Apr 15, 2012
60 Days to Go
John is in Mexico and I’m filling his absence with books. Right now I’m reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I’m writing a memoir, and as part of that process I have read about 100 memoirs. Some are good. Some are really not. I’ve been looking forward to this book because I read several glowing reviews.
I’m also particularly interested in Strayed’s account of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail because I’ve been reading a lot of books about hiking Kilimanjaro. So far, my favorite piece of writing about Kili has been the private journal of our friend Chris, who inspired us to take the trip in the first place. Some of the Kili books are tedious first-person diaries of how much an individual suffered on the hike (most often told with painfully repetitive & simple subject-verb sentence structure: I ached, I wheezed, I blah blah blah).
Would Wild make some more profound observations about humans vs. nature? Why yes, yes it would. Plus, it is finely crafted prose. I’m about 75% finished, and I have alternately laughed, wept, and hurried to my writer’s journal to record some inspirational thought. My favorite moment so far has been this phrase: “the wilderness had a clarity that included me.” Yes. I understand that. It’s why I love hiking and backpacking. And trail running and biking for that matter. Wilderness is my meditation.
Last night I stayed up reading. Blew past my 8:30 pm bedtime. The Vizslas got really angry about that and kept whining, their expressive eyebrows pointing towards the stairs begging for “bed!” But I sat in my garden until 10:30 pm and I could not put the book down. Strayed has crafted the hike as a narrative thread, using events on the trail as triggers for back-story. It’s something I’ve been implementing with my own book: imposing a narrative thread that creates depth through contrast. The bulk of my book now takes place in the forward action of the 5 months between my mother’s death and my father’s death. But I’m only halfway finished imposing that structure to my book. Please, please, let this reading be the impetus for finishing it.
So now there are only 60 days left before our group of 7 hikers sets off for 8 days on the mountain and 5 days on safari. Reading Wild while thinking about the details of our trip has given me the ability to re-frame my feelings. For the past 3 months now we have obsessed over preparations: Agonizing over missed work-outs, ordering perfectly good gear then exchanging it for perfectly good different gear, waking in our soft beds worrying about waking up on the hard ground in sub-zero cold. I’ve been having a recurring dream that slices the night air about once a week: I jolt awake after I have plummeted off the side of a cliff. But in reality there aren’t even many cliff-y sections on the Kili hike. These are insidious anxieties.
In Wild, Strayed describes her inexperience with backpacking in contrast to the people she meets on the trail. I am more like those experienced hikers than I am like Strayed. And yet I think I’ve gotten carried away by fears. I remember telling an acquaintance that I was planning to hike Kilimanjaro. “People die there!” he said. “Yes.” I nodded. People die there. Or people fail to summit. Or people get AMS and vomit all day. Or people get dirty and tired and grumpy and cold and sore. I am, I admit, afraid of all of those things.
But last night as I was reading I felt suddenly blessed about the Kili trip. And why had that been missing? Because I had been focusing on fear. Wild made me focus on opportunity.
No matter what happens on the mountain, I’ll have people I love at my side. I’ll have a strong and healthy body. And the view certainly won’t suck.
My first of many Packing Run-Throughs for Kilimanjaro. Penny wants to come with us.
