CDT Day 88 (8/14/23)

Miles 2132.65 (Red line 2395.4)- 2159.45 (Red line 2422.2) (26.8 miles)

Verbatim

Well, today wasn’t the thirty I’d hoped for. But that’s ok. I was exhausted all day, and even fell asleep at one point while resting on the ground by a stream. The day was hot and the morning miles were spent in a burn zone. I can smell faint smoke on the air today this evening. Which seems fitting.

I slept for ten and a half hours last night! And emblem of my weariness I think. I fell asleep shortly after nine and didn’t wake up until seven thirty this morning. I wasn’t walking until eight-ten; so it’s a miracle at all I made twenty-seven miles of walking. I could easily have had a low thirty if I had taken off in better shape.

I can’t really think of much to write about… I’m in the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness now. There’s lots of climbing. It’s a fun section because the different mountains are so tight together. Peak bagging here would be fun because the peaks look so rugged. There’d be a lot of scrambling. It’s pretty, but not breath taking.

I got to change to the last Guthooks map today. That’s pretty cool! It’s officially countdown time. Doing less than a thirty feels a little slow, like the timer won’t go down fast enough. But that’s ok. The timer will go down fast. I wish I was enjoying my mental experience out here more. I still think so much about the past and get angry. I found myself yelling again today. That’s discouraging. Even writing this is making me angry.

The future is also daunting. So, that’s hard to hold in mind. The timeline for the future seems hard to arrange. And then nothing goes as planned anyways. This trip sort of feels like a cleaning up of last year and makes me feel behind, like I should be doing other things with this time.

My backpack is also really heavy! If I was light and quick I could be moving forward. Instead I’m stuck dragging the weight of the past and waste of the past. This accumulation is really dragging down the experience. I’m reminded of Hotmess’ words, “If it’s bringing you joy, do it. If not, then don’t!”

It’s not bringing me joy. But it’s a discipline, and a good one.

Post Note

Reading my distress feels really… embarrassing? Maybe that’s not the word. I think I do feel a bit embarrassed, but only because I feel so much less anxious then I used to. I can hold both compassion for myself, which means giving permission for myself to get angry, sad, catatonic, or curl up in a ball, while also holding compassion for those who hurt me. People are just experiencing life. My well being doesn’t have to be at the center of that. But man… It’s sad! I was so distressed. I was not enjoying myself. Often still don’t.

There comes a time in every thruhike when you realize just how far you’ve come. I got this retroactive feeling while copying my journal onto this page. The first trigger was thinking about how I do enjoy a faint smell of woodsmoke in the air. Wildfire. It’s alive. Maybe for people from the west fire smells dangerous. But for this Maine boy fire smells like the wood stove at Daniel’s house, like songs at the fireplace at Camp Lawroweld, like warmth and life. The distant and far reaching smoke of a wild fire smells like weather to me. The first time I’d smelled good smoke on this trip was all the way back in the Gila. That was over two months ago at this point in my hike! That’s a lifetime. Before forgetting my socks. Before the crowds of Yellowstone. Before the basin. Before desperately buying polaroid film for my picture in Steamboat. Before crying in Colorado storms. Before beautiful northern New Mexico. Before the endless road walks. Before all the people I’d met. Before most of the animals I’d seen.

And then I remembered Hotmess’ words. Hotmess, sharing lunch up at the top of a pass I’d just bawled my eyes out climbing. She said I didn’t have to do it. Hotmess’ words were freeing. But it didn’t really seem possible to follow them. I certainly couldn’t just let my mental distress go. And at some point along the trip, maybe it was day 88, I started to use words which equated the two. Like, maybe I was carrying the building pressure of both these worlds; both the internal and external. And then one day, when things were heaviest, when things were done, I could just dump it in the trash and walk away. Let be clear, and I’m speaking now from the place I sit here as 2023 comes to a close, I don’t think grief works that way. I didn’t come to the end of the trail and just dump things at their heaviest and get to walk away. That sounds like a model for disaster; one akin to denying the continuation real emotion and feeling. You don’t, for instance, get to just explode in rage or pain or desperation and then suddenly the pressure is gone. No. But, I had found language for a building hope that at the end of this trail I could at least put the damn bag down. It didn’t have to be right on my back the whole time. The shoes didn’t have to proverbially kick the water bottle I needed out of its pocket just as I reached for it anymore.