Category: journaling

Times and Travels: Hiking the AT

Shirleyjdietz6 Comments

I have tried for days now to find my journal of the first AT hike – I’m coming up with nothing, although I know I’ve seen it somewhere. But I have the record of the second hike from 2004.

Finding people to hike with can be a bit of a problem. Someone has to be able to get time off and really want to do this. That narrows down the prospective pool of hikers. I found three women online who were interested in planning with me and we corresponded for a couple months before our hike. One of them hurt her ankle right before the hike and couldn’t go. 

Day 1

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Our packs look a little overwhelming, but we need it all, probably.

A good start from my daughter’s house in Tampa. Just enough clouds to make easy driving. We met Lorraine for the first time in person. She was nice and talked easily so we got to know each other pretty well.  I forgot all my vitamins and pills at Esther’s so we stopped at a grocery store to replace it all (plus a cake server, don’t ask…). Other than that we only stopped once for breakfast in Gainesville, and once for gas in Tifton, getting into Franklin N.C. about 4:30 pm. Another of our hiking buddies, Elyse, and her husband were waiting at the motel. The last member, Kenton, came a few minutes later.

We decided to do the car drop at our end point, Wayah Gap. What a beautiful drive up in the mountains! We had a real dinner (maybe our last for a while) and then went back to the motel to go through our gear one final time. Our packs still look too heavy.

 

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Hopefully not our last meal, but perhaps our last GOOD meal for a while.

Day 2

I am up first and out to the lobby to journal. There are big storm clouds out there and 70% chance of rain. Are we being stupid?

I barely survived the ride to Dick’s Creek crammed in Elyse’s small Blazer (actually I was stuck to the ceiling). Dick’s Creek. Who is Dick? I want to know. We took parting pictures and got on the trail by 10 am.

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Kenton, Lorraine, Elyse, me and Esther. This is a hike, not a fashion show. 

We had only a few sprinkles for the first two hours, which was kind of cool and pleasant. Then it started to pour, which was nothing but cold and unpleasant. We put garbage bags over our packs and that worked fairly well. But our ponchos only kept part of our bodies dry. By the time we reached Plum Orchard Gap we were soaked head to foot, either with rain or sweat, it didn’t much matter which.

We crowded into a trail shelter with 10 other wet, smelly people at about 1 pm. This left a lot of afternoon and evening to sit and do… yes, what? Dry off? Hardly. The temperature started dropping so we huddled in our sleeping bags after supper and listened to mice for the next eight hours. May I never have to repeat a night like this. Saw my first “bear bag” cables.

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Esther in her deluxe upper shelf (where most of the mice were). This was before five other hikers joined her. My cold, wet finger on the lens, sorry.

 

 

Times and Travels: Revisiting the AT

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Countless stunning views on the trail

Last night when I should have been sleeping I was instead thinking about how I would get back to my car after hiking a section of the Appalachian Trail. This is a step beyond getting time to do it, or finding a suitable section to hike. I am in the commitment stage.

It has been a long time since my first hike in 2002, with four high school girls. We were all newbies.

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Seriously, we were blessed to have made it out alive.

And thirteen years since my last hike in2004 (when we could have died in freezing rain).

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The lady with the crutches backed out (for obvious reasons). 39 degrees, brrrr. Seriously, we were blessed to have made it out alive.

It takes longer than that for a dream to die however, and countless times I have gotten the maps out, looked at the pictures and considered possible hiking companions. I finally have hopes of getting back on the trail, possibly for this year’s birthday treat in April. The excitement is building.

Hiking the AT is kind of like birthing a baby. It’s an arduous process, but if you wait long enough you forget the horrible parts and remember the joy. I want to re-visit those times, all of them, and make sure I remember the ones that are crucial to health and safety.

One of my reasons for wanting to hike now is to see what damage the last thirteen years have done to my body. Another dream of mine, hiking down into the Grand Canyon, is scheduled for this fall and I need to know if I can do it. Since I have reasons for being in North Carolina these days (daughter Julie’s new home), some trips on the AT will be good conditioning and a test of my stamina. A friend has offered a place to stay in Franklin, NC and there are several sections near there that I’ve not done. It feels good to have a fun challenge and a goal on my list.

