The 5 Stages of Hiking
Glacier Lake, just north of Missoula, Montana
Last week, my husband and I headed up to Missoula, Montana to see P!NK in concert. Both the town of Missoula and the concert vastly exceeded my expectations. PINK’s performance was astonishing - seeing her live was more than worth the 6 hour drive and the small amounts of beer that the enthusiastic women behind me spilled down my back. The town of Missoula was also an unexpected delight - we found great coffee shops (Le Petit Outre was my favorite), restocked the liquor cabinet with wine and beer that’s not available in Utah, and learned about ‘Ledger art’ and the work of Blackfoot artist Aspen Decker at the Radius Gallery.
And then we went for a hike. We drove about an hour north of Missoula, and after some minor issues with Apple Maps, found our trail head. According to AllTrails, it was a 3 mile easy hike. For those who use AllTrails, it won’t surprise you to know that nowhere did the description mention the 11 miles of dirt road to get there, the distance was actually 3.6 miles, and we navigated fallen trees across the trail and stream crossings that involved balancing on rocks to get across. If I were not 60 years old and managing a neurological disorder, then the trail would not have been a challenge - but dear lord that app needs to find better ways of describing trails.
And this is where I have to say that having Parkinson’s sucks. One of the many ways that it sucks is that it impacts balance, it slows gait, creates stiffness, and so forth. And as successful as my DBS surgery has been, things still aren’t right, and my brain and body aren’t fully connected. There’s a profound level of “use it or lose it” with this syndrome - and with the run up to my birthday party, the 6 hour drive, the late night at the concert - I didn’t realize exactly how little I’d been hiking in recent weeks. Which is to say I experienced a lot of emotions in those 3.6 miles, all of which aligned perfectly with the ‘5 stages of grief.’
It all starts with Denial. “It’ll be fine! I mean, I can’t really feel my feet very well, but I’m sure that’ll wear off soon.” And a few minutes later “still can’t tell where exactly my feet will land, but okay, no problem.” And so forth. We managed the first stream crossing, which included a ‘bridge’ that was reasonably wide and had a wooden rail for support, so not bad at all.
It was at the next creek crossing, which had no bridge and was wide (and shallow - I mean nothing terrible was likely to happen if I fell), and involved balancing on rocks and fallen tree limbs. We approached the crossing at the same time as another couple. They, being not brain damaged, scampered lightly across with no issue. Then it was my turn and that’s when Anger really set in.
Me, with my stupid trekking poles, stupidly making my stupidly tentative way across the stupid creek, then walking with a stupidly uneven and slow gait, stupidly stumbling on rocks if I did anything other than than stupidly focusing on my stupid feet and their placement. And my stupid husband, stupidly walking slowly to stupidly accommodate me, being stupidly happy and supportive, pointing out stupidly beautiful trees and stupid rocks and other stupid things along the way.
It wasn’t pretty.
Then came the bargaining. I will hike everyday, stretch everyday, meditate everyday, eat well all the time IF that will make it so I don’t have to experience this bullshit again. The bargaining mixed with the anger - there’s no guarantee that any of that will stave off a degenerative brain disease and maybe this is just my life.
So then all of that brought the Sadness. The internal wailing at the unfairness of it all, the grief over past abilities, but most over what might come in the future. When will I be unable to even travel and easy 3.6 mile trail through a wilderness to a gorgeous alpine lake on a perfect summer afternoon with my beloved and kind husband?
Thankfully, dear reader, this is when Acceptance finally arrived and I was able to just be in the moment and enjoy the beauty around me and savor my slow pace as a way to be in the moment. Yes, I had to focus on my feet, but at the end of the hike I was walking better than at the beginning. Yes, the creek crossings were stupidly difficult but I did not fall in. And yes, I had to use my trekking poles on an objectively easy hike, but at least I had trekking poles to use and had a car that could get me down an 11 mile dirt road to a wonderful trail head. And yes, my brain is degenerating but so what. I have people who love me and I can still get out into the world and I may get hit by a bus tomorrow so accept it and be here now. Because now will never come again.
I apologized to my husband and asked him to remind me at the start of any hike that I will likely go through the 5 stages of hiking (as I now think of them) again. Awareness will, I hope, make them more manageable and spare him from some ridiculous anger on my part.
I’ve also realized how much space Grief takes up in my life, in everyone’s life. Whether it is an acute grief from a loss, a chronic grief from a long term issue, or simply the grief of living, we are all grieving. One of my favorite authors on religion, Karen Armstrong, talks about the Buddhist principle that “life has gone awry.” That phrase has been more commonly translated to “life is suffering” but I much prefer her version, that things are “awry’. We feel that sense of grief always, that life is not quite right, that we are separate when we are meant to be together, that we are in pieces instead of being whole. That try as we might, if we could only eat right, live right, meditate right, pray right, then we will feel right. But the truth is that we have no control, that the best we can do is to let go of what we ‘want’ and what ‘should’ be and accept what is and find what joy we can. Which is something I am terrible at doing.
But I am learning, slowly. I am grateful to have the time and space to reach for the present, to savor the present, to mix in the sorrow with the joy so that, as in any good recipe, the bitter enhances the sweet, which would otherwise be too cloying to be palatable. To joke at sorrow and to cry with joy, while weeping with sorrow and aching with laughter - that is all I have to offer.
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“There are days when you wake up up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.
Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.”
From ‘Grief’, by John O’Donahue