Flagstaff AZ. Jun 4.

Flagstaff AZ. Tuesday Jun 5

Walked 2.2 miles down from rest stop at 786.5 to stateline campground at 788.7. Slept Saturday night at campground. Then rode 174 miles - 3 hours - with Trail Angel Tim to Flagstaff. Stayed Sunday with Tim and Melody. Stayed Monday at hostel in Flagstaff. 

Dear Trail Friends,

So much has happened since I wrote my last post Saturday afternoon, from my rest stop overlooking Utah and the Vermillion Cliffs. 

The last two miles were among the most beautiful of the entire hike and I could feel how the colors, textures and shapes of the rock formations called to my soul. What a strange and wonderful thing it is to feel such a call. To my surprise the rock formations that I had glimpsed from the viewpoint became closer and more visible (photo 1 shows the trail near the end) as I walked down to the campground - I had expected to lose sight of them as I hiked down. 

As I arrived at stateline campground and the end of the AZT, I was greeted by a fellow hiker planning to start a section hike south to Flagstaff the next day and eager to talk with me. I realized, from my inability to summon the energy to be minimally polite and friendly, that I was exhausted. I am still puzzled by that exhaustion, except to speculate the usual difficulty of transitioning back from trail solitude to real life was complicated by a realization that this might be my final hike, that my abilities to continue both planning and executing long distance hikes were uncertain. I was as gentle as I could manage - and did write down the locations of probable water caches for him, and wish him well. 

I found it hard to set up my tent and even wondered if I had reverse elevation sickness from my descent.  But I did summon the energy to walk up the path to a view of my (truly) last sunset on the trail - shown in photo 2,along with my tent with the cliffs lit up by the setting sun, and a small precariously balanced rock cairn (that seemed to reflect the fragility I felt) Ihat I built on the campsite picnic table 

I felt anxious about the return to civilization and being with people. I felt both grateful for and overwhelmed by Tom and Melody’s generosity. I guess it brought up fears of being unworthy and not giving back (to them, to the universe) enough. It is odd but I don’t think/feel that way in the wilderness. I have more trust. (Trust - That essential social skill that I want to practice and strengthen.) one way I addressed my anxiety was by trying to make my scruffy self a little more presentable. I had grown a little bit of an old lady beard and of course did not have my shaver along. But I used my little scissors (that I carry in my emergency bag) to clip the chin hairs back a little. It occurred to me as I did so that it calmed me down, and I thought that preparing for social interaction (by washing, dressing, makeup or whatever) can be a kind of ceremony of  preparation or purification. A trust- building or calm-building deremony. So I thought to myself - and laughed aloud at myself- clipping chin hairs is practicing a social skill. So of course I offer you photo 3 - to be “read”  clockwise - starting in lower left) to illustrate River training in social skills and ceremonially transforming her mood. 

I slept deeply, despite anxiety that I may have misunderstood campground rules and taken a site reserved for others (I guess, in retrospect, that this mirrored my anxiety about the return to civilization and am I taking what belongs to others, not “getting” boundaries, etc). In fact the campsites were all “first come, first served” but I had misunderstood a lounge chair chained to the table as a gift/blessing from the gods to me - when it was in fact a chair belonging to an RV and laying claim to the site. I do tend to misread social codes! (And I do find comfort in the story about Coyote throwing the stars into the sky - because the story suggests that the Law really isn’t clear to anyone - that confusion is part of our shared experience of this world, not a personal defect of mine). 

In the early morning I found the RV in the campsite driveway and the owners’ stuff on the table. I packed up quickly and left, embarrassed that I had poached on someone else’s claim. 

It was 7am when I arrived with my pack, all set and ready to go, at the entrance to the campground. Melody had told me Tim would arrive at 7:30am instead of 9am - (once they heard I arrived the night before) - but now, at just 7am,  I saw a white car approaching the campground and knew it would be Tim. He had left at 4am and arrived at 7am. I was so glad I was ready!

The ride back with Tim was amazing. I found myself falling in love with the landscape and dreaming of hiking more in Northern Arizona and Utah. Tim who knows and loves the landscape loved sharing it with me. I felt deep peace and happiness.  I think we both did. 

The high point of the journey was our stop at a place (whose name I do not remember) where the Hopi (I think ) used to stop on their first night on the sacred pilgrimage to the Grand Canyon to gather salt. Tim pointed out the petroglyphs and when I wondered outloud what story they told, he said that he had been told that each one represented a clan. So when I looked at a series of cornstalks I imagined a clan with that symbol and year after year the carver saying “Here I am” (or “Here we are”) and while carving aware of the ancestors who had gone having been here before, and carved their symbol into the rock, and the descendents who come after who would be here later and add their symbol. Tim and I talked about rapid change in the world and how different it must have felt to be so connected both to place and to the presence of past and future generations repeating the same pilgrimage. (Also a high point for me was when the sign said no entry without a permit from the tribe or tribes - the tribal names probably Hopi and Navajo had been scratched out - and Tim just decided to enter anyway. It made me wish I could show Tim and Melody the sacred burial grounds on Orcas at Madrona Point, which the Lummi Nation has closed to visitors because some were going off trail - mostly homeless young people I think, who would probably go on disregarding the sign). Anyway photo 3 shows some aspects of this place - whose sacredness I think we both felt. 

