Healings, Nothing More Than Healings....

  Healing is boring.
  Healing is getting in my way.  Healing is something I'd rather do in the winter when sitting on the couch with cup after cup of tea is my preferred activity anyway.  Healing takes patience and stillness and for a girl who considers it a luxury to spend two nights in a row in the same place, this is a task. Healing feels like a very grown-up thing to do and in the last couple of months there is not much that has made me feel like a grown-up.  But healing is what I need to do if I have any hope of hiking to Canada.  Canada, you've never felt so far away.....
  I know some of you won't believe this, but I am at a loss for words.  Oddly, being  stationary and in pain is not whipping my creativity and gift for gab into a frenzy.  I will do the best I can to describe my predicament and feelings.  For the first time since I began the Pacific Crest Trail I'm not totally content with where I am.  Not totally living in the now.  I now look at pictures that my friends are posting on Facebook and wish I could be there, jealous of what they are doing.  Don't get me wrong, the place where I literally am is gorgeous and has perfect weather.  Lake Tahoe is a destination vacation spot for lots of people and I've somehow met the nicest, most generous couple in the whole area who have welcomed me, let me have the run of their house, and loaned me their beater car so I can get around town if I want to.  I'm very grateful and fortunate in that aspect.
  It's mentally and physically that I'm not where I want to be and I'm just doing my best to keep my head up and have patience.  How very grown-up.  Unfortunately my annoying hip pain that was troubling me as I walked into Tahoe nearly two weeks ago (!) has blossomed into full-blown, full-time searing pain.  I left S. Lake Tahoe while the pain in my hip was still but a dull roar and took myself off the trail 32 miles later after limping, lurching, and enduring sharp shooting pains that left me unable to sleep or walk.  This was obviously not something that I could walk off.
  So while my friends continued to walk north toward our mutual goal, I made the very adult choice to take more time off and let my hip get better.  The only thing is that it hasn't gotten better.  After 3 days with family friends in Tahoe City, I'm on day 5 in South Lake and as seized up as ever with no signs of improvement.  Standing up from a sitting or lying position has become an activity I dread and I'm halfway surprised I haven't ripped the towel rack off the wall in the bathroom from when I instinctively grab it as the inevitable pain shoots through my hip when getting up from the toilet.  I have this mental image of one of those jaggedy cartoon caption bubbles from Batman (the old Batman show) on my hip that say BAM! or POW! when these foreseeable moments of pain shoot through me.  Once the pointy, sharp pain has cleared the path, the tight, hot omnipresent pain settles in, allowing me to move, but move like Estelle Getty in her later years.  It's hard to imagine myself, mere weeks ago, climbing mountain passes and walking 20 miles a day.  Now I'm lucky to get from the bedroom to the kitchen without incident.  Sigh.
  In the last 3 days I've been to a massage therapist, an applied kineseologist (I'm not certain how to spell that, but Windows wants to replace it with "Kremlinologist" and I think that would send the wrong message), and an acupuncturist.  The kineseologist has provided the most relief even if it was just emotional and mental relief.  Through a series of tests that had me crying with hysterical laughter (sometimes my reaction to physical pain--it's quite hilarious....well, at least to me. The doctor looked quite confused as to whether I was in pain or not.) and pain, but he determined that there is nothing wrong with  my hip ball and socket: the joint is OK.  I do, however, have a severe case of tendinitis and fasciaitis (again with the spelling, but you get the point...it's definitely not a case of "fascism").  He said he hasn't seen so much inflammation in many years, so I've got that going for me....which is nice.  The GOOD NEWS is that this will heal.  There will be no long-lasting, permanent damage.  The BAD NEWS is that there is no real time frame for the healing process.  I'm already doing all the right things and I've seen no progress toward getting off the toilet in a pain-free manner.  Also, I have no time frame for when I'll be able to get back on the trail.  That is a far off goal for me now...I just want to be able to walk normally again first.  I just want to be able to wake up in the morning, after a good night's sleep, and not have to anticipate an unwanted, painful contraction of my hip muscles.  I want to be able to hop out of bed, get out of a chair, or off the motherscratchin' toilet,  for Pete's sake, without crying out in pain and sucking air through my teeth.  I'm not looking for sympathy, good people, just telling you how it is. This too shall pass, I just wish it would pass a little quicker because it's frankly exhausting being in pain so much of the time.
