a seemingly functional adult woman's guide to coping with heartbreak...

I am watching a documentary on the life of Amy Winehouse and she is speaking about writing “Back to Black” – which is a crushing song really - and she talks about writing the song, saying, "You have to remember how you felt, you have to remember what the weather was like, you have to remember what his neck smelled like.” I freeze. My stomach clinches. My eyebrows gather and my throat constricts. An actual pain radiates through my chest and I spend the next five minutes mourning the loss of some unidentifiable part of me. It’s like a limb is missing or an organ that I took for granted while it did its job, and now there is space left by its absence and though I don’t miss the function it provided as much because I can compensate in some way…the space it left turns dark and fills with smoke and every now and then that smoke floats through my body, washing over me and making every inch of me ache…and then it retreats to the confines of it’s original form…and it waits.

My life lately has been a collection of moments rather than an actual story. Each moment seems completely it’s own. I seem to be a different person in each and I can’t find the consistent “me.” I can’t weave my way through the moments untouched and unaffected. One minute I am my silly self, laughing at work with a colleague; the next I am staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, not seeing anything at all, replaying a moment that some word or smell or noise brought back to me. I am not fully Me in either moment. I am not fully Me in any moment, but I am closer…I get closer to Me with each passing hour. Right now I am only Me in the quiet moments between breaths. I watch the other moments and all the people who I know are my friends and loved ones as though they are in a movie. I might reach out and touch them, I might smile with them or laugh with them…but Me is deep inside sitting on the sideline watching it all and trying to step in but not yet able to really be there.

Drama, right? It’s a little too heavy when I write this way. It’s all completely real – but my suffering is so small in this world. I am a girl, a woman I guess though I have never really seen it that way, who broke her heart. Nothing more and it’s a pretty common ailment. I didn’t have my heart broken…I broke it myself the way you break an arm or leg. No one walked up and broke your leg, a careless moment, an unexpected twist…you weren’t guarded and you were vulnerable and the bone couldn’t take the pressure all on it’s own. No one broke my heart. I broke it myself.

But I keep breathing and that simple little act is brave in some small way. First I was just exhaling and allowing my inhales to come out of some involuntary muscle contraction occurring somewhere inside my body. Over time, I have taken back the inhale too. The tiny muscles in my eyelids joined in and took control over the opening and closing and reopening of my eyes and my brain started to note inputs again, replacing the passive glaze that had effectively deceived the people around me into thinking I was there while I wasn’t. I have been taking back the responsibility to live, bit by bit.

So, this moment is not about the person I should have been or the person I will be – it’s about where I am today. It’s about the wild swing of each moment and the strength of the emotions behind each. We are all so lucky to be given the chance to feel so strongly. We each get to laugh one moment, cry the next and feel both of those so fully. Who we are comes from finding our way between moments and knowing that we can always, at our most challenging moment, rely on our bodies to just take over – making the inhale and exhale happen, opening and closing the eyes while we take a mini-vacation and feel nothing.

I think a lot about peace. Peace does not mean you feel you have always been your best self or have always done the right thing. Peace is accepting that those things are in the past and all you can really do is be IN THIS VERY MOMENT. It’s not contentment…because contentment implies you are happy with where you are. Peace simply means you accept the temperature of the room, the posture you are sitting in, the amount of light hitting your eyes, the sounds your ears are registering, the weight of gravity pulling the atmosphere into your every inch…you aren’t happy about it all, you aren’t bothered by any of it, you just ARE. I practice tiny moments of peacefulness and am grateful to feel nothing at all.

the end of a love story?

It turns out, I am not an “easy” person to love.

 

This is not some self-deprecating statement I make just to invite someone into encouraging me… “no, you?? You’re great. Really.” And in fact, just ask anyone I have been in a relationship with – oh they will tell you. Someone very dear to me recently said, “you are very passionate…in the moment. You feel so much…in the moment. But then the moment passes and it’s hard to be me when my moment passes.” It’s pretty accurate. And in some ways, thank God for that. I wouldn’t trade the fact that when I feel something, I really, really feel it and it feels like I will feel it forever. I mean, I wouldn’t want to let go of that energy – but I would like to settle in next to someone for the next 50 years…and I don’t know how that will work if I keep on being me. I guess what I am saying is – the love story that I wrote so much about and the man I made out to be my knight, well both may have been more in my mind than in reality. Writing about your life is a funny thing because in wanting to make someone else feel what I felt, it seems I made myself feel it all the more. Putting someone in a knight’s armor and watching as they save you doesn’t mean they will love you forever…it means you found a good guy and the armor fit…and well, you needed saving.

 

So, life got real after the trail and I used my special powers to turn something pretty good into something so exhausting that even the best guy couldn’t find the energy.

 

The week I came off the trail, I transformed from a peaceful, outdoorsy hippie to a tortured, panicked basket case. I felt like I failed and I couldn’t figure out if I left the trail for my own reasons or just to be with this man. I couldn’t really know if it was a sign of strength – I didn’t have to keep going just because I had momentum or a sign of weakness – the seat beside this man in his truck was so cozy. I spent the weak uncomfortable in my own skin. I looked at the weather everyday. I checked in with shuttle drivers to see if they were available SHOULD I decide to go back out. I readied my pet-sitters and child-carers. I repacked my gear and studied maps. I could not settle in and it didn’t help that I was on sabbatical so I didn’t have work to distract me. I thought I was having a week-long panic attack. Finally, I made the decision to go back out. I had a six-day course planned of extremely aggressive miles to get me to Damascus, Virginia. I would have to hike an average of 30 miles a day with zero rest. I was sick about going and sick about not going. I was fucked either way.