It was wonderful to return to Tim and Melody’s welcoming home and fall into the arms of their hospitality. They have a spacious upstairs room with bathroom (including a huge jacuzzi bathtub) that they offer to their hiker guests. I discovered the balcony this year with its view and with the sound of their backyard fountain. An utterly peaceful place (Photo 4 combines views from the balcony with a close up of the fountain - meant to suggest the sound. ) 

When Melody and Tim invited me to stay two more nights (instead of going to the hostel) I became aware of fairly intense fear. I sat on the balcony and used my old EBT skills (I kept saying alternately “I feel afraid that... “ and “I feel secure that...” I felt afraid of making the wrong decision - of staying, getting overwhelmed by social exhaustion, and saying or doing something that might hurt or harm them or our relationship. And I felt afraid of going and having that damage or harm in some way, or of it being a refusal to receive fully the gift of their caring for me. But when I practiced (and surely this is a social skill) looking at the “other side,” digging inside myself to find secure feelings, I realized that even in all the fear I felt secure that I (and they and our relationship) were all part of a larger “unconscious design.” That I could feel secure that  my decision whatever it was would form a part of that greater unconscious design. There I sat on the beautiful balcony of their home feeling that deep sigh of trust (and chest opening and breath entering) - and realizing that I was practicing social skills by practicing balancing emotions (in this case balancing fear and security). As I write about it, the work of balancing emotions seems similar to the art of balancing rocks - and I think of the little cairn I made on the picnic table. 

Monday morning Tim and Melody and I visited the Museum of Northern Arizona - which Tim had talked about during our drive. I loved seeing the pottery, jewelry, tools, mocassins from different places and  times - yet perhaps my greatest joy was when the three of us walked a small trail into and through and out of a lovely little canyon beside the museum. Tim joked that we were walking to Utah and it did feel like a small symbolic pilgrimage (and an honoring of the original dream/plan that Melody and I had made to walk that together, and then that Chris’s Sicily dream had made it impossible for me to do at a time that worked for Melody.) Tim started to sing “this is the song that never ends” and it reminded me of writing in this blog about granddaughter Amanda and great granddaughter Cora and I had a secure feeling that even in all the rapid change of our modern world our desire to keep love and friendship and the generations going - to hand life and the future on - is a song that will never end as long as we exist as a species. 

Photo 5 shows Tim and Melody at the edge of the canyon before we started our walk on the little path. Photo 6 shows me toward the end. I realized I had forgotten to ask someone to take the usual celebratory photo of me at the monument marking the end of the Arizona Trail. But in some sense this walk with Tim and Melody represented more fully the completion of my hike/pilgrimage (especially considering that I saw it as a pilgrimage to Ribbon Falls and so about the emergence of social relationships out of darkness into light - and perhaps that has come to mean for me, paradoxically, both a clearer ability to perceive ‘right relationship’ between people and a deeper acceptance of the inevitable confusion and lack of clarity, and a trust that they can be part of a larger unconscious design that embraces opposites, like darkness and light, curse and blessing, harm and help, as all part of something mysterious and beautiful). 

By the way, just in case you notice that I am not dressed in my dirty hiker clothes, the outfit I am wearing in the photo was found in the hiker box at Tim and Melody’s. There seemed to be a lot of tiny stickers in the pants, which Melody as an Arizona resident was used to dealing with, she just got some tough tape and rubbed my butt with it til the stickers were all gone. Melody’s a no-nonsense, blunt, outspoken, doing-what-needs-to-be-done kind of a gal. Which makes her a lot of fun, deeply lovable and (as she herself so winningly acknowledges) difficult. 

People have always been an important part of these trail walks. Mostly we have met and parted, though I did have the surprise accidental reconnection with Meander (with whom I began my PCT hike) near the end of it. Tim mentioned that he is also a recluse and much as he loves all the people from so many different places that he meets as a trail angel during hiker season, he also loves when the season is over and life gets quiet again. At heart he is a hermit. 

But these relationships sometimes continue. Tim and Melody invited for dinner Sunday night their young friends Peter and Esther (early thru hikers who actually lived with them four months while finding their own place in Flagstaff, now 8 months pregnant with their first child - and Esther’s mother - also an AZT hiker - being the person with whom Melody actually hiked part of the trail  she originally planned to hike with me). 

Melody later said maybe it had been too much for me to be with them when I first came off the trail. Well - yes - both too much and just right. 

Let me end with a photo of Melody and their dogs Noah and Tiber. I fell almost as much in love with their dogs as with Tim and Melody last year. I love how Tiber is listening to Melody. 

So here I am. I made the decision to move to the hostel and, though ambivalent, was relieved to be free of the complexity of human interaction. I stayed in my room from 2pm on, didn’t even take a walk or go out for dinner. Just wanted to be alone and digest my experience. I just now awakened at 1 am (its now almost 2:30) and decided to finish the blog. 

I have the feeling that the blog is a bit “too much” too, but I’m willing to trust it as part of the unconscious design. I think this will be my last blog for this trail. It’s been a long walk and an important one for me. Including the Sicily “detour” (and the way giving priority to Chris’s dream and braving the social trail of the tour turned out to be a part of this pilgrimage, even if that connection is expressed mostly implicitly here - perhaps through the theme of practicing social skills, introduced by Peter Downing in relation to the Sicily tour) - and how it changed the walk. Including the fact that I did not know - I really did not know - if my feet could do it - and they did. 

Including - most of all - your willingness to walk with me, making the reflections and connections in this blog possible. 

Oh - and there’s always one more thing. (Especially for River who has a hard time with endings). There’s a dream of another trail - maybe a whole different kind of hike with day-hikes from a rented camper-van in Utah, maybe with Chris - or maybe another solo hike on a wilderness trail like Colorado or New Mexico. AND there’s a dream of another group lecture tour with Chris - this one exploring the world of her (and my) beloved Professor Freud - visiting London (where he died), Vienna, Prague (to visit Nearby Pribor where he was born and also the camp at Terezin where his sisters died), Salzburg (the site of the first International Congress of Psychoanalysis), and Bad Gastein (a bath and favorite vacation and resting place for Freud). For me, for whom The Freud of my imagination has been such an important analyst, teacher, soul guide and beloved friend, this will be a pilgrimage and also I think an exploration of the relationship (harmonies, connections, conflicts, tensions) between subjective (inner, imaginary, spirit) realities and objective (factual, historical) realities. 