  So here I am in South Tahoe.  I have to give a shout out to my hosts, Bob and Michelle, who just met me last week and have made me feel incredibly at home, relaxed, and welcome.  I'm hoping for an open adoption.  I'm trying to earn my keep by keeping them well-fed.  After months of heating water for instant food for a party of one, it truly is a joy to cook real, healthy food in a spacious, beautiful kitchen for people who are appreciative to not have to cook after getting home from work. (See how positive I am?)
  I try not to think about where I would be if I'd been able to continue hiking.  Oddly, I don't think about the trail as much as you might think.  I think because I have to muster courage to get out of a chair at this point, the trail is not a huge concern.  It is a little painful and bittersweet to see updates from my friends I'd been hiking with along the trail and see the progress they've made.  At this point, when I do return to the trail, I'll be weeks behind anybody I know and my chances of making it to Canada before there is a bunch of snow on the ground in Washington are pretty slim. I may consider skipping ahead so that I can reach Canada before winter hits and then coming back to finish the section I'll have to skip.  This sort of breaks my heart as I really love the idea of and set out to walk a continuous line of footsteps from Mexico to Canada.  It would really change my entire trip and how I feel about it.  Again, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
  For now, I'm sort of playing everything by ear, day to day.  I'm happy and comfortable where I am and Bob and Michelle haven't kicked me out yet, so that's good.  It's difficult for me to ask for help from people I know well much less new friends, but I'm trying to take them at their word that I'm not a nuisance and they're not sick of me laying uselessly around their home and whinging about my hip.  We'll see.  Bob just told me that one of his favorite things about me is that I'm not contagious.  Another thing I've got going for me.  My folks are at the ready to come up to Tahoe and pick me up. It's extremely lucky for me to have options of where I can recoup and close by options at that.  Initially I wanted to be close to the trail as I had high hopes of returning to it quickly...those hopes have been tucked away in my brand new pack, next to my brand new shoes, waiting patiently. The trail seems very far away at this point....
  For the most part, my spirits are in good shape.  I am relieved that there aren't tumors in my hip or something wrong that would require surgery (yes, I'm at the point where I think of worse-case scenarios to maintain my positive outlook....it could be much worse).  My trail mindset and the ritual of trail life is a distant memory....two weeks on my ass make it seem unlikely that I ever walked 1,127 miles though I know it's true.  I don't think I've really processed the whole PCT aspect of this injury and the consequences of it.  I do know that if I'd replaced my pack and shoes just a little earlier that this may have been avoided, but there's no use on dwelling on that fact since what's done is done.  I occasionally have a pity party for one when I have to move around:  being in pain for this long is exhausting and frustrating mentally as well physically.  But at some point I know I'm going to start feeling better and I've been proactive as far as trying to diagnose and treat what ails me, so what else can I do but sit back, enjoy reading books, watch the trees and Mount Talac out the window, sit in the sun on the deck, go sweat in the sauna and follow it up with epsom salts in my bath, put on a movie, and think about what I'll cook for dinner.  All things considered, life ain't too bad.
  But I dream of putting all this grown-up, responsible stuff to the wayside and returning to my childish ways on the trail:  eating a Snickers bar for breakfast, skipping across rocks or balancing on a log to cross a creek, making a fort every night to sleep in, watching butterflies have tickle fights, walking through forests made of giant unicorn horns, being filthy dirty and dusty all day everyday, eating my lunch on the ground while ants make a playground out of me (I'm a giant!), considering "Nutella" and "Candy" distinct food groups, delighting in the color scheme of the wildflowers on a hillside, digging holes to poop in.  No responsibility, no reason to dress up, if it's not in my pack on my back I don't need it: I miss this.  I miss the feeling of being content.  I miss living 100% in the Now.
