CDT Day 35 (6/22/23)

Miles 771.5 (Brown line 27.1)- 798.4 (Red line 992) (26.9 miles)

Verbatim

Last night was the summer solstice, which means that from now on the days will get shorter and shorter. We’re in the heat of summer, but have begun the march towards winter. I’m happy to be where I am on trail, here in CO at this time. The snow is really melting off, and I expect to send my ice axe home within the next week. I didn’t use it much at all, but it was good to have had it when I did. It has some plastic in it, but I don’t want to carry it frankly. I’ll read to finish Fire and Blood so I can mail them home together.

I’ll do 3 1/2 days into Salida, then likely another 3 1/2 or 4 days up to Leadville. At that point it will be about time to have scheduled a connection with Nathan and Sophie and Causal in Boulder.

The ten mile climb out of Creede was heinous! It was really really steep and there were lots of ATV’s and cars that drove up the road to the divide. I’m not really sure where they went, however, because I didn’t see many coming back my way. I broke down and sobbed at the end of that climb. I remembered a vision and dream I had of hiking in CO; where I came upon a young woman crying off the side of the trail. That may very well have been an image of myself. While crying, I imagined walking up to myself and comforting myself.

My sadness today was triggered by a very yummy bakery I was able to eat at in Creede. It reminded me of Proof Bread and L and my dream to bake with her. The bakery was delicious. I had an almond croissant, a Nutella thingi, and three egg and chili hot pocket things. They were all very good. Served out of a tiny house and baked on a commercial kitchen back home. The lady behind the counter (the baker’s mother) said her son bakes for 15-17 hours a day during the summer. That’s hard work! I’m disappointed in L that our shared dream won’t be realized (Ok Andrew it’s not all her fault what the hell). I’m looking forward to baking my own sourdough, however.

At the top of the climb I ate lunch with Hot Mess. She’s really funny. We shared fun trail stories. She thought I was Canadian. She’s from Toronto! It was nice to share company with yet another hiker today. I’m moving in on the bubble, or what’s left of it after so many NOBO flips. I should be able to catch others tomorrow!

I have shoes tied to the back of my pack now. It’s obnoxious the way they bounce around. But, I’ll get used to it I think. People, of which Hot Mess was the first, are going to be asking about them!

It was good to do so many miles today.

Post Note

Ah man. These verbatim feel uncomfortable. Here goes.

One of the things I’ve noticed about myself is my capacity for a really vivid and descriptive imagination. It’s ridiculous, but I’ve often come to moments in my life where I’ve felt as if I’ve foreseen the occurrence of that contemporary moment. I don’t think I can foresee the future. I do think I think of so many things that are important to me and then my life is important to me and I come to a moment and think, “Oh, you know just how important this moment is to you because you’ve thought before of how important to you a moment like this would be to you”.

Crying on the side of the trail out of Creede was a good example. I’d imagined, in some sort of ridiculous love fantasy, that I’d chance upon some poor helpless women who needed my rescuing while on my travels. I’d imagined this moment about Colorado specifically once thinking I’d hike the CDT. I’d imagined this moment, and loved the imagination, while still in relationship with L! That’s uncomfortable to say. I wonder what that imaginative part, remember Internal Family Systems, was trying to tell me…

Turns out this was not to be the last of my trail side sobs this trip. It definitely wasn’t the first. In northern New Mexico I’d trashed the ground so hard with my trekking pole while screaming obscenities that I bent the pole. I tantrumed for five minutes and then slumped to the ground exhausted. I remember what Philip said on day two, “the bushes can take it”.

So here I was crying on the side of the trail in CO, exhausted from the compiling stress and exposure of trail and defeated in loneliness. Who’s coming up behind me? Certainly not Missing Person. I’d passed him camped a few miles back still and still wicked hung over. Forgettable was taking another zero in town. I was faster than anyone else here at the back of the bubble. I was safe to sob alone. Then my imaginative memory came to me and I thought about what I looked like from the outside. There I was wrapped in a ball clutching at a sage brush. I was on my cold side; my right side. I bent down and held me. I spooned me. We cried together and fell asleep.

When I’m feeling immense pressure, fear, or shame I curl up in a ball and lay on the floor. I have nothing to give. When I think about this response (flight? fawn?) I think about a memory I have of my mom yelling at my dad about a piece of furniture he’d brought home. True to the expectations my mother had about a family’s traditional roles, she was very upset that he dained to buy a piece of furniture. It was a reaction blown way out of proportion. And I could identify that disproportion as, I don’t know, a ten or twelve year old? I was afraid and so I went upstairs to my room over which the argument was happening and curled in a ball. I just listened and prayed it would stop. It’s this part of me, wounded and terrified by anger out of my control which needed the care below that CO pass. More terrifyingly, I’ve come to know I’m capable of the same unrestrained violence which first wounded that child. The little boy on the floor doesn’t want to defend himself. If he’s forced to do it (aka if I don’t step up to the moment to hold him) he becomes the very image of violence which wounded him to begin with. AH FUCK. Now I’m mad.

I’d felt so lonely, and still do. I’d imagined arriving in Colorado having been stripped bare and cleansed by the desert of New Mexico, ready to take on the role of savior and friend for some unsuspecting thruhiker. I had hoped I’d be ready to move on and replace. I wasn’t. And realizing that the broken human who needed my love was me, and not someone else, forced me to reconcile with the fact that I was in no shape for intimacy with anyone other than myself. That was the final closure to the hope of romance on the CDT. I was in it by myself, for myself, walking the weight of the mistakes I’d made up to Canada. I do think I’m a pretty beautiful woman though. Not a bad person to stumble upon crying on the side of the trail!