So I am hoping these dreams may come true, and that I will have the opportunity to walk again with you through them. 

In the meantime, may you dream your life beautiful, and may your dreams come true. And thank you so much for walking with me. 

Bye for now. See you maybe next year. 

AZT Mile 786.5 (2.2 miles from end). Jun 2.

AZT Mile 786.5 (2.2 miles from end). Saturday Jun 2. 

So far today I walked from last night’s tentsite at mile 778.1 to this rest stop, 8.1 miles. Not sure yet if I will sleep here and hike down in the morning or hike when it cools down this afternoon. 

Dear Trail Friends,

I was happy from the moment I woke up this morning. The same terrain that irritated me yesterday seemed glorious as I walked through it in the dark and as the day dawned. Then suddenly some of the gnarly twisted plants I discounted yesterday began to burst into bloom. It is an odd thing about walking how one can change zones - these plants in yeaterdays’s area are not yet in bloom, here they were all in bloom. Maybe in part because I came down some in elevation. 

Photo 1 is a collage of these guys. The air was full of their sweet dusty scent and they were blooming everywhere. 

Then there was the matter of being surprised by all these flowers and loving the same plants I could not relate to yesterday - in the light of the miracle of morning. 

Photo 2 is trying to share with you how the flowers combined with early morning life to create a sense of miracle and magic. 

I got to thinking as I walked about flowers. We associate them with funerals, weddings, sickness, graduations. They seem an equally natural way to share joy and join in a sense of celebration and to share pain and console. Maybe it’s because they so express the beauty of transience. 

Even the gnarly plants from yesterday that weren’t blooming glowed in the morning light (as did the cactuses)  til I fell in love with all of them. (Photo 4)

I noticed (photo 5) that some of the gnarlies had blossoms with long stamen or pistils or whatever it was I didnt learn the name of back in sixth grade. To me they looked like truly wonderful multiple penises. For some reason that reminds me that some animal (I no longer recall which) has a prehensile penis (that means, I think, that it is like a finger or an elephant’s trunk and can grasp things). Aren’t these crazily different from the ones in photo 1? Maybe male and female versions of the same plant? Not that I’ll ever research it, but I love feeling curious about the natural world. 

This was a great morning for curiosity. Also for blossoming cactuses (Photo 6)

So - I was walking along learning to love the gnarlies and all of a sudden a pine tree (or a fir, some dignified shade tree with needles) appeared. And another. Talk about curiosity. Why was the habitat suddenly changing? And then a shock of bright green and a whole mini grove of baby oak trees (I think oak, but if they’re elm or something else you will still get my point, I hope),shown in photo 7. 

I noticed that the trail was wandering along a wash (that word “wash” again, as with Corette, except this time it means the place where the water flows rather than the gunk that it pushes around when it flows). It seemed natural to speculate that the change in plants was due to water. Duh. That seemed like a reasonable theory. Then I thought about the Grand Canyon. Desert below where the river was. Green trees above. So how do we make sense of that? 

I know! It’s because Coyote got impatient and threw all the stars into the sky and we have confusion instead of nice neat laws. 

Walking along the wash was beautiful. I thought it was a perfect finale for the hike. There were even some rocks and the sense of it being a small canyon (photo 8). 

As we climbed away from the wash (which I had thought was going to be a hard act to follow), I began to glimpse rock walks in the distance that made me think I was looking south at the Grand Canyon. I even checked my compass. Gradually it dawned on me that I was looking north at Utah, (maybe, I found myself hoping, the setting for my next walk or walks?). 

I am now resting at a spot overlooking those rock walls. Photo 9 collages two views each just a few steps away from where I am resting. 

I felt, as I walked up to this view, a physical attraction - the kind of magical

body pull to another person that as a young person I called “love at first sight.” Now granted that we know how fickle such attractions can be (just as yesterday’s horrid gnarlies become today’s beatified luminaries, the reverse transformations are just as likely to occur) 
It is still a kind of magic that the body spontaneously falls in love with someone or something when it sees them for the first time. 

This reminds me of that little blonde girl I saw walking down the Grand Canyon holding her mother’s hand, looking like she was being dragged along. Just a few minutes before I had seen he two bigger dark-haired sisters skipping and running down the trail, their father hard pressed to keep up with them. Mother and daughter were doing a relatively short hike, but Father and older girls were doing a Rim to rim, they’d been training in track and he was sure they could do it. “They sure are passionate about it,” I commented to the father, and later to the mother. “I’m afraid she isn’t,” the mother said, indicating the little girl she was dragging along.  I remember saying to the girl “that’s alright. You don’t have to love what they love. The important thing is to know what you love and to love what you love.” Guess I’m still trying to be a family therapist (of the worst kind - the preachy kind) but I think I was also speaking to myself. 

The important thing is to know what I love and to love what I love. To pay attention when love beckons. Will it lead me astray? Of course it will. life looks a lot more like Coyote’s beautiful mess than First Woman’s clear and orderly laws. 

If this is a pilgrimage about emergence out of darkness into light, a pilgrimage about the miracle of morning, it is most of all for me about the mixed-up-ness of curse and blessing, light and darkness, wisdom and foolishness - the confused mess we say yes to when we have the courage to say yes. 

Okay I am getting grandiose. But this is the crescendo of the hike. Pretty soon I will pack up and walk 2.2 miles (and 1000 feet) down to stateline campground, the endpoint of this hike begun more than a year ago (before my niece died and my -and my family’s - world was changed forever) and finished now a year later (after Angel’s death and that change). 

