August 26. Hikeathon Day 6 (and last). Boundary Crossings

Sunday, August 26. Hikeathon Day 6 (and last). Boundary Crossings

Southeast Boundary Trail zig-zags (hiking all the trails that connect SE Boundary Trail to Mt Pickett Trail) with excursion to Doe Bay

Mt. Picket Trails

Dear Trail Friends,

I thought it would be fun to call today's hike "Boundary Crossings." In this hike we return to one of the boundary trails I hiked on the first day, but we keep going back and forth, touching the boundary, then retreating back into the interior. Well, that's a small exaggeration. I take one connecting trail to the boundary, then come back, then I follow another trail to the boundary, then come back. I also transgress the boundary - taking a side trail and then a road walk to the Doe Bay Resort and Retreat, spending the first rest period today watching a blue heron fishing (photo 1) and gazing at the bay (photo 2)

The term boundary crossings has other resonances for me, probably irrelevant to both this pilgrimage and this blog. But I have made a practice of trusting my associations, so here goes: As most of you know, Chris and I first met as therapist and patient, during a fairly short interlude in which she was doing psychotherapy (she never even got her license, but did get training and practiced under supervision, to get a taste of the clinical experience of the students to whom she was teaching theory). We waited what seemed to both of us a reasonable amount of time, and then began to date, and eventually married (although back then we called it a vows ceremony). When I changed careers and became a therapist, the field was beginning to try to clean up its act (a long tradition of sexual exploitation of patients by therapists) and make strict rules and boundaries between therapists and patients. Although I felt fine about our relationship, I was afraid to tell people how we met because it had become so forbidden. For a long time I thought about writing a book about therapists and patients who fall in love, and form healthy durable (or as healthy and durable as the average relationship of people who meet in other ways, which all depends on a lot of good luck and support from friends and family), and to try to help people discriminate between abuse and love. I interviewed a lot of couples and read a lot of books. But I never wrote the book.

This year a psychoanalytic group I go to is having their conference on the theme of Unsiliencing. I thought what a great time to talk a little about the book I never wrote (in large part because of my fears that I could not adequately disguise my interviewees, and that I would be attacked for discussing a forbidden topic). I thought I wrote up a dynamic description. To my shock, the paper was not accepted. (I have presented at this conference every year for the last four years and I considered this by far my most substantive proposal, so the refusal shocked me.) I was at first stunned and angry and hurt and very disappointed, but gradually as I discussed it with others I begin to imagine the point of view of the reviewers. In this era of "Me Too," might it be dangerous for the organization to implicitly endorse my point of view (that love between therapist and patient can be healthy and not harmful), a point of view of course promulgated by predators to ensare their prey? Had I written my proposal  in a way that addressed and eased my audience's potential fears and concerns? When my friend Sharon told me that if she had been asked to review the proposal she would have recommended that it not be accepted - though she would be curious to read the paper if it were published. That was helpful to me. It was one small step up that everlastingly challenging mountain of imagining and taking into account the other person's different point of view.

So what does this have to do with today's walk? I still think little or nothing. Except that the whole pilgrimage has been about kindness. And if there is ever an impediment to kindness, it is that inability to see past my own point of view. The boundary crossings involved in therapist and patient breaking the rules and falling in love are one kind. Another kind is the crossing between my own point of view and being able to imagine someone else's. 

So let's think of today's walk as a metaphor. A big all-day walk representing the dance we do, touching the edge between ourselves and the outer world, then going back into our own interior, then touching the edge again, and sometimes crossing over - at least in imagination - into that world outside ourselves, different people, different points of view.

In any case, Doe Bay was beautiful and a highlight of the walk. Great to get there early in the morning. They were setting up for a wedding, but still I could sit at the edge of the rocks looking down on the water in quiet solitude. Then great to walk back and return to the woods. It was deep mist all day and the air felt fine to breathe. I was not aware of smoke. 

And now a different kind of boundary crossing. I did some writing while I was on the trail, so here is a little time travel back to that writing. Oh, but before I do that, let me show you the map of today's hike (photo 3)

The track looks like some kind of dancing creature with two legs, a head, and a tail, don't you think? So the tail is my morning walk from the falls (where I parked) on Mr Pickett Road to the first connecting trail. Where the trail track gets horizontal, and then turns a corner and goes vertical, I'm on the boundary trail. Just past that right angle turn, I leave the park and hike down to Doe Bay. 

Now all of this is new territory for me, because I haven't made the Doe Bay excursion before. I make my first (mistaken) walk down a road called Shorewood (that's the first leg of the little beast the track seems to draw), then come back and walk to Doe Bay (the second leg). Then I walk back to the boundary trail, making a sharp left to get on the second connector trail (Mystery Trail), then a right as I rejoin Mt. Pickett road again. Finally I turn right at the third connector trail, and another left when I get to the boundary trail, which winds around and finally rejoins Mt Pickett road. I then follow Mt. Pickett Road all the way back to my car. I hope you are with me. I'm not sure I am.

