There’s a long hike I’ve been wanting to do, but part of it is known to be riddled with rattlesnakes. I knew that if I wanted to do it, it would have to be in winter so the snake risk was minimal. But because it was still a hike, there would have to be no snow on the ground, or at least not soft snow. And if the snow had melted, it couldn’t be recently, because melting snow makes mud. And because this particular hike begins at one trailhead and ends at another, I would have to make sure I could get a ride back to my starting point.
I chose yesterday.
The choice made sense in some ways. The weather was perfect. It was sunny, and not super cold especially for January 2. But in other ways it did not. For one thing, I was going alone. I also had never done this hike, so I lacked experience in addition to companionship. And it was already past noon when I decided to go, not two weeks out from the shortest day of the year.
I brought my dog to address the “alone” part, and just decided I’d figure the rest out.
I learn everything the hard way.
At first I took my time. I marveled at the scenery, which was lustrous. I took photos and videos. I rummaged through my phone for good podcasts. My plan, I thought, was good. I’d pored over online maps and had made the decision that instead of going the entire distance, I would cut it off halfway, turning off to another trail that I knew led out to a trailhead a mere 10-minute drive from my house where I could be picked up.
Halfway. Ha.
My 20-year-old son lives with friends a few miles south of here, and I called him during the hike so he could look at my location on Life 360 and see how close I was to his house. So close and yet so far. The call was fun at first. But eventually I said, “Hey, use your computer and based on my location let me know how much further you think I have.” I knew for me to do that, I’d have to stop walking. Or hiking. And I wanted to keep going. He agreed, and I listened to him figure it out.
What he told me was mildly shocking. I hadn’t even gone halfway.
That couldn’t be true, could it?
But it was. I’d started at 12:45. By the time my son was checking my distance, it was about 2:30. I had been hiking for an hour and 45 minutes. As I would confirm without a doubt later, I still had two and a half hours to go.
I hung up and started to move faster. No more stopping, period. I still wasn’t quite accepting what he said, and pushed ahead with a queer sort of determination to prove him — to prove the facts — wrong. I thought about something he’d shared with amusement, because my snake phobia was well known: along the way, directly in my path, was an area named “Rattlesnake Gulch.” I anxiously watched my blue dot in Google maps as Riff pulled me along. (God forbid he didn’t lead the way.) My phone was at 35 percent; it had been at 53 when I started talking with my son. Goddamn it. I put my phone on low power mode and closed all the apps I wasn’t using.
After the trail deposited us on a fire road for a bit, which made both of us happy, I was dismayed to see a fence in front of me. The trail was being temporarily rerouted away from the road. Because of an eagle habitat. I almost wished there was a sign “Only walk on this road in case of emergency,” because in my opinion, I would qualify.
The wind was starting to blow a little harder, which upped my anxiety and forced me to pick up the pace even more. I fixated on a house in the distance, way up on a mountain ridge near where I suspected I would have to turn off for my “cutoff” trail. That house never seemed to get any closer.
I kept going. Kept checking Google Maps. Finally, finally, I started to turn in the direction of the cutoff trail, which was to the east. But as experienced hikers know and as I was cursing myself for not realizing, distance on an aerial map is never straightforward, because elevation is a thing. And you can’t just hike up a steep hill. You have to walk on switchbacks. More dismay: I finally, finally was able to switch back enough to get to the top of the ridge I thought led to the end. And all I saw was another ridge.
This would happen two more times.
The last couple miles were the worst. It looked so easy on the map, but this hike, Google would tell me later, was “moderate” where the rest of the hike had been “easy.” Easy = walking. This was climbing or at least some of it was. Switchback, switchback, down in a valley, switchback, switchback, up another ridge, only to see another ridge rise up in front of me.
It was getting darker. I kept watching my phone. I stopped calling my son for updates.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, my watch died.
Let me say this here: I knew I’d be fine. I could literally see houses, even if they were fully labeled private property and I wasn’t allowed to go near them. I knew I was “close” (again, relative) to the end of the trailhead. I even took a photo (from a distance) of what I thought was the final ascent before the final descent.
That wasn’t the final descent.
As the hike got harder and harder the further I went I kept remembering last August, when I’d made a last-minute decision to go mountain biking an hour and a half from home. Again, solo.
That day I also started late. But it was a long drive, so I didn’t start biking until 2:30 pm. In August heat. I had a map, but I misjudged the actual distance (again, elevation) and almost ran out of water.
Both days, yesterday and last August, I was skating on low-key rage and a good measure of helplessness. Parenting and being the wife of an alcoholic had instilled a sort of helplessness that had become permanently lodged in my psyche. I wanted to ride it away or hike it away. The verb didn’t matter. I just wanted it away.
And both days, I did something I’d been wanting to do for a while, things that I had brought up to my husband, and that he’d been pleasantly agreeable about, but that he’d never brought up again, because in our 24-plus years of marriage the person who suggests what to do and decides when to do it has always, one hundred percent, been me. And he’s passively agreeable about it all, as long as he doesn’t have to think of it first.
My husband is great — outstanding, really — about the things we have to do. Very involved, engaged, and reliable. But when it comes to the things we want to do, he doesn’t exist.
It’s not the kind of emotional labor people talk about. Buckling under the weight of it feels silly. But I still do.
In both cases, yesterday and last August, I relied on myself. I made rash, unwise choices, but I learned a few lessons along the way. The hard way. And ultimately I succeeded. I succeeded by myself. Like I’d learned to long ago.
You’re on your own, kid. You always have been.