Shenandoah Farewell

An SNP deer lets me take this closeup

Shenandoah National Park has been my favorite stomping ground since I first moved to the DC area.  My ex and I spent our first mountain trip there and walked on its trails for more than two decades.  We were often joined by our two dogs, Ranger and Buster, two perfect trail mutts who bounded between us eager to see what was around the next corner.  My ex and I would take long day hikes, finishing around 4 p.m. or so, then head back to the cabin or campsite for a beer or two.  I preferred to backpack, which we did occasionally, he preferred car camping or staying in one of PATC’s cabins.  We rang in the new millennium in 1999 there.  We spent the weekend before my Dad’s death there, our last trip in the park together.  In between we soaked up its riches and shared countless happy moments.   We saw our first bear in the wild there, not to mention countless deer, a copperhead or two and once a rattlesnake.  We learned how to set up a tent after you forgot the tent poles at home in those woods.

That’s why I had to take a final hike there before leaving the DC area. 

I wanted a simple hike, so I parked at Booten’s Gap in Central SNP with the intention of camping at Rock Springs Hut, summiting Hawksbill Mountain (highest point in SNP) either that afternoon or the next morning.

It turned out to be one of those hikes that brings to mind the trekker’s adage, “don’t quit on a bad day.”   I’ve been on numerous solo hikes over the past year as I train for the Long Trail.  This was the first time I felt lonely.  Or perhaps it wasn’t loneliness so much as the past clinging to me like quicksand, dragging my spirits down into the muck of regret.

With my spirits flagging, I decided to camp at Big Meadows Campground, preferring the “luxury” of a campground instead of a hut.  It was the right decision.  A large campfire, the sound of children laughing from the families camped nearby and plentiful deer wandering the grounds relieved my melancholy.

As I watched my fire I told myself that I am moving past my break-up grief stemming from the loss of two relationships.  “It’s over, it’s over,” I told myself, trying to focus on the fact that in the coming week I would be finally leaving D.C. and my life here and, more importantly, starting my Long Trail hike and eventual move to Seattle.  Since June my life has been about ending things.  I am about to start beginning things.

Well, almost. 

The next morning I rose at 6:30 and broke camp at 8:30 (truly, if there is one thing I enjoy most, it’s a hot breakfast outdoors).  I hiked the rest of the way to Hawksbill, and summited at 10:07.  The day was hazy and overcast.  Below me stretched the beautiful Shenandoah in the mist.  Flanked by Massanutten and Old Rag.  Never one to miss an opportunity for sentimentality, I could see my ex and I still tromping over those trails below, Ranger and Buster joyously bounding at our feet.  Looking at Old Rag I remembered the many hikes up its slopes he and I led since 1987, sharing the camaraderie that comes from enjoying the fellowship of a beautiful view gained from a day of steep hiking and a rock scramble.

My heart full of these memories and images, I climbed down from there. 

It became hard to see the trail ahead.  Hikers really shouldn’t cry.

View of Old Rag from Hawksbill summit

 

Simpler Days

The GOP is longing for simpler days when "I am not a Witch" was the defining statement of right-wing crazy.

Walking Memories

My hike is a month away, but I am already walking.  In a sense walking from my old life into an unknown new one.  And quite literally walking everywhere around this town I've called home for most of the last 25 years -- Washington, D.C.

Sunset over the Potomac River, from the Potomac Heritage Trail

I've always walked a lot.  D.C. is a good city to walk in, with ample paths, great scenery and traffic and parking logistics that make driving a real nightmare .   I bike here a lot, too.  When I worked in an office I biked to work.  Now that I'm preparing for my hike I take every opportunity to walk.  I go out of my way to walk.  I have a doctor's appointment 10 miles from my home tomorrow.  I will walk back.

All this walking gives me plenty of time to reflect on my time here.  Memories good and bad follow me everywhere.  My past echoes with each footfall.  I have a connection to that building, that street, that business.  Some memories are so distant I feel connected in fact only.  I know this place was part of my history I thought yesterday, standing in front of the home my ex-partner lived in when I met him.  But I have no feel for that place anymore.  Like a date inscribed on a tombstone it's just a cold memory scratched in my brain.

Other places are warmer, recent, familiar.  They still pull me in.  Some evoke smiles and laughter.  Yet there's still the sad sense of finality.  This part of my life -- the life I have known the longest -- is coming to an end.  The new part is not here yet and I feel caught between two worlds.  The old one passing and the new one not yet beginning.  Walking among shades of the past, I am a ghost among ghosts.

And all the while I keep walking.  Because walking is what I do now.

Your Children and Chick-fil-A

A friend from high school just posted this on her Facebook page.  It reminded me of what is most upsetting to me about the recent Chick-fil-A controversy.

The glee with which so many laughingly and light-heartedly defended the right of someone to say hurtful if not hateful  things about gay people and pursue policies that will continue to deny their equal rights.

