HYOH: Hike Your Own Hike

Last October, we set out on our very first backpacking trip to hike the 40 miles of the Appalachian Trail in Maryland south to Harper's Ferry.  Prior to leaving, I predicted there would be some type of weird thing (really, you can read about it here), and of course we had a Hurricane and a Nor'easter heading our way.  The hurricane veered off course, but the Nor'easter was making a direct hit.  We decided to go anyway.  The time had been taken off of work and the planning had been done so off we went. 
When we started out, things weren't too bad.  It was lightly raining, but it wasn't too cold and it wasn't a heavy rain, so we trudged onward.  By the time we made it to the first shelter (the Raven Rock Shelter), we were dealing with injuries, and before long, the weather started to turn. 
We opted to stay the night in the shelter where most of us were up all night listening to the wind and the rain and the large limbs banging on the roof.  It was a wild storm, and I'm thankful I was in a sturdy structure and not my tent. When morning came (very early since we didn't really sleep much at all), it was decided that we needed to end the adventure and head home.  At the time, we were all comfortable with the decision being the right one, even though we were disappointed.  Unfortunately, there was someone on social media who made comments about being "quitters".  This person tried to claim they were trying to give a pep talk, but in the end all the comments were borderline mean.  The other unfortunate thing is that I let it get to me.  I began second guessing the choice we all made, second guessing my ability to even backpack and ended up depressing myself.  There were several times when I considered taking all my gear back to REI and being done with the dream.
There were others on social media, namely those from a Women's Hiking Group, who were sympathetic.  They let us know it was better to "live to hike another day" and mentioned how some of them canceled their trips without even attempting it like we had.  While that made me feel better, I still beat myself up over it. It wasn't until listening to a podcast (The First 40 Miles that I've mentioned before) that I finally got it.  In their episode 13 "Are You Hiking Your Own Hike?" they discussed the top 5 Tips for Hiking Your Own Hike, and #5 resonated with me:

5. Remember that it’s not a “Winner Takes All” sport

• Hiking and backpacking is a non-competitive sport where the only players are you and Mother Nature.
• You’re not separate teams, you’re kind of on the same team, but not always playing the same game.
• Snow, washouts, mudslides, freak thunderstorms can totally change your plans
• Learn to respect Mother Nature and be flexible
• If you go home early you haven’t “lost”
• No one who leaves a trip alive ever “loses” 

(quoted from The First 40 Miles Podcast episode 13 notes  http://www.thefirst40miles.com/013-are-you-hiking-your-own-hike/)

I don't know why it took this podcast to get through my head what others had been saying all along, but it did. 
Message finally received.

So when you're out in the woods hiking, and a situation arises where you have to end the trip early or alter your plans in some way, it's okay.  You will never beat Mother Nature.  More importantly, you don't have to feel like you need to beat any body.  And if you live to hike another day, that makes you a winner.  Because you aren't dead.  It means people who sit at home on their comfy couch while you're out walking to a privy 100 yards away at 3:00 am in the middle of a Nor'easter dodging falling tree limbs don't have the right to judge any decision you make for safety reasons. 
Our trip attempt from October will just be another one of those "Remember when we hiked in that crazy Nor'easter?" story to go along with all the other stories that have similar remember whens (oddly, we have quite a few of those stories).  And looking back, I think that makes us pretty kick-ass.

So get out there and Hike Your Own Hike

The Pit of Despair

Westley: Where am I?
Albino: The Pit of Despair! Don't even think... don't even think about trying to escape. The chains are far too thick. Don't dream of being rescued, either; the only way in is secret. (from The Princess Bride)


I debated whether I wanted to write this post, but since I wanted this journey to be transparent for myself and others, I decided I needed to.  Things in my life became more difficult over the last week or so.  My husband lost his job.  I won't go into those details because they don't really matter, but know it's not because of anything he did wrong.  Anyway, this created a problem for me.  My husband is the one who had the health care.  With no job there is no health care and with no health care there is no way to afford the 6 (or 7 I don't remember) prescriptions I have to fill every month or the regular doctor's visits I have with the regular blood work I get.  It also means no way to afford physical therapy.  Without PT my piriformis syndrome issue can't be resolved and if that can't be resolved I can not physically hike.

If I can not physically hike then there's no possible way I can manage 40 miles on the Appalachian Trail.  Which means, I can't go on this trip.  This is what had me in the Pit of Despair.   

I'll be the first to say depression sucks.  And I'm not talking about the kind of depression where you're just a little sad about something happening, like your hamster died.  I'm talking about the medical illness caused by a combination of genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors.  I'm talking about depression that changes your normal daily life- interferes with your sleep, your ability to work and your everyday activities.  It steals your motivation and sucks the enjoyment out of activities you normally enjoyed.  For instance, if gardening usually helps you with stress levels and makes you feel better mentally, you can not get out and garden.  Deep down you want to, you might know it will help, but the depression won't let you.  You don't want to go into the garden and work because you don't care (or more accurately don't want to care).  It takes a long time to motivate yourself to do whatever it is you want to do, and if the smallest thing happens that changes your plans, you say "Forget it! I knew I shouldn't have bothered to do xyz! It's not worth it!" 

I want to also add that you should never tell someone who suffers from depression that being happy is a

choice.  For most people I guess it can be, you can choose to laugh things off.  For those with depression the choice isn't yours.  It isn't that you are choosing not to be happy/content it's that being happy is an emotion you can't even muster.  There is nothing more frustrating for me than someone telling me I need to choose to be happy.  Because yeah, I'm choosing to eat my weight in Nutty Bars, sleep all day and not experience anything remotely close to happiness. 

