I'm going home soon

I want to thank everyone who has been reading my updates and offering encouragement and positive energy... Thank you so much!

In a few days, I'll hit the halfway point of the trail. At close to three months, it's a sobering reminder of how much there is yet to go. It has prompted me to ask how much fun I'm having and whether what I receive from the trail each day outweighs the separation from other things I love to have in my daily experience. There are a few reasons why I come up short in that calculation on the northern half of the trail, as I'll explain below. I have tried on and ultimately rejected a "grind it out" mindset. That's not what I need to do at this stage of my life. My goal has been to play a game with simple rules that lets me traverse vast mountain landscapes of the American West. I'm close now to reaching the goal of continuous footsteps across two states. Those are real winnings, to my mind! I'm proud of the work. But I'm also satisfied. I don't need more, and...I don't even want more. That surprises me a bit! But it also makes me like myself a little bit more, which is a funny outcome that I can't really explain.

So... I'm good with everything, and not disappointed. Here are the factors that influence me:

Grizzly bear country

I really took the bear problem lightly, never thinking very deeply about it. But in the Wind Rivers Mountains of central Wyoming, it becomes in very serious. There are factors which make the risk of interaction with a bear very, very possible.

And any interaction is potentially deadly, or, perhaps even worse, may lead to a mauling that alters the trajectory of your remaining life.

Bears are no longer hunted. When they were, their populations faced a continual removal of those day-active bears that had little fear of humans. Now, those bears breed offspring, and the tendency for boldness is selected for. However, our ideas about bears come from that now-outdated interval when they were shy, and active mostly at night.

Secondly, there is a vast worldview disconnect between the people who live near bears, and the mostly city-dwellers like me who venture into the mountains in the summer to walk. The rural people carry a loaded gun in their hand at all times in bear country. They have no illusions. They've seen the adaptability and intelligence of bears, and they've been stalked by bears, which is an experience that will change your worldview instantly. For example, some bears now run in the direction of gunshots, knowing there is an easy meal which they can take over from the hunters (who are often killed or maimed).

We hikers are encouraged to make noise... To wear "bear bells," and shout or sing. This is well and good, but it ignores the problem of s growing percentage of bears who will go the other way.

As a hiker, I'd be carrying pepper spray in a holster. It is better than nothing... It might actually work. But there are many limiting factors.

To travel through and sleep in bear country for months on end, and likely often alone is, to my mind, now that I've thought about it, way beyond the risk profile that is acceptable. Suppose I meet a sow and her cubs? Worse, suppose the sow is on one side of the trail, and the cubs on the other? Suppose I come upon a dead elk, which is guarded by a bear? I'll be met with absolute fury.

I spend many hours in brushy country, where a bear could be very close and I wouldn't know it. This makes me doubt my ability to use pepper spray correctly at the right distance. In reports, people continually express surprise at the speed and fury of the bear. Experience with bears likely helps. But I have none. I'd have to perform very well on the first interaction, which is statistically unlikely. And that interaction may come at any point in a 12 hour hiking day... In fog or rain or tricky, broken ground... In thick brush.... Or in the tent at night.

Being alone increases the danger tremendously. And, I am kind of a loner. I like to hike alone. Also, my place going uphill is too slow for the younger (or fitter!) people I meet on the trail, despite the fact that we get along great. If I try to keep up, I exhaust myself. So, despite the danger, I would end up alone.

Smiley, the great guy in Pagosa Springs who hosted us had a sobering personal story. He came around a corner in the Wind Rivers, and surprised a sow and her cubs. The bear slapped him down, raking through his backpack with her claws, then bit him on his buttocks, shaking him like a rag doll while he screamed. She threw him down and walked away. He was able to dress the wounds and walk out.

He could have easily been mortally wounded.

My personal history comes into play here. The climbing accident in 2020 that resulted in a three week hospital stay, a three month convalescence before I could walk, and another surgery to remove pins, affected my risk tolerance in a real way. I very much don't want anything like that to happen again. Those who survive bear maulings often need years of plastic surgery and all kinds of medical interventions to regain functionality.

Basically: no way. There is no country so beautiful on this earth that I'll risk that kind of hospital interaction to see it.

I speak only for me. I don't judge what other people do. This is my own risk profile, and I'm happy to have discovered and measured the contours of it quite closely. I know what I want and don't want.

Spiritual factors

I entered the trail in the midst of an extensive meditation practice, which has made my life joyful and full of meaning. My hope was that I could continue that in "walking meditation," and, ideally, sitting for a while each morning and evening. I'd taken up vegetarianism, and seen a beneficial effect in my practice from it... Achieving a deeper, more subtle state of consciousness. The yogis are not joking: it is easier to feel those subtle and exquisite states when the food used to sustain the body is of a higher vibration.

However, it hasn't worked out the way I expected. I've become someone who talks about meditation, and not one who does it. I've left the frame of direct experience, and entered "armchair spirituality." I know what value there is in there, but I'm too tired to practice. And into the vacuum flows negative thoughts and actions.. Basically, rampant desire for distraction from the hard life I committed to. I see that I am not a "great" man, but very ordinary. Without my sitting practice, I fall into the errors from which my practice rescued me.

The practice is, as it turns out, the great love of my life. It is what enlarges and protects the part of me that I would have as the whole of me. In there, I am building something that cannot be expressed, and yet is more precious than any of my works in this world. I feel that I've failed, in a way. I fell into busy interaction with a busy world. The truth is, I am still a "child" in my practice. I need to continue with the quiet life that I have in Germany. With few, but important and loving relationships. When my boys. With my beloved Barbara. With my ex-wife, the wonderful mother of my children. With my few and dear friends. With my colleagues, such balanced and admirable people.

This is more important than any hike.

Perhaps then...I have found what I needed to find.