So here is my writing while on the trail, beginning with my second rest stop somewhere along the Mystery Trail, and just so you won't think I made the name up, here it is photo 4:

Today feels like the benediction at the end of a mass. I’m sitting here at my second rest stop at 11am. It’s been a very quiet solitary day. The mist-filled woods have a quality of deep silence that holds and consoles me. I feel surrounded by the living breathing presence of the trees (photos 4 and 5). Earlier a very soft rain was falling and I kept thinking “the quality of mercy is not strained it falleth like the gentle rain from heaven.” At that moment it was as if that gentle rain really was falling from heaven, bringing me mercy.

The hike started with its share of drama and yet I found even the drama consoling. A half mile into the hike I realized I had no backpack (hence no food or water not to mention the other little conveniences such as first aid and a mat to sit on). I hiked back to the car praying I had not left it at home but with no memory of having carried it to the car. When I reached the car I opened the passenger door to find an empty seat. No pack. 

But then I looked in the backseats and there it was. It’s being there felt like a blessing. 

I had only walked a few yards with the pack on when the waist strap came loose. After taking the pack off - very concerned that the strap had torn loose and required a repair I could not make and knowing I cannot carry even a light day pack with all the weight on my (compromised) shoulder, I again felt blessed when I discovered it had pulled out of a buckle. 

But when I tried to push it back through the buckle I found it impossible (the end was turned over and stitched and doubly thick). Then I felt blessed again because I had brought a little first aid including a small pair of child’s scissors. I cut the strap, threaded it back through the buckle, got set to go, but....uh oh. The strap was upside down. So I took it out and turned it over only to find it was still wrong (when the buckle was right the strap that pulled through was on the wrong side). All this was too confusing for my imperfect brain and yet somehow I figured out how to undo it yet again, rearrange the strap in relation to the second buckle, put it back together, and have it work. 

I felt very blessed. 

And blessed yet again when the never before hiked excursion I had planned down to Doe Bay made possible a quiet rest stop on rocks just above the bay where I watched a blue heron fishing (how perfectly still like a statue she stands until the moment when she plunges her beak down into the water). It’s true my little adventure involved a prior mistaken choice to walk down Shorewood (when the entrance to Doe Bay was not where I had guessed and would later turn out to be a half mile walk further down the road). My mistake led to a 2 mile (round trip) hike toward the water where there was private property only and no beach access. But part of what drew me to that “wrong choice” was remembering Marcy Lund who used to live there and host a little Quaker like meditation group - that later led to the group Chris and I host on Saturday mornings. I wanted to recall those mornings, and Marcy and Helen Boyd who are no longer living. I am glad I had a chance to be in their presence. 

I’ve been fantasizing again sharing this model with others. I do think the combination of physical exertion (and the brain and consciousness changes it makes possible - those endorphins of love and curiosity and wow!) and immersion in beauty can provide radical healing for depression or post traumatic stress, and deep support for major life losses (a loved one, a job, a home) or transitions (graduation, marriage, moves, leaving home, divorce). I imagine ways to make it known and posting the hike descriptions and other advice on a website. I also imagine hosting people in my home and maybe even walking with them some of the time. 

When I consider how deeply satisfying such fantasies are, I think of the withered foxglove stalk I was moved to photograph. (See photo 7 for a collage of foxgloves in June, in late August, and today's closeup) . I realized it had a different more subtle but still wet powerful beauty from the beauty it had when it was young and covered with bright pink (like Angel’s birthday cake and balloons) blossoms. Looking closely I realized that where there were once blossoms there now were seed pods. Some of them had opened and the opening looked like the open beak of a bird. I thought of those pods scattering seeds and wondered if that is part of the beauty of age. That there is something we have inside us, something even in these times of rapid rushing technological and cultural change, and old people feeling pretty left behind and obsolete, some seeds we have to scatter that will grow into something beautiful. 

What if my hikeathon idea could bring beauty and happiness such as I have experienced these six days to other people, maybe to people I don’t even know? I’ve loved sharing my adventure through the blog but what if I could encourage people to experience it right here in these peaceful quiet woods?

***

Now I’m at my lunch stop - my third rest stop. 13 1/2 miles hiked and only about 1 1/2 to go. 

Today has been so beautiful. I have walked in beauty all day amazed at the beauty of mist and green trees and moss (photo 8). Somehow the misty light has been perfect. I have felt not just held but hugged by this green misty silence, this presence of beauty all around me. I remember that Chris and her friends once came out of a Mozart opera and said to each other “This is as good as it gets.” I doubt if I will ever feel that way about something cultural (although as I say that I think about the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival and I’m not so sure), but I certainly feel that way about today’s walk through this deep green silence. Funny to think of the OICMF just now because on the walk I have thought about a young woman cellist from Iceland who now lives in Seattle who added a special Dvorak piece, titled Silent Woods, for cello and piano to the program - simply to express through music her gratitude for these quiet woods.  The music did seem in some mysterious way to communicate the quality of silence I feel in the woods. 

My hike is a bit shorter today than I guessed - I will have to add a little to this one to make my design work. For me, having walked three extra miles by mistake, I’ll have no problem finishing my 100. But adding a little more will be fun. There are two very short sections of hikes between the falls and Cascade Lake that I haven't included in the hikeathon.  Other than that, with the exception of a few private roads, the hikeathon includes every single trail in the park. That gives me a sense of wholeness. It really is an incredible immersion experience into the beauty of this island.

[Interruption in the present time]

I had the feeling as I walked that I was incredibly lucky to have been born into this beautiful world (and I am here to tell you, that is a long way from the depression I was wrestling before this hikeathon started). I thought of myself as a lottery winner - what are the odds against one particular egg and sperm meeting and starting a life, when you think of the thousands that never meet? I want to include a few other photos (9-13), hoping they convey the sense of moments of beauty that gave me such a wonderful day.

[Back to writing at lunch rest stop] 

I’ve been fantasizing about lots of other people doing this hikeathon. Not all at once as an organized event but on their own schedule. But doing it as a fundraiser. Getting their friends to donate a dollar a mile, or 25 cents, or 50 cents, to some organization that helps spread the seeds of kindness in the world. an organization like Doctors Without Borders, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the American Friends Service Committee.

Speaking of AFSC, I think I’ve written in one of these blogs before about what Quakers/Friends mean to me, which is summed up in two stories. When Chris’s family got their first car in America (after leaving Hitler’s Germany after Chris’s father lost his university position because Hitler saw him as Jewish) Chris’s mother wanted to attend a Quaker meeting. She remembered being fed by the Quakers as a child after World War I and she wanted to meet these people who care about feeding the enemy’s children. That was how Chris became a Quaker, and then she married a Quaker and raised her children in a meeting.

 My parents - secular humanists without much interest in religion - began to attend Quaker meeting after their divorce, during their ongoing child custody battles, because church attendance looked good in court, and because Quakers did not insist on a creed. When Chris and I began to attend La Jolla Meeting (the meeting of my childhood) and I mentioned my parents’ names to Olivia Davis, an older woman in the meeting, she responded “Dave and Ginny Malcolm. Oh yes. That was a misunderstanding between two good people.” As I walked today I thought how the Quaker quote from George Fox “walk cheerfully over the earth answering to that of God in everyone” - which I think Quakers really do their best to practice - includes our enemies. Even political enemies like President Trump and his supporters. 

It’s a good time for scattering seeds of kindness in our world, I think. I love walking through these woods imagining that I might have the power, just by sharing my hikeathon idea, to help people emerge from depression and difficulty, and sow seeds of kindness in the world. As a dream, that’s about as good as it gets. 

Well. I’ve finished my lunch. Time to complete my 100 miles. Actually, I’ve hit 100 already. This last mile and a half is just a little bonus added to the beauty I’ve already been given. 

One more thought before I walk. I’m sitting here noticing how some trees stand straight and some of them lean ... sometimes on each other (photo 14). I noticed that quite a lot during this hikeathon. It makes me think of how I used to be ashamed of how much I leaned on Chris. How natural it is for the trees. If one of them leans and another is standing nearby then it supports the leaning one (who might otherwise have toppled down). Wouldn’t it be nice to see it so simply?

You are not going to believe this but the sun, which hasn’t been out all day, seems to be intermittently shining through the clouds. Now I realize I don’t always get to be the center of the universe, but don’t you think the sun must be hoping it can help me celebrate the completion of my kindness pilgrimage?

BACK TO PRESENT TIME - I notice I'm a little too tired to read this over carefully and to see how and if it weaves together. So be it. One thing I have learned from these blogs is to trust the digressions and the imperfections. (Boundary crossings?) That way I enjoy the writing and it doesn't become drudgery. And I love imagining you reading, and you walking with me, and I love when you send your kind and supportive comments. In fact, I get teary as I think about it. How someone who needs so much solitude and alone time can also need so much intimacy is a mystery to me (a tough job description for being oneself, too, and I know I am not alone in wrestling with a conflicting nature. We all have our unique variations on the theme of impossibly conflicting needs and drives. If we aren't crossing one boundary, we are crossing another.

So, this brings our little hikeathon/pilgrimage to an end. I am a little sad to say goodbye. The next time I blog (unless I try doing this same hikeathon again this winter, which I may, because season turned out to be such an important part of it, and such a gift too for me to be immersed in this early fall, when Chris and I have gone to Santa Barbara in the fall for the last 5 years and I have so missed the beauty of Orcas autumn, the gold big leaf maple leaves lighting the trails just as the darkness begins to wax) - okay, before that digression I was about to say that the next time I blog may be next April when Chris and I head for Europe, first to visit friends Christopher and Jan in Amsterdam, and Sabine and Agnes in Cologne (all of whom visited here on Orcas the summer Angel was six and lived with us, and I can still remember the sparkling laughter and happy connections they made with her, the kind of connections I was so rarely able to make with her), then for Chris's next lecture tour "Exploring Freud's World" (Prague, Vienna, London, and a few other places), and finally for a quiet week in the lakes district of England for relaxing and quiet day walks. I hope you will join me then. 

Meanwhile - Happy trails to you, til we meet again. May you walk in beauty.