More about meI am 48 years old, a woman, and not in very good shape. In fact, that is a bit of an understatement. I have a chronic illness which has torn my life apart since I was sixteen years old. I have trouble with my nervous system and my heart. Little things exhaust me. Walking a quarter mile is likely to leave me shaking and exhausted. If I get too exhausted, I "crash", becoming dangerously weak and disoriented. If I don't find a way to rest very quickly after that, I can black out - sometimes for days at a time - until my body has a chance to recover. After a crash it is often days, weeks or even months before I can even function well enough to feed myself or take a shower without help.
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One might wonder (okay, one MUST wonder) why I would ever think I could be a candidate for serious wilderness travel.
I'm not always, obviously. My illness is cyclical - sometimes better, sometimes worse. During my best times, I can do moderately strenuous activity for 2-5 hours at a time before needing to sleep the rest of the day. After two to four days like that, I need a week of solid rest before I have another stretch of good days again. For the past five years, I haven't had good days. In fact, I was mostly bedridden for three of those years, only able to sit up a few hours a day and unable to prepare my own food or shower without help. Things began to turn around for me in the spring of 2018 and the time since then has been a slow, plodding road towards regaining my strength again.
This illness first struck me down when I was sixteen years old. I had to reduce my high school schedule to half days so that I could go home and sleep all afternoon. Even so, I graduated valedictorian of my class. By my second year of college I was too sick to live on my own and had to drop out of school and return home. It took eleven years and many classes spent laying on the floor in the back of the room because I was too weak to sit in a chair, but I got my degree. In 2004, my husband and I moved from Chicago to an off-grid horse ranch in Montana and I started raising and selling horses, even though I sometimes went months without being able to do more than stumble out to feed twice a day. Then things got worse and I started having times when I couldn't even do that much.
When my health got really bad, I closed my horse business and tried to give up on all of the things I still wanted to do with my life. The doctors told me that pushing myself beyond what my body could do was destroying what little health I had. I tried to be content with a simpler life. But I never was.
Here is what I love - here is what I burn for: To be surrounded as far as the eye can see by wilderness, alone except for my horse and my dog, exploring the world, every forest path, every hidden pond; To go with no concern for getting back, to go and go until its time to rest and then to set up my tent in a quiet field and sleep the night and do it all again. Day after day. Alone.
I've spent the last year recovering, slowly, from my latest and greatest crash. Five years that one lasted and I don't want to do that again. I know the doctors are right - when I push myself too hard, I destroy my chance of ever getting back on my feet again. I've learned to monitor my heart rate, listen to my body, sit down frequently, not lift heavy things. I've learned that I can no longer push myself to my limits and expect to just bounce back again and again.
For the past ten years, every time I was well enough to ride, every time I was well enough to go off into the woods and spend the night, I studied my experiences, tried methods and gear and learned, coming ever closer to knowing how to do these things without pushing myself over the edge. After this last five year crash, I finally know I am getting better because for the first time in a long time I can't sleep for dreaming. And I dream of the Pacific Crest Trail.
Here's the thing - I can't do this trail the way other people do. I can't do it for the same reason, or with the same goals, or the same timeline as anyone else I have ever heard of. But I can do it.
I'm starting now.
I'm not always, obviously. My illness is cyclical - sometimes better, sometimes worse. During my best times, I can do moderately strenuous activity for 2-5 hours at a time before needing to sleep the rest of the day. After two to four days like that, I need a week of solid rest before I have another stretch of good days again. For the past five years, I haven't had good days. In fact, I was mostly bedridden for three of those years, only able to sit up a few hours a day and unable to prepare my own food or shower without help. Things began to turn around for me in the spring of 2018 and the time since then has been a slow, plodding road towards regaining my strength again.
This illness first struck me down when I was sixteen years old. I had to reduce my high school schedule to half days so that I could go home and sleep all afternoon. Even so, I graduated valedictorian of my class. By my second year of college I was too sick to live on my own and had to drop out of school and return home. It took eleven years and many classes spent laying on the floor in the back of the room because I was too weak to sit in a chair, but I got my degree. In 2004, my husband and I moved from Chicago to an off-grid horse ranch in Montana and I started raising and selling horses, even though I sometimes went months without being able to do more than stumble out to feed twice a day. Then things got worse and I started having times when I couldn't even do that much.
When my health got really bad, I closed my horse business and tried to give up on all of the things I still wanted to do with my life. The doctors told me that pushing myself beyond what my body could do was destroying what little health I had. I tried to be content with a simpler life. But I never was.
Here is what I love - here is what I burn for: To be surrounded as far as the eye can see by wilderness, alone except for my horse and my dog, exploring the world, every forest path, every hidden pond; To go with no concern for getting back, to go and go until its time to rest and then to set up my tent in a quiet field and sleep the night and do it all again. Day after day. Alone.
I've spent the last year recovering, slowly, from my latest and greatest crash. Five years that one lasted and I don't want to do that again. I know the doctors are right - when I push myself too hard, I destroy my chance of ever getting back on my feet again. I've learned to monitor my heart rate, listen to my body, sit down frequently, not lift heavy things. I've learned that I can no longer push myself to my limits and expect to just bounce back again and again.
For the past ten years, every time I was well enough to ride, every time I was well enough to go off into the woods and spend the night, I studied my experiences, tried methods and gear and learned, coming ever closer to knowing how to do these things without pushing myself over the edge. After this last five year crash, I finally know I am getting better because for the first time in a long time I can't sleep for dreaming. And I dream of the Pacific Crest Trail.
Here's the thing - I can't do this trail the way other people do. I can't do it for the same reason, or with the same goals, or the same timeline as anyone else I have ever heard of. But I can do it.
I'm starting now.