From Hiking to Crawling: Lessons Learned on a Long Walk

 * * Upcoming Talks:  March 7, Oregon City Library, 7 PM  //  March 26, Straub Environmental Learning Center, 7 PM  //  April 16, Tryon Creek State Natural Area, 6:30 PM * *

Recently, I wrote an article for my park's--Tryon Creek State Natural Area, Portland, Oregon--newsletter, "The Trillium Times."  It forced me to reflect on my thru-hike (and made me cry a few times), so I thought I'd share.  Enjoy!

“From Hiking to Crawling:  Lessons Learned on a Long Walk”

For nearly three years, walking has been my greatest obsession.  Last spring, I tackled my first long trail—a thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) from the Mexican border to the Canadian border.  From the day I finally resolved to attempt it in 2010 to my first steps away from the corrugated metal fence that is the Mexican border on April 30, 2012, I obsessed with the idea of walking—planning and preparing for a journey I could not comprehend from my temperature-controlled home in Silverton.  For the next 151 days, I was immersed in the act of walking—traveling an average of 20 miles a day to reach Canada before the Washington snows hit.  And every day since those final steps on September 28, 2012, my time and thoughts have been filled with reflecting on and recovering from walking. 

Today, I look out the windows of the Tryon Creek Nature Center where I have just started working as an Interpretive Park Ranger, and I see countless people walking.  All hours of the day, all days of the week.

And so, it is in this light that I would like to write today about walking. 

Let me begin with a few of the lessons I learned during my six-million step journey:

My new park includes "Willamette Stone," the surveyor's monument that is
 the point of origin for  all of Oregon and Washington's public land surveys.  
So, in a round about way, this historic place led me through Oregon & Washington!

• A good long walk takes the weight of years and worries off your shoulders.  You’ll lose as many pounds of actual weight as you do of worry.
• Nothing is so worrisome that you can bear to worry about it for 14 waking/walking hours a day, 7 days a week. 
• Rest is as important as anything else in the world . . . as is water and nourishment.  Without these three, nothing is important.
• Nothing tastes as good as anything after a long day’s walk.
• Anywhere really IS walking distance if you have the time.
• “Walk it off,” is more than just a coaching cliché.  Many ailments, physical and mental, can be cured by a nice long walk.
• Walking is for everyone.  The tall and the small, the young and the old, the injured and the well, the elk, the porcupine, and the goat.  I found them all traveling the PCT.
• If you walk far enough, you will find answers.  You will not find all of them.  Rather, you will find answers you were not looking for and questions you did not know you had.  Rest easy knowing that your question to answer ratio will remain the same.
• You cannot walk away from your problems, only into them.
• Clarity rides on the shirttails of fresh air.
• Christopher Robin was right when he said, “... we ought to eat all of our provisions now, so that we shan’t have so much to carry.” 

And last, but not least, for all those of us who have neither the time nor energy for an expedition-length walk:

• A long walk is nothing more than a series of short ones.

My slowly-healing feet recently walked me around
Mammoth Hot Springs in northern Yellowstone National Park.

The above is what I learned while walking the PCT.  My most valuable lesson, however, came post-trail.

Since finishing the PCT, I have had a limited ability to walk.  In northern California, I developed plantar fasciitis.  1000 miles later, upon finishing the trail, I found I could walk no more than 100 yards—and at a snail’s pace as I attempted to balance pain with distance and pretend that everything was fine.  When I awoke at night with no one watching, I would opt to crawl to the bathroom rather than put weight on my feet.  This drastic transition from hiking 25 miles a day to hobbling to the kitchen has been one of the  most humbling experiences of my life.  My appreciation for the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other has increased tenfold.  As has my awe and respect for all of you walkers—tall and small, young and old, injured and well—who make the time and effort to do it.  It has only been through reflecting on and recovering from the PCT that I have fully grasped the final lesson of a long walk, which is this:

• Sometimes putting one foot in front of the other is the most difficult thing you can do.  It is sometimes also the only thing you can do.

And with that, I bid you farewell.  I am out for a short ramble on my new favorite Tryon Creek trail, Big Fir.  Perhaps I’ll see you out there.