camping Archives - Nadine Walks

And then it all went up in flames

June 27, 2020

I just returned home from a 2-day backpacking trip that was supposed to be a 9-day trip, though to be fair, I always knew that I might have to cut the trip short. I’m new to backpacking, and I like camping well enough but I don’t exactly love it. I’m nervous about animals at night and I don’t like being dirty and when I’m on vacation, I really like a glass of wine or a beer at the end of the day. On a Camino, you can sleep inside and take a shower and have a hot meal and an entire bottle of wine. All reasons I really like the Camino. So nine days for someone who’s never backpacked before was ambitious.

But, you know, I thought I could do it. If not for the coronavirus, I would be walking through Portugal right now; I’d planned 40-days of walking this summer, more than I ever have before, and I was excited for it. Walking long-distance paths has become such a big part of my life, ever since I walked that first Camino in 2014. What’s a year without a long walk? COVID has demanded this question, and I didn’t want to accept its answer. I felt restless, my legs itching to go: to go somewhere, to go anywhere. Could I find a long walk a little closer to home?

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Towpath (the C&O) runs for 184.5 miles from Washington DC to Cumberland, MD. It’s a mostly flat path and often used by bikers and day hikers, but there are some backpackers who hike the entire trail. With enough free campsites, water pumps and several towns close to the path, I thought it would be an ideal first backpacking experience. And in many ways, it is.

I threw my gear into my pack: a tent and sleeping bag and sleeping pad, a camp stove and a bag full of food and a water filter. I booked a hotel room halfway through the journey, in a town with a post office where I could ship a resupply box full of more food. If all went well, I’d walk for nine days, camping most nights.

I set out early, at dawn, driving to the my starting point, stowing my car, finding the start of the trail. The sun was shining and the air was fresh, my pack was heavy but my legs were eager. I was back on a long path! Nothing to do all day but walk and walk!

After about 3 miles, I realized how much weight I was carrying on my back. I could start to feel an ache in my shoulders and around my hips. My feet were starting to hurt a bit, too. I walked a few more miles, stopped for a short rest. A few more miles, stopped for lunch. I was 9-miles into the walk and starting to get worried. I’d planned for a first day of 22-miles (I know, I know), and the next day I was due to walk 23, the day after that, at least 25.

I’d intended to start a little slower, but poor planning involving picking up my resupply box from the post office meant I had to do big miles (note to self: in the future, don’t time a resupply for the weekend). But I thought I could do it, because hadn’t I walked 20-miles a day before? On the Camino, I do it all the time!

But here’s the thing. When I was planning this little adventure, I was imagining myself on my strongest Camino days. After 3 weeks of walking when my body had adapted to the path and my legs were strong and my shoulders could bear the weight of what I carried. Those were the days I recalled, the days when I felt strong and unstoppable. And there were days on the Camino, or on a hike in England, when I pushed myself hard, when I struggled but kept going. And these are also the kind of days that stick in my mind, proof that I can push myself hard, that I can keep going through some pain, that I can endure.

Well, maybe ‘endure’ should be the word of the last two days. There I was, on the C&O, putting one foot in front of the other, pain radiating through my body. “Have I ever hurt this much on a walk before?” I asked myself. I felt it everywhere: my shoulders and lower back and hips and thighs and feet and even in my ankles. My ankles hurt! I realized that I should have been more careful in my packing, that I probably should have done a few training hikes wearing my pack. Why did I think I could walk 20+ mile days with 30 pounds on my back like it was no big deal?

I made it to 15-miles. I stopped, I rested my feet. “4 more miles,” I told myself. “Then you can stop.” As I walked I came up with a new plan, one where I would shorten my next few days, and then take a bus or an Uber to the next town where I could pick up my resupply box.

After 19.5 miles I made it to a campsite and I sat on a bench and didn’t move for awhile. Slowly, hobbling, I set up my tent and washed my socks and changed out of my sweaty clothes. Two people on bikes road up, and set up camp at the opposite end of the site.

I took out dinner supplies, figuring I could eat and then crawl into my tent and have an early night, that maybe sleep would soothe my muscles.