  But I will be patient.  I will be grateful for what I do have.  I will try to make the best out of a bad situation.  I will go with the flow.  I will heal, boring as it may be.

Oh The Humanity!

Yosemite. The weekend before the 4th of July. It feels as if all of humanity has arrived to enjoy the great outdoors of this popular National Park and for a girl who has spent the past 70-something days living in the backcountry it feels extremely crowded.
  As I hiked toward the Tuolumne Meadows area of the Park from Donohue Pass I was well aware of the change in the air. For the first 750 miles of the trip (mas o menos), I could count the number of day hikers or southbound hikers on two hands. The PCT was mainly clogged with people headed north with a very long way to go. We met in towns and leap-frogged each other on the trail, but we were all headed in the same direction. At Mt. Whitney that all changed: we encountered our first John Muir Trail (JMT) hikers. Most JMTers hike from north to south, beginning in the Yosemite Valley and 250 miles later finishing on the top of Mt. Whitney. Thus the sudden influx of traffic on the PCT since the PCT and the JMT trails are one and the same for a majority of those 250 miles. From out of nowhere hikers with giant packs, heavy leather boots, and a few extra pounds on their bellies were breathily greeting us PCTers on the trail while we verily bounded with our relatively small packs, light weight sneakers, and 700-miles-under-our-belts bodies over 12,000 foot mountain passes.
  I've had a couple of weeks to get used to this trickle of people who are not PCT hikers. But approaching Tuolumne Meadows brought on an entirely different slice of humanity: day hikers with tiny backpacks and white sneakers, fisherman with nothing but fly rods, joggers with pink pigtails, piercings, and tattoos who look at you like you're in their way. Don't they know I've been on this trail for 942 miles? Don't they know they are on my trail? So as I approached Tuolumne with the excitement one always feels when her parents are meeting her and there is promise of gobs of food, I was feeling anxious about the hoards of people about to encroach my idyllic world. This was Yosemite after all... in peak season: bring on the chaos.
  The Tuolumne Meadows Store and Grill area was predictably insane: families streaming out the doors with hamburgers and ice cream cones, hikers with bulky packs frantically inhaling calories, shuttle buses idling in the parking lot, and no one really watching where they're going.  This sort of crowd would have me bristling on a normal day much less one where I'm emerging from my blissful backcountry sabatical of the high Sierras.  However, I found my parents and fellow PCTers and in short order the giant bagel sandwich in my face eased my anxiety riddled brow.  People? What people?
  My folks and I stayed in the enormous Tuolumne Meadows campground with hundreds of other car campers and mostly they stared in awe as I continued to consume calorie after calorie.  Besides walking, eating is what I do best right now. It's insane. Eat everything in sight and my ribs are still sticking out and my britches hang on my bony hips.  But I digress. My parents left the next day and I secured a spot in the backpacker walk-in campground for a day of R & R.  I wrote postcards and when I ventured to the Grill for a soft serve cone I immediately returned to the relative sanctuary of my picnic table for peace and quiet. The humanity and busy-ness was too much.
  On the trip to the store area, I ran across a National Park Service volunteer.  He was a gentleman who was acting as campground host for the summer and living in the campground in his RV with his wife and small dog.  I inquired if there was anywhere available to plug in my cell phone and camera battery for recharging and he invited me to leave them with him and he'd be happy to charge them for me. I found this extremely nice since if he went out of his way like that for everyone, he'd have a full time recharging station: this is a campground of 350 sites plus the walk-in sites.  I happily handed over my technology and promised to be back in an hour.  What a nice man!
 Upon my return, Mike was sitting around his campfire with a glass of red wine. He got up and helped me gather my belongings and said his wife was interested in speaking with me about the PCT.  She returned from a walk with the dog and I answered her questions about the trail, why I was doing it, yes, I feel safe, and no I haven't read "Wild."  As I profusely thanked them for the electricity, Kim invited me to come back for a shower.  My first instinct was to gratefully decline the offer....but then I thought about it: I was about to launch into an 8-day stint to South Lake Tahoe and I would not have a chance to really be clean until then. I went back to my campsite, ate dinner, and decided to take them up on the offer of a shower in their RV.  So as campers flocked to the Campfire Program, scurried to the public restrooms to wash their faces with icy cold water, and tended to their s'mores, I returned to the RV and was treated to a hot shower. It was heavenly.
