[pct-l] Reasons for quitting

[Jeffrey Olson]

I thought I sent this a couple days ago.  I don't think it went through. 
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I started at Manning in 2005 planning to do a full thru-hike.  I was in 
terrible shape, having done almost no training, what with packing up my 
house, readying it for renters, finishing out the semester, and hanging 
with friends saying good bye.  I knew this and so planned only 8 to 10 
miles a day for the first week, 10 to 12 for the second, 12 to 15 for 
the third, etc.  This had worked for me before. 

It is very possible to start a long hike, the whole trail or six weeks, 
not having exercised with any regularity for a year.  It requires a 
different kind of consciousness and tolerance to physical pain than  
most people are not familiar with.  Over the years I've become familiar 
with starting long hikes like this.  I don't recommend it by the way...  
I ended up spending two nights a week and the day in between in a 
motel/lodge letting my body find the next level of being-in-shape...  
Give me a bed, TV, shower, and source for white noise...  I did this for 
the first four weeks. 

I wore 14EEEE New Balance 808s on a 12 and a half EE foot.  Perfect...  
No foot problems. 15 pound base weight with 5 pounds of snowshoes and 
the potty ice ax.  Five days of food, no water.  I almost never carried 
water through Santiam Pass...

The first pull up the dirt road out of Manning reminded me that this 
first month to six weeks was going to be very painful.  That was ok.  
I'd done this before and physical pain was a "so what" for the most 
part.  It ends.  It did after about five weeks on this trip. 

I knew in the first couple days that I wasn't interested in hiking alone 
to Mexico.  All the planning and dreaming and reality checks - 
re-reading journals in which I said 'I NEVER WILL DO A LONG DISTANCE 
HIKE ALONE AGAIN" came up against the inexorable and inescapable fact 
that I really didn't enjoy hiking alone.  I will try another hike - 2010 
on the CDT is my current goal.  But I won't do it alone. 

The first week I was on the trail, to Stehekin or so, I hiked in clouds 
and snow and sleet.  It was an analogy to my mental state.  I was 
hyper-conscious. There was a part of me that witnessed what I was doing, 
that simply watched.  But it was unconnected to anything than the trail 
unfolding in front of me.  I couldn't see anything that wasn't right in 
front of me.  Clouds and snow and sleet...  No big views, no big picture...

To be sure there were many times when I was "in" the moment and totally 
involved in the world.  Fleeting images race by still- the mother bear 
and her cub racing away and the cub climbing a tree at 20 mph, a big old 
black bear grubbing 20' from me, oblivious to me for five minutes until 
I harrumphed and he leapt downhill and crashed away into the forest.  
Countless north cascades sneak previews of the vistas I knew were 
there.  Turning to see my snowshoes lying by the side of the trail a 
couple miles south of Harts Pass after having met my first hikers in 
days who said there was no snow to speak of where snowshoes would be 
needed.  Hiking in shorts (I don't carry long pants) in the 30 mph wind 
driven snow, blind to anything but the trail just in front of me - and 
exulting I was warm and competent and this what it was all about!!! 

But the trip almost from the beginning was marked by a 
self-consciousness that kept me out of the experiential moment.  I was 
having a very difficult time being alone.  Because I'd quit my job, left 
my home, and at the last minute accepted an offer to start another 
teaching job when I felt like it, I'd already lost the "busyness" of day 
to day life.  BAM!  There I was, alone.  Unsettled with moving out of 
home, comfortable knowing I had a job I could start when I wanted.  Alone...

Normally, I welcome being alone.  I live alone.  I have a mild case of 
social anxiety that when younger, I would deal with by drinking.  Now 
there are no veils to hide behind.  There is only the beloved routines 
of the trail. 

When I hiked with a friend for five days between Stevens and Snoqualmie 
Pass I felt much more a rhythm of being on the trail.  She and I work 
well together, and my being out of shape and slow didn't bother her.  
When she left I spent two nights at Snoqualmie Pass in the Best Western, 
watching it rain.  Even watching television couldn't murder the 
hyper-awareness. 

I danced inside my watching, trying to let go whatever it was that 
dogged me.  Hiking was now wet and a dull ache started to merge with 
being-aware.  This was the kind of mental or emotional pain - I'm not 
sure which - that had me turn over quickly when I awoke in the middle of 
the night.  I jerked and cringed at times as I hiked.  As I got in shape 
and the physical pain began to lessen, the other began to take its 
place.  Here was my burden, my task, the challenge that met would take 
me to the next level of my own consciousness in living...  Such was the 
myth... 

A friend argues each of us has a personal myth that sustains us through 
the banal routines and self-perceived mediocrity that can emerge as we 
work for others and bury ourselves in daily routines.  Mine is that I 
hike alone and meet all the emotional/mental challenges with an heroic 
attitude that welcomes joyously what comes in every moment that I am on 
the trail.  This involves knowing I am going to spend 90% of the hike in 
a forest, metaphorical of course, where the moment and its aches and 
pains keeps the focus small. 

The first weeks are spent in a shell of physical pain, where walking 
involves having a center of pain move from ankle to knee to hip to 
sciatic nerve, to calf muscle, to groin, to ankle, on and on and on...  
For me, this is the dull beast part of a long hike.  I simply put one 
foot in front of the other, one after the other, in order to arrive at 
camp and lie down.  However, there are always moments of wonderful 
release and exultation that give credence to the myth.  As I get in 
shape, week 2, week 3, week 4, and finally, on this trip, week 5, the 
focus shifts from the intensity of shifting pain, to shifting pain with 
less intensity, to moments where there is no physical pain.  Exultation 
actually has more and more time during the day.  But the emotional downs 
seem to balance exultation and revelation.  Up to the heights of "I'm in 
the wilderness and what more could anyone ask" to the downs of "I'm 
hiking in the wilderness/forest and all I see is what's in front of me.  
I open to exultation, when they occur...

