When I was at Corinna’s I realized I was missing the small digital recorder I carry with me when I hike. Rather than keeping a written journal, I speak into the recorder during the day. Besides providing a record of my trip, it helps me remember what I want to later blog about. I am usually too tired and have too much else to do to write at night, and I doubt I would remember at eight thirty in the evening what I thought about at nine in the morning! As an added bonus, the recorder gives me a sense that I am talking to someone outside of myself and lets me feel connected with you who read my blogs. I also find that speaking, writing and thinking seem to use different parts of my brain. Doing all three helps me process things on a multitude of levels and has helped me integrate some of my dissociated parts. As an example, I might be walking along thinking about something. When I start talking about it into the recorder, I get new insights about those thoughts and where the feelings attached to them may have originated. It is like my own personal therapist.

I was really sorry to have lost the recorder that had all my musings from the Pacific Northwest Trail on it. When I got out of Bill’s truck I had a sense I was leaving something behind but I did not listen to that inner voice. I told Corinna I thought the recorder might be on the floor of Bill’s truck so she called him. Since he wasn’t able to find it, I worked to let it go, although I maintained hope that it might yet be found. I knew feeling bad about it in the moment was not going to help me. Rather than focusing on the loss, I tried to view this as an opportunity to become stronger in my ability to approach the world with balance and calmness rather than from the chaotic dissociative place I had grown up with. By using it as an opportunity to deepen my ability to let go of what I had no control over, I turned a negative into a positive. I was able to remain steady in the present moment without being triggered into larger past losses. I felt good in recognizing that I was learning to feel okay no matter what life threw at me. I took some consolation in the fact that I had written down a lot of what was on the recorder.

I didn’t have energy to even care about the loss as I rode the train from Spokane WA to East Glacier, MT. I was weary from hiking so many miles in pain. The long wait at the train station, managing public transportation on crutches and the overnight train ride in a cramped seat added to my fatigue. By the time I arrived in East Glacier all I had energy for was to sit and stare out the window.

When I arrived in East Glacier I learned I had broken the law. While there had been no sign in the Spokane station, there were a number of signs in the East Glacier one noting that carrying bear spray onto the train was forbidden. I was glad I had been ignorant to this fact and so had been able to keep the fairly expensive can with me.

The people at the station in East Glacier were friendly and allowed me to remain in the station after it closed. I was waiting to be picked up by Misty who had generously kept my car for me on the reservation, where she lives. Misty works at the post office in East Glacier. I met her four years earlier when I had hiked the Continental Divide Trail. I always thought she was one of the nicest postal people I had met on any of my hikes, but still I was surprised that this woman, who sees many many hikers during the hiking season, remembered me when I again walked into the post office four years later to mail my packages for the Pacific Northwest Trail. She told me she remembered me because when I walked in the first time to pick up my resupply package after hiking the CDT through Glacier National Park, I “looked in rough shape and not like most of the other hikers on the trail.” Back then I had shared with her the story of my ex husband’s running away and the nasty divorce I was embroiled in. I appreciated her kindness both then and now, as the original plans I had made to keep my car at a hostel in East Glacier, which would have cost me $300, fell through at the last minute when the owner reneged on her offer to allow me to work off the cost by cleaning the hostel. This hostel owner had been quite inconsistent in her communications with me and I had been feeling less and less comfortable about leaving my car with her. Once again, what originally looked like a negative when she reneged on her offer, ended up being a positive. Misty refused to take money for keeping my car and I knew it was in much better hands with her than it would have been at the hostel.

I was aware that once I picked up my car I would be starting yet another part of this adventure. I was in no hurry to get back to my house in Vermont with all the ghosts it contained from the divorce. But as much as I wanted to make a slow drive across the country to give myself time to transition, I didn’t want to delay getting proper medical care for my broken foot. In fact, even then I suspect it I might have broken bones in my other foot as well.

I came up against a number of walls when I tried to make an appointment with a doctor back in VT. The sports medicine doctor I usually saw didn’t deal with feet so he gave me the name of someone else to call. That person wouldn’t see me without a referral. The emergency room where I was seen in Washington refused to give me a referral because they said that wasn’t their job. It looked like I had to make an appointment with my primary care physician who couldn’t fit me in for a few weeks. Then after I got her referral I would have to wait a few more weeks for a spot to open up with the foot guy. I was concerned I was looking at another month before I had my broken bones looked at by someone who could give me a better idea of what I needed to do for good healing. I was apalled with how complicated this was and recognized that as hard as it felt to me, it was nothing to what so many other people with serious medical conditions have to deal with to get proper care. Each time I hit another wall, I worked hard to not let it pull me down and frustrate me too much. I kept trying to advocate for myself, but each time I did, making calls to hopefully expedite the process, I had the unpleasant feeling of being viewed as the problem child. Again, I worked on letting go and trying to trust. I decided to take care of my feet the best I could and to let go of the rest, aware that many people around the world have no access to medical care.

Misty is a woman of great strength who has been enduring her own frustrations with the medical system as she tries to get care for her aging mother. I was honored to spend a night in her home, sharing a meal with Misty, her nephew and her mother. It was hard to pull myself away the next day, and it was afternoon before I finally got into my car and began the next phase of this journey.

#thruhiking #CDT #continental divide trail #PNT #pacificnorthwesttrail #olderwomenhiking #nationalscenictrails