Anyway... back to hiking.  The thought of not being able to do this trip sent me careening into the Pit of Despair.  This trip was more than a fun way to celebrate turning 40.  It wasn't just an adventure.  It was one of the things I had listed as something I wanted to accomplish before I was 40 that I could actually accomplish before 40.  I had accomplished nothing else on the list.  Nothing.  And that made me feel like a failure (here's where I say don't tell me I'm not a failure.  I feel like one and telling me I'm not one is invalidating how I feel- boy I'm up on all sorts of soap boxes today!).  Without going into too much detail, the last decade or so, I dealt with a lot of things.  Things that can be considered emotional and psychological abuse, and things that were extremely high stressors.  Some of the things I dealt with actually had me stop writing.  I haven't written anything other than blog posts in 15 years- and prior to that I was editor of an award winnging college literary magazine and a published poet.  I lost who I was.  I no longer knew myself.  My life was not what I imagined or wanted it to be.  And then, I planned this hiking trip.  Suddenly I was getting passionate and excited about something.  I was going to accomplish something that I wanted to before I was 40 AND it sparked a desire to write a book (also on the list of things to accomplish) that I began working on feverishly.  And then, like that. It was done.  Dreams squashed again.  All because I hurt my butt a year ago and didn't realize it until I hiked with a pack on my back.

It's been a long week for me and everyone around me.  There's been rivers of tears, nasty attitudes, anger, woe and violent out bursts where I throw tennis balls and break glass (just a photo frame, not a window).  I stopped doing my PT exercises because why bother? 

 Then, I had 2 dreams both featuring my deceased grandmother and both occurring on some trail in the woods.  In the first I'm laying sprawled on the trail wailing and my grandmother is standing there holding one of my hiking poles and says "Get up or I'll crack you with this!" and in the second we're on a wooded rocky trail and I'm having a pity party and she's holding my pocket knife- open- and says "Get up and start hiking or I'll crack you with this!" (the I'll crack you with this is something she often said to myself and my cousin- and truthfully, we probably needed some cracking).  If you know me and my paranormal background, you know I believe these weren't random silly dreams but actually visitation dreams.  My grandmother, who I was close to, was telling me in no uncertain terms to knock it off.

So last night I told my husband the hike had to happen.  I have no clue what's going to happen with my injury, but for now I'm going to keep doing the exercises and having my husband work on massaging the area to help work out the knots in the muscle.  I'm going to lay off the training for a bit longer to give the muscle time to heal, and hopefully it will be okay.  And if it's not, I'll push through it.

Because this hike is happening.

How This Trip Came to Be

The idea for this Appalachian Trail adventure isn't a recent one.  It started many years ago when my brother got a documentary from the library about AT Thru Hikers.  I can't remember the title of the film, but I remember watching it with my brother and by the end of the film, we were both ready to pack our packs and hit the trail.  Unfortunately, I was a 20-something divorced mom who was incapable of taking off in the woods for 6 months and my brother was still in high school (though I don't think being in high school was keeping him from going off hiking for 6 months).  

 

 

 

So, because there were things that I couldn't just up and leave, the idea of a back packing trip went on the back burner.  The years passed, I got remarried, had another kid and got divorced again.  Somewhere along the way I thought of the Appalachian Trail and came up with the idea of doing a section hike through Maryland. I researched it a little, knew it was about 40 miles (40.9 to be precise) and thought I should do it.  But it never happened.  I got remarried again (third time's the charm) and moved into my husband's apartment.  This meant clearing out some things that I just didn't need anymore.  One afternoon in late summer as I was going through some papers I had, I came across a post-it note with a list of things I wanted to do before I was 30.  At first I was amused, but the amusement quickly turned into depression because the only thing I had managed to accomplish on the list was learning to play the guitar.  And while I did learn to play it, I hated it and couldn't play it now to save my life.  And I was getting ready to turn 39 and I hadn't done anything.  So somewhere in the back of my brain, a voice kept whispering about that AT hike through Maryland. Each day I'd think about it longer until I eventually started thinking I should do it and plan it for October of 2015 and hike the 40 miles for my 40th birthday.  Even though a plan had started to take shape, I wasn't actually planning it as a certainty.  It was still just this idea of something I had always wanted to do, only now it had a title: "40 for my 40th".  That all changed, though, because of a small little stove.

I watched a vlog on the Cold Antler Farm Blog about Black Out Bags.  It's just some common sense preparedness for storms- things you might want if you lose power.  And one of those things was a small Esbit stove to make a warm drink on or even heat up some soup.  I decided I wanted one- just in case.  So when my husband and I along with my parents went to visit a BassPro store, I showed my husband the little $10 stove and mentioned I wanted it.  I suggested it might be a nice Christmas stocking stuffer.  When he wanted to know why I needed it, I told him about the black out bag idea and how it would be good to have- just in case.  And then, suddenly, I was telling him about the back packing trip I had been thinking about for so long- long before he and I had met. I went on about how I was depressed about not accomplishing anything on my list, how we could do the 40 miles in celebration of turning 40 (he turns 40 too) and how preparing for it would help us both lose weight and be healthier.  Instead of telling me I was crazy, he remembered me talking about wanting to do the same trip when we first met and suddenly, he was on board.  Then he told my mom, and then she was on board.  There in the store we settled on a date in October.  My brother joined the group and my cousin (who turns 41) and my sister.  

And that's how the "40 for my 40th" 4 day back packing trip came to be.