[pct-l] Most Common Causes of Thru-Dropout

[Jeffrey Olson]

I'd set out from I-5 heading north in June 1994.  I was 42 years old.  My ex-fiancee - really good friend - and I had planned to hike Oregon and Washington.  We'd spent 30 days hiking from Lassen to South Tahoe the previous summer.  I blew out an ACL to end our hike.  She'd never hiked before and I taught her everything I know.  We were truly hiking partners.

We spent a couple months planning the 1994 hike and a week before we were to leave she was offered a job she decided she couldn't turn down.

There was too much momentum.  A part of me wanted to ditch the hike and hang out with family that summer.  I was going into a PhD program at the Univ. of WAshington in the fall and this was "probably" the last time I'd have this kind of time.  (Little did I know the power of student loans to buy free time!)

I walked for 10 days.  It was hot and dry and really quiet.  The part of me that didn't want to be hiking, that wanted to drink beer with family and friends, go to movies and the beach, to go to a new brewpub, to party and revel in Mom's and Sister's cooking, to sleep late and sit on Kristina's grave stone and talk to her while feeling deeply - this part of me got stronger and stronger.

I was in central Oregon - in the "Oregon Desert" where pines are 30' tall and the trail is sand.  It was late morning and I'd gotten up and started hiking without eating.  I was thirsty.  I was hungry.  It was clear and hot, and the hiking took some effort - sand.

All of a sudden, literally all of a sudden, I began to cry.  I don't mean I walked and sniffled.  I started to BAWL!!!

"I'm not having any fun.  I want to go home.  I want my Mom.  I'm so sick of hiking."  I spoke all this out loud as I walked down the trail, blubbering.  I took great, gasping breaths and just moaned them out, these short sentences.  I put one foot in front of the other, and my face would crinkle up - I could feel it crinkling - and I'd just let out a huge moan of self-pity and pain.  I had so, so much pain all stored up.  I was so lonely and alone, so filled with pain and longing and missing Jane and my family and so alone and lonely.

2% of me watched the trail ahead.  I didn't want to walk up to another hiker bawling, blubbering, snuffling, snorting, blowing snot and sighing big time.  The other 98% just let loose and I cried and cried and cried.  I'm an ugly bawler.  I've seen my face when I cry.  It's scary.  I didn't care.  I could feel my pain just leaving through my sobs and shudders. AFter awhile I grabbed my pain and like a well-thrown baseball, would let loose with a giant moaning cry and send it bouncing through the scrubby pines.

I was riding the wave.  I realized I was expressing emotions I'd been keeping bottled up since Jane said she would rather take the new job than hike with me.  The part of me that was conscious made sure that when I sniffed and blew snot and walked, I'd open to the next wave of pain ready to course through me, like my feelings riding a washboard.  I knew I needed this, but had no idea where it would end.  I just opened up to the next wave of pain and gave vent to it in tears and moans and bodily flexes as I walked.

I'm a "guy" or GUY.  Sure I have a MSW and am "sensitive."  But I'm a guy.  I'd never, ever let loose like I was letting loose as I walked down the trail.  All this "rational" stuff was coursing through me as I blubbered and snorted and moaned.  I opened to and acknowledged that I hurt intensely.

I walked down the trail.  I walked and emoted.  I walked.

I emoted for 10 minutes or so before I started taking great deep breaths - gulps - of air.  With each gulp of air between blubbers, I felt the exhale shudder through my body and there I was, walking...

Where I was a walking body expressing deep, deep pain for 10 minutes, I discovered myself walking and sniffling and finding myself in the walking.  One foot in front of the other.

There was a period of a minute or so where I was caught in my shuddering breaths - recovering I guess.  Something happened in this minute or so.  I put one foot in front of the other - flat trail to support my emotional excesses!!!!

One foot in front of the other.  The platform.  I found myself in my body.  Each step was accompanied by a swing of the hip, a centering of my core through my walking.  It was like waking up.  I'd been walking and crying and now I was walking and something new was appearing.  I was in balance.  I'd vented all my pain and just wrung myself out.  I was in the aftermath, the gloaming - maybe...

I was walking and could hardly feel each step.  I was so big and centered and alive.  I was dancing down the trail.  My feet touched the trail where only minutes before they'd been trudging, heavy.  I was so damn high I couldn't believe it.

This lasted for 10 minutes or so before I sank back into intense depression.  I was on a new platform of self-understanding.  I was going to go up and down and up and down and this is how it is.  I didn't need to leave the trail because I was feeling low and depressed and everything was a trial.  All I had to do was walk through it - one foot in front of the other - and I'd be high again.

I hiked for another 25 days before deciding to leave the trail.  The five days I hiked after making that decision added another solid sense of center to my walking through my ups and down.  I was ready to leave, and wasn't being driven from the trail because I hurt too much.

Or so I told myself.  I've set out on other trips by myself and left the trail because the emotions got too intense.  The older I get doesn't matter.  I have to "be here now" as Baba Ram Dass laid out.  Age and accumulated wisdom doesn't mean I begin hiking where I left off.  I have to go through it all again, and again, and again...

Sigh...

Jeffrey Olson
Martin, SD