I have this little camp stove that is nifty and neat and so easy to use. It heats up water in under 2-minutes and I’ve had it for several years, used it a few dozen times.

But this time? I was using a new fuel canister so that must have been it, maybe there was a leak, there must have been a leak, because something went terribly wrong and my stove went up in flames.

I keep thinking of that expression- “burst into flames”. That’s what happened. One minute nothing, the next, the thing was engulfed in flames. I started at it for a few seconds, my brain lagging behind the reality of the situation, lulled by the licking and leaping flames.

I snapped out of it. “Help!” I called out, panicked. The bikers ran over, the guy reached in to turn off the gas and the girl suggested I douse the remaining flames with water. I’d been frozen. I don’t do well in emergency situations, when I need to think and act quickly. If I’d been alone I would have figured it out, I think, but thank goodness there were other people there.

The stove was dripping like a Dali painting, the lower component fused to the fuel canister, the smell of burnt plastic everywhere.

“My stove,” I whispered.

I knew that my trip was over. Half the food I was carrying needed to be heated, coffee included. I might be able to push myself through a lot but I wasn’t going to do this walk without a morning cup of coffee.

It’s hard to quit something. I was thinking about that today, on my drive back home, and I realized that once I set my mind to something and go for it, I rarely quit (sometimes to my own detriment, but that’s another story). I thought about all of my research, the stages I’d planned, the treats I’d tucked into my resupply box, the excitement I’d felt about being able to head down a long path again.

But I knew I was done. I let the stove cool off and ate a cold dinner of tortillas and babybel cheese and tucked myself into my tent and fell asleep to the sound of trains on the tracks and frogs in the canal.

The next morning, at 6am, I packed up my things and turned around and walked the 19.5 miles back to where I started. I didn’t think it was possible that things could get much worse, but maybe it’s just that kind of a year.

About 3-miles into the walk, I could feel a blister developing on the bottom of my foot. I’d felt something the day before, but figured it would be fine. But this time I knew it was a blister. Should I have stopped and tried to do something about it? Probably. But my pack was so heavy that I just didn’t want to stop to take it off and put it back on more than was necessary. I was already feeling defeated, I just wanted to get the miles done and get back to my car.

So I walked, and walked, and the blister grew, and grew. After about 12-miles, I knew I’d be coming to a bench beneath a tall tree (aside from the campsites every 5-7 miles, there were few places to stop and take a break). I stared ahead, constantly looking for the bench, walking on and on.

Finally it appeared, but there was someone already there. A young guy, with a large pack and a tall walking stick.

My head was foggy from the lack of coffee, my blister ached with every step and I was annoyed that I couldn’t stop to rest at the bench. But then the guy called out- “Where are you headed?”

I stopped, and turned. “Just to Cumberland,” I said. “How about you?”

He gave me a small smile. “Denver.” A pause. “Colorado.”

I grinned, something shifted. “Tell me more.”

He talked about the route he’d plotted: starting in Pittsburgh, winding down to Cumberland and then onto the C&O to DC. He would hop to the Appalachian Trail and hike down to Georgia and then through the forests and into the midwest where he would pick up another long rail-to-trails path, and get himself over to Colorado.

“When the coronavirus hit,” he said. “I started to walk around where I live. It’s the best therapy I’ve ever found.”

I nodded and nodded.

“And then when restrictions started to lift,” he continued, “I knew that I just wanted to go out and walk for a really long time. It’s freedom.”

We talked for a few more minutes, he told me that I was the first backpacker he’d seen, and he wanted some advice. I sheepishly told him that I didn’t know much, that I was new to this too, that I didn’t even know the base weight of my pack. But I did know how to walk, and I also knew that walking was freedom, and maybe despite it all, that was enough.

He told me his name was Colby, and I wished him luck on his journey, then I continued on. I thought about him as I walked, wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t had to turn around. If I’d shortened my days would he have caught up with me? We would have been headed in the same direction and maybe I could have made a friend.

