I wake to pouring rain, rumbling thunder and flashes of lightening that brightens the dark lean-to here at the Speck Pond shelter. We’re doing our planned Mahoosuc Range route in reverse – starting out near Bethel, Maine and heading South to Gorham to avoid the rain I wake to.
It wasn’t supposed to rain today, but tomorrow, by which time we’d be down the Mahoosuc Arm and through the Notch, the hardest day of our four-day trek through the Mahoosucs. From the trail notes we’d read, it doesn’t seem to matter which direction you go through the Notch, but doing it on a dry trail makes all the difference.
As I turn over in my bag, the patter of dripping rain off the roof, I see Pat’s already sitting up, dressed and ready to go.
“We’re not actually going are we?” I blurt.
“The birds are singing, the sun is up,” she responds.
“But it’s wet…”
“And it may well get worse later,” she replies.
I wouldn’t be out here on the Appalachian Trail on this wet morning without Pat. It’s her dream and determination to section hike the AT and why Jen, Barb and I have been trekking along beside her through New Hampshire and Maine these past four summers.
If it were up to me today, I’d be lingering in my warm bag for a while waiting for the wind and warming day to dry the slippery rocks down the steep ascent before us.
But instead, I’m pulling on yesterday’s damp shirt, socks and shorts, tying up my boots. After a quick cup of coffee and bowl of oatmeal, we’re off.
People find their way to the Trail for many reasons and sometimes, like today, I wonder about mine. What is it that draws me here? It has to be something more than following someone else’s dream, doesn’t it?
Our through-hiker friend Sully reflected a few days ago over dinner at Mizpah Spring Hut that there are certainly more enjoyable and perhaps even better ways to do the Trail than through-hike 2,190 miles over the course of four or five months. Certainly, section-hikers like Pat have a funner time of it as well as those that just hike the most beautiful sections of the Trail. Perhaps its true, that as Sully said, what’s left for the through-hike is the challenge, and this, the most challenging thing he’s ever done in his life.
I too like a challenge and doing what I didn’t think I could. To expand the boundaries of identity I’ve made of my life, see beyond what I thought was possible.
I don’t know if this is right, I’m feeling my way into this, but I also want something more than a challenge. I’ll never be one to finish the fastest or do the longest race. No, that particular drive has never been in me. The joy I’ve found in running a road race, competing in a triathalon, or backpacking for 11 days isn’t in the competition but in the sense of presence I’ve found.
Of course, I can find my way to “here” at home stretching on my yoga mat, sitting and breathing, meditating, listening. I can find my way to presence watercoloring or listening to a friend tell me about their day. I can find my breath sitting here looking out at the mountains. So why the “effortfulness”, the sweat and strain, that I seek out in a challenge to be present?
Typically, it takes me three days, three days of breathing hard, aching muscles and much groaning to find my way to presence on the trail. To just being here. And then I get it, the feeling of just walking the trail, taking one step at a time, one hand hold to another, making my way on this little path winding its way through the woods, out over the ledge, through the mucky bog.
At this point on the AT, some 1900 miles from Springer Mountain, Georgia, many of the NOBO’s (Northbounders) who pass are wearied down to just wanting to get through. Just wanting to get done. Tell us they’re tired of everything out here on the trail that drew them here in the first place. We see them as they scurry pass, scarcely a hello, head down, a scowl and grim determination to just keep going.
Rack wishes he had taken two weeks off to rest his body months ago but admits that if he had he might well not have gotten back on the Trail. So he’s kept on like Rock Bottom who has lost 19 pounds, grim and determined but for that early morning on Mount Moriah when he came up behind us with a wide smile on his face, sharing that indeed it was a good day, a very good one, his 40th wedding anniversary.
He almost quit the trail a few days before when he walked in circles up and around Mount Washington and ended up exactly where he’d started three hours earlier. Angry, worn out, sick of it all, life sometimes comes down to exactly this. And the choice, the sheer grit that despite it all, he’d take yet another step forward and keep on keeping on a Trail that by now seems to be extracting from him more than it is possibly giving. Not sure who will win out, his willpower or the relentless grind of the 300 miles before him.
For Matthew, today’s come down to plugging in and listening to his book. I don’t have any desire to get out there again, but I want to get back to my book. The Trail becomes his morning commute.
No, I want something more than grim determination to just get through, and yes, I get it. I want to be unplugged out here. To pause in the silence and see the swoop of the trail ahead, to feel the rough bark of the white pine, to smell the balsam fir. And yes, sometimes the noise in your head or the toil of yet another day on the Trail, is all too much and overwhelming.
What’s it all for? To have “done” it? Met the challenge? Done what you didn’t think you could do? Know that you can survive good days and bad days, watch your moods rise and fall with the ridge line?
What’s on the other side of “done”? For some it must be depression – now that its over, now what? For some it’s heading off to the next trail to conquer, the Pacific Crest, Continental Divide or a flip-flop, turning around and heading back South to Springer Mountain in Georgia.
Perhaps we all want something to have come of it all, these Trails we follow and make of our lives. We want to know that it’s made some difference – given us that longed for change of perspective, an opening of possibility, a clarity. Shaped us, crafted us somehow into someone different than our weary ways of being. Or maybe that’s all too much to ask of a Trail and the desire for meaning leads only to frustration or despair that we did not nail down that secret of life we were looking for. No, perhaps, instead the answer to meaning lies instead in the wounds we’ve worn, our scratches, sore back and knees. We did something that we didn’t think we could do and this body, this heart, this grim determination carried us through.
Our determination has us now completing the Appalachian Trail across New Hampshire after three years of slowly, carefully finding our way through spring snow, rain drenched trails, and hot steamy days. We’ve shivered and sweated, wearied and groaned, slept well and not so well. We’ve noticed bear claws on trees and toads at our feet. Chatted with through-hikers and cheered them on. Couldn’t imagine eating another protein bar. Laughed a lot. We did it, and now, besides completion of a goal what did we really get?
A tightened belt, a day of insatiable hunger, the joy of devouring steak, potatoes and a chocolate chip cookie sundae and still not being full. The delectable luxury of taking days, a week off, to sleep in, let our bodies rest and recover.
The emptying out that we experienced, quickly fills over the next days. The few pounds I lost, return. Something happened but what?
The morning after our trek, here we are, maps strewn on the breakfast table, calculating distances, planning next year’s trek across Maine. Pondering if and where slack-packing is possible.
It seems that your life is now full of purposeless activity, a friend reflects. I laugh, perhaps it is. Instead of making something happen in life, I’m giving myself to Life.
Sometimes life comes down to sitting up and rolling out of bed, pulling on yesterday’s damp clothes for the Trail ahead. Sometimes, stopping and listening, watching the clouds at this clearing, kneeling and noticing this mushroom, all the time knowing we could wait forever and never “get” this we are waiting to take in.
Once again, we tighten the pack, walk on.
Navigating Through Change 