15th (a very popular start date) and before the 30th (how could I hike fast enough to finish without those extra five days?). Somehow, I had decided how long it would take me to walk these miles, decided not when I wanted to finish by (the northern terminus is a capricious mountain with its own weather system and the great state of Maine closes it, persistently, by the 15th of October), rather when I wanted to start -in order not to worry, and also figured into the plan that I would not want to be surrounded by other hikers starting when I was (I mean, really, what could we possibly have in common?), figured that I would prefer a more isolated beginning.... was all this rain something to avoid? My mind covered my two options, back and forth, a wave over sand and water. Or was tomorrow just the beginning, in whatever form? Eventually, after talking with friends and making them check the weather, I accepted the shitty forecast, embracing that I would invariably walk in rain, why not begin in it.<br />I slept.<br /><br />When I woke up to my alarm, the windows were stenciled with gathering raindrops, tinted slightly by the gray morning of an approaching storm. I couldn't eat much, so I let Connie pack me a tuna sandwich for lunch (Hell, I knew it wasn't what I was supposed to eat, but I was carrying 30 frickin pounds on my back, what would another 1/2 lb in my coat matter, right? Right? How little I knew). She got on the highway, wipers moving at that rate above intermittent, and said to me "Are you sure you want to do this today?" Thankful for her to give me the opportunity to ask myself, I privately enjoyed my resolution.<br />"I'm going to walk in the rain eventually, I guess I just have to start in it. I decided on this day, to delay would feel like quitting a little."<br />So she kept driving.<br />"Sara, I don't know you very well, and don't want to say you can't do it, but if you ever feel like you don't want to keep going, you have my number. I can meet you, in Georgia, North Carolina, wherever you might be. If anything happens, I will pick you up."<br />"Thank you." And so I knew there was an out. As we drove on through the, now driving, rain, I thought: this is it. This is the point of no return. I am delivered to my entry to the woods. There is no turning back now. This is what I chose. I choose to walk in the rain.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-15211114964310981372009-10-30T16:07:00.003-04:002009-10-30T17:08:48.414-04:00Open DoorsThe end of the trail is passed. The blazes turned to blue and the knife's edge carried me back to the world I used to live in. Weeks spent poring over pictures went by, as a mourning of this brief lifetime in the woods, from where nothing short of a rebirth, it seems, emerged in the end.<br /><br />The sadness consumed the triumph, and left me antsy, restless, but mostly tired. I slept for a few days; and packed my bags.<br /><br />After a day on the road, alone (the way I thought the trail would be), I returned to my old diary and read about my motivations to hike. Within minutes I felt energized, inspired, the sadness washed away. The mourning was genuine, but avoided the simple fact that the trail had been a success. Not for the completion of it alone, but for walking Boston out of me, and letting go of the anger and stress that marked my temperament for a good year. How simple it was, to realize I reached my most treasured goal. How simple to look back now, knowing that beyond one goal, those months in the woods gave me so much more. From this new orientation, I have found peace outside of the woods, contentment with myself, an openness to the society I didn't miss on the trail, and the tenacity that accompanies a powerful faith in your own capacity.<br /><br />After visiting my trail buddies, folding their friendships into our present- without a shared path, I cried. It was the loss of my only community, now scattered across the continents. Despite that reaction, as I commute from old friend to new friend, the blessing of these connections clarifies the picture. There is so much love in my life. Even the love in my life is clarified. The appreciation, support, drive, and understanding among these anchors on my precious web have refined and redefined concepts previously tarnished. For all you are, I am grateful. For all I have, I am blessed. For how simply I lived, I was happy. Exiting the wardrobe and stepping out of my Narnia, holding the hands of my fellow daughters of Eve and sons of Adam, together and individually we are finding our way without any blazes, and these are exciting times.<br /><br />When I was on the trail I often said "we're all in it for one person alone but we're in it together." Now, today, nothing about that has changed.