Or maybe, I wouldn’t have met him at all. Maybe I needed to turn around to find another person walking the same path.

A half mile further on I found a flat and grassy patch where I could stop and rest. I aired out my feet, drank water and ate a snack and stared off into the distance, where dark clouds were gathering.

Dark clouds. I’d timed the start of my walk for days that promised sunshine and clear skies, no rain. But the clouds were moving closer, and then there was the rumble of thunder, too.

I kept walking. What else was there to do? The clouds moved overhead and rain drops began to fall and then in the next minute, the skies opened up and the rain poured down.

Another expression: torrential downpour. How else to describe this rain? I’ve walked a hundred days on long-distance trails and I’ve walked in the rain but I have never walked in rain like this. I’d put a rain cover on my pack but hadn’t bothered to put on a rain jacket, figuring that I might just walk under a passing shower and the rain would feel good and cool on my skin.

This rain was hard and cold. It pelted down, for 10 minutes, for 20 minutes. After about 30 minutes it slowed and stopped, and I stopped too. I took off my pack and dug through to find my little towel. I looked up and down the trail and then took off my shirt and dried off as best as I could, then put on a dry shirt and pulled out a poncho to carry in my hand and then continued on.

The rain started again, falling even harder than before. I threw the poncho over my head and for awhile I stayed dry but soon there was too much rain. And then thunder, and lightening, and my blister growing larger and larger, I limped with every step through the thunderstorm, through the puddles and the mud, retracing my steps from the day before.

Thunder directly overhead and the path coming to a clearing in the trees and I stopped, and waited, and stared at the ground as water ran down the poncho into my shoes and then I saw tiny white marbles bouncing in the grass. Hail!

When it felt safer to continue I kept walking, and saw that further up the path, there was a bridge overhead and people sheltering underneath. I approached, and a woman called out to me.

“Where are you headed?”

She told me all about her days of hiking the Appalachian Trail. There was wistfulness in her voice, a tinge of envy, she looked at my pack and my poncho and my shoes and told me to savor every moment. Just as I was leaving she asked if I had a trail name. “I don’t,” I said (though the name ‘Flame’ ran through my mind). Trail names are common on the the long-distance hiking paths in the US, but not at all on the paths I’ve walked in Europe.

Something else shifted when she asked this, just as something had shifted during my conversation with Colby. It didn’t matter that I’d only made it one day on the trail and had to turn around. It only mattered that I was out there, and doing it: the weight of the pack, my battered feet, soaked to the bone, water rolling in my shoes and dripping from my nose but my legs still moving, one step at a time. Just call me Flame, I thought.

I continued, two more miles to the end. The rain stopped, the clouds moved out just as quickly as they came in. The sun poured down, warming me again. A man on a bike pulled up alongside of me. “Where are you headed?”

He was biking the final stretch of the C&O, doing an out and back ride and had seen me at my campsite the night before. “I figured you were heading south,” he said.

I told him the story of my stove, that I’d decided to turn around. And the blister, and the rain, and the hail.

“Karma,” he said, “I think if you can make it through this with a smile on your face, then something good will come back to you.”

I had a half mile left, 10 more minutes to walk. The sun was shining. My legs were still holding me up.

I smiled.

Uncaffeinated on the Pennine Way: Day 11, Dufton to Alston, 19.5 miles

April 6, 2019

I woke up in my tent to discover- almost shockingly- that I’d gotten a good night’s sleep. I was in the Camping and Caravan Park in Dufton, a little over halfway through the Pennine Way. For this 268-mile walk, I was carrying a very heavy (heavy to me, anyway!) pack, my tent and sleeping pad adding to the weight. I only ended up using my tent for two nights on my 15-day walk, and maybe it seems a bit unnecessary to have carried all that extra weight for only two nights of camping.

But honestly, having that tent set my mind at ease. I had reservations for every night along the trail, but the thing was, this route was kind of tough. There was never a point where I thought I’d need to cut a day short and pull out my tent and make camp somewhere, but I think having that option added an extra layer of security to the walk.