 The kindness of these campground hosts got me to thinking....not only were they not burnt out or jaded on people, the amount of people, or the routine of campground life, they were still excited to meet people, to help out a hiker on her journey.  I've worked tourist jobs like this my whole life and I know how tiresome it can become to deal with travelers who seem to leave their common sense at home most of the time. But these volunteers, after years of service, still found genuine interest in my journey and opened their home to me.  As I emerged clean and glowing from the RV we exchanged goodbyes and Kim sent me back to my site with a cold Coors Light for a nightcap. I felt a bit smug walking among the common campers.
 And then I started to think about the mass amounts of people I was surrounded by.  These are my fellow citizens (and people from all over the world, for that matter) who are using our national resources for family time, time away from the TV and internet, and time in nature.  Sure, most of them never get more than a mile from a road, but still, they are out utilizing one of our greatest national treasures: our National Parks.  They may not be hiking 2,650 miles or even 5, but they are enjoying time together, sleeping in tents, and experiencing nature on their terms, not mine. As I examined this perspective I became less claustrophobic of this crowded campground and more appreciative that these people were here at all, out of their comfort zone, and "roughing it" for the weekend.  And if Yosemite Park has to endure 4.5 million visitors a year, feel like a parking lot at times, and take the brunt of park visitation then there is this silver lining:  it leaves most other Parks free for people like me to find solace, peace, and isolation.  Let Yosemite be the crowded area. Let Yosemite wow visitors from the comfort of their SUVs.  I'll be in Kings Canyon or Sequoia Park away from the crowds and mass of humanity.  I happily realized that there is something for everyone.
  The next day I hiked away from Tuolumne Meadows.  The trail was crowded....for 1/2 a mile.  The people thinned out and in no time I was back in trail mode, enjoying wilderness mere minutes from the roads and chaos of Tuolumne.  I felt lucky and grateful for the kindness of Mike and Kim, the campground hosts. I felt more of a connection with the faces I saw on the trail: we're all just out here to get away from it all, no matter what lengths we go to to do that.  I was happy to see a number of young folks out with their parents with backpacks on....right on.  And then I happily hiked away from all of them, to my happy place miles from nowhere.
  That experience was over a week ago now and I am enjoying a relaxing couple of days off in South Lake Tahoe.  As generous as I left Tuolumne feeling about my fellow Americans, one of them deposited a nasty cold upon me and that, added on top of one of the arguably most difficult sections of the trail, contributed to the last 8-day stretch of hiking being some of the hardest of my trek.  You know when you're sick and you get winded just getting up from the couch to go to the kitchen for a cup of tea? I continued to hike 20 miles a day through that. I don't know how I did it and it was exhausting.  On top of that, my pack was ridiculously heavy with food (it's impossible to carry enough calories!) and my pack AND my shoes gave out during this week.  I can feel every rock on the trail and my pack is now considered a torture device, leaving bruises and chaffing to prove it.  New pack and shoes will be delivered next Saturday!! Needless to say, I had my own pity party and I listened to my iPod a lot to distract me. Fortunately, though one of the toughest sections, it was also one of the most beautiful sections and there was Trail Magic along the way to bolster my spirits with soda and fruit and junk food.  I am staying with definite Trail Angels, friends of friends who have generously taken me into their sanctuary of a home, and am taking an unprecedented 2 DAYS OFF IN A ROW to recoup from the exhaustion of my sickness and nurse a sore hip flexor muscle.  I'm pretty dang happy. I'll be back on the trail tomorrow and while I'll be missing my English hiking buddies that I've been with through the Sierras, I have a feeling we'll meet up again and I'm looking forward to being back on Wee Time.