Dear Trail Friends,
I woke up at my wonderful campsite to the view from my tent shown in photo 1. I wish the photo could convey the sense of open vast spaciousness. And the quality of early morning light.
Photo 2 shows the magical stripes of early morning light in the beautiful woods I was hiking downhill through.
I wish photo 3 could convey the excitement of my first glimpse of a river after walking through the sound of its roar for so many switchbacks. Then after the thrill comes the concern: will there be a bridge? If not, will I be able to safely manage the crossing? In this case ( for all the really fierce rivers today actually) there was a bridge though I didn't find out for a long time because the trail went along parallel to the river a good long time before crossing it. Plenty of time to take in the fury of the white water and the roar and wonder "what if...?"
It was a wonderful day. Felt good physically (I'm wondering if the "spare electrolytes" I received as a gift, a powder that dissolves in water called Ener-C, may be more helpful than the endurolytes I usually take.) and loved the world around me and got very engaged with reverie and music (played classical music for a change). I wish I had the energy to tell you about the reverie I had about "the arc of the story" -- a phrase often used in my writing group that I find myself constantly arguing with and thinking about. The arc, of course, is rising action, climax, falling action. Beginning, middle, end. But life isn't like that, is it? Well, maybe in some sense the day is. The sun rises, reaches high noon, and descends. But does it really? In fact it's on it's own journey and we by that magical force we call gravity do a twirling circling dance around it that creates our experience of sunrise and sunset (and seasons). Wouldn't stories be more truthful if they twirled and rotated rather than followed an arc? All this highly relevant to my other big retirement project -- how to turn my experience of being in analysis with Professor Freud into a story. He points out that our lives also have an arc - we are born, we grow bigger and stronger and reach our high noon and begin to descend (growing smaller and weaker, among other things), and we die. Maybe, he suggests, that's why we like a story to have an arc. It helps us imagine our lives.
The problem for me seems to be endings. Twice I dropped out of analysis without real closure (a conscious ending, in which the associations around ending are given plenty of time to rise up and be noticed). And part of the dread of writing the Freud book is of finishing and having it be not as good as I wished and no vague future possibility of making it so. And having my imaginary analytic romance with Freud be once and forever ended.
It was as if he was walking with me and we were chatting. He pointed out my trouble with ending my pct hike-pilgrimage. My need to plan to do it again next year. He pointed out that the tattoo with the river breaking out of the boundary of the logo is just my fantasy of having the pct, analysis, my life go "on and on, on and on." He even said that he thought I should keep the boundary as an affirmation of limits and finitude. A stunning point and I may take heed of it.
I began to question doing a thru-hike next year. It does seem in some ways like avoiding an ending. And there are other things I want to do: go to Minnesota and Europe with Chris in the spring, go to our Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival in its big 20th year. So I thought maybe I could hike the Arizona trail in early spring. As part of it, I would get to hike the Grand Canyon, a hike I never did with my father (though we planned to do so together) because I developed a hammertoe training for it on our paved hill in Del Mar. Then I had surgery and in the days of forced rest with a swollen foot I made the decision to go back to school and become a therapist, and to go through the special multi-cultural immersion counselor training masters program my father had founded. So it would be a meditation on my retirement and my career as a therapist and my relationship with my father. And on endings. And beginnings.
Then because I always do like to have my cake and eat it too, maybe I could attempt a one-year thru hike in summer of 2018. I will turn 70 fall of 2017. So I could make it my big Seven-Oh birthday celebration - I could invite friends and family to help celebrate my birthday by bringing me resupplies on the trail, maybe hiking a way with me, or taking me to a trail town and joining me there. It's a really fun idea. And by delaying it a year I can pretend that I really am letting this experience end. I can put the boundary around the river in the tattoo (even though you and I both know that she - the river - lives "on and on, on and on" forever. Or as the catholic church used to say saecula saeculorum, world without end - can't remember what the Latin meant - century after century? I imagine it was talking about God. He's the one whose allowed to be infinite. )
I do love the reveries as I walk - not sure how well they translate off trail but, tra la.
Okay. Back to work. Today on the trail I saw a leaf smiley face. And then another. These were not close together. Some may have been miles apart. And then a grumpy (or scared?) face. And then I began to imagine all the leaves had faces and feelings. And to think about who might have put those faces on the trail and why. And that I will never know. Photos 4-6 show some leaf faces.
To be continued in Day 5, part 2
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