Category: travel

thoughts on hiking

walking on the lake at sundown-00775

reprise (see notes on traveling with a backpack from 2013 — all of which still held true this time, too!)

thoughts on hiking/backpacking, unedited.

  1. are you a little bit afraid of what lies ahead? good, that means you’re doing the work you need to do.
  2. gorge yourself on all the online personal accounts of what it’s like to hike a trail. then forget it all, because it will be different for you.
  3. have hope for the future. anticipate it. but don’t let it stop you from enjoying the present.
  4. learn to improvise.
  5. go at your own pace if possible. this is not a competition.
  6. your body will be different as you get older. listen to it, it’s ok if walking takes longer. be kind to yourself.
  7. rocks are very useful for holding tent stakes down.
  8. laugh.
  9. always bring a snack. practice making it last longer. save some for the uphill climbs.
  10. i’ve never had short hair while completing a thru-trail hike until now, and it is AWESOME. no dreads this time, +++
  11. perform small rituals to grow as a person. here, while out of the way of connectivity with the world, take the time to connect with yourself.
  12. hiking to lose weight never works because afterward all you want is cookies and cake and you also feel like “f*ck it, I deserve it”
  13. meet other travelers. talk to them. learn things about the land, the country, the animals (or lack thereof). ask questions.
  14. bring a notebook. write your thoughts down.
  15. read at night. it feels like a luxury.
  16. don’t be too proud to ask for help.
  17. if you can’t sleep, it’s still pretty amazing to walk outside at 3am and see nothing but land and sky and remaining (or impending) light.
  18. don’t drink too much water before bed because it might be freezing outside and you’ll have to suffer the “do i get out of my sleeping bag or hold it?” dilemma.
  19. note to self: a fanny pack would be really awesome next time.
  20. pack less than you want to. but recognize the small luxuries that will be worth their weight.
  21. you will not feel clean. and that’s ok.
  22. bring really good socks of different colors. even when dusty, they will make you happy. and you’ll be able to tell them apart!
  23. don’t worry, everyone else’s socks smell just like yours do.
  24. don’t be anxious, be prepared.
  25. wear your f-in’ sunscreen!
  26. keep your receipts.
  27. figure out the humidity so you know how quickly (or slowly) your stuff will dry.
  28. indulge when it’s in front of you. cake is cake. you quickly learn the value of cake when it’s offered to you in the middle of nowhere.
  29. ziploc bags are super-duper handy.
  30. go with someone you love talking to, but with whom you can also be silent comfortably.
  31. … preferably also someone who will belt out Disney songs with you on the last stretch!
  32. have a reward waiting for you. a meal, a song, dessert, puffins, cartwheels, whatever floats your boat.
  33. put down your backpack when you arrive at camp. go for a walk, and marvel at how light you feel.
  34. just when you think the last landscape *had* to be the MOST-BEAUTIFUL-and-best-thing-on-this-earth and there is no way anything can top it — a new one comes into view and takes your breath away. meaning, it will all be ok. leave your past behind you. take a photo. remember it, carry it with you because you are human and to be human means you must carry it. but go forward, knowing that the next turn will bring you joy and be every bit as beautiful in a different way.

 

#Hamilversary

(a.k.a. in which I listen to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat as part of the attempt to get over you)

Say,
That would be enough.
Say you’d still want this:
us alive, right here, feeling lucky.

— Ada Limón

mountains and rivers to reach you

Headphones on, bus rumbling through rivers. Rain falling. “Should we climb mountains and cross rivers together?” I asked. “Of COURSE we should,” you responded.

So we did our best in the weather that was given to us. You promised me an adventure, and we sang so many songs along the way. We have arrived at the end of the trail, bursting from all the tough terrain and beauty that is now behind us. I come away from it, quietly delighting in the way we got so close to it all and yet managed to remain so far. “Just call it horizon, & you’ll never reach it.” I hold the topography of your landscape close inside me as I watch it grow smaller in the rearview mirror. “Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,” you send to me some final lines of poetry. I resolve to comply.

“Beep beep boop,” chirped my phone as it revived itself in the world of reception. “Beep beep boop,” I responded, trying to speak a language you’d understand.

***

After I walked to the edge of the world and back, the big all-terrain wheels of the bus shook me from side to side. The movement made everyone else nauseous — yet all I wanted to do was write about my feelings. “That’s probably a metaphor for your life,” my friend tells me solemnly after I recount my actions. “You should blog it.”

And it’s #Hamilversary today! So just for fun, in lieu of emo poetry, here’s our love story in too many parts, composed on a bus-and-plane ride, told only in lyrics excerpted and rearranged from a musical.

Read More

The edge of the world

They said, “You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar.”

— Wallace Stevens

 

I went down to the waterfront and ran along the crashing waves for a little while. The sun and the wind layer upon each other, and the white-capped water fades into the horizon. It’s strange to contemplate how close to the end of the world we are again.

The water color, the temperature, the mountains peeking out from above the cerulean, the hazy distance, and Antarctica just beyond our reach.

As I mentioned, I’m trying to listen to Podcasts while I run. Death, Sex, and Money was recommended to me. I listened to how love comes up as a subject so frequently in conversation, no matter the original topic. I listened to how vulnerable it can be, how secrets can be kept from each other in relationships for over 20 years.  I contemplated Jane Fonda’s decision between “being with a funny man who keeps you laughing” and “being whole.” She chose the latter. The stories that were most striking included examples of when love surprises us, when love is bigger than we could have imagined, and that it can overcome the clichés. That when given the chance, lovers may be more understanding than you could ever expect. That you don’t have to follow the set narrative that everybody else does, you can decide to go a different way.

The wind sends a cloth of clouds over the mountaintop every afternoon, reminding us that there is something greater than ourselves.

This life is an opportunity to lean in, to face whatever we fear, to calm down the urgency that can lead to unguided action. While still leaving room for the unexpected to unfold.

“The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.”

— David Bowie

The way through love and life is more difficult to find than the way beyond it, or even away from it. I am no longer sure what parts of the path are fiction that I make up as I go along, and I am no longer sure that there even is a particular reality that I am trying to arrive at. I am no longer sure that it matters to be certain one way or another.

The moment I convince myself that what I’m staring at is definitely the edge of the world, the moment I am certain we will fall into nothingness, you quietly hand me a way to see that on the other side is yet another luscious shore.

“The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else.
The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.”

“After the final no there comes a yes,
and on that yes a future world depends.”

— Wallace Stevens