“Aren’t you afraid of bears or snakes?” This was the most-asked question I encountered while long-distance backpacking along the Appalachian Trail.
It’s a valid question, though. Just what is the greatest risk to be aware of and prepared for during the long haul? Click the link below.
Illuminated manuscript, psalter. Inhabited initial B of psalm 1 ("Beatus vir") (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
They also left some comments in margins –
“New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.
“I am very cold.”
“That’s a hard page and a weary work to read it.”
“Let the reader’s voice honor the writer’s pen.”
“This page has not been written very slowly.”
“The parchment is hairy.”
“The ink is thin.”
“Thank God, it will soon be dark.”
“Oh, my hand.”
“Now I’ve written the whole thing; for Christ’s sake give me a drink.”
“Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims you sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.”
“St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.”
“While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight.”
“As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.”
“This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more’.”
The Great Smoky Mountains near Gatlinburg, Tennessee (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Increasing the Chances of Finishing Your Long Distance Hike
Lest I dig down further into the essentials of preparing logistically for a long-distance hike, I feel compelled to back up and share what, in my opinion, is the prime essential determiner which increases the likelihood of a successful hike along the Appalachian (or any!) Trail – developing mental preparedness.
For an in-depth read about this topic, please see: Long Distance Hiking: Mental Preparedness
A pathway into the wilderness.
ORIGIN
It began with Ed Garvey’s book “Appalachian Hiker II,” which I discovered at a backpacking outfitter. I read it to enjoy a first-person account of walking the legendary footpath which runs from Georgia to Maine. I didn’t realize I would find myself tracing Ed’s footsteps just over a year later.
Finishing my read, I considered what sort of preparation it must take to complete the 2,000-mile trip. Curious to find out, I purchased one in a series of Appalachian Trail Conference guidebooks. The “North Carolina/Tennessee” guide came with colorful but serious topographic maps. The chapters showed mileage, road crossings, resupply info, reliable water sources, local history, as well as the flora and fauna a hiker might expect to see. This was intensive logistical and planning material! I was amazed by the necessity of planning and preparation required of anyone heading out to hike. Walking the Appalachian Trail would not be a matter of simply shouldering a pack and hitching a ride to the trailhead. A successful hike meant planning and answering a lot of questions:
The list of considerations seemed endless, and overwhelming at times. Priorities would need to be set. Decisions weighed. As if on autopilot, I found myself awash in the details involved in making preparations, which was where my own personal journey on the A.T. began.
Image via Wikipedia
I still have a deep love for the Appalachian Trail, and the lessons I learned hiking it. Spring arrives soon, and my thoughts turn to the Trail and those who will shoulder backpacks and attempt the Georgia to Maine journey.
Occasionally, I will post some take-home lessons which I gleaned from my time on the trail and which still serve me today.
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Moments later I was breathing deeply to suppress my anxiety as I was strapped into a climbing harness and roped to the tower by the belaying team. My head swam with thoughts, my gut with emotion. I had just blurted out that I wanted to try a blindfold tower climb. I was amazed the words came out at all! But, I had cross the Rubicon on this one, so I walked to the nearest timber and, with guidance, I slipped the blindfold over my eyes and reached out to feel for my first handhold.
My focus remained on moving up, working to discover my next gripping point with my right hand, and launching my body upward with my left leg. Any sense of anxiety evaporated as my concentration increased, and I alternated between pulling myself up with my hands while using my legs to push, and feeling for hand holds further along the timber. I lost count of my maneuvers and put my effort and energy into scaling my way up. My breathing was steady but slightly labored, and – most of all – I noticed a remarkable absence of fear.
A few minutes later I paused to catch my breath. “How’s it going?” I heard a voice below me say. It was good to know my climbing team was keenly focused on my well-being. “Good,” I said. “I think I’d like to take a look around.”
