Big Bear Blahs

May 25th

Big Bear is a very beautiful place. It has all the ingredients required for it to be so: There are flowering cacti in bloom, rocky mountain faces, vistas that open out to widest stretches of southern Nevada; pine trees, everything.
But as I left Lily and Jasmine and hiked along the ridge north of Big Bear Lake, I didn't feel inspired. I felt down. It was partially leaving Lily, and partially the letdown after a swashbuckling detour adventure. It was primarily that my own personal set of memories and anxieties was on their A-Game.
My friends all know that 2014 was, to put it mildly, a bad year. Jennifer Matz, whom I loved very much and for whom I was the primary caretaker, died of cancer. I lost my job of ten years. My whole life seemed to be coming down on me, except that in retrospect, it did not seem to be doing so, it did.
So the classic trope here is that a person experiences trauma, goes to wilderness, has some transformative experience, and comes back fixed. This is not only the basis of That Damned Book (Wild), it is one of the foundational narratives of our nation, or maybe of humans. We Americans definitely love this story.
And it has, to a remarkable degree, worked for me. I am a calmer, more responsible person now than I was prior to hiking the Triple Crown. I like to think that I handle adversity pretty well, and rarely panic when the shit hits the fan. I certainly had this in mind when I set out to hike this year -- that I wanted to tame my grief, anger, shame, and guilt.
I had a amazing conversation with Madeleine Matz, daughter to Jennifer, on the eve of my departure. We were sitting next to the Gandhi statue at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market, munching on blueberries. She cut right to it and asked if I was hiking to move on from Jennifer. (Jennifer was a direct person, and in this respect the apple didn't fall far from the tree.) This is a really important question. I responded that I was, and am, not. I want to annex these feelings I have, incorporate them into my life so that they are part of me, not apart from me. Put another way, I want to accept them.
All well and good. But what does that process of acceptance look like on a concrete daily basis? I cannot say. I can say that thoughts about that time, my Very Bad Year, what happened to my career, my love for Jennifer's kids, what her loss has meant to my life, these thoughts hunted my thoughts all day like spear-fishers. What use to me were all these rocks, when what happened had happened? There didn't seem to be any line connecting them or my actions in walking past them to a sense of peace or respite.
But all you can do is hike. It's like yoga or something: You place your faith in the practice and hope for a better day. I slogged my way through to the Holcombe Creek valley, found to my delight that Jake (of Montana and the mountain-lion bow-hunt, see previous entry) was there. It felt good to see someone I knew. The temperature dropped below freezing, and I burrowed down into my bag and chalked that day up to experience.

whatever (sigh)