So let me be a little grandiose for a minute or two. Why not, if it makes me happy? Angel won’t see or experience any of this. She won’t live to be 70 and see her life in perspective. She won’t outlive her mother and me. We’ve got to live without her to hand the future to. That line brought tears to my eyes. It’s as if I am sitting here looking across at Utah and imaging the future as something beautiful, like this landscape.  Something worth reaching for, worth handing on. (Not the way I feel when I read the news). 

The future is there even though Angel is gone. We have to hand it on as best we can - even if it’s only vis a few words I speak to a little girl walking down the Grand Canyon or a little boy not allowed to climb the Lookout Tower. I am doing my best to hand the future on. 

Hey - thanks for walking with me just then. I’ve got tears going down my cheeks. I wouldn’t have gotten to that thought/feeling, without you there listening. Thank you. 

I will see you down below at the end of the trail. 

AZT Mile 778.1 tentsite. June 1

AZT Mile 778.1 tentsite. Friday, June 1

Walked from AZT 761.7 (16.4 miles) plus about 4 miles from Kaibab Camper Village (including about 1/2 mile detour taking wrong road) for a total of 20.4 miles

Dear Trail Friends,

I woke up early and decided to go ahead and get up and start walking, forgetting how confused I get in the dark when trails aren’t as simple and clearly defined as they were in the Grand Canyon. I made the one mile hike to Jacob Lake Inn alright, but was surprised at how confused I felt trying to follow the trail given that I had walked it twice in the light (and gotten lost one of those times, River, remember?)

Unfortunately I thought all I had to do was turn right when I got to the Inn. I hadn’t checked it out carefully by daylight and didn’t realize that the Inn is right at the intersection of 89A, the road I was supposed to be on, and 67, the one I was not supposed to be on. So of course I turned right onto 67. Thank heaven I had cell coverage and could use Apple Maps because my AZT app didn’t include this part of the off-trail map. 

So I turned around, walked back, and got on 89A. I think only two cars passed me the whole walk, one from each direction, which made it much easier than when I was walking and hitching - the shoulder was very narrow - or nonexistent - and the cars whizzed by. 

The early morning part of my trail walk I kept noticing partly dead trees - trees that had been in a fire but managed to survive. I thought a lot about the fact that a lot of branches can die and there can still be some life at the top of the tree. I thought about it in relation to aging and to my sister’s fight to survive both cancer and the side effects of her treatment. Photo 1 is a collage of trees that seemed to me to be part living, part dead. 

Photo 2 is a close-up of a wave pattern in a tree’s bark. It made me think of the Wave made of rock that is such a tourist destination. I thought about how interesting the forms and patterns in the natural world are - and how amazing that it is all what I call unconscious design (which is to say I don’t believe in a conscious designer of the universe). 

The terrain changed from woods to low plants - and I did not fall in love with it. Photos 3 and 4 show the new landscape I found myself in.

It was a dry gnarled landscape with hard red clay. I thought it was poetic that I was back in a desert, that it brought the hike that started in the deserts of south Arizona to a kind of full circle completion. But I loved the desert then and I didn’t now. I tried to be a good sport and look for something to love. So photo 5 is a wildflower collage. But the fact is there weren’t that many of them and their colorful presence and fragrance did little to endear the environment to me. 

I saw one of the Kaibab squirrels - with their amazing platinum blonde tails - but she totally refused to pose for me. Dashed to the top of a very tall tree and tucked her tail behind her. 

I saw several horned roads that seemed to be adaptively colored to match the red clay. They were not cooperative photo subjects either. If you can see the horned toad in this picture (photo 6) you get three silver stars. 

Among the critters who would not pose for me was an interesting rabbit with very long ears and a longer tail than most rabbits have (photo 7)

One good thing about bones in the desert is that they are very cooperative about not running away when you try to take their picture. And they are very white. (Photo 7)

So it wasn’t the greatest day ever on the trail. The best part was I really wanted an afternoon nap but the ants were crawling all over me at my rest stop. Not a fun way to nap. So I stopped a few miles later and actually pitched my tent in a shady spot - first time I have ever done that - pitched my tent just for a midday nap. It was wonderful. 

After the nap I felt renewed and enjoyed the hike much more than earlier in the day. I hiked to the last cache of water (I was a little alarmed by how much water I was drinking and relieved that the cache was there). I set up my tent and watched my last sunset on the trail (photo 8) - a very ho hum sunset. 

Tomorrow I will arrive at the state line. I will spend the night there and trail angel Tim will pick me up Sunday morning. 

See you on the trail - tomorrow completes the walk (started last spring) from the Mexico border to the Utah state line. A total of 790 miles (just 100 of them this year). 

Thanks as always for walking with me - especially this year when I was so filled with uncertainty about my feet (among other things). 

Bye for now. 

Kaibab Camper Village, zero day. May 31.

Kaibab Camper Village, zero day. May 31. 

Dear Trail Friends,

It is past 6:30 and I had hoped to tuck myself in early - around 6 - and wake up early and start hiking before dawn. I still hope to but I do want to write a little bit about my rest here. It did turn out to be deeply restful. And I did get to practice my social skills. 

Yesterday afternoon I walked along a lovely little up and down trail between Kaibab Camper Village where I am staying and Jacob Lake Inn. I was hoping to have a beer and use guest WiFi at the restaurant, or to take advantage of a last minute cancellation and get a room that had WiFi. 

On the way I met Corette (photos 1 and 2). I wish I had a little video of her. Like Chris dancing her lectures, this woman spoke with so much embodied animation - hands, face,eyebrows - that I could feel her passion for life. 