In any case, the night in my tent in Dufton was the second and final night of camping on the Pennine Way, and overall, it was a good one. The temperatures were warm enough (unlike my first experience in my tent!), and I was so tired that I fell asleep quickly and easily.

After I woke up I broke down my tent and attempted to dry it out in the very early morning sun (dew drops everywhere!) while I got ready for the day. But there was really nothing to linger over- I didn’t have a stove so I couldn’t make myself a cup of coffee, and there were no open shops or pubs where I could have breakfast. So I wiped down the tent as well as I could and then stuffed it back in my pack, figuring I would really dry it out somewhere along the day’s walk (turns out that I forgot all about the damp tent and had to later air it out in my tiny B&B room, but that’s for later).

I left Dufton, heading out for day 11 on the Pennine Way, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. I like this kind of walking, the kind when absolutely no one else is around, but to be honest, I was pretty nervous for the day’s hike.

Out of Dufton on the Pennine Way

There was going to be some difficult walking, with a lot of elevation gain, up through the mountains where I wouldn’t pass any resources until nearly the end of the stage. Normally this might not be so bad, but the previous day had me spooked. I’d walked on very, very tired legs for the entire day, and I was dreading the possibility of more fatigue. What if I couldn’t make it up the final mountain? What if I didn’t enjoy the walk, what if I couldn’t have any fun, what if the rest of the Pennine Way ended up being a long, slow slog through the last bits of northern England?

These fears and also, I would be doing the 19.5 miles on no coffee. No coffee! Yes, the day before I’d only slurped down a bit of lukewarm instant coffee but at least it was something. But this day held no possibility of caffeine, and this might have made me more nervous than anything else. I remember how, on my first Camino, I walked through the Meseta for maybe 13-miles before my first cup of coffee, and my head was pounding and I was grumpy and didn’t really want to talk to anyone. But those were 13 flat miles with a much, much lighter pack. Uncaffeinated on the Pennine Way might be a whole other kind of beast.

But at least my blisters were totally gone! I’m not sure if I’ve clarified this in the last few posts or not, but it’s a good time to mention that my feet had completely healed, and I was totally free of blister pain. Little victories!

Full of fears but free of blisters, I set out from Dufton and began a gradual ascent on a lane that passed through several farms. When I reached the ruins of Halsteads, I passed through a gate and was in the open countryside and heading for those big hills. At this point the walking became a little steeper, my breathing became heavier, but I was feeling okay. I stopped for a sip of water, I felt okay. I kept walking, I felt okay.

Heading towards Knock Fell, Day 11 on the Pennine Way

I took lots of tiny pauses and breaks in my climb up to Knock Fell, the first summit of the day, but incredibly, I continued to feel okay. The bone-weariness feeling of the day before had lifted, and I had my hiking legs back. This isn’t to say that 1500ft ascent up to Knock Fell was easy, because believe me, I stopped to catch my breath quite a bit (but with another clear day, I was able to see all the way to the Lake District!). I stopped only for a small break when I reached the trig point- just enough time to take off my pack and drink some water- but then I continued on. As long as I was feeling strong, I wanted to keep walking.

Looking out towards the Lake District on the Pennine Way

Summit of Knock Fell, Pennine Way

Down from Knock Fell, onto stone slabs for a bit of level walking and then back up again, higher and higher until I could see the great white dome of the weather station growing larger in front of me and soon enough I had arrived at Great Dunn Fell. I didn’t take off my pack this time, only pausing for more water and a fist raised in victory and then I continued on, down then up then down and then up, up, up, all the way to Cross Fell, the highest point in the Pennines.

Radar station on Great Dun Fell, Pennine Way

Line of sheep on hill, Day 11 on the Pennine Way

Up at Cross Fell I took off my shoes and socks and stretched out in the sun. I’d waked 8 miles and still had 11.5 to go, but from here it would be mostly downhill. I knew I would be okay.