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-26380860644921915382009-08-30T10:49:00.003-04:002009-12-14T10:44:47.428-05:00The End in SightA few days ago I was standing on West Peak of Bigelow Mountain. Beyond the range in view, behind a haze, Katahdin sat, peering over the tops of all the other mountains. 100 miles as the crow flies and 51 more on the trail, it will take us 10 days to reach the summit.<br /><br />I have lived in the woods for over five months. I have camped and tented and enjoyed a bed here and there. I have walked over 2,000 miles. I am accustomed to the simple pleasures of climbing to a peak, feeling the wind and smelling the changing seasons, walking to the next peak, and enjoying the camaraderie of the most supportive group of men I know outside my family. We sleep, we eat, we hike, and we laugh. That is my life.<br /><br />But in ten days, on top of that mountain, it will no longer be.<br /><br />Recently we've begun listing what we're looking forward to, slowly preparing our minds and hearts for the transition to the normality of our parents' basements.<br /><br />Above all I cherish my one inevitability: proximity to friends and family.<br /><br />With the end in sight, the miles will fly by against our better wishes. And it is hard to reconcile all this, in my blessed life.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-87069376312841075342009-07-23T10:00:00.002-04:002009-07-23T10:47:41.078-04:00Oh Neglected Blog!When did the urge to type leave me? Only a few weeks in, sitting at a computer became less fun. I expect it will return.<br /><br />The last months have flown by, unlike the first weeks. Soon even if I were moved to write in town, there was too much to convey, too many stories to choose from.<br /><br />So I have less than 600 miles left. By the time I finish hiking tomorrow, I will have less than a quarter of the total miles remaining to hike. The last entry I wrote on this was before I had walked a single quarter.<br /><br />How much have I changed? What of this experience will color my life when I return? What the hell am I going to do when I'm free of the white blaze? Some of the distance I feel to these questions, and the discomfort that washes over me searching for answers, is because at some point, many hundreds of miles ago, I stopped saying 'I.' This culture is a collective, and I have learned more from the camaraderie than from the miles I walked alone. We have abandoned the individualism that I used to cling to. All this is connected, then.<br /><br />The hike has grown a momentum in me, one I remember from returning after East Africa. It has pulled my comfort outdoors- I find my body close to the door, my mind missing the clarity of fresh air.<br /><br />So I give you these poor, scattered thoughts. We hike on tomorrow; the final stretch is bittersweet. The end is gaining a superstitious quality: it has been safely far away for so long, it's proximity now appears fragile, capricious. We dropped the K-word from our normal vocabulary, now referring to our 'end' feels more polite, as though we do not want to anger the fates determining our future in these worn and weary bodies we have pushed to limits we did not imagine when we set off from Springer. As these final days pass, and some push for deadlines chosen before bonds formed, more bodies are breaking. Many of us slow down, now.<br /><br />And from here, we are careful, somewhat. We are excited, but nervous. We hike on. Together now.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-72631096412995224972009-05-15T11:34:00.004-04:002009-05-15T12:08:19.653-04:00Brief PostI originally hoped to write the first story that I experienced and jotted into my tiny notebook, however time is creeping by and I'm not very quick anymore.<br /><br />So as an update, another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place. Recently, I started hiking shorter days. Specifically, fewer miles. I take a long lunch, talking with friends, doing some yoga at a waterfall, taking in the views, and walk 9-16 miles a day. It's like the most gentle awakening; walking far enough to get home at a reasonable time, but also slow enough to let your body heal. It makes perfect sense, but the people closest to me, and myself, have figured this out, and are happy for it. I talked with a middle aged hiker yesterday who's planning 75 miles in 3 days. I feel sorry for his shins!<br /><br />Yesterday I left the Woods Hole Hostel, and the proprietress, Neville, told us that she was thankful for the hikers coming through because they bring in the spirit of the woods. I'm going to ponder this for a time.<br /><br />Ohh the yearn to write has passed. I have too much to say! I will write more when I visit my cousin in two weeks. However, I have a feeling the adventures and misadventures will start to increase, now that I'm in no rush, and I have medical insurance! hooray!