Day 2. March 16. Mountain.

Day 2. Monday, March 16. 

20.16 miles. 3793 ft ascent. 

Dear Trail Friends,

Thank you so much for the caring and encouraging responses to yeaterday’s post. Today is tougher. Basically I had a grumpy day and my feet really hurt. Since getting home I’ve had a great Epsom salt bath and am hoping to continue the hikeathon but while I was hiking my last six miles today I pretty much thought I had overdone and it was all over. 

At one point during the hike I remembered feeling the same way on one of my long distance backpacking trip. I was exhausted, I hurt, and I was wondering what the hell I was doing this for. But I knew then, and I knew today. Sometimes I just have to keep walking through the pain and discouragement so that I will be here, waiting, when the “here I am” feeling comes - and all of a sudden I see and feel the miracle of all the beauty around me and of being present in it, and having that kind of beauty inside me. That kind of happiness is worth waiting for. Photo 1 is looking back at the light in the trees as I climbed up the mountain from Mountsin Lake. I was miserable and exhausted and hiking so slow I didn’t think I would ever get to the top. Then I looked down behind me at the light on the trees. 

The hike started out suspiciously. There was the half moon floating in the predawn night sky and heading up the mountain with a headlamp. This is the hike where I take all the different paths up the mountain (I forgot to give you the track of yesterday’s hike where I went around the perimeter of the oark and took a couple excursions beyond oark boundaries). So photos 2 and 3 are today’s and yesterday’s hikes. 

Anyway I stopped as I always do on hikeathon a to visit the abandoned gold mine. I am amazed when I walk through it and imagine the hard labor of opening up several long tunnels in the rock, probably using only a pick axe. I think about the man doing the work and his dream of finding gold. I have learned that no gold was ever found on any of the claims on Mt Constitution but I would love to learn the story of the man or men who dug out this mine. As I walked today I thought about dreams and the hard work that goes into them and how sometimes they are like this abandoned gold mine. I thought of my 20-something dream of a socialist revolution that would cure the world forever of greed and injustice and war. I thought of my dream of having a child. It’s interesting to consider the abandoned or failed dreams as just as much part of the larger music, the grand design, the great dance - as the dreams that “come true.”

Photo 4 is looking out at the world from inside the gold mine. 

My second little excursion was to the stone circle that I understand is a Native American worship site. I prayed  and called out to the spirits of each of the directions: Spirits of the East, musicians, dancers, designers of beauty of the East and dawn and beginnings, greetings and gratitude and blessings. I ask for your blessing and your love and acceptance. Please help me to be aware of your presence in the world and within me too. 

I stood in each of the corners and prayed and was moved by connecting the spirits of the directions in the stone circle with my idea of god as the great music/dance/design. But then I was tired and grumpy so my self-critical thoughts jumped up and started having a party. Look at you, they said, you are copying native peoples religion. Isn’t it enough that your ancestors massacred them and stole their land and tried to destroy their way of life?

This went on and on until I no longer felt worthy to pray at all. I tried praying for help to feel worthy to pray but then the self critical voices reminded me that my experience of the big music and dance and design was that it loved me but was utterly indifferent to whether I lived or died, and also to my ideas about moral goodness. So here I was praying for help feeling worthy (also for help past my greed, to sense and serve the greater good - I was praying for that for our leaders too) and my self-critical voices start pointing out the contradictions in my theology and I’m getting grumpier and grumpier. And my feet are starting to hurt. 

Meanwhike I thought the sun would be out today - which it was, beautifully - but there was still a fierce cold wind toward the top of the mountain that made me regret not bringing my balaclava. I kept looking at the ice sculptures in streams and at the edge of the lake and they made me think of the ice queen fairy tale and the little boy with a splinter of glass from a certain evil mirror in his eye that meant he could not see anything or anyone with love. That’s a little how I felt today. I identified with that little boy. Although secretly I did love all the ice designs. 

In spite of my horrid mood, it was a beautiful day. I don’t believe I have ever seen Mt Baker and the Two Sisters more clearly and crisply -and I could even make out the ghostly presence of Mt Ranier in the distance. 

I hope to hike tomorrow but the final decision will have to be made by my feet. I like to think that today my feet were making a walking prayer even while my brain got all befuddled. 

I can’t imagine that it’s any pleasanter for you to walk with me today than it was for me to be walking. So I thank you even more than usual for staying with me. I understand why you do it - for the same reason I do - we never know when when of those open-hearted moments will happen and we want to be here if it does. 

I’m hoping for a good nights sleep, bandages on my blisters, and being able to start my hike in the morning and continue all day. Okay - great music, great dance, great design - I get that you love me but do t give a damn about my preferences - but I’m still praying to you. Hold me - hold my feet - in your hands, in your living gaze. Put the whole of me on your world wheel and squeeze me and shape me strong and beautiful enough to get up tomorrow morning and hike. And pray. And sense your presence. And believe in your presence in me. Even if I have invented a theology full of contradictions. Surely your music and your dance and your beautiful design is big enough to hold contradictions. 

Good night.