For obvious reasons our 2020 return to trail got cancelled. But when Caiti asked if I wanted to tackle Washington for August of 2021 it seemed like a no brainer.
Day 1 of Trout Lake to Packwood
Pug was kind enough to drive us up a long winding Forest road to meet the trail near Trout Lake. I realized what a sad couple of years it’s been as the pressure for this to feel good got really real.
I’m not that same person and I’m not in that same body that hiked in 2019 because of lots of good reasons and some hard ones and I’ve gotta open myself to the idea that there may not be context and continuity between the first 1000 miles and these 500. This might be an entirely different story and I need to let it be whatever it is. Walking 1000 miles changes a body. Working manual labor changes a body as well. Both of these things and others and therapy have changed my relationship with my body and awareness of the trauma I store there. And while it was novel and exciting to discover and untangle the hurts and pains (physical and emotional) that I carried before… I live with them now and healing them has been ongoing.
The stakes and expectations feel so much higher even if I technically know what I’m doing. I’ve never been particularly athletic and this has always been far more of a mentally and emotionally theraputic endeavor than anything else. I really just know enough to not die and to keep walking. My systems and schedules could be entirely different this round to meet totally different needs.
Being on such a social trail was hard the first time for me and harder now. A larger history of PTSD and the obvious take aways and disappointments of pandemic and political isolation feel heavy and further isolating. I don’t want to be seen, I absolutely don’t want to be touched and I don’t want to entertain small talk. I want to feel spacious and I already feel hemmed in. I’m in deep grief for many things and I’m not here to make friends. Which is obviously humorous to me because I still managed to make lifelong friends last time around, some of whom I might even see out here.
Fear is a doozy. Caiti takes the lead at trail passings, saying hello and making conversation. Bent against my trekking pole on an uphill slog I get asked if I’m “Okay” by a stranger and snap into a shallow and taxing performance of wellness that I know I’ll lose my ability to take on soon, in all of life. The idea of just being a blight of pain and weary fear – an open wound I can’t hide anymore is crushing.
However, there are blueberries and huckleberries and so many wildflowers and so much water. After a year of working out in the desert in a drought, I don’t remember ever touching water so crisp and cold. I lay a wet kerchief on the back of my neck. Press the cold rag to my temples and zing back into my body for a moment. The air is a fragrant tonic of life, the forest is lush in it’s bursting recovery from a fire that’s left a palace of charred and bleached ghost trees. Name five things you can see, smell and touch. I guess that’s how it worked all along. The trail pulls me out of myself, settles me and returns to sender. I step out of time and into beauty.
Blake x Boomhauer
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