Birthday Plans

I’m trying to plan our weekends for the next couple months, and that led me to thinking about my birthday, and then I got excited and had to plan everything. It’s been a bad year for trips between the weather, Dean not having vacation days, and a wedding to pay for, but I don’t think much can go wrong with this:

1. I will be gaming Friday night the 9th, so a leisurely Saturday morning. When we’re up and running, we’re driving to Pueblo.

2. Once in Pueblo, we’re going to Gagliano’s Italian Grocery for a light lunch of bread and cheese; don’t forget the potica! Then hitting the zoo, and trying Pueblo’s famous “sloppers” at Gray’s Coors Tavern for dinner.

3. Driving down to Alamosa to set up camp at the UFO Watchtower. We’ll heat up hard cider on my camp stove and eat potica while waiting for night to fall. The new moon is on the 13th, so I’m hoping for a very dark night. The UFO Watchtower has no light pollution, so I’m hoping to finally catch a glimpse of the Milky Way. Dress warmly!!

4. The next morning (unless we’ve been abducted by aliens), check out the Watchtower in the daylight, add a couple rocks to the Garden, and then head out to Great Sand Dunes National Park, where we will be hiking the ~1.75 miles to Zapata Falls.

5. I’m not terribly familiar with that area, so we’ll see if anything catches our eye before we head home. If nothing else, we can go to the Gator Farm.

Golden Gate Canyon State Park and Windy Peak, Colorado

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.

A Personal Entry

Tomorrow, I'm doing a few miles along the Colorado Trail, west from the FS-560 trailhead to the point where it intersects with the branch of the Brooks-McCurdy Trail that leads to Lost Park Campground, about 9 miles. I've got (three) maps and my compass, I've walked myself step-by-step through my day to make sure I have everything packed that I'll need, and it's a really well-worn popular trail so it's not like I'm bushwacking in the wilderness - but to be completely honest, I'm terrified.

I haven't done a lot of backpacking lately (in fact, none at all this year, I think), and publicly I'll say that it's because between work and school, I have no time to disappear for even a quick overnight, but I have to admit, I never got over the experience of losing my way when I attempted a portion of the CT last year. I lost the trail and had to turn back; luckily I was near a popular campground in a familiar area and managed to hitch my way back home after only a few miles of road-walking, but it was completely humiliating and shook my confidence to the core.

There's a Daniel Boone quote that goes, "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks."  But still, what if I hadn't been in such a convenient position, where I was a short walk from other humans, where I had ample water, where I knew where I was on the map, even if I didn't know where to go next? What if I was really and truly lost? I could've wandered out there until I died. After I got home, my dad told me a story about how he got lost hiking once - really lost, not just confused - and how it turned him off hiking for the rest of his life; he said that he didn't want that to happen to me, and I don't want it to either, but I don't know how to get rid of this knot of fear in my stomach.

Except by getting back on the horse.