Miles: 2,067.4 — Woke up angry and didn’t know why until a trail meltdown made it obvious — I was terrified of the end. Talked it through with Miles, realized I’d been burying my feelings in podcasts, and decided to pay more attention when I start avoiding things. Easy terrain toward Monson gave me time to think, but also left me drained. Camped at Horse-Shoe Canyon Lean-To with Butter and wrote down every “fog inducer” I could think of.
I woke up angry. I don’t remember why. I wasn’t confronting my feelings. I wasn’t coping with the fact that this was the end. The end of the trail, the end of daily life as I had come to know it, possibly the end of every day with Miles, the end of an era. I was more upset than I ever expected, and I couldn’t express it. I couldn’t even confront it in my own mind. I didn’t even know why I was upset at first. I had a mental breakdown as soon as I woke up. Racing thoughts flooded my head and anger began to rage through my blood.
I took it out on Miles, the closest person. I got upset with him about the dumbest, irrelevant things and I don’t even remember the argument now. I couldn’t tell him what I was really upset about because I, honestly, didn’t even know. By the time I figured out that I was upset about the end, I was walking out of camp by myself crying. Miles slipped ahead of me and started climbing up Bald Mountain without me. I cried and walked and after a few minutes he was there waiting for me.
“Are you okay, Mi Amour?” He asked me. I shook my head, dropped my pack, threw down my poles, and slumped onto the side of the trail. He sat down with me. “What’s really going on?” He asked me to clarify. I couldn’t stop crying enough to tell him. Finally, I realized, it was because of the end. I told Miles how scared I had suddenly felt that morning. Maybe the speedy crew of northbounders we ate breakfast with had gotten into my head. Or maybe I had just been drowning out my feelings in podcasts, instead of confronting them. I vowed to confront my feelings in the future and to recognize when I was avoiding them. We talked it out and I realized, my whole life when I didn’t want to confront my fears or feelings I had buried them: in TV, or, more recently, in podcasts whatever that kept me busy and distracted. Recognize the signs, I told myself.
After I cleaned up my face and put my pack back on, we headed toward Monson once again. If we could do 22 more miles we’d be in Monson tonight. There probably wouldn’t be anywhere to stay and I desperately need a shower. I was also freaking out a bit about our 100 mile resupply for the Hundred Mile Wilderness (HMW)… We chose to just get as far as we could this day and do whatever was left the next. We had enough food to make it. The terrain was easy, and I welcomed the relief. I was tired and my back was starting to hurt again. Which meant I had started to think about things that made me anxious or stressed out again, the usual source of my back pain. At the lean-to that night we ran into Butter again. It was cold. I was drained, I spent the whole day thinking about my future, the end of the trail, anxiety and stress building over the course of the day.
That night, in my journal, I wrote down all of the signs I could think of. All of the distractions, or possible fog inducers as I called them, that could be indicators of me avoiding my feelings, fears, or problems. Television, music, podcasts, books, other people’s problems, overextending myself at work, etc. While some of those can be good things in moderation: if I’m spending more than 5 hours per day watching TV or reading a book, I might have a problem. I decided to limit my podcast consumption to 3 hours or less per day. While I LOVED hiking and listening to podcasts at the same time, I recognized that it helped keep me in a distracted fog and enabled me to avoid thinking about what was bothering me.