As I get older I am beginning to appreciate that I am never going to figure it out. The states of getting ready to make a decision, making a decision, dealing with the consequences of a decision...those are always ongoing. 

In the words of Buddist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, "There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. There is no way to peace, peace is the way. There is no way to enlightenment, enlightenment is the way." 

I guess that applies to love too...there is no way to love, love is the way.

strange noises in the woods

It took hours but we eventually arrived at a compromise. I was going to see if I could find us a ride to his truck, parked outside of town about 15 winding mountain miles away. Once there, we would hike onto the trail for a couple of miles and camp somewhere. We would see how his feet were the next day…and we would see how I felt about continuing this journey. Tony is very practical and would not consider paying someone to take us to his truck when we had just paid someone to bring him from it. His pride or practicality (or general disdain for parting ways with money) made it impossible for him to consider, so I set about the task of finding us a ride. He would agree to going to the truck but with one condition…I could pay nothing for it. 

I asked around and it didn’t take long to realize that few were willing to drive an hour out of their way and those who were couldn’t until much later in the day. I made my way back to the Outdoor Outfitters where we had originally arranged Tony’s shuttle into town yesterday. The same old man was working the desk. He weighed roughly 400 pounds and looked like he was very familiar with a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whisky. He had charged Tony $50 the day before to bring him into town. Shuttling hikers around is a real job in these mountain towns. A shuttle to/from the Atlanta airport will cost you $400 and in this depressed part of the country where mines and railroads used to allow citizens to flourish, now the few jobs left were in service of the AT Hikers…it was like the poor feeding the poor. I marched in and straight up to Bob. I was just going to level with him. “I need you to drive us to his truck. I can’t let him walk on those feet. BUT…I need you to tell him you are doing this for free.” He looked at me sideways. “I am going to say you were going that way anyway and that you wouldn’t accept any money,” I told him as I slid the $50 across the counter. He wrapped his head around it for a minute…he wasn’t going to have to lie, just go along with my lie. He didn’t deliberate long – he grabbed his keys and we headed out to his van. 

In less than a minute we were pulling up in front of the picnic tables where I left Tony. “Hop in,” I said as I slid the vans door open. “Bob is heading this way anyway and agreed to take us – no charge.” Bob turned away sheepishly. Tony does NOT look like someone you want to lie to. Tony climbed in next to me. I rested my head on his shoulder and braced myself as we headed over the snaking mountain pass toward his parking spot. I struggle with motion sickness, so I wrapped my arms around Tony and snuggled into his chest and tried to doze off. Sleeping or driving are the only ways I know to avoid getting sick especially in the back of a smelly van driven by a man who has gone this way too many times to count. The van had been "customized" for the transport of hikers…and by that, I mean the middle seats had been torn out leaving an open space in the center of the van for packs and gear. It smelled like cigarettes and dirty bodies, ours adding to the mix. Tony made small talk with the man driving us. He had come out to Hot Springs to live a slow life. He ran the small outdoor store and the shuttle service and made a good enough living doing it. It wasn’t hard to envision how his day would end – sitting in a recliner in front of a TV, mindlessly watching The History Channel…a bottle of Old Crow beside him. He would stay up too late, eat too much junk, go to bed feeling like shit and wake up to do it all over again tomorrow. I say this with no judgment because this might just be the life he always wanted. I say it only to give you a visual. 

Hot Springs, NC

We pulled up to Tony’s truck and hopped out - our legs shaky beneath us. After a quick deposit of our excess items into Tony’s truck, he hiked back in to meet up with the trail. This was the first time I had ever jumped ahead…a 20 mile gap, a day of hiking, lay untouched by my feet between Hot Springs and here. I was already “off” the trail. I was already failing. We hiked in a couple of miles, Tony limping along as best he could, cringing every time the trail went up or down as it caused his feet to move in his shoes. I was in my own little personal hell behind him. My experience with the Diva Cup and its horrors had left me in a bad spot. My stomach was a mess – either from my period or the cup or the dirty water I had used to clean the cup…or the dirty water in general or the physical exertion of the past week. There were a lot of likely causes but the effect was that my stomach was…it was not good. I needed to go. Really go. So, next topic to explore, how does one do “that” along the trail while maintaining any level of attractiveness to their partner? Now, I have been married before. I’ve had children. But I believe there is some level of privacy necessary to continue to look at your partner as anything other than your assigned bunkmate. Rules I try live by with regard to what I owe my partner: Stay in shape. Put dimmers on every light switch. Wear mascara at all (most) times. And do your “business” with the door closed. We all KNOW what goes on and we all KNOW everyone does it, but seeing it is another thing altogether and it literally NEVER needs to happen. Now someone will read this and will be in one of those relationships where everything is open and shared and if that works for you and you can still feel sexy – I love it. Good for you. For me, it’s just best I go it alone when it comes to bathroom time (side note: I am actually fine to pee anywhere and in front of anyone. Those who know me know I will pee anywhere – side of the highway, Lowes parking lot, potted plant at a crowded mall, [joking. Never at the mall. Never.] mostly because I have to pee approximately every 7-10 minutes). So, this all leaves me with a rumbling stomach and an innocent boyfriend who doesn’t deserve what happens next.

(NOTE: Another graphic detail warning) I drifted back on the trail, allowing Tony to get ahead of me. My stomach was at level 9 on a 10 point scale and I didn’t have much time. Once he was out of sight ahead of me, I threw down my poles, ripped off my pack and squatted right there on the edge of the trail beside a tree. My booty hung out over the ledge and I hung onto the tree while my stomach fell down the side of the mountain. Noises escaped my body that there was no masking. Panic set in…could he hear me? Oh God, of course he could – we were in a silent forest. Maybe he would think it was a wounded animal? Maybe it wasn’t as loud as I thought. I hoped it wasn’t. What could I do? I was shamed and relieved all at once. 