Now it’s already a day ago and I doubt I can remember what we talked about. I know for sure she spoke of her Grand Canyon “roam” and I got curious. She talked about how she plans trips. Finding a place she dreams of seeing,like the Grand Canyon. Then studying the whole route between for opportunities to explore places or connect with people (such as I think maybe an uncle or great uncle and cousin that lived almost en route between her home in San Antonio Texas and the Grand Canyon. She planned several days on each rim giving herself freedom to discover how she would explore them. 

As we walked along she said she had four bars of coverage on her iPhone - and it was ATT. I tried mine but got the usual “no service.” Tried a restart. Still no service. I had heard the iPhone 8 was better - maybe it could pick up weaker service. But four bars when I got none? 

We walked along and she pointed to some branches and earth and needles piled up against a fence. She said that water must flow there sometimes, she recognized that as “wash” - we have it in Texas too, she said. Then she pointed out careful piles of wash that looked almost like burn piles “but they’re not,” she said. “They are to provide habitat for wildlife. We do that in Texas too.” Walking with her was like walking with Peter Downing - the way she noticed things and thought about them. (Photo 3)

She spoke of her one daughter - the person she usually travels with (they used to camp but bought a small trailer as a concession to her husband who does not like to travel and worried about them in a tent). The daughter couldn’t come on this trip because she was busy with graduate school. I asked and learned the daughter was studying biochemistry at Johns Hopkins. That brought a flood of memory of the summer after I graduated from college. I visited my friend Paul Patterson who was just finishing his PhD in biochemistry at Johns Hopkins. We became lovers and within a year I had dropped out of graduate school at U of Wisconsin (for reasons unrelated to Paul) and moved to Cambridge to join him where he was doing a postdoc at Harvard Medical School. Paul died a couple years ago and his widow Carolyn has written amazing emails about her walk through grief that have been an enormous gift to me. As was her generosity when he was dying -  calling to let me know, conveying my message of love to him. It’s funny I don’t think Corette was a very educated (in the schoolbook sense) woman but her clearly brilliant mind and her vibrant passion for life and learning were a lot like Paul’s. Is this part of practicing social skills? Noticing what to love about people?

Corette turned back after a bit and I walked to the Jacob Lake Inn - but there were no rooms at the inn and the restaurant wasn’t serving except full meals (I was not hungry - had eaten plenty of trail food and it was a little bit hot). They had a bar-like area but even there explained that they didn’t have the right kind of license to serve beer without food. I could buy a bottle of beer at the store if I wanted. In the end I bought a big bottle of smart water which I gulped lustfully down while paging through a photo book called Beyond the Wave about hiking in southern Utah in the less known places - the Wave for those of you like me who are ignorant of it - became a major destination after Microsoft used a photo of it as a screensaver. It’s a wild rock  formation which is like walking in and through wildly flowing waves of water. Those photos and photos of similar less sought after places filled me with physical longing to hike in Utah. This book was about day hikes though. I don’t think there is a long distance wilderness trail there. 

Anyway - walking back to the campground -my searches for WiFi thoroughly thwarted - but still having had quite a pleasant and restful afternoon - I was walking past the place where Corette had spoken of “wash” (I think that’s what she called it) and the piles created for habitat, enjoying remembering her energy, and took out my iPhone to take photo 3 (above) so I could share her story with you,when I noticed three bars of cell service on my iPhone. I had forgotten to turn it off and the damn thing had picked up a signal after telling me definitively “no service,” (it’s that kind of mixed message, Ms IPhone,that makes the whole subject of date rape so messy. Don’t say “no” unless you mean it!). So I learned a new fact about my iPhone. “No” does not always mean “no.” It means “wait and see.” Not only is it wise to restart it, it is also wise to wait at least a full minute after it tells me “no” to see if it really means it. 

But this changed EVERYTHING. I texted Chris. I started to edit and upload my blogs. Unfortunately it was getting dark so I decided to just upload them and forget about edits. Suddenly I was a happy camper. A rest day here? Why not. What a restful place - now that I had found cell service. 

I did manage to get lost on my way back focusing on uploading the blogs and not where I was going - and thinking it was a simple path where I could not make a wrong turn. I was mistaken. And nervous — since I had not brought my headlamp (I thought - actually it was in my pocket). I did use my iPhone light and I did make it to my tent and I discovered upload all five blogs - a bit of an accomplishment since they took about 3 minutes each and I had to keep watching the screen and tapping it if it tried to go to sleep (which I know from experience aborts the upload). 

So I slept well - and I did have a weak signal even in my tent so Chris and I have been able to talk several times (for the first time since I left). I also - in firming up my plans for the end of the trail - got a generous offer I could not refuse. Tim (of trail angels Tim and Melody I fell so in love with last spring - Melody and I were going to do this hike together but Chris’s Sicily tour upstaged our plan and she didn’t want to hike this late in the season because of the heat - but she is coming to see me on Orcas this coming June - Tim will visit briefly then go spend time with his daughter in Seattle) - I have to stop and catch my breath, that’s another of those sentences that never ends (remember the song our granddaughters taught us the summer we took them to Europe? This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends, somebody started singing it not knowing what it was, now they’ll continue singing it forever just because, this is the song that never ends...and speaking of songs that never end, Amanda who was 13 then and now is in her early 30s became the mother this spring of Cora George. So there was a sentence back there that began with Tim and the gist of it is that Tim is going to drive all the way from Flagstaff to the end of the trail to meet me when I arrive. Our “date” is for 9am - I don’t know how long a drive it is but I imagine it is many hours. The canyon south to north rim drive is 200 miles, for example. And Flagstaff is I think south of south rim and the trail end is north of the north rim. But my apple and google maps don’t know how to find the stateline campground so I can’t ask them how long the drive is. “This is a big deal” I told Melody. “We love you,” she said. Now there is a social skill I need to practice. Learning to receive love. Of course they fell in love with me, just as I did with them. Duh. 