Summit of Cross Fell, Day 11 on the Pennine Way

Nearly as soon as I started the descent from Cross Fell, I saw several men running up the hill towards me. They were breathing heavily, totally focused and wearing racing bibs, but each one took a moment to nod and say hello as he passed. I continued down the hill, a few more men ran by. Then a woman, then another man, and as I looked down through the fields I could see a line of them. Another race! You know, there’s nothing like seeing a mass of people running through the same hills I was huffing and puffing over to make me realize that what I was doing wasn’t exactly extraordinary. That’s not to take away from my own accomplishment, but still, all morning I’d been totally alone, battling the inner voices that had me questioning whether I had the strength to climb each summit, feeling like I was in wild countryside, on my own epic course. Then, suddenly, here come the runners!

Nothing to do but smile and say hi to each one as they passed, and continue walking. There was a point where I had to help direct some of the runners- they’d gotten confused and couldn’t see the runners ahead of them, but since I’d just walked down where they would have to run up, I was able to act as a guide. “It’s up that way!” I yelled, pointing up the hill, my voice carrying away with the wind.

“Thank you!!” the runners yelled back.

A race on the Pennine Way

From here the Pennine Way continued on a rough and rocky dirt path that wound for nearly 8-miles down through the hills and towards the village of Garrigill. At first the walking felt rather easy as I picked my way around the larger rocks, but soon my feet grew tired. I passed the lovely stone structure of Greg’s Hut, another place that would be a relief to stop in during bad weather, and a little further on, resting on the hillside, was the Dutchman. We waved at each other as I walked past, and then I continued on and on, further down that rocky road, the bottoms of my feet protesting as the miles accumulated.

Greg's Hut, Day 11 on the Pennine Way

The rough and rocky Corpse Road, Day 11 on the Pennine Way

At least my guidebook was hilarious. Each little map had something to say about the awful experience of walking Corpse Road: “The path is rough and stony and there are miles to go before you sleep.” “As you round a bend and see the path ahead snaking away into infinity, the heart sinks. It’s a long, long way to Garrigill, I kid you not. And as for Alston…” “View of Garrigill, a sight for sore feet.” And, finally, “I’ve had enough of this…”

Arriving in Garrigill was, indeed, a relief, but I didn’t stay long. I stopped and used a toilet but then kept walking, wanting to push on to Alston where I could finally put my feet up after a long day. The rest of the walk wasn’t as bad, and honestly I can’t remember much. I’m pretty sure I was on auto-pilot, just moving forward until I arrived in town.

Bridge over South Tyne River, Pennine Way

And then, when I finally walked into Alston, I felt a bit triumphant. It had been a long day… it had been a long several days, and I’d made it. There’s something about staring down a fear or a challenge, walking into it and walking through it, and coming out on the other side.

With my arrival in Alston I only had four more days left on the Pennine Way, but I think this was the first moment where I felt like I could do it. That it didn’t really matter what else came my way: unless something disastrous happened, I was going to be able to finish this walk.

And what better way to celebrate a feeling of accomplishment after 19.5 miles and 3500 ft of ascent on no coffee than with a night in a B&B? My reservation for the night was in the Victoria Inn, a small and relatively cheap establishment on one of the main streets of the village. I was welcomed and escorted up to my tiny room on the top floor of the building, and the owner apologized over and over for how small the room was. But when I walked inside I couldn’t stop grinning: the room was perfect. Yes, it was tiny, with just enough room for a bed, a dresser and a little nook with a sink and a mirror, but I didn’t need anything more. There were three windows surrounding the bed with views over the rooftops of the village. I instantly fell in love with my little nest, deciding that I would only leave to go out to look for food.

My perfect little room in the Victoria Inn, Day 11 on the Pennine Way, Alston

And that’s what I did. I aired out my tent and took a shower and washed my clothes and hung them from the curtain rod over the bed, then set off for the grocery store where I bought dinner and hiking snacks and lunch supplies and tiny bottles of wine. I took my loot back up to my room, opened a bottle of wine and a bag of chips, and sat on a pillow on the floor in the corner of the room where I could get wifi. I spent the evening feasting and relaxing and writing in my journal and reading- you guessed it- a few chapters of Jane Eyre.