<br /><br />Thank you everyone for your overwhelming support. I am so blessed. Truly blessed.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-76789737746669829972009-05-01T13:32:00.003-04:002009-05-02T10:34:27.414-04:00The Next 550 MilesTo look back, and see an actual trail behind you, which you have been meandering along, step by step, for 463 miles, is an experience unlike other memories.<br /><br />I have 550 more in the state of Virginia alone. Do I feel disappointed? Like, 'what have I accomplished in three states?' No. It's elation that comes over me. There's this rush, when my feet are quiet enough to ignore, and I'm comfortable, and fed, of pure joy. It's simple joy, but energizing. I feel like a balloon filled with champagne bubbles. I talk miles a minute, feel like anything is possible. Sort of a moronic mania.<br /><br />I've been enjoying pondering how, everyone here, around me on this trail, thought about hiking it, some from as far back as 1968 when at Dartmouth the AT was officially celebrated as a national and complete single trail, and then set out to hike it. We all made the dream, made the plan, and left. Not many people get to do that. And many who can, don't. I'm not saying we're better than people who dream about a thing but don't risk their job and security to follow it. I'm just saying to have that in common adds to the solidarity of our group. We all know each other, by two degrees of separation at most. We know everything about everyone. We support each other. We're in it for one person alone but we're in it together. Damn I'm corny.<br /><br />So I've completed 20% of the trail. I may finish in August. I may finish later. It's more to go than I can fathom, and I've already walked more in the last 5 weeks than I'd ever fathomed. Because although I planned to hike 2,200 miles, it was not a number that related to anything in my previous experience. It was a scale beyond. My expectations were fiction. The last 5 weeks are a curious blend of hardship, body-breaking and muscle-building (I've gained weight and lost inches), that culminate daily at the shelter.<br /><br />Like when I call home or a friend, and all I have are simple, children's words for my joy (love, awesome, cool, amazing), despite the fact that I'm nursing an aching and swollen foot, I gush. Gush with that mania. Like residual endorphins. Or a release of seratonin and adrenaline after merely remembering what it feels like to hike. And every night when I sight the shelter 100 yards ahead, though I've walked alone all day long, there are my friends ahead of me, and we smile to see each other, and we cook our food and talk about our aches and sing songs and fall asleep joyfully. All the roughness, the shit around the edges when you trip over 20 roots and curse the trail for being organic or get soaked feet, those feelings pass. Triumph takes its place.<br /><br />So the next four months must be held as a mystery. Because although I have done 463 miles, and after a month my body has finally started complaining, but not badly; another 1,715 is a whole other can of worms. Who knows what misery and glory awaits?Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-89043678993196347982009-04-30T12:16:00.005-04:002009-04-30T13:34:46.391-04:00Freedom in an Institution: Self-Actualization and the Trail<div>In my last post I mentioned a few ideas about the lifers. Since then the conversation has come up on the trail. The concept of institutionalization - what happens to inmates who spend so much time in prison that they are unable to assimilate once released - seems appropriate in this community. Because I have a mild form of institutionalization, I welcome your comments. In the book I'm reading: Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, the neuroscience discussed is applicable here. Our brains are not static, and so by spending so much time in a completely different environment, our brains change. It will take time for me to remember how to be normal after the Trail. For instance, I am already forgetting to flush toilets. In a room, I'll reach for my headlamp before I reach for the lightswitch. Table manners are no longer motor reflex. For some, the freedom of the trail (and this is a flexible definition) is too tempting to leave.