These moments, when they occur, form the nucleus of revelation.  To get 
up from a break and find that I'm moving with aplomb and grace down the 
trail, each step part of a larger rhythm that spirals into poignant 
recognition that I'm walking without physical or emotional pain - 
self-awareness freed from simply putting one foot in front of the 
other.  And when the moments become periods of time, 3 mph surges up and 
down the trail, passing blocks of miles of which I have no memory - the 
difference is marked. 

The myth is that small moments become larger continua - a pulsing 
consciousness of moving across the land along the trail, the coping 
becoming triumph and exultation.  I remember Ryan - GodMan - pulling 
into Cascade Locks after a 38 mile day.  He was driven by longing for 
his girlfriend - no stopping - get to town and stay in the high...

To find the myth at the threshold, being-in-shape and injury free and 
able to walk 3 mph regardless whether the trail goes up or down - this 
is what all the planning and dreaming and spent energy is all about.  
It's right here and now!!!

When I passed Mt. Hood I found myself able to hike 20 miles by three in 
the afternoon.  I'd still be tired, my 53 year old body still needing 
almost constant downtime to recuperate for the next day's hike.  I was 
either hiking or lying down.  What was different now from a month ago is 
that I'd hiked 20 miles rather than 10.  That and the lessening of acute 
intensity of pain, was the only difference.   In the first week out of 
Manning I lay down 16 hours a day.  In the fifth week I lay down 14 
hours a day.  Not much difference in time, but huge in terms of one foot 
in front of the other. 

I remember stopping at Ollalie Lake and picking up my mailed food drop.  
I purchased two beers and sat on the porch and slammed those suckers 
down.  There was something different now, 400 miles later.  There was a 
new plateau calling to me, one that came from the myth as well as being 
in better shape. 

However, there was a continuum I didn't want to face occurring.  
Physical pain was morphing into emotional pain.  As my body got used to 
life on the trail, my self-awareness became increasing attuned and 
present.  The void, the emptiness that I felt at seven years old 
replaced the physical pain and the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other slowly 
moved into emotional pain that's been present as long as I can 
remember.  This is where the myth meets reality.  Could I find 
exultation routinely and move beyond the sense of emptiness and despair 
that formed my life's emotional background? 

The answer for me was no.  As physical pain and connection to the busy 
world of modern society receded, the void gave itself to me.  I had to 
face the fact that I was no better able to fill the void at 53 years old 
than I was at 19 when I headed out on my first section hike - the JMT, 
with 15 pounds of granola and 17 Mountain House dinners.  Being alone as 
a challenge, so rare and so hard won, simply was too much for me.  My 
myth, exulting alone at the top of a ridge, and carrying this into the 
forest, was illuminated for what it was, a hope or dream, a challenge, 
or possibility.  But not this year...

I'd met some of the SOBOs and spent interesting conversations with 
Donkey and Gizmo and GodMan - deep conversations, the kind that form 
bonds.  I could have sped up and hung with them and Burn and others 
should I have wanted to.  But from the first week I knew I wasn't going 
to Mexico, and had decided to get off the trail at Santiam Pass.  Some 
family things emerged that I could have ignored, but were important 
enough I didn't want to, so I had a surface reason to quit.  (Defined 
as: released from obligation, charge or penalty; especially FREE)

I think I am simply uncomfortable being alone on the trail.  The 
experience for me is akin to being locked up in a room with the light 
on.  No matter how much I move and go, go, go, the walls are still there 
and the light is on.  Hyper-awareness.  When physical pain lessens, 
emotional pain strengthens, and I am ill-equipped to imaginatively 
create a world in which my foreground is exultation. 

I once spent 30 days with a fiance on the trail (yes there has been more 
than one!), and none of this came up.  Overall, that was my most 
enjoyable long section hike.  When I leave this job and take another 
year off, I will find a woman partner to hike with.  Hopefully it would 
be someone I already know well enough to believe we can make it on the 
CDT for the five or so months it would take. 

For me quitting isn't physical.  I haven't had a blister in years.  I 
routinely fall off one inch rocks on the trail because of countless 
times I've sprained my ankles, playing basketball when younger, playing 
tennis harder than I should, and hiking with too heavy a pack until ten 
years ago.  I bruise and scrape my hands and legs and arms as I roll.  
The ankle aches for a time, and then the throbbing recedes.  Quitting in 
the sense above - released from an obligation I set for myself - is 
about some spiritual and/or emotional void and an inability or lack of 
tools to fill it. 

I feel no shame in talking of this.  It isn't a reflection of an 
inferior character or lack of will that I write, but an ineffable part 
of being human that at 54, still stumps me. 

In 1994 when hiking from Tahoe to Tuolomne, I met a fellow in Grace 
Meadow who'd started at Campo on June 1 or so.  He was averaging 35 
miles a day and was about to catch that year's wave.  He'd stumbled on 
Ray Jardine's first book about ultralight hiking and had adopted his 
style hook, line and sinker.  There was a peacefulness about him I found 
immensely attractive, and he did me the honor of stopping for an hour to 
talk.  While I could "feel" his calm being-in-the-world, I couldn't 
myself grok it.  (Grok:  Etymology: coined by Robert A. Heinlein died 
1988 American author *:* to understand profoundly and intuitively)

He left me with a sense of a different kind of life that I admire, but 
don't think will ever find for myself.  I'm crazy imaginative and that 
won't stop, or hasn't yet.  Perhaps when imagination finds itself 
unfettered by the dulling routines of modern life, for some of us, the 
lack of focus and direction morphs into sweet suffering.  I don't know.  
I can still only guess...

Jeffrey Olson (Jeff, just Jeff)