After my last blog about the wind, I have mixed feelings reporting that the wind has dissipated quite a bit. It still comes up during storms and threatens to blow my tent down, but unfortunately it’s lessened in these days when the temperatures are in the high 80s and 90s. Just now I would gladly welcome it back, which goes to show I should appreciate everything when it’s there because I never know when I am going to miss it. It’s been brutal walking in this heat, especially pushing through high prairie grass or walking down shadeless blacktop roads. It’s been hard for me to string two words together for a blog and so for this one, I’m going to let it be a random collection of odd stuff my brain wanders to while I’m on trail. I will accompany it with a collection of photos I’ve taken along the way since I started the North Country Trail on June 17.

At present, I’m really grateful I’ve reached sections where the grass has been mowed and there’s been a trail to follow. I’m also grateful for people who have put water out and who have slack packed me through some sections, especially some of the longer road walks west of the Sheyenne National Grasslands.

I was surprised when I hit the Sheyenne River out of Cooperstown, to see there were hills around the river. As hard as it was pushing through the grass, it felt good to move my body up-and-downhill a bit rather than consistently on the flats. I thought about the geology of this area a lot. I want to look it up when I get home.

I wonder if it’s really safe for people to swim in this water and eat the fish from a river so full of agricultural runoff. In fact, I wonder how the fish even survive. I did see at least one blue-green algae bloom. I learned Fargo uses the river for drinking, but only after it goes through a special treatment process to remove the agricultural chemicals.

I’m always thinking of new ways to tape my foot so I can walk with less pain. I’ve been walking crooked on it because of the skin graft, and am concerned this might have caused a stress fracture. I am not yet convinced and have taken some days without carrying a pack, which seems to have helped. I’ll give it a few more days before making a decision to have it medically checked out. One dilemma is that an x-ray doesn’t usually show a stress fracture and most of these small towns don’t have access to an MRI machine all the time.

Other than those basic things, I wondered why I didn’t see more windmills, especially on the western end of this trail. There have been some as I’ve gotten further east in North Dakota. It seems to me that every home could be generating their own power. I’ve learned that in the past, most every home had a windmill to pull water out of the ground. Periodically I see those defunct windmills at old homesteads. I can usually tell where the old (or new) homesteads are because there is a cluster of trees around the house as a wind break. I thought about how different this is in fire prone California where people would not want trees surrounding their house.

One of the weirder things I’ve wondered is if I use a few ounces of sunscreen a week, where does the weight of that sunscreen go? Some rubs off on my clothes, so I assume my clothes are getting heavier, but is some getting absorbed into my skin? If that’s the case, do I gain weight from the sunscreen, or does it get processed and either peed, pooped or sweated out? It’s not like I’m swimming or even jumping in the shower on a regular basis to wash it off and given the laws of matter, it has to be going somewhere.

Another weird place my brain went to was trying to decide why pee is yellow. I knew it changed shades based on my hydration level and what I was eating, especially if it had vitamin B in it, but I pondered it long enough on the trail to have to look it up. I learned some new things and am including a link for those of you who want to know more.

https://magazine.medlineplus.gov/article/what-makes-urine-yellow-the-answer-lies-in-your-gut

I went through an intense moment in a storm where the wind picked up so strongly it yanked almost all my tent stakes out of the ground. For a while I lay wrapped up in the fallen down tent. It was like being in a plastic bag. The wind was whipping intensely outside and the lightning and thunder were simultaneous. My entire focus was on staying dry as a survival need.

As the wind subsided a bit, I was able to get the tent back up, even though there was still fierce rain, lightning and thunder.

When the storm eased, I shifted out of survival mode and began to relax, enjoying the lighter patter of the rain on the tent. I thought how during any intense experience, such as accident or abuse, our first instincts are all about survival, doing what needs to be done in the moment. It is only when the worst of the storms pass that there is time for relaxation and reflection. I was thinking for some people, and for me for much of my life, I lived in a constant storm state inside, even if I looked calm on the outside. As a result of childhood abuse, my inner world was always in turmoil. l have had to learn to relax and retrain my inner world to soak in the calm. People who are really good in crisis are often people who grew up used to living in a storm. When the storm stops, they don’t know what to do and can’t settle down. I think sometimes kids like this get labeled with attention deficit.

Because of my foot pain, every day I ask myself if I want to keep going. Then I remind myself my foot would be in the same level of physical pain if I was sitting home, so I usually decide to continue on, but sometimes I reevaluate how many miles I’m going to do. After one particularly trying day, when I got to a tiny town called Sibley, which had a number of campgrounds but no store, I was having a hard time moving on. I spent a very noisy July 3 night in Sibley with fireworks exploding until 1:30 in the morning. I was definitely weary when packing up to leave on the 4th. I looked at the trail map and decided it would be OK to only go about 5 1/2 miles that day. I knew I would be pushing through unmowed prairie again and so listened to that inner voice telling me 5 1/2 miles was enough.

By the time I had that 5 1/2 miles done, I was exhausted. I had indeed been pushing through chest high grass for much of it, stumbling through an area where a lot of trees had come down and were buried in the grass. When I emerged into an army core of engineers campground, I looked for the host to check in. The next thing I knew I was being fed a delicious lunch, including watermelon and barbecued ribs. Soon after eating, while talking with the group, I fell asleep in a lounge chair. They let me sleep until it began to rain. While we waited for the rain to stop, they informed me I wasn’t going anywhere until I had dinner with them! Who was I to argue?

I thought how glad I was I had listened to that internal voice of mine only planning on going that short distance. If I hadn’t, I not only would’ve missed some delicious food, but more importantly, I would’ve missed meeting some really lovely people who had an eclectic mix of interests from working in special ed to cooking, quilting, boating and fishing. As with all the people I meet along the trails, my life has been enriched by meeting these people.

I don’t know how long I’ll continue on this 4800 mile long trail, but for now I’ll keep going, one step at a time, until something else presents itself as the next direction I should turn in. I try to stay in the present, taking in what each day presents, leaning into the difficult feelings, and noticing and being grateful for moments of more ease.

I’m surprised how far through North Dakota I am and I’m looking forward to reaching the lakes in Minnesota, although I think there’s a lot of road walking on the western end of Minnesota. Before that, I’m looking forward to meeting up with Michelle, who I’ve never met, but who helped me with water on the trail. We’re going to hike two or three days through the Sheyenne grasslands together. It’ll be wonderful to have someone to hike with, especially since the days are going to be in the 90s.

And finally, especially when times feel rough, I think about things that make me happy. I recently had a friend who I hadn’t talked to in a while call me to reconnect. That was a happy thing.

Another thing at the top of my happiness list was getting a message from Sean, who’s been helping me make my first book, Meeting Mary Badass, a reality. For weeks, after he sent me the finished copy of the cover, I felt happy every time I thought of it. And now, when I’m in the middle of a brutal heat wave with a possible stress fracture in my foot, I think about the excitement I feel knowing Sean has ordered the first proof of the book. If it all looks good, it will be ready for sale. I’ll keep you posted. Until then, I hope you all can listen to your inner voice within and experience some peaceful moments out of the storm.

#healingtrauma #dissociation #did #kindness #ptsd #posttraumaticstress #thruhiking #thruhike #nationalscenictrail #ncnst #northcountrytrail #themarybadass