I want to reread the part of my blog about my time with them before I see them again - refresh my memory and re-open my heart. 

What else did I do today? I took a nap. I went to the laundry room to recharge my phone and sew up a hole in the butt of my pants (there’s another one now but I’m not doing any more sewing today). In the laundry room, I met a woman named Mary Ellen who was a sixth grade English teacher from - oh dear I am not sure I remember where. I know it was not a big city. Maybe 17,000 inhabitants. So she goes to the tire store, the grocery store, the school and meets her former students now playing their adult roles in life. “A lot of people in this city are your students” her grandson says. She loved teaching them and when she travelled because her husband’s work involved reward trips for buyers or distributors or some such - she would come home and learn all about the place and create a curriculum about it. One of the books she loved to teach was Mocassin Trail, a novel about the Oregon trail. That’s a trail I wish were a wilderness trail I could hike. 

Mary Ellen told stories about her great grandfather who came west to avoid fighting in the civil war, of her grandfather who lost an arm (from falling on a track in front of a train as a boy) but who managed to become both a judge and a superintendent of schools, so that as she grew up she could say to herself, if grandfather could to all that with only one arm, certainly I can do this. 

Photo 4 is Mary Ellen. So I am really training my social skills. I actually had a lot of nice interactions with people in the laundry room. Interactions that were relaxed and not stressful. 

Did I mention walking over to the Inn and having breakfast there and relaxed conversation with the young waiter? And then talking with Chris on the trail “home” (to my campsite) - the trail is where the best cell service is. 

So what more? I was going to talk to you about Jacob Lake that turns out to be barely a pond now but that has an important role in history (Mormon and cattle rearing history) as the only year round water source on the Kaibab plateau - and about the white tailed Kaibab squirrels that exist only in this plateau. 

But I didn’t really have the energy to read much about them myself. But in case you have more energy than I do: photo 5 is Jacob Lake (with privies in foreground) more or less from my tent. Photo 6 and 7 are photos I took of info posted about Jacob Lake in the campground office. Sorry they are indecipherable but that’s the breaks. Photo 8 is about Kaibab squirrels. Their tails are very white. If I see another one I will try to get you a photo. 

Oh I forgot to tell you. At breakfast I practiced social skills by looking at people and imagining them as all coming from somewhere and having stories. As having joys and sorrows, seeking to love and be loved, to accomplish things and gain respect from self and others, and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. That made me look at them curiously (instead of fearfully). But I watched one young girl shrink away from the man beside her (her father, I assumed) and saw what seemed to me a sad hopeless look on her face and I felt a strong - well, to use an Arizona word - flash flood of pain. This led to many reflections about the ways I seem to lack certain boundaries. Whether the pain I feel when I “sense” others pain is real or imagined, or both, the fact is I get flooded. I don’t seem to have quite the sense of boundaries others have. And I cope with pain by making up and telling stories. And so all my life I have trespassed because what to others is clearly not my pain or my story feels to me like my pain and my story. This got me to reflecting that my fear and avoidance of people started very early with my sister Bonnie and my not “getting” the boundaries between her pain and my pain, her story and my story. And it being unbearable to me that I then became a cause of more pain to her (by violating her privacy) and she a cause of more pain to me (by her anger). So that was one way human interaction became unsafe for me. It was amazing how flooded I was by this young girl’s real or imagined pain. It gave me a lot of compassion for myself as a child. 

So hurray for me. I really am practicing social skills and training myself in trust. It’s a lot harder than walking solo on a wilderness trail. But it can be very beautiful too. 

Thank you for walking with me. See you tomorrow on the trail. 

Kaibab Village Campground near AZT Mile 761.7, May 30.

Kaibab Village Campground near AZT Mile 761.7, May 30. 

Walked 9.5 miles from tentsite at 752.2, plus a little extra road walk (maybe a mile?) while hitchhkliking along Highway 89A until a kind couple picked me up. 

Dear Trail Friends

Here I sit at my campsite at Kaibab Camper Village. I am disappointed that there is no wifi or cell service here. Everything else I could hope for is here: a quiet private campsite, a chance to shower and do laundry, my resupply box arrived safely and held, and chairs and a table in the laundry room that made sorting and packing the resupply easy and comfortable. 

But I am missing WiFi and cell service. And I am missing having a room. I could have reserved a room at Jacob Lake Inn (nearby) but they were not willing to receive and hold hiker resupply boxes. Somehow with a room I find I can relax in a different way. And it is also true that for me a campground is the worst of both worlds: all the discomforts of camping without the comfort of solitary communion with the world around me. Even though my campsite is quiet, I can see other campers pretty much wherever I look. 

I am wondering if I want to bother with a rest day here as planned or just get up tomorrow and hike. I suspect I would enjoy an extra day at the end in Flagstaff with a room of my own (and , I assume, cell service and WiFi) more than a rest day here. 

One option is to walk the mile to Jacob Lake Inn to see if they have a last minute cancellation. But I know how booked everything is around the Grand Canyon, and I imagine they have a waiting list. I also could walk to their restaurant to see if they have WiFi service there - but I really should be eating trail food and lightening my pack which is heavy because of the resupply. 

So I wonder what I should do - in the sense of what I would most enjoy - and I am not sure. Is there a way to practice learning to relax here as a kind of training in social skill? Wouldn’t being able to relax in the presence of other humans be considered a social skill? 

