2004 (2) – Why We Struggle

The day came when it was time to drive up to the trailhead, and David was late as usual.  He showed up just after sunset with an enormous, fully stuffed backpack resembling an elephant seal that had been on the beach a bit too long.  We were traveling in his dilapidated Plymouth utility vehicle that was usually full of boat gear.  He called it “V-ger” after Star Trek, and removed the O, Y, and A.  Because of our delayed departure, it took us much longer to navigate rush hour traffic before reaching the wide open spaces of Highway 5, all the way smelling of fish and gasoline.  By the time we reached the trailhead late at night, the edifice of our advance planning had crumbled to rubble, and we slept in the back of his van like grateful tramps, amidst the lumpy piles of camping, boating, and fishing gear.  I swear we had enough equipment to provision an ascent of Mt. Everest, but we were only going up about 10% of that altitude.  The next morning we hastily picked out a few likely pieces we might need, stuffed them in our packs like refugees, and hit the trail in desperation… practically running to escape our bombed-out lives.

From the beginning, David was constantly stopping to readjust the slumping sack on his back, and I took advantage of every spare moment to grab a much-needed breather.  At that point, we were just a couple of out-of-shape office workers masquerading as woodsmen.  The less one is fit, the more the exposure and altitude change take their toll.  My disdain for exercise was summed up in a credo: “Optimal health is merely the slowest way of dying.”  Down at sea level, a body gets used to easy breathing with an abundance of oxygen, and the lungs atrophy for lack of exertion.  The natural result of this sloth is shortness of breath, which becomes a real problem even at a moderate altitude.  By the time we reached the Forest Service bridge, we were a couple of very sorry adventurers.  By my calculations, we were less than a fifth of the way to the lakes, and were already thinking about the comforts of home.  How strange it was to realize that I worked so hard for those “comforts,” and tried to get away from them as often as possible; only to find that much harder work was required to leave them behind!

What is it that keeps us walking on a difficult trail?  There is so much pain in life, and a diabolical variety of setbacks.  The journey is discomforting – sometimes excruciating – and yet we proceed anyway simply because we can’t go back.  One step at a time, one foot in front of the other, through so much beauty and so much pain.  Ever upward we continue, laboring under burdens of various sizes and difficulty, and still most of us don’t quit.  What unseen motivation urges us to keep on bushwhacking through a wilderness of problems, instead of sitting down somewhere in a peaceful clearing, and letting it all go?  It is a question to be pondered in times of quiet.  One dares not consider the dubious solace of quitting when the trials and tribulations are near at hand.  The trials must be endured.  The lessons must be learned.  The hardest truth is that the ultimate triumph does not come at the end of the journey.  One never crosses the finish line or takes a victory lap!  There is no arrival at a destination; there is only the trail.  The definitive victory is in walking the trail well, and to do that, one must learn well from one’s missteps.  At times the errors are staggering; or even crippling, but one must make progress even if it means crawling.  To quit is to contribute nothing to the unfolding of the universe: to be irrelevant in the only journey that really matters.

So with great trepidation, we yielded to the sweaty embraces of our misshapen backpacks once again and plodded on up the dusty, dismal switchbacks, away from the brightness and alpine cheer of Bear Creek.  In the dull, repetitive manner of Sisyphus, we struggled to move our loads of gear and food upward, ever upward against a sluggish ebb tide of gravity.  This had always been the hardest part of the trail for me, when my body realized that the couch was no longer nearby, and I didn’t have a remote control or air conditioning anymore.  It always took a while to transition from chronic inactivity to full-on aerobic exercise.  While working at the computer, I often forgot I even had a body… now I was asking it to carry me and my junk up the side of a mountain!  It’s no wonder it was pissed at me!  Long-forgotten muscles complained in bitter tones of stiffness.  Underused tendons quavered and wobbled in confusion.  Creaky joints clamored for attention, and my back said it would never speak to me again.  The parts of my body were an angry, vengeful mob that was looking for a rope.

As much as it was uncomfortable, I was enjoying the freedom immensely.  Nobody was telling me what to do, and I wasn’t expected anywhere.  In theory, we could have taken two or three days to hike the few miles up to Big Bear Lake, and I was beginning to see that David wasn’t going to make it to Little Bear, anyway.  His pack was riding him like a fat, drunken cowboy on a Brahma bull, and it was breaking him.  For all our bravado, we were simply too out of shape and overburdened to make good time on a 3,000 foot elevation gain.  Just when he started to look at me with serious misgivings, as if he thought I was playing a cruel joke on him, the trail started to get beautiful.  Familiar trees waved their branches in a friendly way as we struggled past.  I recognized many of them from past years, and noticed their changing growth.  One particular cedar was starting to look gnarled and bent, but still towered above the trail with its massive, scarred trunk.  It looked as if its growth had been severely interrupted at several times in its life, but each time it learned to grow in a different direction.  Huge branches the size of smaller trees jutted out at awkward angles, and its copper-toned bark was scarred by fire and lightning.  Like us, it was a survivor.