Surprised, again, by my unexpected boldness, I used a hand to lift the blindfold so I could see. I was struck by my continuing absence of anxiety or fear. In fact, I marveled that the solution to my dread lay in simply doing something completely counter-intuitive.
Have I overcome my fear of heights? To a significant degree. More importantly, I learned there is more than one way to handle fear, and a means to manage it may be found by considering outrageous-sounding, out-of-the-box solutions.
Image via Wikipedia
“They climb it — blindfolded?”
The statement stunned me. How gutsy was that? A troop of kids exuberantly clambering up a height without the benefit of sight to maneuver.
I kept walking around the tower, looking up. I checked to see if anyone else was coming to climb, but no one had yet arrived. I stared up once again, and kept walking around the looming structure. The climbing ropes trailing from the top battered against the timbers in the wind. I heard carabiners clink and bang together like wind chimes in a gale.
The notion of tackling a ropes course made my stomach twist in a knot. But the idea of doing it — sightless!?
Yet, there was something else beneath my amazement. Something that bothered me, which I could not uncover –
I stopped in my tracks, frozen in place by an experience I rarely have: what’s called an “Aha!” moment.
Of course! It was completely counter-intuitive to anything I’d experienced — the notion of tackling a long-held fear by simply subtracting an element of that fear — namely, sight.
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The tower was a medieval-looking structure – a tripod constructed of massive timbers which looked like over-sized telephone poles. Wrapped with ropes the thickness of my upper arm, the structure rose into the grey afternoon sky. There were climbing holds stapled along the legs at various points, and climbing ropes draped from its height. There was a platform on top where one could stand and look out over the Connecticut countryside. My first impression was that it looked like a siege weapon from a Lord of the Rings movie, only missing a few attendant orcs. It was at once challenging and forbidding. And the closer I walked toward it the more uncomfortable I felt.
It was the afternoon break during a conference. Participants could snooze, chat, read, play ball or –as was my case — check out the “ropes course.” But this was unlike any challenge course I had seen. Instead of cables strung between treetops there was this lone structure in a field, tended by a staff of three whose task it was to ensure the safety of climbers who would ascend belayed in harnesses.
I was the first to arrive, and wandered below the three-legged device. I looked up and felt slightly dizzy. No one had come to climb the tower yet, and I had no intention of trying to climb it. My plan was to hang out and watch more valiant souls do it.
Being curious, I peppered the climbing safety team with questions, such as who made the tower, how it was used, and how safe it was. Admittedly, deep down, I had always wanted to address my own long-standing fear of heights. Sure, I’d had limited encounters with vertical space, such as clambering up the Forehead of Mount Mansfield in Vermont and scaling Katahin in Maine. But those, while risky, never involved as much anxiety as the notion of climbing this tower seemed to.
After a few questions, one team members offered a candid comment. “Even kids love climbing this thing,” she said. OK, I could understand how fearless children, restrained with rope and safety harness, would not hesitate to tackle this over-sized Tinker Toy. But then came the clincher.
“They even climb it blindfolded!”
Next: Counter-intuition
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It seemed like a bit of retro viewing when I noticed “Fear Factor” was back on television. Contestants competed for money by escaping from cars submerged in water, diving into gallons of cow blood for cow hearts (you heard right!), and engaging in an Indian-Jones-like stunt involving a bus, helicopter, and boat in an attempt to “blow up” a floating barge.
Clearly, fear may not have been a factor for winning contestants, but the point that reality shows dealing with fear are still prime-time viewing choices.
Juxtapose that with the previous post and story about endurance athlete Gerry Duffy, certainly a man who overcame resistance and fear. I found the piece to be challenging and inspiring and intimidating all at once. I also wanted to become Gerry Duffy, and to achieve what he has. And, having finished the piece I came to two conclusions: I did, and I can.
First, on the next section, let’s deal with the “I did” part, the lessons I learned from it, and where I am with the entire fear issue right now.
How an overweight chain-smoker discovered the secret of transformation–and you can, too.