I finished up and cleaned up, reloaded my pack, patted down my clothing, ran my fingers through my hair and grabbed my poles, trying to look as dignified as I could. I marched forward on the trail, feeling better and telling myself that he heard nothing when suddenly the trail disappeared ahead of me. I looked down to see a switchback, meaning the trail literally looped back on itself in a zig-zag, commonly used to weave you up or down a hill so the terrain is not so steep. My mind literally exploded when this realization set in…Tony had not disappeared ahead on the trail, he had walked under me, below me, below my ass hanging off the side, below my stomach falling out, below the sounds and the smell and…OH MY GOD. I slowed. I stopped. I stood there, suddenly never wanting to catch up to him. Never wanting to be face to face with him ever again. Thinking for a brief moment, the ONLY solution was to turn and run and change my name and move to Mexico. I stood there biting my lip, the smell I had left above me wafting through the mountain air. Seriously? I rolled my eyes at the Universe…at the trail and her bullshit and her way of winning, always winning. Her way of making me pay for skipping 20 of her stupid miles. I rolled my eyes and accepted my fate. I picked up the pace again and Tony was soon in view. As I came up behind him, he turned and gave me a little smile. He knew. He knew and I knew. We walked in silence for a bit…a silence broken by these two words, “so, switchback.” The laughing began and soon tears were streaming down both our cheeks. Over the course of the next hour or so, I had several more “moments” and now it was ok to just say, “Hey, I am going to stop again for a sec.” I didn’t need to explain further and he dutifully marched ahead.

I was returning to normal by the time we found a spot to camp for the night. It wasn’t an ideal spot…certainly not the perfection we had the night before…but it was flat and there was space for a campfire and plenty of firewood. Tony’s blisters were too bad to go further and there was a stream to bathe in nearby. We made camp and took our stream showers. Tony cut more firewood and made a great (albeit unnecessary because it was warm) fire.

We made dinner and then just lay in the tent, looking up at the night sky. It was so beautiful. So perfect. Some decisions needed to be made. Tony was heading back in the morning. Was I going to continue on or head home? Was I going to go back into Hot Springs to hike that missing 20 miles or just start from here? Could I keep going? Could I watch him drive off and know I had weeks alone ahead of me? 

When we asked the shuttle driver why most people left the trail…assuming illness or injury…he answered with “boredom.” I understood that so deeply. I was bored of myself. Tired of my inner dialogs. I was lonely and depressed. I was missing home. Missing my girls. Missing this man. And on top of all that, I had lost my north star…I had no idea why I was out here. As we lay there looking at the sky, holding onto each other, Tony said, “I could never ask you to come home,” and I responded with, “I need to be asked.” Our eyes grew heavy and I rolled toward him – my hand on his face. Eye contact has always been his gift and you feel as though he can see right inside your head, to the thoughts and insecurities and secrets you hide there. I wanted to go home. 

It wasn’t an easy decision or even a decision at all, really. When dawn broke, I packed up and when we reached his truck, I simply got in instead of walking onward. I looked out the window as we drove. I cried a little. Then I thought about my girls and if we made it home quickly, I would get to spend the rest of the day with them before they left with their dad for vacation (they had spent the previous week with my mom in Florida on vacation, in case you are wondering). My tears dried up. I didn’t think about failing…not at this moment, though I would think about it a lot in the weeks to come. I softened toward myself and allowed myself some peace. I let my body relax into the comfort of the truck seats. I let my eyes sag and my shoulders slump. I was comfortable and that didn’t make me weak. I was needy and that didn’t make Tony pull away. 

What if there was a new world for me where I could need people and not fear their rejection…what if I could even embrace the possibility of getting hurt because without it, you never really put your whole self into anything. There is always risk and shouldn’t we welcome that? Instead of “be careful, you might get hurt” I say, “go get hurt” because I think I would rather die feeling than live not feeling. I think I want all the strongest feelings, not the watered-down, “safe” feelings. I think that’s the brave way to live and I hope I can live THAT life on more of the days ahead. It’s not going to happen overnight, but I am going to ask myself at every decision point…“What is the brave choice?” and I realize I won’t always choose it but I will always acknowledge it. This day, the brave choice for me was actually not continuing on the path I was on…it was climbing into an F150.

dating on the AT :)

The moment I woke up I noticed the beautiful absence of one thing…the sound of rain. It was dry and the birds were singing. The day ahead would take me out of the Smokies and toward Hot Springs and the man I love. I hesitated writing that line…should I call him the love of my life? So cheesy. My boyfriend? It’s not a lofty enough title for this man. My savior is so biblical and my hero is so overplayed. He is simply the one man who makes everything else make sense. I am not someone people easily get on with…I have been called “difficult” by my kindest friends. I don’t think I am disagreeable on the surface…if we met you might find me completely tolerable. Most likely you wouldn’t even notice me. But get to know me and you might find I think too much, talk too little and am too quick to leave the past in the past and move through the world quickly and alone.

My temperament has translated into a lifetime of disappointing relationships with men. I have taught myself, over time, not to be needy or helpless. I am outwardly too capable and overly confident when I have no right to be. I let the men in my life “off the hook” and then I shake my head disapprovingly when they take the easy option…instantly loving them less for being so weak. I push everyone away and then, if you keep at it, I suck you in and am loyal to you for a lifetime. Needless to say, I have very few good friends…but those I have I am utterly devoted to. Men however, men fail to inspire me. Or did, until 16 years ago when I met the man I love now. It’s been a twisted road and we’ve spent the past 15 years apart until we reunited about a year ago, just after my separation. When we first met we were young and our lives were so simple. Now, they could not be more complicated…kids, exes, homes, careers and individual plans all conspire to make sure adult dating is the hardest thing you will ever do…at a point in your life when you have the least motivation to compromise. It is remarkable that it ever works out and I am convinced it only does due to sheer willpower of those involved. A 20 minute drive is enough to call it quits. “You’re a night person, I am a morning person,” – deal breaker. Things you would have laughed about in your 20s and 30s become intolerable in your 40s. “I love ‘Game of Thrones’ but he prefers ‘Vikings’, isn’t that cute??” No...deal breaker. 

