Together in Movement
(Originally posted 04/04/21)
One of the women I’ve been following on Instagram, a Canadian solo hiker named Kate, posted this the other day, “My every day now revolves around this simple routine... water, hike, eat, sleep, drop jaw around every corner.” Maybe because my partner, is living this same routine right now, as I write this, that simple statement reduces me to tears. Actually, I am so confronted by both the subjectivity and the objective reality of that statement and of his journey, words can’t do it justice. But I’ll try.
Setting off on something new, a committing experience that is anchored in movement, or is in-and-through-the-body, that simplifies our existence to water, hike, eat, sleep, is to peel back the layers of the mind and amplify the singularity of the body and mind. In these bodily-based projects, the body becomes the stage of awareness rather than the mind. The body is where we feel, we are tactile-kinesthetic affective beings. Nothing could be more primal in our DNA than the earthly depravity of trekking together in the desert. So in this amplified bodily place, where we live in the flux of our being, we feel all the feels as the saying goes.
“Hey Chef”, :Phee”, and “Sonic” (trail names of my brother-in-law, and two sisters-in-law) wrangled up some borrowed packs, tents, and sleeping bags from friends and all bought a new pair of walking shoes with only about six weeks before they headed out from Campo, CA (on the southern most border) on March 31st. Their intention was to walk the first ten days with their brother “Buffalo”, who was planning to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail over the next 5-6 months.
Each day they walked ten to fifteen miles. I have to think it was, at times, pretty grueling. Everyone talks about how hard the desert section is. They didn’t have all the ultralight gear, nor would any of them say they were overly prepared for hours of walking day in and day out. So, when after taking a day and a half off to deal with a pretty bad blister, I was surprised that they headed back to the trail. But mile after mile of living in-and-through-the-body was calling them. They started earlier each day, they exchanged being in the lead, or being in the back, of sometimes carrying someone else's water or needing time alone... they were getting their system down. After the rest days, it was as if the walking itself was drawing them back to the trail.
In the end, they made it to their planned place of departure, which was Ranchita, Ca, and spent their last night cooking food for everyone who was lucky to share the evening with them. The next morning Gavin/Buffalo was leaving to go back to the trail and the three siblings were sending him off. He told me that as he fell asleep that night in his tent, looking up at the stars, thinking about the walk with his siblings, what they had accomplished together, the tears started flowing. It’s not like he is one to not cry, but it’s like he cries at the things that are less close to him, like something Harry Truman said, but when I think he should cry, not uncommon for particularly men, he holds it in. He said this crying was different. It was full-body sobbing and it was everything. It was grief, it was joy, it was gratitude and awe all in one.
It was a bardo. In Tibetan-Buddhist philosophy, a bardo is a liminal place between two states sometimes called betwixt and between. It is interpreted to mean a transition between life and death, or death and rebirth. But metaphorically it is in reference to the time before and what has yet to be. When we are in that liminal state it is a particularly powerful time, it is more charged with potential. Maybe being betwixt and between the two worlds of earthly depravity (water, hike, eat, sleep), and spiritual power (jaw dropping around every corner), we are in a powerful bardo. We are confronted with their proximity, their nearness to us and to each other, and we feel it all. A recent article on sibling relationships the author, Angela Chen wrote, “siblings are a living part of someone’s history in a form of memory that lives outside of ourselves.” With these complex bonds, Chen continues that with our sibs, we have a choice: “to let that history define the bond or to use the past as a foundation from which a new way of relating can grow.”
As witnesses of their shared experience,the sibs each said their goodbyes, but now from a new place, a place their bodies put them in front of, where few words are needed.
And we are all changed already.
