Not Lost

When I started backpacking The Colorado Trail in segments in 2016, I had no idea what it would come to mean to me. I'd spent most of my life in wild places, but I'd never walked long miles across vast stretches of them. I meandered in the woods, mostly on no path other than game trails and with no intention of going anywhere in particular. I'd seldom walk more than a few miles in any direction at once. I'd climb a tree and write poetry in a small notebook, watch the wildlife, and listen. By the time I learned of The Colorado Trail, I'd spent countless hours in wilderness areas and rugged mountain terrain, but I'd never attempted to hike a long trail. As I stepped off at Indian Creek Trailhead on May 27, 2016, I still hadn't planned to. 

I'd lived in Lubbock for eleven years, and I missed having ready access to forest and water, to public land, to a place where I could go at the end of a long day and be immersed in the clarity of nature. I wanted to live in these places again. Instead, I felt like I was slowly dying from lack of them. 

I also had a dog, Mani, who demanded more from her life with me than spending most of her days waiting for me to get home from work.

I started the trail for both of us. 

And now, coming up on the third anniversary of Mani's Lymphoma diagnosis and subsequent death, I still haven't written the book I promised her (and myself) that I'd write about this ongoing adventure—a book I originally envisioned as a photo book with short stories about the trail that has since developed into so much more. I've been walking this trail for more than six years now. A photo book feels too insignificant. I suppose that plays a small part in my delay in writing it. I can't decide what it should be. A lot has happened since I began. The world changed. The people around me changed. I changed. And it all played out, step after step, on that rocky footpath, between gasps for air at 10-13,000 feet, amidst breathtaking sunrises above cloud-filled valleys, and among countless more-than-human beings, seen and unseen. 

Recently, someone at an art festival asked me where I take my photos. After listening to me talk about backpacking The Colorado Trail, they looked at me and said, "So, you're like Cheryl Strayed." I smiled and said, "Well, I like to think I'm a little smarter than Cheryl Strayed."

My sarcasm was in reference to Cheryl Strayed's lack of preparedness to backpack the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail (though she did complete 1,100 miles of it, which is no small feat). I haven't read her book (Wild), but when I found myself wanting to turn off the film after twenty minutes, I questioned my resistance to it. I came to the conclusion that, for better or worse, I'm tired of the particular trope in outdoor writing that presents a female protagonist as recklessly unprepared and "lost" in personal emotional drama. Upon further reflection, I realize that the outdoor literature I tend to read is more academic in style (and more landscape-centric) and, incidentally, mostly by male authors (with a few exceptions the likes of Amy Irvine and Rebecca Solnit). This realization has set me on a mission to read as much outdoor literature by womenauthors as I can get my hands on (I already have a growing list, but recommendations are welcome).

My point in sharing the Cheryl Strayed anecdote is to say that for me, wild places have never been about feeling lost, or setting out to find myself. They've always been about being myself in a world I've often found it difficult to be myself in. In wilderness areas, I can just be, like the trees and mountains themselves. It’s the ultimate feeling of acceptance and inclusion. Thus the feeling of resistance to the idea of titling my yet-to-be-written book Finding Myself on The Colorado Trail, as suggested during a workshop by a well-respected outdoor author and photographer. I've been plagued ever since by the thought that the book I'm trying to write is just another version of Wild.

Admittedly, I struggle to determine how to write my own long trail adventure in such a way that it isn't compared to Cheryl Strayed's. I wish I could say that walking 500 miles across the state of Colorado over six years (and counting), climbing 90,000 vertical feet across eight mountain ranges and six wilderness areas is something I was able to do without breaking down a few times. But I can't. Walking a long trail provides a wholelot of time to reflect. One could consider it a mindfulness practice. Walking meditation. Thoughts rise up, you acknowledge them, then let them go. The more likely scenario, however, is that you walk with those thoughts awhile, trying to work them out to the rhythm of your feet hitting the ground. On occasion, if you're paying more attention to your thoughts than your feet, you take a hard tumble down a steep hill. I like to think of it as the universe's way of saying, "Wake up!"

While I prefer to read outdoor literature that's more academic in style, I'm aware that I write much more colloquially. While I prefer to read more landscape-centric literature, I'm aware that my own writing leans toward memoir. I prefer writing that expresses the experience of wilderness as a way of living, rather than a singular event, or series of singular events that changes one's life in some profound way. The truth of the matter is that my present circumstances are, much to my dismay, more wilderness as a singular event than wilderness as a way of living (I hope to change this soon).

As such, I'm finding that the type of writing I'm doing is less what I'd actually prefer to read. This is something I'm slowly coming to terms with. Despite what I would liketo write (or read), the stories that want to be written each time I sit at the laptop are the ones of a white-haired little girl from the middle of nowhere who grew up, went out into the big world with great ambition, endured some really difficult things, but never lost her connection to the beloved wild places she calls home.

Ultimately, it’s what Joseph Campbell called the hero's journey. So is Cheryl Strayed's Wild. And no matter the recurring tropes one might be tired of reading, we each do not have the same experience outdoors, and somewhere out there is a little girl who needs to read my hero's journey. And maybe, just maybe, I need to read it myself.

*Side note: the heroine's journey also exists and was created by therapist Maureen Murdock in the same arc as Campbell's monomyth but through a feminine lens. I think Murdock's ten-step outline results in, or rather reflects the common trope I mentioned earlier, which begs more questions. Perhaps someday the things that make a woman a "hero" won't be quite as fixed in acts of escape from the tragedies of her life and instead be more rightly rapt in her precision and skill, her remarkable combination of intellect and sensitivity, her unquenchable spirit and penchant for a life of adventure. Until then, there are stories that need to be written because we lived them. And somewhere out there, someone needs to read them.

Maybe 2023 will be the year for my CT book. Maybe not. It will be finished in its own time and it will be whatever it decides to be: photo book, memoir, adventure novel, or something else entirely. After failing to complete the trail this past season—something I thought absolutely must happen before I could write the book—a friend and fellow backpacker and writer quite brilliantly compared writing a book to section-hiking a long trail, which makes perfect sense and has helped me be at peace with the unfinished status of both endeavors.

I remind myself that I never started this trail to finish it. All I ever really wanted was to feel like I was home again. And year after year when the snow melts and I return to the high mountains and green forests, I am indeed home.