So the fact that today, this sweet man was going to be hiking something between 15-25 miles to meet me on the Appalachian Trail…which involved buying the equipment, driving 4 hours, sleeping in his car, catching a shuttle to the trail…oh and THEN hiking 12 hours…was in no way the “easy way out.” He met my bullshit head-on and I have to tell you, I have loved him like I never knew possible. 

I packed up my stuff and headed off toward Tony. I knew very little about our rendezvous since we were making arrangements via my GPS unit. I think I have bitched about this before, but texting on my GPS unit is like testing the text option on the original Motorola StarTac. You know a bunch of guys were sitting around sending simple 3 word messages and saying, “no way anyone will EVER do this…not when they could just pick up the phone and say it.” 

I passed the Northern boarder of the Smokies before noon. There was nothing to distinguish the milestone in the hike. There was no big sign acknowledging what you had just endured to get here. There was simply a dirt road and a box to sign in/out of the park. I opened the metal box and wrote my name with the pencil provided. I paused only for a moment to take a photo on the large rocks that created the border. 

As I crossed the dirt road and began to climb the next mountain out of the park, the temperature grew noticeably warmer. It was strange, the microclimate of the Smokies. I had been cold for the past week and now sweat poured off me and the sun beat down. I had not even bothered to look at the terrain today, I didn’t seem to matter. I walked as fast as I could and I ran when I could muster the energy. I passed through pastures and grassy balds…the landscape was beautiful and the weather was perfect. I stopped again at the top of a grassy bald known as Max Patch. It was stunning. 360 degree views from the top of the world. I was rushing to meet Tony but couldn’t help snapping some pictures. I passed an old man making his way up the grassy climb and when he reached the top I offered to take his photo and send it to him. I asked him for his email address and repeated it to myself for the next hour as I hiked…then forgot it.

If you know this man...please send me his email address

I knew that I would not see Tony before I had at least covered 15-20 miles of the day. We had no way to communicate with each other. He wasn’t carrying a tracker and his phone would have little coverage as he hiked out of Hot Springs. I began looking for him after about 15 miles. I picked up my pace and hiked on toward 20 miles and past the point where I thought we would probably intersect, a shelter called Walnut Mountain. There was a few people hanging out at the shelter and I stopped to ask if they had seen anyone. They hadn’t. I told them if they did, to send him back toward Hot Springs and I continued on. I was starting to worry…this was actually a pretty ridiculous plan. There were a million ways we could miss each other, from simply stopping for a restroom break to getting off the trail. I was accustomed to the trail and following its blazes. Tony was not. I came around ever bend more nervous than the last. This plan had gone terribly wrong. I saw someone walking toward me on the trail. I hurried to him and before I could speak he asked, “Are you supposed to meet someone out here?” “Yes!” I said, “have you seen him?” “Yeah, a couple miles up on the trail. He was sitting at a campsite. I think he was turning around…thought he had missed you.”

WHAT?! No. I thanked him and literally took off running. Do you know what’s not cool? Running with a 50 pound pack on your back when your knees are swollen and every muscle in your body hurts. Can you even imagine what that looks like? I didn’t care. The thought of not getting to see him was enough to evoke sheer panic. I covered the next couple of miles in record time and yet, nothing. I passed a campsite that was likely where he had been sitting. There was no sign. I couldn’t keep the pace up long. I had covered 23 miles at this point and was running on fumes. Then my GPS pinged. I quickly pulled it off my back and read the message. It was Tony and he was heading back toward Hot Springs. Several messages from him came all at once. He had turned around and was looking for a spot where his phone would connect. It’s crazy how something so simple…walking on a North/South trail, one person coming from North, the other from South, can get so complicated when both are alone and unable to communicate. Literally anything could happen. One of you could twist an ankle and be moving slowly. One might stop at a shelter to see if the other had stopped there, only to be passed by the other in that very moment. One might have gotten a late start…or an early start. And neither of you have anyone else to consider the possibilities with…it’s maddening. 

I slowed back to my normal hiking pace, resigned to the fact that I could do literally nothing. As I came up a long, easy incline I looked up to see someone standing in the trail…filming with a GoPro. I was so excited to see him that I didn’t even care that he was filming me after a week without soap. I ran(ish) toward him and wrapped up in his arms. I can still see his smiling face in mind and I tear up thinking about it. We climbed up on some large boulders at the side of the trail and began sharing all our stories. Tony, it turns out, had gotten an early start and was a very fast hiker. He had gotten a lot further than either of us anticipated and then started to second-guess himself, assuming he had somehow missed me. At this point, he had covered nearly 20 miles. Blisters were forming on the bottoms and heels of his feet. His pack outweighed mine by 10 pounds at least. In addition to carrying our big tent and his own bag, sleeping pad and food for both of us…he was also carrying: 

-new hiking shoes for me – knowing mine had been soaked for the past week and were in pretty bad shape to begin with he had bought me new ones and hiked them out onto the trail

-fresh, DRY clothing for me

-bananas that I had been craving

-firewood to start a fire – I am serious, he thought this through and realized the wood in the area would be too wet to burn. He was carrying firewood in his pack. 

