I took my notebook thinking I’d journal. I did, exactly four times during the first two of the eight days. But it was still worth the weight – having the notebook, the option. I’ll take it again. The first entry was a kind of trip log, I guess: what I did, how my body felt. Harriet the shuttle driver – I wrote about her. She is a Trumpian motorcycle mama who hates where she is… I described the trail from Magney to Kadunce, and then I cataloged the things I thought about on the trail: the dream I had the night before, my last job and all the issues that came with it, including mansplaining inappropriate relationships irrelevance laziness tears integrity jerks invisibility personal fulfillment ugh – so I had to stop the brain from spinning around all of that. It took a day of catching and releasing that crap before my mind gave all the way over to just focusing on where I was, how hot or cold I was, and how my body felt.
I saw a woman thru-hiker on Lake Superior during the shore walk drying out all of her gear on the rocks. She was sobo and solo and about 25 and very nice. It took me a second to realize I’m 50 and she probably didn’t want to hang out with me, so I moved on down the shore and ate lunch. It was after this I really started vlogging, which very much turned my attention to the experience.
The next time I wrote, it was to complain about the bugs, report on my bear bag hang, and talk about pooping in a latrine. I was already impatient for all the deep thoughts, but all I could muster were some odd but vivid and meaningless dreams. Then I wrote to report I had started my period and had nothing with me to deal with it. Good times.
And that was it. No deep thoughts. No revelations. No real writing. No drawing. Over those 8 days, my mind really just turned to the present, turned to the trail, the foot pain, the landscape, the shoulder pain, the birds, the fatigue, the bunnies, the lower back pain, the rocks, the tree roots, the blow downs, the pine needles… I focused on those things and hoped my lizard brain was doing the hard work on the ongoing existential crisis.
And honestly, it did. I came back and started really doing things that would push my personal art-life forward. And then I had foot surgery – heh. I had wondered if my body could handle it all. It kind of fell apart. But I did my best to fix it all and I’ll give it all another try as soon as I’m allowed. Because it’s all I think about. It’s all I really want to do. That, and buy a 13′ Scamp.