Saturday, November 23, 2013

Wildness

In 2004 I backpacked sections of the PCT in OR and WA- and so related to Cheryl Strayed's PCT account.  These last months, I've walked a fuck ton of miles in a wilderness of a different sort.  The difficult choices- they really come down to this and my insular focus on going forward, feels less like retreating into a cave of woe and more like real growth while being with it.  I hope so!!

“The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.”
Cheryl Strayed

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