The guy even had laundry detergent in a little pill bottle, thinking I might want to wash my clothing out in a creek. There are no words for what sort of person does this for someone else. I guess there are, but they seem to escape me because everything I write seems underwhelming. It was the most loved I have ever felt and then on top of that, he seemed genuinely excited to have done it.

After a bit of catching up and repacking – we headed back (doubling back on the hike he had already done for the day) the six or so miles to Deer Park Shelter where we planned to camp for the night. I knew right away his feet were literally killing him, though he said nothing and continued to hike far faster than my comfort level. I hustled to keep up, especially on the uphill portions of the trail. Tony also has a past of competitive cycling and I flashed back to days 16 years prior when we would be riding with a large group of cyclists…he at the front pushing the pace, me dangling off the back cursing him. It didn’t matter, I was happy and I needed the push or I would have crawled into camp. Tony and I had talked about trying, at some point in the future, to hike the trail fast – averaging 30+ miles per day. It was clear to me that he was capable of that and I wondered if I could manage. I had lost 10 pounds in the week I had been on the trail. It was impossible to eat enough and I was always either hungry or eating. My goal had been to average 20 miles a day and I was well above that – most days were 22-26 and 28 was my longest so far. I hiked behind him contemplating what 30 miles a day behind this man might feel like and the remaining few miles went by quickly.

We arrived to the shelter area and Tony pulled his shoes off. His feet were destroyed. We settled on a campsite away from the shelter…a little clearing at the side of a creek. It was absolutely perfect. We set up camp and Tony began cutting more wood for the fire. I speak only for myself here, he may think otherwise – but to me, this was perfect. We made dinner, sat around the campfire and then settled into the tent for the night. It was absolutely the best night. In fact, shit…it was TOO perfect. I began to wonder if Tony might assume it was always like this. I was sure he was sitting there, eating his freeze-dried dinner and wondering, “what was she bitching about, this is great?” and I began to wonder myself. I had wasted the entire Smoky Mountains being a whiny baby about it. Only now with Tony’s reaction to judge myself again, did I realize how lucky I was to be out here and living on nothing with no clutter, no technology and no to-do list.

I am going to pause here and talk about something that you might want to opt out of reading. In fact, you might want to opt out of knowing it even exists. This about to get very female specific and somewhat graphic, so you might want to look away and continue to live your happy life unaware of what goes on within the bodies of the lovely women in your life. If you have the stomach for it – read on and I am about to tell you what it’s like to be on your period while hiking on the AT. Now, this is not news for anyone who is female and has thru-hiked during their reproductive years. It’s a fact you have to face at least a few times over the course of that journey, but for me – it was an “oh shit” moment. I can still remember when it dawned on me, while planning my MONTH-LONG hike… “ah, damn, you know what that means?” I said aloud to no one. I am sure most of you know the rules of the trail with regard to trash at this point…hike in, hike out. Whatever you bring into the woods, you must also hike out of the woods. There does seem to be a “turn a blind eye” exception to toilet paper, but even that requires digging a hole and burying it or composting over the top of it at the levy (side note to the side note – a levy is a makeshift bathroom erected at the shelters where you get to sit on an actual toilet seat fastened to the top of a wooden platform with a hole in it, basically allowing you to poo from a 6 foot elevation. When you are done, you are to toss some mulch in over the top and close the lid to promote decomposition and inhibit odor. Oh and in case you are wondering, the mulch is somehow magically provided. It’s in every levy though I have no idea how it gets there). Tampons, however, are not to be left behind. Honestly, even if they do decompose over time, can you even imagine happening upon that in the woods? Urgh, it would just ruin it all for you, wouldn't it? So, tampons in – tampons out. It’s that simple. Except it’s not, because now you have to decide when to carry all the tampons. Do you pack them in the bag from the start? Or do you ship them in one of your resupply boxes? How sure are you on timing? I mean, think about it, you would be carrying every single tampon you would need for an entire period into and out of the woods. For me (and again, I realize this is graphic) that is likely at least one box of tampons. If you are male and still reading this, we are talking about the size of two rolls of toilet paper (and I applaud your commitment to understanding us ladies. Keep reading.) So, I found myself facing the decision to give up all that space in my bag plus carry them out with me OR…introducing, the Diva Cup.

If you don’t know what the Diva Cup is, good for you because it’s the devil. I would suggest you Google it just to know such evil exists in the world. If you are familiar with it and you actually LIKE it, WTF is wrong with you?? Long story short, I opted to take the Diva Cup with me instead of carrying tampons and I lived to regret it. The Diva Cup is basically a small (but not small enough!) flexible rubber cup, a little taller but about the same size as those little dentist Dixie cups. You are supposed to roll it up and insert it into the…you know what, you can probably just guess and if you can’t – seriously check out the 9 page “user guide” on their website where you will also be shamed for destroying the world with your tampons and for not being comfortable fishing around in there with your dirty hiking fingers only to rinse it off in the dirty, bacteria infested stream…all of which I did and paid the price for (more on that to come). Now that I have reviewed their website, I also see that there is a page called “Tips for Success” which I omitted…perhaps dooming my experience. (http://divacup.com/how-it-works/tips-for-success/). 

So really, we need tips for success like it’s an experiment of sorts??

I tell you all this because, as it turns out, my period came on the same day as my boyfriend. Lucky me! So not only was I a weeks worth of ‘dirty’, I was using some sort of masochistic menstrual control device AND it was not agreeing with me. I don’t know exactly what went wrong because there were just so many fun factors – the previously mentioned dirtiness of my hands, the lack of clean, running water or the simple fact that my anatomy was not designed for this item and essentially tried to give birth to it the entire time causing me to have contraction-like cramps while trying to hike the AT. Thanks Diva Cup hippies, think I will just carry my mountains of bloody tampons with me next time…proudly.