<br /><br />What I'm playing with here, is whether it's possible to be free within an institution. Do the people who hike the Appalachian Trail and then decide they want to walk, for the rest of their lives, feel free? Is the concept of self-actualization possible within a narrow community like this? (from Goldstein via Wikipedia, the "motive to realize all of one's potentialities.") No matter how awake I am on the trail, no matter how expansive my views, this life is truly insulating. With therapeutic potential. But insulating nonetheless. So, are the lifers soothed within an institution that is safe for them? I would like to offer the conclusion that they feel freedom, out there in the wilderness when they please, living on the fringe of American society. Yet the alcoholism among this population is troubling. This is what I'm wondering about.<br /><br />Comments welcome. More posts about happy things, soon.<br /></div>Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-20056955551608972252009-04-24T22:08:00.004-04:002009-04-24T23:04:06.990-04:00The lifersThe number of hikers on the trail, over the last weeks, has diminished and they've spread out. However, I meet a handful of new people every day. Sometimes I meet one of what I've started calling the lifers. When I stop at a hostel or hiker-friendly town, I meet a LOT of lifers.<br /><br />These are the guys (I met one lady lifer a couple days ago) who hiked the trail ages ago. People hike the trail for all sorts of reasons, but it's pretty safe to assume that they're searching for something, often hoping for some sort of realization. For this group, it takes more than once. Or, it occurred to me the other day after meeting CB, maybe they experienced that sought-after epiphany, and it is this: hike more. Some are out on their fourth or fifth thru-hike. Some do a couple hundred miles of the trail every year. The vast majority are perpetual section-hikers who live around hiker-friendly towns, helping out the hikers if they have their wits about them, or just trying to party with the young ones and share their expertise.<br /><br />When I was at Standing Bear Farm, which I raved about last entry, the supply room/store had an intriguing box on display. The return address was politely crossed off, and on the blank part of the priority mail box, was written:<br /><br />"This was a re-supply box for Minnesota Smith. If you have not yet met Minnesota Smith, you will. He is an expert on most things, according to himself. He will tell you about how to hike better and how you're hiking wrong, and keep in mind the weight of this box."<br /><br />The box weighed 53 pounds. My pack, with 3 liters of water and four days worth of food weighs 32 pounds. The message was: Minnesota Smith doesn't know Jack and you shouldn't feel like you gotta listen to him.<br /><br />When I met him three days ago, he fit the mold of the typical lifer:<br />Doesn't fit in society any more.<br />Loves the trail like I love pissing in the woods.<br />a) did so many drugs in the 70s that his ability to discern most social cues rubbed off, or b) somehow maintains a life back home but gets kicked out a few months a year so he can 'go bother the new hikers.'<br />Didn't want to do anything else after finishing the trail.<br />Loves his stories from hiking.<br />Wants, more than anything else, to help the new hikers by imparting his own knowledge-from-experience.<br />a) heavy drinker/smoker or b) went on the trail to quit.<br />Not to say that all guys re-hiking part of the trail are lifers, and certainly most section-hikers are not lifers.<br /><br />A few days ago, at the singular Nolichucky Hostel and Outfitter, I met a whole boatload of lifers, and the experience got me thinking a lot. Now, I have eight to ten hours every day during which my thinking goes something like this: "whoa that's a big hill, okay here I go... not so bad... that was great! I feel terrific! Oh I bet I can get to Chicago when I finish during a road trip, that'll be an awesome time to see the city- rock garden! left foot there, right foot there, careful, careful, ooh downhill, easy knees... I wonder why these guys keep on hiking the trail over and over? They did it, if they didn't get the big epiphany by Katahdin, shouldn't they try something else to answer the big question? Or maybe that's just it! Roots! Too many roots! Shit, left foot there, right foot there, balance, I hate roots, slippery roots are hard! what was I thinking about? Oh yeah, the lifers figured out that what makes them happiest is walking. So is that realization a burden for them? Are they stuck following the white blaze?" That was fifteen minutes in my head. So I'm at the hostel, and I meet CB.