I didn’t have a blog back then and I’ve never published a good account of all we saw and did on those hikes. I’m going to do it now as a way of remembering. The 2017 A to Z Challenge is coming up in April too so I have a lot of writing to do in the days ahead.  Hiking and writing, two of my favorite things, should make this a fun spring. Just sayin’…

Beginning with Gratitude

Shirleyjdietz2 Comments

Back in Florida after two weeks in the Pacific North West. This morning it was 71 degrees. Tonight the low is 38 degrees F. For this, I could have stayed in Seattle.

I have decided that I want to remember each visit, each trip for the good things that happen. For this recent visit to Esther in Seattle I am grateful for:

an evening of music, where Esther played flute and I played piano, like we used to in times past. This hasn’t happened for a long time.

a visit to the compline service at St. Marks. I had heard about that kind of music and seen it in movies but the experience far surpassed it all. A first for high church liturgy.

a chance to step inside Esther’s dream Airstream and add the smallest amount of emotional weight to her future plans.

the near miraculous sequence of events the last two days in town that made it possible to get Esther’s car serviced and cracked windshield replaced.

the fun of meeting John at True View who was a delightful person as well as a careful, skilled windowglass technician.

the new information about eating and how much fun I had trying out the AIP (and how much fun it was when we cheated on cupcakes)

the crazy, different electric jacket, and Esther’s “passed down” sweaters.

sweet potato fries at Blue Moon with Esther and Ryan.

I have read recently of research showing that being grateful trains the brain, making it easier to be grateful in the future. It is a mental health practice that extends to the physical body as well. Keeping a gratitude journal, and having daily time to reflect and write in it is one of my goals for this new year. I hope to share some of it here, which leads me to expressing thankfulness for this writing outlet, and for those who read and contribute on WordPress. I am truly encouraged by each and every one of  you. Thank you.

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My Favorites

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Through the  years I have jotted down my favorite things to remember in journals and scraps of paper here and there (because I didn’t have a blog yet).  I found this one recently and marveled at how much I still like it. Even as hopeful people we have times that seem so bleak that we are overwhelmed by them. It helps me to realize the natural pessimism that lurks in all of us, acknowledge it and laugh it out of the room.

Kudos to Chuck Samuels who developed this series and made himself famous with it. Sorry I don’t have stunning photos to illustrate these truths.

The Demotivational Series – for when you don’t care anymore…

Futility – You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take and, statistically speaking, 99% of the shots  you do.

Losing – If at first  you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.

Ineptitude – If you can’t learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.

Mediocrity – It takes a lot less time and most people won’t notice the difference until it’s too late.

Pessimism – Every dark cloud has a silver lining. But lightning kills hundreds of people  each year who are trying to find it.

Procrastination – Hard work often pays off after time but laziness always pays off now.

Agony – Not all pain is gain.

Failure – When your best just isn’t good enough.

Stupidity – Quitters never win. Winners never quit. But those who never win and never quit are idiots.

 

New Year’s Rituals

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I don’t have many plans for midnight tonight.  In fact, I will probably be sleeping at work if my client has no inclination to stay up and watch TV.  Even looking at pictures of Times Square in NYC on TV gives me a severe case of claustrophobia – no way would I want to be there on New Year’s Eve.

But I do have one ritual for the New Year to which I have been pretty faithful.  Every year I get a new calendar book and during the first week of January I like to go through it and transfer all my important dates and addresses.  I like to page through the old one and notice what I wrote, what I did or didn’t do.  Even the weeks when I wrote nothing have significance  because I was probably too busy to write. If I can remember why I was so busy, all the better, and I put that in.  I try to find three of four really important happenings that I can transfer to my family timeline notebook.  I count it as a good investment to spend one day a year remembering what life has been like.  I often end up thinking “oh yeah, that was such a fun time and I had completely forgotten about it!” Looking back helps me get more mileage out of those precious moments of the past.

Someday, all these date books full of the appointments and thoughts of my life are going to be fertile ground for a book to spring out.  It might be a memoir, or something completely fictional – I haven’t figured that out yet.

my trusty companion in 2014
my trusty companion in 2014

This is my old datebook.  It’s one of the best priced ones I have found so I ordered a new one just like it for 2015.  It has a lot of useful information about the area where I live and enough room on each day to serve like a mini-diary or journal. It was sturdy enough not to get bent up or lose pages and it features a tear off corner that makes it easy to find the current page.  I ordered it from www.datebook.com. They have one for most metropolitan areas.

I’ll probably be working on my datebook tonight for a while, but the bigger project will be getting ready for Jack’s football party tomorrow.  That will definitely be the first priority.  Happy New Year everyone!