Wow, that was a deviation from my little love story and I do apologize for that. If you are rejoining the story here – let’s quickly recap where we are. It’s 2015 and we are on the AT and I am in love.

The next morning, despite horrific cramping pains in my abdomen (sorry. Done now. Promise!) we packed up and headed out toward Hot Springs. There very few spots on the AT where the trail actually goes right through a town and Hot Springs is the first. In Hot Springs, the AT pops out of the woods and then goes right up the main street (and only street) of town passing a few shops and restaurants along the way. It’s a haven for hikers and many take a break and hang out in town for a few days, resupplying, resting…and drinking. For some, this is the end point of their hike. It’s 275 miles into the trail and it takes most several weeks to reach it, so by this point – you kinda know how this whole thing is going to go for you. You are likely either acclimating to the physical challenge or you are suffering like a dog and coming to the realization that there is no way you can hike the AT (at least not in the time you had planned). Tony and I descended into town, Tony in the lead…me stumbling behind trying to keep up. I stopped to allow the next wave of cramping to pass and Tony, sensing I was no longer behind him, stopped and turned toward me to wait. I came barreling down the hill to catch up and was just about to tell him what was keeping me when my foot clipped a rock and next thing I knew I was sliding head first down the side of the mountain. I rolled over in my fall and when my leg caught on a tree I came to a stop and was looking up at Tony’s concerned face. I was on my back, my pack hanging below me from my neck. My feet were well above my head. My poles were…well, nowhere near me. I hung there, like a turtle on it’s back…if you attached a 5 lb weight to its shell AND slid it off a cliff. We were momentarily frozen, staring at each other in disbelief. Me because it happened and him because he actually had to watch it happen, and then I burst out laughing.

It was actually pretty funny, despite the intense pain in the leg that hit the tree. Tony crawled off the side of the trail and tried to pull me up. It was not happening. There was too much weight above my head on my back. I had to get my pack off and up to him first. Then he hauled me up the side the way you might envision retrieving a cow that had fallen over a cliff. If he had not been with me, I think my only choice would have been to continue crawling down the side of the mountain. If he hadn’t been with me, I would have cried instead of laughed. Once we collected my things and put me back together, we covered the remaining mile or so into town in silence. It wasn’t like a near death experience. I wasn’t hurt beyond bumps and bruises. It was just a reality check – more for him than for me. Tony had never felt this hike was a good idea, he worried endlessly and now, with him right here beside me, he had watched me ALMOST get hurt. For a guy who tends to be protective, this was probably too much. 

Once we arrived in town, we stopped in at the outdoor outfitters to get drinks and snack (and tampons) and we sat on the bench out front…neither of us wanting to have the conversation we needed to have. Tony’s blisters were horrible. There was no way he could go on. I have seen big, strong men brought to tears by blisters half as bad as his…and now here he was, insisting he was fine to go on only because he did not want me to go on alone and he didn’t want to be the reason I was off course. We sat there for an hour watching the sleepy people of the sleepy town live their sleepy lives. Finally, I said it, “you can’t go on. I won’t let you.” He was adamant that he could and he would. I refused. I knew there was not much he couldn’t get through but this was bad and I just couldn’t watch it. I suggested we get a shuttle to his truck, parked outside of town, and we could decide what to do from there. He refused. We walked on through town to the last shop before the trail reentered the woods and we sat down on a picnic table. We sat quietly for a long time before Tony said, “why do you need to do this?” I opened my mouth to respond and nothing came out. 

I thought for a minute. I had good reasons, didn’t I? I started the trail to prove something to myself – but as time had passed I knew I was capable so it wasn’t that anymore. Then it was to challenge myself, to do high miles and endure tough conditions, but the Smokies had been incredibly difficult and I had exceeded my mileage plan. At one point I needed to explore my own mind – I needed to face myself and the fact that I wasn’t living the life I wanted to live. But again, those things were all behind me and I had spent the last year of my life making brave choices and rediscovering who I really was. This trip was about what I wanted most in this world – love. And the man sitting across from me, telling me he needed me home with him, was teaching me the lesson I needed to learn. I had spent my life being tough enough to survive anything, resilient enough to bounce back and never giving in to the feeling of needing someone – and now, here I was sitting at a picnic table in Hot Springs, NC, covered in a week’s worth of dirt with over 275 miles on my shoes and needing nothing more than the person sitting across from me. Actually, wanting nothing more. The universe is funny that way…

The Kid and the Stoners

The moment my eyes popped open, I knew I was awake for good. I was instantly filled with anxiety. We were too close, packed in the shelter. I was trapped in my sleeping bag, it twisted around my upper body and arms pinning them to me and then around my legs in the opposite direction. I struggled to free my upper body to roll over - my left side aching from too much time in contact with the wooden platform below me. I lifted my body to roll onto my right side, the way you do when you have to change directions without exceeding your existing footprint…not so much a roll as a lift, flip and re-lower. As my head moved to face my opposite neighbor, I gasped. The Kid’s face was literally IN my bag! He had scooted himself over in the night and his annoying little sleeping face was now inside my bag. I pulled my bag out from under his head with little concern for his comfort and scooted myself the other direction, now infringing completely on Ayub’s space. I could feel his daggar under me. I flipped back over to my left side and the ache immediately set back in. Urgh. I was up, and there was no point in laying there thinking about it. I looked at my gps…it was 2:30 in the morning. “Fuck it,” I thought, “what does time matter to me?” and I began the familiar dance of packing up my stuff while minimizing the disruption to my neighbors. 