Food supplies for the Pennine Way

It was a good day. A long, tough day, but a good one. And now, with only four more days left on the Pennine Way, I was in the final stretch.

Victoria Inn; a view over the rooftops of Alston

Next Post: Day 12 on the Pennine Way

Previous Post: Day 10 on the Pennine Way

Day 10 on the Pennine Way: Holwick to Dufton, 17-miles

March 31, 2019

(I had a little trouble with my website last week, so in case you missed my recap of Day 9 where I found myself lost in a field for an hour or two, here it is!)

I woke up around 5:00am in the camping barn in Holwick. I hadn’t set an alarm because the battery on my phone was low, really low. There was no electricity in the barn and so I’d powered down my phone the night before, hoping to save what little battery I had, in order to take a few photos the next day.

The bright sun woke me up, and despite the early hour, I decided to get out of bed and start the day. I moved slowly through the morning tasks: brushing my teeth, loading my pack, eating breakfast. My food situation was not ideal, but still okay- I’d eaten my bread the night before but still had a granola bar and banana for breakfast, and I hoped it would be enough to keep me going until my lunch of cheese and tortillas and an apple and another granola bar. I had a few other snacks as well, but the day’s route was isolated and wouldn’t pass by any pubs or restaurants or stores.

There was no good way to make coffee, but I tried anyway- dissolving a packet of instant coffee into some hot water, shaking it up and gulping it down. It was bad, but I think it got at least a little caffeine into my system, which I suppose is better than nothing?

I left early, before 6:00am, and I was glad to be moving on. The camping barn was adequate but after my misadventures of the night before, I was ready for a new day.

But within about 20 minutes of walking I realized that my body was tired. It was a particular kind of tired, and not the kind that I could shake after warming up my feet and my legs. It was a drained kind of tired, and later I would wonder if it had anything to do with not eating enough the night before. In normal life, a dinner of quinoa and bread wouldn’t be a lot but it would be enough. Maybe I wouldn’t be satisfied, maybe I would be tired the next day but it wouldn’t really affect me too much. But when hiking day after day, on an often strenuous route no less, my body was burning through the calories and needed the right kind of nutrition.

Or, who knows, maybe the Pennine Way had just tired me out, and I was having an off day. In any case, my weariness persisted the entire day. Just about every single step felt like a great effort and it was probably one of the most difficult days of walking I’ve had yet. This was also the sort of day where the mental challenge became almost as difficult as the physical challenge: I had to work hard to keep my mind focused, to not overwhelm myself thinking about all the miles I still had to walk, to not stress over the challenging sections ahead.

Because this day’s stage, from Holwick to Dufton, wasn’t going to be easy. It’s one of the more popular stages of the Pennine Way because it passes several great spots: three big waterfalls- Low Force, High Force, Cauldron Snout- then a long, slow ascent up to High Cup Nick, one of the most iconic images of the Way. And I had a great day for it, too, another day of blue skies and sunshine, but almost from the get-go I couldn’t enjoy it. As I walked, all I could think about was sitting down. I fantasized about a food truck appearing in the distance. I pictured a bed with fluffy blankets and lots of pillows.

I wasn’t enjoying the walking, and I also couldn’t whip out my phone every few minutes to take photos, because the battery was almost dead. Every time I reached a waterfall I’d pull out my phone, turn it on, take a photo and then turn it back off. And then I’d keep walking, moving slowly, my head down, counting steps, trying to distract myself from how tired I felt.

One of my worst parts of the entire Pennine Way came in the approach to Cauldron Snout. It was a flat section of the route that ran along the River Tees, but the path was through what felt like a small boulder field clinging to the side of the river bank. This section took me forever- I had to watch every footstep so carefully, picking and choosing where to take my next step, needing to climb up and over rocks, watching my balance. I nearly stepped on a dead sheep (this is probably way too much information, but it just felt like either a bad omen or else more proof that the day was not a good one), and when I finally reached the end of the boulders I had to scramble up a rocky wall alongside the raging waterfall of Cauldron Snout. I climbed up the rocks mostly on my hands and knees and when I reached the top I stopped for a long break, relieved that I’d made it. The scramble wasn’t dangerous or even too difficult (I thought the scrambling section up Pen-y-Ghent was harder), but I was bone-tired and scrambling makes me nervous even on a good day.

