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.