Point Reyes Backpacking Trip: The Preparation

Since January of this year, as evidenced by my last post on this blog, I have been seeking more of a physical challenge in an effort to facilitate some sort of emotional release, some catharsis.  This has popped up in various forms and manifestations over the past ten months or so.  In January I felt restless, seeking a more palpable and possibly earth-shattering evolution.  I began trail running and I remember noting my excitement at the days getting longer, allowing me to spend more time outside cavorting in the woods.

Then I seemed to lapse into a sedentary period.  I got busy, I guess.  In April my old man cat died, which threw me off something awful.  I kept dating and feeling wholly unfulfilled by the ritualistic passivity that is the online dating beast.  Instead of feeling grateful for my resilience, independence, ability to run the trails, I tended to feel lonely.  This blue period lasted from about April in varying degrees of severity until my birthday in October.  Existential crisis or the numbing cycle of chronic dysthymia; as much as I'd like to believe my personal angst and turmoil is real and true, I also find comfort in knowing that we are all just knots of funky neural connections and hormones sometimes gone awry. Humans be strange creatures.

Then in August I took a long weekend and ran away to Big Sur with a friend and my sister.  We stayed at two different campgrounds - first was Ponderosa in the Ventana Wildnerness, and second was Kirk Creek right on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific.  Getting out and getting away was like soul food; getting out of my humdrum routine and into my hiking boots, a tent, and a tiny Primus stove got me itching to get back out as soon as we got in the car to come home.  I felt drawn to finally focusing on slowly building a decent stash of gear so that I could get out more often.  I felt invigorated for the first time in a few months, and although the continued frustration with having such a consistently low paycheck made me hesitate (asking myself questions like "do I need a sleeping bag or groceries" have become a de facto internal dialogue) I have continued to be inspired to seek that wild escape over my regular and expected daily furnishings.

Over the past several months I've purchased a Kelty Ignite Down sleeping bag, a Klymit sleeping pad, and a Sawyer Mini water filter system.  I had my basic Primus stove, a few pairs of hiking boots, and my REI backpack from over ten years ago when a friend and I backpacked around Europe for a few months.  I also had my Sierra Designs Sirius 2 tent.

As far as I was concerned, I was ready for my first solo backpacking trip, and had visited Point Reyes National Seashore campgrounds several times with friends.  Point Reyes has four hike in campgrounds - Wildcat, Coast, Sky, and Glen.  Each campground, depending on which trailhead you start your trip, has varying distance and degrees of difficulty in getting to them, and they are all insanely popular due to all having running drinking water, toilets, and just being downright breathtaking.  In September, in an attempt to scratch the itch that had been growing and steadily gaining momentum since Big Sur the month before, I booked a two night trip to Point Reyes, my first night at Wildcat camp, and my second night at Glen camp.

Turbid

My favorite word is turbid.  Turbidity is usually referred to within geology, specifically when measuring sediment levels of water.  Murky muddy river beds, for example, are considered to be high turbidity.  Turbid.  It can also be used to describe a foggy mental state.  In psychotherapy, the clinical term is "mental clouding".  It can be related to types of dissociation, of checking out.

I love this word, and have been feeling turbid lately.  Overwhelmed, rocky, and a little murky.  Muddy and opaque.  It helps to be able to describe it using a word rooted in the physical world.  I feel like a mucky river bed.

I have been drawn to chasing more and more extreme levels of activity, not just climbing a hill on the trails, but feeling compelled to sprint up them.  To run until I cry or throw up.  I know it will be painful, but I guess I am seeking that pain.  I wonder what it means that the two most prevalent and comfortable mental states are either dissociated murkiness or being painfully frantic.

Maybe I am seeking some sort of catharsis.  Maybe this is my new drug.  Maybe this is my own nutter version of self-flagellation.  On the trails lately I am focused almost entirely on a strange prayer, the origins of which are unknown to me: let the trail beat the angry out of me.  Sometimes "angry" is replaced with "anxiety", "worry", or "sad". I don't know where this came from, but I can't not repeat this to myself silently as I sprint for as long as I can, which unfortunately (and embarrassingly) is not too long.  Maybe I am in need of a container, something to bring me focus and balance, although each time I consider this my head shoos the thought away and I only imagine running or screaming as fast and as loud as I can until I can't anymore.

It's kind of sad, I've found that the end of hikes don't leave me feeling satisfied like they did before.  I've just been a bit more frustrated that my body won't take me further, that I don't sweat as much as I want to, that I don't feel completely drained and beat down.  I don't feel like there's been sufficient release.  I have no idea what the release is that I'm looking for.  I've started re-listening to the frenetic punk of my teenage years, this provides a little of the release I think I want.

I've been dating people and have been simultaneously bored, exhilarated, elated, infatuated, terrified, and heartbroken.  Maybe it's this mixed bag of feeling that begat the muck.  Maybe it's my denial that any of it really means anything, that it is not real.  There was one person that I met recently who has struck me as so hurt and lost and subsequently made me feel hurt and lost.  The brick wall I built between myself and those emotions showed me more than the feelings themselves.

This urge to sprint or fall in love or lose myself in punk again may just be the way I'm moving forward.  It feels like letting go.  It feels like jumping off a cliff.  I suppose I wonder how to do this gracefully.  I wonder if grace has a rightful place here, or if the mucky and ugly and terrifying needs to shine for a bit.