The sun keeps going in and out behind clouds. Photo 2 shows my campsite, the clouds, and the evidence of other humans. 

Now if I take it on as a training project, I might actually take an interest in it. Although I am not sure it could sustain me through an entire zero day (for any of you new to hiking lingo, a zero day is a day with zero miles, therefore theoretically a rest day. 

I went to sleep early last night and when I woke at 3:30 I decided to get up and hike so I’d arrive here early in the day. I was imagining a major part of the day would be spent rereading, correcting obvious errors, and uploading blogs. Now with that not possible, I feel vaguely restless and a little at loose ends. (Like the photo from Sicily that I called Lost Connections - here’s a copy to remind you as photo 1). 

That was interesting! Just searching through the Sicily photos trying to find this one brought to mind what a rich trip it was. I haven’t had time to digest it, or to reach out to others from the trip because of the rush to prepare for this one. I understand how important it was to me to return to the AZT, to discover if I am still capable of lond distance hiking, and how constrained I was by the ever-rising temperatures in the Grand Canyon. But I hope in the future I will allow myself time between adventures to absorb the experience and connect with people who contributed to it. 

I had also hoped that the Sicily adventure would somehow intermingle with this one. I hoped my experiences here would relate to experiences there, to the myths - and perhaps in some ways they have. But at this moment the photo from Sicily representing Lost Connections expresses my sense of the two adventures being isolated from each other, and of having isolated myself from the people I shared so much with in Sicily. 

One of the challenges of memory loss like mine is that connections are easily lost, whether with people or between experiences. Odd how this image of lost connections makes a connection via the sense of lost connection. Even recognizing that I regret not connecting with the people tells me that connections have been made, that I feel them in my heart. 

I am eating an extra protein bar and feeling very virtuous because my doing so I lighten my pack by 2.53 ounces. 

But back to the trail. I started hiking just as the sun rose and it was one of the more spectacular sunrises I have seen (photo 3) and gave me a sense of it being a special day. 

The hike had a quality of ease. I am learning new ways to walk - since bodywork Rick encouraged me to try uphill walking toes first. I found that I needed to move my body in whole different ways to land on toes instead of heels. I learned a way of walking from my pelvis (my body’s “power center” as one of my fekdenkrais tapes calls it) and discovered I could maintain a rhythm going uphill for much longer. So I’ve been experimenting with how I walk on level ground and how to engage my pelvis. Today I found myself pushing my tummy just a little forward, and my hip bones as well, and imagining my feet rolling from heel to toe in a way that seemed to come from the pelvis. I can’t really explain it but it felt like a new more efficient way of walking just as the uphill pelvic walking did. I seemed to walk faster too - although this might have more to do with how level the trail was than with how I was walking. 

At my first rest stop, as I was putting pain cream and aloe vera on my feet and knees (which were doing quite well) they talked to me about how the loving touch was as important as the cream. It occurred to me that the feet felt loved by me, and when I took the time to thank them and put my love into my touch, I also recognized how loving it was of them to walk all these miles just to contribute to my happiness. It felt at that moment as if the trail was very much about learning how to make a loving connection between I my mind and me my body. And to feel that connection in words and in touch. We are really very different beings, my mind (counting, planning,making up ideas about who I am, about past and future, making up stories) and my body (really the animal part of me who would rather wag her tail or lick your face than put together a sentence - for her it is so much a world of sensation and movement.)

I saw a pretty little lake with a pretty morning reflected in it (photo 4). 

I saw two cows cross the trail in front of me, gallop up the hill, then turn to look back at me. (Photo 5). I thought about cruelty to animals and vegetarianism and how without meat eating these cows would not be alive. I wondered if they loved their lives. 

I saw a beautiful broken down fence and then had a lengthy conversation in my mind with someone (maybe you) if I loved it because it was beautiful or if I found it beautiful because it was broken. I thought about transgression, and rules and wildness. I thought about cayote throwing the stars into the sky and making confusion (but beautiful confusion). I thought of “good fences make good neighbors” and boundaries in therapy and all the ways I have broken them. Which makes me think about the paper I will give this fall at IFPE (international forum for psychoanalytic education) about relationships between therapists and their patients. Relationships like Chris and mine (that has endured and been a blessing in both our lives and our families) and relationships that seem just as deeply felt that end up doing harm. Photo 6 is the beautiful broken down fence. 

Maybe those two cows I saw were free, had escaped captivity through a broken down fence like this. I’ve never heard of a feral cow but they could exist. 

When I reached highway 89, three miles from my campground, I pinned (on the back of my pack) my bandana that says “HIKER TO TOWN.” I knew I should stand in a spot with a place to pull out just ahead ( the road had hardly any shoulders) but after five minutes I knew standing there hitching was way too boring. I started to walk, with the sign on my back, sticking out my thumb to cars as they passed. Lo and behold, an RV stopped right there in the middle of that fairly fast-moving road, and gave me a ride. Meet Keith and Jacqui Woods, hikers from Liverpool (photo 7). Our encounter reminded me, as the trail so often does, that there is no more beautiful sight on this earth than a human face in an act of kindness. (Though in this case the photographer failed to do these lovely people justice). 

Okay. Enough for now. Will River walk the mile to Jacob Lake Inn on the off chance that they will let her use the WiFi if she eats at the Restaurant, or that a room will suddenly become available for tomorrow night?  Will she go to sleep early and get up in the morning and start the final two or three days of the hike? Will she stay another day here to rest and practice the social skill of resting around other humans? (This reminds me of our dog Nikki when we first adopted her at about 8 months. She had been badly treated by her adoptive family and an abusive dog trainer, and had come back to her original family/Breeder to heal. As we drove home (from Vancouver Island, so drive plus ferry rides) she looked very very tired but kept blinking her eyes, as if trying to stay awake. I thought “she’s afraid to go to sleep. She doesn’t trust us.” And I closed my eyes, hoping the act of closing my eyes would convey to her that I was willing to trust her, and I hoped she would trust us. She finally closed her eyes too, and went to sleep. I do think the core social skill that I need to practice is trust. )

Thanks for walking with me. See you tomorrow - on the trail, or not. 