I put my headlamp on and turned it to it’s “red” mode. This mode is used while you are in camp so your light doesn’t shine on others and wake them up. I made a mental note of where bodies where…and that was everywhere. I would have to get myself out of my little space and get all my stuff packed and down from the platform without touching the ground. If I dropped anything, it would inevitably bounce off someone’s nose. I moved like a cat…a cat carrying 50 pounds worth of stuff through a field of land mines. I knocked over my water bottle and held my breath as it rolled toward the edge of the platform and then disappeared over the edge, followed by the sound of its soft landing and a muffled “hey!” from within a bag somewhere. “Sorry,” I whispered. And so it went, one item after another fumbled and dropped, like I was on stage in a comedy act. “Seriously?” I whispered to no one in particular.

Finally, I somehow managed to extract myself and my things from my spot and make my way to the bar at the front of the shelter commonly used to prepare food. I looked back at the platform and my spot was already being absorbed by the surrounding bodies, the way the dry spot under your car disappears as you back away in a rain storm. The night air was cool and refreshing after my hot bag and the combined, heated breath of too many strangers. I made some coffee and oatmeal and prepared to head out. Just as I was finishing my oatmeal and cleaning up, I heard a scratchy voice from within the shelter. “I’m coming with you.” I looked up to see The Kid emerge from the shadows of the shelter fully clothed and loaded up, ready to go. And so, at about three in the morning, we pulled out of the shelter under the light of a full moon.

The Kid hikes fast. He was instantly ahead of me and I stumbled behind, breathing heavily and breaking that “it’s too early and I didn’t sleep enough and I am going to feel like shit in a couple hours” sweat. The first mile of hiking in the morning is always rough for me. Maybe it’s my age (I remind you, The Kid was less than half my age) or just how I am wired, but I am fairly miserable for the first 30 minutes every morning. I also have to pee…a lot. I am quite certain that, if timed, I stop to pee every 15 minutes and I keep that up until 11am. I refuse to time it for fear that I would find it’s even less and would be forced to face the fact that I drink WAY too much coffee or something is really wrong with me. I prefer denial.

I must admit, I was feeling a little pressure to keep up. After last night’s bravado about my 25 mile days, my pride would not allow me to fall off The Kid’s heels. It also forced me to mask my heavy breathing as best I could. I took deep, long breaths through my nose or silent, quick and shallow ones through my mouth. The Kid was ready to chat from the start so I let him do most of the talking, occasionally lobbing a question his way to keep him going while I worked to keep my breathing under control. He was young, not yet out of high school (though he could not be nailed down on either age or grade in school), he did not have a girlfriend, or friends in general, he carried no phone or tracking device, he had no money and had been living off a meager few dollars and the kindness of others. His mother was his entire world – but they were fighting at the time. He talked about his mom endlessly. He was odd to say the least. He mentioned that someone gave him some money back at Nantahala and that he had bought clothes and supplies and I noted he was wearing a Nantahala shirt now. I also recalled watching him have a conversation with a stuffed beaver in the shelter the night before and without thinking I blurted out, “Is that where you got the beaver?” “Oh, Stuffy, yeah. Stuffy is a great friend!” Oh good, I am walking through the night with Norman Bates from Psycho. After this little exchange, everything about The Kid began to unravel. I concluded he was full on nuts and the only thing I wanted in the world was to not be talking to him anymore. I fell back and relaxed my pace without saying a word, hoping he would charge on into the dawn without me. No such luck. He waited and without hesitation, the second I would emerge from the darkness – the very moment he could see the glow of my headlamp, he would begin talking again. 

We did share a few self-congratulatory moments. We patted ourselves on the back for “seizing the moment” and hiking at night. When would we ever do this again? How would we otherwise have known the beauty of the moon lighting the trail, bouncing off the leaves and giving just a hint of the terrain around us? When ever in our lives would we see the sun rise minute by minute over the horizon with nothing else to do but witness it? We thanked ourselves aloud for getting out of bed and making this happen. He thanked me for prodding him…said he would never have done it on his own. As the sun rose to it’s rightful spot above us and night turned to morning turned to midday…I realized what was happening. I was “mommy!” This Kid was not going to leave me or shut up because he had found a surrogate in me. I softened momentarily toward him, feeling my maternal instincts to care for the child in need…and then I came to my senses. This guy was a freak and I was not interested. 

I dug deep and found a whole new gear. I went up the next climb ahead of The Kid with one sole purpose on this earth…to reach the top without him. There are many moments in my life when my former life as a competitive cyclist come in handy. Most are less linear, lessons in how to build a team, how to be generous to those who help you win, how to push yourself or others beyond limits and how a good team trumps the talented solo rider every time. But today my prior experience served me in a very direct way – I knew how to go fast, just fast enough that I would break the spirit of my rival. They would give in to the sting of acid in their legs and the burning in their chest and let up. So, I crested the top of the climb without a companion and knew that somewhere behind me, he was slowly lumbering up the climb in heated debate with Stuffy about whether or not to call his mom.

I began to hear cars in the distance. It’s a strange thing, the trail and the way it snakes and loops back on itself, rendering things like sound or noise an unreliable gauge of distance. You may hear a road and feel like you will see it any minute, only to go hours before actually stepping foot onto it’s pavement. This particular sound stood out as I knew it was Hwy 441 and it had been days since I had heard a car. As I came up along the side of the highway, approaching from the mountain below it, I noticed a beat-up white styrofoam cooler with a rock on the lid. I stood over it and read the block letters written in marker, "Trail Magic." I hesitated…I had seen my fair share of horror movies and instinctively knew there were severed fingers inside, but desperation and curiosity won out and I slid the rock off the top and opened the cooler. Inside I found cold bottles of water and apples. I took one of each and then, remembering the companion I had worked so hard to lose, quickly replaced the lid and hustled off.

