[pct-l] One story of the decision to go hiking...

[Jeffrey Olson]

Here's a story from six years ago...  Maybe the churlish animosities
will abate...

My girlfriend and I had moved in together in November 1991 and rented
house in Duvall, WA that within a year was to be torn down for a
subdivision "in the forest." She had four kids that lived with their
dad. She had her first kid at 20 and the twins at 24. She was the oldest
of four kids. Her mom was 16 when she was born, and 21 when the fourth
was born.

Jane never had a childhood or adolescence. She took care of kids - that
was her job.

She was 32 and I was 39. I'd found out the previous week I had been
admitted to the MSW program at the University of Washington. We were
sitting in a Mexican restaurant in town on March 1, 199, waiting for
dinner to appear. I'm a philosopher at heart so questions of meaning and
purpose and the future were always "UP!" Janey made the comment we
didn't have a "couple project."

This concept was new to me. I thought being a couple was a project.
Apparently there is more involved. Not only do you work on the
relationship - constantly, but you have something you do together as a
couple that involves experiencing something that is the two of yours,
and no one else's.

I'd thought I was doing good in the "being-in-a couple" part and had the
rat in a well-lit room feeling - I can't escape! Scurry, scurry scurry...

I'd done a long hike on the Tahoe Yosemite Trail back in the 70s, and
that had stuck in my history like a beacon without enough amperage. I
had always wanted more.

I asked if she had a pen - she has a purse so she has the world at her
fingertips - and I began figuring out the spring and summer on a napkin.
She asked what I was doing and I asked her to wait a minute. I had to
start grad school on the first of October. If we started hiking on June
1 we could hike from Lassen to Whitney - 750 miles - in 75 days, enough
time to get back to reality and rent an apartment in time for me to
start school and her to find a job. (Her school time would come later.) '

Our food arrived and she asked me questions about backpacking. She'd
never done it before. She'd not done much day hiking. She looked at the
napkin and asked about details - what to do with our meager possessions,
her dad who was dying of colon cancer, etc. By the end of the meal we
were both heady and excited and that much more in love. We had a "couple
project" - a hike from Lassen to Whitney.

We spent the next three months preparing for the trip - a story in and
of itself. On June 7 we left Hat Creek heading south, her pack weighing
56 pounds, mine 72...

Jeffrey Olson Martin, SD
June 2008