 

AZT Mile 752.2, May 29

AZT Mile 752.2 tentsite, Tuesday May 29. 

Walked 11 miles from tentsite at mike 741.2, plus 7 miles round trip back to Mile 737.7 - searching for lost mat etc. for a grand total of 18 miles. 

Dear Trail Friends 

Wow. If was a long day and more miles than I intended to ask my feet to do in one day. 

I decided that it was worth going back to look for my mat. I even decided the poop bag was probably there too because it made sense if I used it during a rest stop that I might set it down and forget to put it away - especially if I left something else as well (or didn’t check thoroughly). 

I woke up at 2:30am and started walking at 3:30. I took a very light version of my pack, leaving my tent, part of my water, my bag of clothes, my iPhone recharger battery - I figured I left about 8 pounds behind. I wanted to take the food bag just in case it might - despite the op sak that is supposed to contain scents - attract critters. And I wanted my emergency bag - in case of an emergency.  

I was lucky that I remembered the mile number 737.7 of my rest stop. Even so it wasn’t so easy to find the exact spot. I went back and forth, back and forth along the tenth mile stretch the gps identified as 737.7. I thought I recognized a tree and it was part of an area that looked like the photo I had taken there. But no mat and no green poop sack. I searched all around on both sides of the trail, even looking up into tree branches, trying to imagine where wind might have blown it. And then I decided to give up. I was glad I went back, I was sure I searched in the right place, and I wasn’t able to find it. What’s done can’t be undone. Just as I turned to head back, I saw the mat, where it had been blown against a young evergreen tree several yards from the tree I had rested against. Having a clearer idea of wind direction, I did one more careful search for the green sack with no luck. 

I forgot to mention that the sun came up slowly as I walked and at much the same time the moon began to set. Photo I is the moon as I’m conducting my search. 

I hiked back to my tentsite and never found either my green sack (I thought it could fallen out of my pack if I didn’t secure it properly) or any sign of Barry. I’ve pretty much concluded he took another rest day or is hiking much slower than he originally planned and that I won’t see him again. 

As I walked back I saw a group of elk at a small lake. When they saw me they ran away with that elegant leaping run of theirs. I took a rest stop near the lake and one elk came and watched me from a safe distance. 

Very early in the hike I entered a burn area - a comment in the gps app suggested this would cover the whole area from approximately Mile 744 to Mile 762 and to plan accordingly for campsites. I wasn’t sure what this meant but it might mean no safe campsite opportunities in the burn area. It did mean a long stretch with no shade on a hot day. Photo 2 is a collage of views of the burn area. 

I became more and more fascinated with the rocks and frustrated with the way the iPhone photos did not communicate the vibrant colors. I would have shucked my pack and spent hours on my knees searching for tiny rocks with vivid colors that I could bring home to remind me of the magic. In the end I put them all back - it didn’t work. But in the meantime I had a long inner debate about violating the “Leave No Trace” rule (which includes to take nothing with you.) I thought how much those tiny rocks could mean to me and how unnoticeable their absence would be. I argued that if thousands of people reasoned like me the ground might eventually be nude of rocks. This seemed highly unlikely. I thought of a distinction Gary Snyder made between wilderness and wildness. Wildness is what happens outside human planning and control. It can be a bird or a flower in New York City. Wilderness is something or things, environments created out of wildness at a time before the human population density destroyed most of it. Most of what is left is now managed wilderness - defined and planned and protected by humans. I am profoundly ambivalent about managed wilderness. It is the way wilderness evokes wildness that matters most to me. Yet without human agency it would not continue to exist. Rules like “leave no trace” are part of that - and I am ambivalent about them. Sometimes I think it’s like cayote throwing the stars into the sky. What’s done cannot be undone. 

I include another collage of rocks just because they fail so miserably to communicate the power of these colorful rocks and the magic and mystery of their presence. They are in a way the same stuff as the canyon walks.  Arizona is all about rocks. So photo 3 - the rocks. 

Photo 4 is me at a rest stop with my sun umbrella. I intended to send it home then made a quick check of weather for the next week (lacking WiFi I had to ask at the lodge front desk). It looked like it was going to get less and less cloudy and more and more hot (up to 90 I think by tomorrow) in Fredonia (which was my best guess for the weather on the trail). So I kept the umbrella. And I am so glad I did. It is impossible for me at least to rest on a hot day without shade. The umbrella doesn’t provide all I need and it’s hard to set up at rest stops (the gizmos that attach it to the backpack work great when I’m wearing it but not at all when it’s off) but it is so much better than nothing. 

Just for contrast photo 5 shows me in the merciless sun. 

I actually took the second photo after trying to comb my hair. I took it to show Suzi the barber why I need my hair shorter on top when I am on the trail. 

There was an incredible view of some amazing landscape toward the end of today’s hike. Photo 7 was my favorite shot of it. 

If Judy were here and she and I were doing drawing meditations I would try to give a simplified abstracted version of those colors and shapes. Maybe I will when I get home. Though I never seem to want to draw alone since drawing with Judy. Our silent shared drawing creates a something very comforting - like what Quakers call a “gathered meeting” that holds me as I draw. 

There is so much more to tell about today. But I need to sleep. So here’s the beautiful spot I found to put up my tent in photo 8. 

Good night. Sweet dreams. See you on the trail.