Walking through boulders towards Cauldron Snout, Pennine Way

Raging water of Cauldron Snout, Pennine Way

From here it was a lot more walking until I would reach High Cup Nick, a geological formation that’s kind of hard to describe. It’s a valley, a chasm, an enormous chunk scooped out of the earth and the Pennine Way takes you right up to the edge. To get there, I had to walk through moors, up Rasp Hill, through the long and open valley of Maize Beck. Along the way I met two old men, both shirtless, coming from the opposite direction. They stopped me to comment about the weather, and one of them, gesturing to the clear blue skies, said, “Ahh, but you’re so lucky!”

And despite how difficult the day’s walk had been, I had to agree. I was lucky to get to do this. I was lucky that the weather had been so beautiful, that- aside from my first day– navigation had been easy, lucky that the ground wasn’t boggy, lucky that my socks and shoes could stay dry. I was lucky that my mishaps so far had been small, lucky that it was only fatigue that I had to walk through, and not something much worse.

High Cup Nick was, indeed, beautiful, and the few photos I was able to take on my now nearly charge-less phone don’t do the landscape justice. If there is ever time for a wide-angle lens, it would be here. But it’s not about the photos, is it? It was about my ability to sit at the rim, peel off my shoes and socks, lean back on my pack and lift my face up to the sun. It was about a good chunk of cheese and a crisp apple, chocolate that hadn’t yet melted. There was a large school group off to my right, the kids must have been between 8 and 10 years old and I watched them, how they listened to their leaders talk about how the valley was formed, how they smiled and laughed, how they dutifully went off into the bushes for a bathroom break before continuing their trek.

High Cup Nick, Day 10 on the Pennine Way

A couple other hikers drifted in and out, but after the school group left I had the view mostly to myself. And then I carried on, and although my body was tired, the walking from here on out wasn’t too bad- just four more miles until I reached Dufton, all downhill.

Dufton is a small hamlet, not much more than a few streets, a restaurant, a corner shop and post office, a youth hostel (completely booked) and a camping caravan park. I walked through the village and before figuring out my campsite for the night, I made a stop at Post Box Pantry, the little corner shop. I walked inside, then had no idea what I wanted. Do you ever have those moments when you’re just so tired that you can’t make basic decisions? I looked at the food on the shelves, I looked at the small menu, and then I ordered a strawberry milkshake. But the milkshake wasn’t really a milkshake, not the kind with ice cream anyway, and I was handing a large glass of pink milk and so I took it outside to drink it on a bench in the sun.

There was a Dutchman sitting at the next table who was also walking the Pennine Way. “I couldn’t find a bed in this village,” he told me, “So I’m staying a few miles away and the owners of the B&B are picking me up.”

This had been my dilemma, too, when I’d been making reservations. There were no beds available at the only Inn or in the hostel, and so I’d settled on a campsite. But now hearing that being shuttled out of Dufton and back in had been an option, I realized that maybe I hadn’t needed to bring along a tent at all. But before I could sink further into these thoughts, the Dutchman introduced yet another stress.

“Look where we need to go tomorrow,” he pointed. “It’s going to be a really, really hard stage.”

Far off in the distance, way above the village and into the mountains was a round, white radar station. It was jut a pinprick on the horizon and tomorrow, I would have to walk up there, and then I would have to keep going. I couldn’t imagine having the energy.

I pushed those thoughts away, too, telling myself that I’d worry about that tomorrow. So I finished my strawberry milk, said goodbye to the Dutchman, hoisted up my heavy pack and headed off to my campsite. Once there, I found a sign that said I needed to call a number to check-in. My phone was dead (and I didn’t have an international calling plan or a local SIM card so I wouldn’t have been able to call if I tried!), but there was an address listed on the sign so I set back out.

