Hiked today for the first time in a long time, a 9-mile loop around Golden Gate Canyon State Park, including the 9000-foot Windy Peak summit.It will be three years this year since "the incident" and I still don't have my confidence back, but today felt good. And I'm excited to plan some trips this summer.
There's an episode of The Office (one of my favorite shows ever) after Michael has his heart broken by Holly, and he meets this woman while giving blood. They hit it off, but he passes out ("I was so nervous about this I don't think I've eaten in three days.") before he can get her number. She leaves her glove, though, and Michael picks it up, and all day he's hoping she'll show up again for her glove, but she never does. And at the end of the episode, in a rare moment of insight, he says, "Sometimes it's not about Cinderella getting her slipper back, but it's the fact that the prince picked up the slipper at all."
Because it's not about me getting back to snow-climbing and bushwhacking and multi-night backpacking trips. It's about the fact that I'm excited to do a single-night trip on a trail I've been on countless times before. It means I'm getting better. I'm trying to celebrate those victories, however small, rather than expecting myself to overcome a traumatic experience in an instant.
Because I keep planning these elaborate multi-night trips, and obviously I had to go somewhere I'd never been before, and it *had* to be 30 miles at least, and then I'd chicken out and find some excuse to not go. If healing means I'm gonna do eight-mile roundtrip overnights, if I'm gonna walk on trails you could take a car on, if I'm gonna go to Lost Creek Wilderness for the umpteenth time, I'm doing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment