Reaching the halfway mark

“Do we just send it?” Catch-up asked. Just the day before, we’d been at this pit toilet shivering from the rain. Today, the sun was shining through broken clouds, and though the wind had a cold tinge to it, it was much warmer than before. Currently, it was 1 p.m., but only 20 miles from the Colorado border.

“Absolutely,” Solemate and I answered in unison. How could you be so close and not reach it?

The day was beautiful as we set off, though there was a chance of rain, it held off for us. It was our last day in Wyoming and the state was wishing us well. We ate dinner on trail, like we had in the Basin, and snacked on raspberries and gooseberries. Before long, the sky darkened with night and we pulled out our headlamps.

And then, Colorado.

We camped there at the border and officially crossed over the next morning. Then, only a couple miles from the border, were two coolers. There were locks on them to keep the bears out, but the code, along with, CDT Hikers, was clearly displayed across the front. Opening them up, we found two coolers full of snacks and Starbucks. Starbucks?? In the wild?

The trail angel who maintained it also left camp chairs there, inviting hikers to hang out there and celebrate reaching the halfway point. And we did for over an hour, sitting there drinking and laughing and reminiscing as more and more hikers showed up.

Reaching the halfway mark

Looking back brings strength. Turn at the top of the climb, and see how far you’ve come, how far you are from where you started. Look back at all the things that tried to stop you, hinder you, and how they all failed.

The snowstorm in Glacier. Sitting on the side of the trail with an aching knee, wondering if I’d be able to make it the next few days, much less a thru hike. Staring in dread at my shoes and taped-up feet, knowing how much those 15, 18, 24 mile days would hurt with all those blisters. The heat in Helena. The loneliness in Anaconda. The ever-increasing elevation. The fire in Darby.

But you can’t look back at the negative without seeing the positive too. The rays of sunshine, the wildflowers blooming. Raspberries, huckleberries, thimbleberries, and gooseberries growing beside the trail. Pressing the “I’m safe at camp” button on my satellite communicator each night.

Each person who’s seen a stranger standing on the side of the road asking for a ride and picked me up. The people who’ve supported me, encouraged me, hiked with me, laughed with me. Trail magic in all of its beautiful, varied forms.

This trail has been long and beautiful and wonderful and challenging; but enough looking back. Now it’s time to look forward.

Colorado’s welcome

Though we entered Colorado beautifully dry, the sky clouded shortly after the magic coolers. I looked up and sighed, but what’s a girl to do?

Before long, it started raining. And kept raining. It rained as we hiked, rained as we climbed. My rain jacket eventually soaked through and I soggily continued onwards. Freebie and Samurai started a campfire, and we took a break there, drying out as much as possible, before finishing the climb. That night, I set up my tent as it continued sprinkling.

We slept in the next morning and again, I woke to the sound of rain drizzling on my tent. But eventually I heard Catch-up outside. “There’s a patch of clear sky! And it’s coming our way!“

We packed up soggy tents but the sun shining above us gave us hope for the rest of the day.

We climbed up through the Mt. Zirkel wilderness, in awe of the beauty of Colorado when we weren’t soaking wet. The sun warmed my face, the golden grass swayed. Streams trickled through the meadows, and we climbed up to 11,500 feet.

But dark clouds gathered behind us and I stopped to dry out my wet gear before it started raining again. Just as I got my gear back into my backpack, thunder sounded behind me.

It didn’t just rain, it hailed. Thunder cracked, lightning exploded, and I tucked down into my raincoat against the ice pelting me. “Colorado, what the heck?” I couldn’t help but laugh.

When the storm was over, hikers emerged from wherever they’d hidden: tents, if they’d been smart enough to put them up in time; trees, bushes, the exposed ridgelines they couldn’t find the end of. Surely that was all of it, right? The sun was out again, the clouds were moving on.

But only three miles later, the sky darkened and I found myself once again piling into a privy to hide from rain with Solemate and Catch-up. Rabbit grabbed his backpack and moved it in with us. “Colorado isn’t very welcoming,” he said.

Thankfully, Colorado didn’t rain on us any further after that–no hail either! But we did wake up the next morning to ice on all of our tents, a reminder once more that we really weren’t in the Basin anymore, and that the seasons are starting to change.

The death of empathy

“People always say, ‘Oh, I can imagine it’ when I tell them my stories and I think to myself, ‘no, you can’t. You can’t possibly understand unless you’ve also been that cold,’” Solemate said.

We were talking about the difficulties of thru hiking and some of the challenges we face, specifically curling up in a pit privy. There, her lips had been turning blue from the cold even as she drank warm coffee and I’d been curled around a hot water bottle as if it were my source of life. Yet we were still shaking and shivering. One who was not there and has not experienced that level of cold can imagine it and think, “that’s cold,” but there’s not a way to understand the deep dampness that had soaked into the very core of my existence, the shiver that I couldn’t get rid of despite the fact that I’d been out of the rain for an hour, the way my thoughts narrowed down to simply I can’t get warm.