<br /><br />Alcoholic, chain smoker, has lived on or near the trail getting work for the last ten years. He's missing a good number of teeth on his left top row, and likes to point the gap near the person he's speaking to when he laughs. He also has the tic of repeating his last phrase after a pause. CB has hiked the trail 3 times. When I find him talking to my friend Scout late that evening, knowing he's been drinking for about 7 hours, I join the conversation. He asks why I'm walking. Then he chuckles to himself, and spurts "I respect all hikers, for whatever reason they're hiking, whatever gets them out here, you know? I have total respect, cuz it's all types of people, comin to do the same thing. the same thing. and I have respect, heh heh heh" and with the hand holding his cigarette he makes an encompassing arc, to show his acceptance. He grins towards me with his tooth gap. I never got to tell him why I was hiking, he started on about how the 1,000 mile mark, that's when the mind games start, when the 'fuck it, my knee' or 'fuck it, my ankle' quitting gets people off the trail. As he reminisced, warning us of the woes to come in his jolly drunken way, he would lean, shuffling his feet imperceptibly closer to me, so that as I listened, I would slowly step back from his cigarette tracer and gapped smile. Then, aware of his travel, he would step back, regain his spiel, and swerve again. This dance lasted a few back and forths and side to sides until I knew I'd heard all he could tell, and went to bed.<br /><br />This encounter is the bread and butter of a lifer. They move slow or camp out somewhere friendly, so that every day they can meet new people to share their favorite stories and maybe give some of the advice they carry with them. But those they meet are transient, and move along, so that the next day new hikers come to town, and it all starts again.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5522291289628768007.post-41542935545249043932009-04-16T10:56:00.002-04:002009-04-16T11:27:14.760-04:00I think it was said once before "holy shit I have knees!"So I'm 272 miles in. That means I'm over 10% done, and have fewer than 2000 miles left. These are great milestones.<br /><br />Other statistics include: 2 sunny days, 2 half sunny days, all other days wet or snowy.<br /><br />Two obscene care packages and one "anonymous" postcard. High fives all around you mischievous planners you!<br /><br />Words of wisdom: if it snows and then gets warm, you get mud. If you have mud and it rains all day, you get rivers and lakes. If you have rivers and lakes and it freezes all night, you get skating rinks! And that is the Smokies.<br /><br />I hate the Smokies. From what I learned in one sunny day there, it is usually very beautiful. But when it is foggy and muddy, it is not beautiful. And you have to sleep in shelters, but if a weekend tourist wants to sleep in the shelter, they tell you to set up your tent in the mud. But sometimes the Smokies are very beautiful. The end.<br /><br />This is really an indescribable experience. My first journal is already almost full, blathering on about emotions and exercise and plans and joys. After a day or two, every single challenge that wasn't immediately rewarding, becomes a landmark. Time goes very slow, even when I hike 3 miles per hour. We do not multitask. We talk about our feet, and our packs, how far we plan to hike that day, try to keep track of our friends days ahead of us and behind, and the food we plan on eating. We talk about why we're here and why we'll stay. We hike for 8 to 10 hours, find a place to camp, crawl in our sleeping bags at 4 pm and start making dinner. There's a community along the trail of people who still like living in this other-ness, who have started hostels and stores or shuttle services to help us out, and we are insulated from normal laws and etiquette... and hygiene.<br /><br />I feel like a year has passed in the real world. I've covered so much ground and met so many people and filled my days with moments of pure bliss and then moments of animalistic exertion. In the last four days I hiked 20, 18, 15, and then 18 miles. I'm losing weight because I won't carry enough food to cover the calories I burn. My knees suddenly started talking to me yesterday, so I'm taking today off. I've planned all of 2010 for myself and a few other people. I have no idea when I'll finish, but some have told me at this rate it'll be August. September seems more likely.<br /><br />This is a simple life, but it is the hardest lifestyle I have ever maintained. Every day is an achievement in my simple little brain, in my tiny little life. When people who help me along the trail show me pictures of the past hikers who sent them photos of Katahdin, I get choked up. Imagining being <em>free of the white blaze</em> is an odd idea. Terrifying. Powerful. Unparalleled. And I've only just begun.<br /><br />With love, and hours of apologies for not being able to maintain my treasured friendships- to all my friends, I wish I could stay in your lives, updated and constant; so thank you for understanding that I cannot, and supporting me anyway. I am so lucky to have you all in my heart.Sara Haxbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16652366015043506180noreply@blogger.com