I had spent far too much time thinking about the crossing of Hwy 441. This much was evident as I stepped out into the clearing and felt the intense pang of disappointment in my chest. There was no McDonalds, no Starbucks, no laundromat ...as I had dreamed. And there was no convenience store or even a coke machine as I had hoped. There was only an incredible lookout where cars could drive to the top and enjoy the view and there was a small, flat roofed building that advertised a restroom. I briefly considered the restrooms and had the fleeting thought of stopping in for a rinse in the sink and to sit comfortably on a toilet seat...maybe there would even be an outlet! But in the end, I was honestly unwilling to deviate from my path the 100 feet necessary to check it out. My apathy was compounded by the fact that it wasn't raining YET. Though the clouds were gathering and the thunder rumbling in the distance, so I knew it was only a matter of time. 

I selected to bypass the comforts of a public restroom and charged onward. Pause for a moment the next time you stop in a gas station restroom and just imagine what it would take for you to consider it an oasis. As the rain started to fall a couple hours later, I fantasized about going back to that restroom and camping inside. I would roll out my pad and bag on that standard terra cotta tile floor and I would draw my water directly from the sink, no pushing and pumping to muscle it through a filter. I would wash my hands! And my face! Honestly, the toilet was least appealing to me as I didn't really mind going outside, but water and a roof, those were my necessities. Life really was just that simple. All we have versus all we really need. 

Now, I am in no position to rant about excess. I admittedly get a thrill out of new shoes and am guilty of replacing things that do not need replacing. I have an endless list of "to-dos" and most of them don't actually need doing ("replace the perfectly good coffee maker with the newer and somehow better coffee maker" or "paint the girls room an unnoticeably different shade of pink"), but some quality time in the woods with all I needed on my back has made me see things a little differently. It's made me realize my wants are usually temporary and my needs are actually few. Even the needs of my daughters, they are often more about me than them. In reality, they need more time with me...time I usually spend distracted and rushing to complete those damn "to-do's." They cycle is shamefully self-imposed.

The second half of the day’s hike was largely uneventful. Up and down, up and down…light rain, heavy rain, downpour. And so it went until I reached the shelter at about 6:00pm that evening. It had only been a 20 mile day – which in the early days of my hiking would have been a death march. I felt really good considering the smell of rot on my feet and how mud covered and wet I had been for days now. My spirits had lifted the night before when a message from my boyfriend brought me the best news I could have hoped for…he was coming out to join me for a few days. And, sensing my desperation, he was coming a day earlier than he had planned. I was instantly revived and no mountain or distance would keep me from making it the 28 miles I had to travel to see him the next day. I cruised up to the shelter in the pouring rain, a spring in my step, until an overpowering smell of pot and tobacco washed over me. 

100 miles of this...

Nailed it!

I stared into the shelter, so dark and smoky inside that I could not make out its inhabitants, and saw only the red glow of cigarettes and joints. Once inside, I realized there were really only 3 people inside, but they were spread out across the entire platform. No one greeted me as I entered and no one moved to adjust their things and make room…so I pushed aside the shit on one side of the shelter and made a place for my things. I began to get out of my wet clothes and hang my things to dry. The night ahead would involve only dinner and sleep for me…I had been up way too long and tomorrow would be a big day for me. I wanted desperately to stay in my tent and avoid any small talk, but it would mean setting up my tent in the rain and mud and it would also mean a slower start in the morning. As I set my things up, my shelter companions continued to talk only among themselves and continued to light up again and again. The smell was overwhelming me. Waves of nausea washed over me and anxiety set in. Would they smoke this much all night? Surely they had to stop at some point, or at least take a break. Maybe it would stop raining and I could pitch my tent? I eavesdropped on their conversation and it seemed one of them was packing up to head out. I wondered why someone would be leaving at 6pm in the rain when today had been at least partially dry for a few hours. Turns out, he had been at the shelter for days and had decided now, at 6pm, to begin the 10 mile hike to a hostel just on the border of the Smokies. Stoners…who gets them?? Anyway, he was packing up and that would leave one less person to smoke out all night. 

The rain continued and so did the smoking. I consider myself pretty open-minded. I don’t personally smoke but I don’t consider myself ‘judgy’ toward anyone who does…but on this night when my nerves were frazzled and my mood dark, I simply cracked. “Are you guys just going to smoke out all night long…or will you, at some point, take a breather?” I blurted, not even sure I intended to say it aloud. “Why? Does it bother you?” the older of the two asked in a tone that let me know that I was the one being judged here. I was the one out of place. “Want some?” the younger one asked and I am certain inside he was begging me to smoke a little and chill the fuck out. “No. I don’t want any…and I don’t want to smell like I have been smoking all day. I can hardly breathe in here.” They stared blankly at me for a moment, then began chatting quietly between themselves. My meltdown was none of their concern. “Ugh. I guess I need to just go pitch my tent,” I continued, my conversation now completely one-sided. No response. They watched in smoky silence as I repacked my things and headed out into the rain in a huff…uttering over my shoulder just loud enough as I stomped out into the storm, “losers.” I am sure they thought it original.

Once I managed to get my tent up and my things inside…I was so completely blissful to be alone and in my own private suite. My tent was so perfect. So peaceful. It was my happy place. I hung my little lantern and snuggled deep into my bag to read the first page of my book…again. My blood pressure from the ‘stoner conflict’ had quickly returned to normal and I forgave myself for the momentary tantrum knowing that few humans could endure this week of misery and isolation and not come unhinged a bit. Tomorrow was going to be a bright day for me. I would be meeting Tony on the trail and would get a few days of his company on my hike. I would get to show him “my trail” and we would get to share a bit of the magic of this journey. I was so very happy as I drifted to sleep in my tiny tent in this big, soggy, maddening, beautiful, lonely forest.