Empathy, oftentimes, is built out of understanding, an emotion brought about by shared misery or pain. You can empathize because you feel it as deeply within yourself as the other person feels it themselves. You don’t need to imagine it or develop compassion: there is instant understanding and recognition, an immediate “oh, I’ve been there too.” Even if your experience is less intense than what someone else experienced, it doesn’t take much to fill in the gap from your pain to their pain.

Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves.

Leslie Jamison

A few days into Colorado, I was rationing my food. I wasn’t going to run out of food (since I was rationing) but I did have less than I would have liked. It was my own fault, really. We were doing a seven-day food carry and I knew I should’ve packed more but I didn’t want to carry it. And so, I was 200-400 calories shorter each day than I wanted to be.

And I was hungry.

I felt my stomach grumbling. I woke up in the night thinking about food. I looked longingly at the bag of food that I carried and willed myself not to eat it, knowing that my mild hunger would be worse otherwise.

I’m being dramatic; this I know. I had enough food. I was okay. I even had an entire bag of M&M’s to chow down on every evening as dessert. I simply couldn’t eat as much as I wanted.

But as I was mildly hungry and hiking, my thoughts turned to those even hungrier than I. How could it not? Somewhere across the world, there was someone who hadn’t eaten in days. Somewhere in a city near me, there was someone who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. Nine million people each year experience a hunger so devastating it kills them.

How long have I known about this and been unmoved because the problem was too big and I was too small and it was news headlines that I try to avoid anyways and I didn’t understand the daily pangs of hunger enough to empathize?

Empathy dies in comfort, whether we call it comfort or not. It drops onto a couch in a warm house, sits before a TV where all pain is fictional, and melts away into a careless oblivion, fueled by the mind-numbing understanding that it’s only one small creature who can’t change much for many. It exchanges compassion and action for apathetic sympathy, lulled into thinking it’s the same thing. It hears someone’s struggle and gives them comforting pats on the hand, saying, “thoughts and prayers.” Comfort removes our shared understanding of each other, dims the fire within us, and dulls the passion that only challenge, discomfort, and pain can bring.

I’ve talked about redemption before, about watching beautiful things bloom out of scars. Empathy is the fertile soil from which these flowers grow, the healing “antidote to shame” (Dr. Brené Brown).

With a consistently full stomach, there’s no understanding of the pangs of hunger. There’s no realization of the anxiety that comes from rationing the food you have. You never wake up from a low ache in the night and the thought of food so strong you can’t go back to sleep.

With a sturdy house, there’s no need to think about rain at night, the way it can seep into a shelter or drip through a roof, the way it can turn to ice in the cold mountain air. There’s no thought of a wet sleeping bag or going to sleep knowing you’ll probably wake up cold at some point, hoping you can go back to sleep. There’s no thought about a bitter wind and the way it can eat at your bones; no concern about the place you’ll sleep at night; no worry of being homeless.

Without standing on the side of the road, you never experience the awkwardness of people trying to avoid your gaze, the stares of people judging you for standing there, the confusion of people unable to understand why you’re there, the judgemental eyes locking with yours and shaking their heads no, the sudden joy and relief of having someone finally meet your eyes with care and pulling over.

I’m writing to myself, to the girl curled up on the couch in Ohio, who heard these things and whispered to herself, I can’t do anything about it, I’m just a girl. I’m writing to myself, who cannot take the world onto her shoulders, who cannot fix world hunger, who cannot give everyone a home, who awkwardly avoided eye contact with people standing at the ends of highway ramps and beside intersections, but who understands better now. I’m writing to myself, saying, take this empathy and step out in faith; you’re just a small girl with a big God; actions don’t need to be big to make a difference.

It turns out that a single meal to feed a starving child only costs 30 cents. If you’re interested, here’s how to take a small step with a big impact.

What’s next on the CDT

The halfway point (mile 1,525) has been reached, which means there’s still 1,525 miles left to go! Colorado (if she stops raining on us) will be an incredible state full of elevation, massive mountains, big views, and of course, aspens turning golden. Though I’m sure we’d love to stay here forever, we’ll need to push through rather quickly. Winter is coming, of course, and whether we get to hike through the San Juans will depend on if we get there quick enough before the snow starts to hit.

After Colorado is our last state: New Mexico. There, we’ll get to relax a little bit as our (main) worry about snow is over. Then we’ll just get to explore the Gila River, walk through the beauties of the desert (when it’s not the  blazing heat of summer), and once more do long water carries.

This adventure may be halfway done, but it’s nowhere near finished.