The Pacific Crest Trail first became known to me four years ago when my colleague Amy's husband was preparing for his summer-long hike. I remember a few startling details: his legs grew as sturdy as tree trunks, all the hikers end up with a trail name, and boxes were sent to specific destinations to help him refuel during his Mexico to Canada via foot voyage. It truly seems other-worldy, especially since one emerges renamed.
Cheryl Strayed's book
Wild brought me into this other world of the PCT and held me captivated from the moment she struggled inside her hotel room to simply lift her pack off the floor and failed to her final destination atop the Bridge of the Gods.
Along the journey she notices that she hasn't cried at all on her trip: not when she tore the radiator pipe from the wall of the hotel room in order to hoist her and her backpack to a vertical position, not when she lost her boot, ran out of water, almost walked across a rattlesnake, or had two cents to her name. She declared to herself that with all that turmoil behind her and not a single tear shed, she certainly wasn't going to let herself cry the day she and her hiking pals could not find the Rainbow Party with their groovy music and free food celebration. She reinforced her resolve and bolstered herself saying it would not break her. And it didn't.
While sitting in a ridiculously tedious meeting on a new yet oh-so-not improved computerized gradebook training, a colleague of mine had the same sentiments. She just declared this cockamamy program would not break her.
The two women in drastically different worlds arrived at the same conclusion: this thing outside myself will not conquer me; I will chose what, if anything, will bring me out of myself, bring me to tears, bring me to my knees. Consider, one woman in the wilderness creating daily life from dehydrated packets of nutrients and a shelter from a taught piece of treated nylon while another woman creates her livelihood in the computer-will-solve-the-world's-problems in the two steps forward three steps back world of education, yet both are resolved not to let something insignificant make them crumble.
When I was a little girl, I would sit on the bathroom counter, legs dangling, hair wet from a long bath while my mom coaxed a comb through a blonde tangle of knots. I held a bottle of "No More Tears," studying the pudgy long-haired girl on the front with silky smooth hair. My hair politely and obediently slid through the tines of the comb. I didn't scream when the comb moved through treated "No More Tears" hair. The invisible coating worked its magic, there were no tears.
Maybe that is what these women possess internally. Some inner spray of No More Tears that has created a barrier to the threats, big or small, of the world. What is it that I will let bring me to tears? Tangled hair, sometimes. Education initiatives unworthy of a breath, kinda. Lack of food and shelter, most definitely. But maybe, just maybe, these troublesome irritants don't have to. Maybe I have the strength to decide what can change me. Today is a new day and I am sure I'll be handed plenty of opportunities to see if I have that invisible strength that will decide what will protect me from the wayward winds of the world. I just wish it were as easy as coating myself with a little spray, maybe it is. I'll see.
