After I left Jan and Jim, I was happy to see that my body felt better. My foot wasn’t screaming in pain and hiking was finally feeling pleasurable.

Unfortunately that only lasted a day and a half. By the middle of my second day out, my foot was again starting to hurt. I remembered my resolve not to be a frog in boiling water, so when I reached old headquarters camp, I began to contemplate my options.

From that camp, I intended to hike either 13 or 16 miles. The day after that, I would cross a road where Trail Angel Roger was going to meet me and bring me breakfast on the trail. A few days after that, I would pick up my resupply when Ellen brought it to me at a road crossing. Seven days after that, I figured I would reach Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where I might be able to take a few days off.

Normally 16 miles would not be a problem for me, but with my foot, I knew I might have to be satisfied with only doing just over 13 miles. That meant I would have 4 miles to meet up with Roger in the morning, which under normal circumstances would take me a bit under two hours. I knew I was not hiking under normal circumstances, but little did I know what was in store for me.

When I left old headquarters camp, I was determined to stay in the moment and let the day determine how far I would get. While I was hoping to do the longer day, I did not want to focus solely on getting the miles done, which I tended to do when I was in pain.

As I walked, I realized I could improve my skills around staying in the moment. I saw how even though I was trying to focus on one step at a time, I was sometimes thinking about where I’d be in an hour. I recognized I had to stop thinking even about one minute in the future and really be in the present moment, acknowledging my physical pain, but also trying to focus on the beauty around me. This skill became really important to me later in the day.

Mid morning, I crossed a gravel road which led down to a beautiful lake. I had planned to take a break here, but when I found myself sitting on the road rather than walking the very short distance to be at the lake edge because my foot was hurting so much, I knew something had to change. I thought about how I always said I would never quit on a bad day. And while any day with pain could be viewed as bad, I realized that on this particular day, the temperature was perfect for hiking and the lakes filled with loon calls were beautiful. If I couldn’t see this as a good day and didn’t want to walk a few feet to get a better view of the lake, I thought it might be time to stop for a longer time than a few zero days in Grand Rapids. Minnesota had some beautiful country and I wanted to enjoy it, which would mean finding a way to walk with less pain in my foot.

I made the decision that if I still felt the same way, I would take a longer break when I reached Grand Rapids, which was still about 10 hiking days away from where I was. Rather than walking another hundred miles to get to Ely before skipping around the boundary waters area, which was on fire, I thought I might have an easier time catching a ride from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. I decided I might also skip the Superior Hiking Trail, which the North Country Trail utilizes just before it hits Wisconsin. I figured I would come back and do these two sections together if I could get my foot to stop hurting. I had someone offering to slack pack me the 207 miles through Wisconsin, and I thought that might be a good way to continue hiking while giving my foot a rest.

After my snack break, I packed up and moved on, aware it could be a bodily challenge to make it to Grand Rapids. I didn’t see many other options as places to get off the trail, making the assumption that being a larger town as far as trail towns go, Grand Rapids would have some sort of public transportation, and thus be an easier place to return to when I was able to get back on the trail. I hoped I could make it there without too much suffering.

Once again the trail threw a bunch of unexpected things at me, causing me to change plans yet again. You can read about this change of plans and what happened next in my following blog.

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