The right to say such things is not in question.  The joy and mirth that so many expressed in defending that right is.  They seem to have forgotten that their joyful anti-gay messages will be heard by small ears.

"Careful the things you say, children will listen."

Lost in all of this are the children growing up gay but too scared (some for their lives) to talk to their parents or loved ones.  They fear they will be cast out (because they see their loved ones doing it in the things they say and in the politicians and policies they support).  These kids will have no where to turn.  And so these kids will hide.  They will withdraw.  They may turn to drugs and alcohol for relief from the crushing loneliness and rejection.  All too many will see suicide as their only option in a world where loved ones mock other people who are just like them.

After all, what future is there in a world where your dreams for a relationship full of love and companionship are demonized and rejected?

I hope that all those people standing in line to support anti-gay free speech at Chick-fil-A and posting "funny" cartoons about it like this one do not have any gay children or grandchildren.  Sadly, I know they do.

More sadly, those kids are watching.

Love Never Dies

**SPOILERS**

Not sure if the spoiler alert is needed, since I'm uncertain that anyone really cares about Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to the Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies.

Count me among the uncaring.  At least, until I caught the performance on PBS the other night.

The idea of a Phantom sequel seemed to me unwarranted and desperate.  Hackneyed.  Why not an Evita sequel?  (I try to imagine some of the songs:  "Don't Rot for Me, Argentina," "Eva, Beware of the Cemetery," "High-Flying, Embalmed").

And then I found myself actually liking parts of it -- mostly some of the music.  Especially the Phantom's big number, "Till I Hear You Sing." Admittedly it's overwrought, melodramatic Webber.  But, in my recent state of mind after my last break-up, it works for me (and my recent ex-boyfriend frequently sang to me, albeit without a mask).

I would have to agree with some of the criticism of the show though.  The plot seems contrived and the characters not really believable.  In the story, 10 years after the disaster at the Paris Opera House, Raoul and Christine (and their son, Gustave, who is (hint-hint) 10 years old) reunite at Coney Island with the Phantom and Meg and Madame Giry.  We learn that the Phantom is actually Gustave's father and then Meg, in a jealous fit, accidentally shoots and kills Christine.  And you just don't really care.  Too bad Meg didn't shoot that sap Raoul as well, I never liked him.  I mean, really, using your girlfriend as bait for a deranged murderer (in the first show)?  Betting your relationship in a drunken wager with the Phantom (in the current show)?

If only, at the end, the Phantom had looked at Gustave and said, "Join me, and together we will rule the galaxy as father and son!"  Oh, but I guess that's another show.

Still, I liked the song.  What can I say?

Take a Hike

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, and so on – have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear – what remains?

“Nature remains.”

-- Walt Whitman

I need to take a walk.  Have an adventure.  Spend some time in the woods.

Seattle is in my future, as I’ve detailed here previously.  Until then, I’ve made a few other plans.  The focal point of those plans is a hike on Vermont’s Long Trail, a 270-walk in the wilderness:

Built by the Green Mountain Club between 1910 and 1930, the Long Trail is the oldest long-distance trail in the United States. The Long Trail follows the main ridge of the Green Mountains from the Massachusetts-Vermont line to the Canadian border as it crosses Vermont's highest peaks. It was the inspiration for the Appalachian Trail, which coincides with it for one hundred miles in the southern third of the state.

I take this journey for various reasons.  The main reason is recovery.  After going through what has seemed a prolonged period of loss, which includes the death of my father, the end of a 24-year relationship, the bitter breakup of a new relationship and the loss of my job, I want some fresh air.  I need a re-start.

I go into the woods somewhat battered, but not yet beaten.  I seek a better path and a stronger stride.

My goals for the hike include:

• Re-evaluate my life and my career
• Take time to discover/reconnect with the spiritual aspect of life that I have neglected for so long
• Find the strength to overcome physical and mental challenges
• Experience living in nature

And, finally:

Simply have an adventure – life is short, why postpone dreams until retirement?  That old diem needs to be carped before the tempus goes fugit.

After the hike I hope I find myself connected to new goals; more centered spiritually, more patient, self reliant and better able to accept conditions beyond my control.  I want to be a better outdoors-man.  I hope to simply be a better man.

I have more things to say about some of these goals as well as how I’m training for the trail, my hopes, my fears and, of course, my equipment.  I plan to start a blog devoted to the hike and hope to post updates when I can.  My hike will start in mid-September and I’ll be starting the new blog soon.

But for now, suffice it to say:  I’m going.

“ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

 “I should not be withheld but that some day       
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.”

-- Robert Frost

Health Insurance

I had to talk to a doctor at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois about my medical history as part of my application process.  After 45 minutes on the phone:

Dr.:  "Have you ever had thoughts of suicide or harming yourself?"

Me:  "Not until this phone call."

I guess they didn't think that was funny.  I was denied.