Pages

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

That old feeling

We're about two and a half weeks away from setting out on the trail. Two and a half short weeks. This Friday is my last day at my job, which somehow seems like a point of finality. As if that's when the hike becomes real, even without a foot stepped on the trail. But somehow that still doesn't make it feel real to me, or at most only slightly so.

When I talk to people about leaving soon for the Trail I get this sense of amazement from them, a sense in their minds that this is a big, unimaginable thing. They usually want to talk about it, they want me to explain the logistics of it, and they sometimes tell me they've always wanted to do it. I can see in their eyes and hear in their voices that this trek has a size to it that is almost unreal. Meanwhile, I'm plodding along buying gear, making plans, reading books, and generally preparing to leave, yet I don't really feel the immensity. Somehow, setting out to hike the Trail and doing everything necessary to successfully accomplish it makes it smaller and less ethereal.

This is almost the exact same feeling I had before I left for the Peace Corps. I remember telling people that I was going to be leaving to live and work in Armenia for two years, but I never really felt the immensity of it, even though I knew that it was two years of my life in a place not much farther away from home than I could get. It's amazing to me that the only times that that experience was big in my mind were the day I got my country assignment, and after it was finished. Now I look back on it as this huge, monumentally enriching thing (which it was; I miss it dearly); in some way, I think that makes me more confident about this trip, because I know that this will be a thing that I look back on and say "wow, I did that!"

Other old feelings are less helpful. One of the things about both having been a Peace Corps volunteer and about being a life-long outdoorsman is that I've had a lot of experience of mental and physical hardship. I remember the depths of depression I was in during parts of the Peace Corps because I felt purposeless; I remember taking no comfort from day to day knowing that at the end it would feel like an accomplishment. I remember even more viscerally hiking through miserable conditions on more than one occasion.

One of the strongest memories I have of hiking is from a winter camping trip I took years ago. It was February in Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains, incredibly rugged and unforgiving terrain in that season. I was on an eight day snowshoeing trip with some folks from my college's outdoor club; half of those eight days we were hiking through a blizzard that dumped probably 6 or so feet of snow, in addition to sometimes painful wind. I think particularly about the section where I was hiking up a steep, rocky ridge with wind blasting me, and my snowshoes slipping back because the angle of the ridge and the wind allowed only a thin coating of snow to collect, one that didn't provide good traction for snowshoes. I can feel even now in my chest the deep exhaustion, the sense of despair as I cursed and wanted to give up with each near-futile step. I was close to breaking down on that ridge, and probably only made it up thanks to the patience of my fellow hiker plodding along behind me.

Remembering the pain of that journey scares me more than a bit for this one. I don't relate that story to show that I'm hardcore and totally prepared for what comes my way. I tell it because that's what parts of the Appalachian Trail are going to be like, for much longer than eight days. There's five months of this ahead of me, and I can feel a sense of dread at times when I think about that, knowing in very small part its pain. I know that I will want to give up at some points, and just hope that having Grace along, and being able to convince myself that there are more beautiful days of trail even when one or several are shitty, will keep me going.

Even knowing some of that, I'm still excited to go, and I'm still confident that I'll finish it. Though it doesn't feel right now as big a journey as I know it should and as I can see others feel it is, it does still feel like an adventure.

Two and a half weeks.

No comments:

Post a Comment