I arrived at a house with a fenced in yard, so I let myself in though the gate but stopped short when I heard loud, angry grunting coming from a small enclosure. I waited, and then a huge black pig appeared, and can pigs ever be aggressive animals? Because this one did not seem happy to see me. And why in the world was I standing in someone’s yard, in a showdown with a pig? Things were getting stranger and stranger.

But I was in the right place and a man came out and took me back over to the campsite, showing me where I could set up my tent. It wasn’t the most ideal situation- I was on a patch of grass in the middle of a circle of camper vans, where people were parked on holiday. There were no other tents and for the life of me I can’t figure out where other Pennine Way walkers stay in this village. Maybe there weren’t other walkers that day, maybe they’d taken up all the rooms in the Inn.

I mentioned that I was planning to have dinner at the pub that evening, and once again, I got a concerned look and the manager asked if I’d made a reservation. “You might not be able to get dinner,” he told me, “you really need a reservation and at this point they’ll be all booked up. But go over anyway and ask at the bar. You might have to wait until every else is served, but if you ask nicely they might be able to make you something.”

My heart sank. I needed dinner that night, I couldn’t face the possibility of another difficult day on not enough calories. The corner shop had already closed so there wasn’t the possibility of buying food items there at this point (note to self: stock up when you have the chance!!), and so the restaurant was my only option. This is something that I wished my guidebook had pointed out. Maybe I was supposed to have known that I needed to make reservations at restaurants (and not at pubs?), but there was no mention of this in my guide and I assumed that as long as I showed up at the right hour, I would be able to order some food. But this was now the second night in a row where I was running into problems!

After I showered and washed my clothes and set up my tent, I went over to the restaurant. It was around 6:00pm, and I went to the bar and asked about the possibility of food. The response was along the same lines of what the owner of the caravan park had given me, and once again, the barmaid looked at me a little sternly, showing no sympathy. But I persisted, asking if there was any way she could ask the chef if he could fit one more meal in. She disappeared into the kitchen, the came back a few minutes later.

“You can sit at one of these tables,” she pointed to a section of the restaurant in front of the bar. “You might have to wait awhile but the chef said he’d make you something.”

Nearly two hours and a couple of beers later, a piping hot meal was placed down on my table. I ate every single scrap and then left a very generous tip that I hoped would make its way to the chef.

The sun was beginning to set as I arrived back at the caravan park, but the golden light was still pouring onto my tent and the inside was toasty, and warm. I snuggled deep into my sleeping bag, my belly finally full, listening as children and dogs ran together in wild glee, watching their shadows dance across the walls of my tent, watching as the light dimmed and faded to darkness.

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The Luckiest Day; Cumberland Island Adventure Part 3

April 2, 2016

Have you ever had one of those days, a day that just goes so well that you think you must have been hit with a great big stroke of luck? I’ve had a few of these days, and whenever I find myself in one, I always think of that moment in Harry Potter when he drinks the potion Felix Felicis (otherwise known as ‘Liquid Luck’). Basically, the magical potion makes him lucky and successful in whatever he does. Not just a lucky moment, but an entire lucky day.

My second day on Cumberland Island felt like it was under the magic spell of Felix Felicis. It started with that beautiful sunrise: I’d stumbled out of my tent a little after seven and hoped that I hadn’t missed the sunrise. I walked quickly out to the beach, wandered down to the ocean, and looked up at the horizon. Within seconds, the first sliver of sun appeared. “What good timing!” I thought to myself.

This wasn’t the only good timing of the day, but that comes later. First, I made myself a cup of coffee, ate a pop-tart, loaded up my pack and then set out for an all-day hike of the island. I headed north, starting out on the Parallel Trail (a quiet path under the oaks that runs parallel to the main road) but at the first dune crossing moved over to the beach, where I walked for a mile or two. All along my beach walk, I was keeping my eyes peeled for sea glass (something I’ve been collecting since I was a kid). Somewhere I’d read that fabulous sea glass can be found on the island, but after a few miles of close and careful searching, nothing came up. And I’m a champion sea glass finder! I saw just about everything else- beautiful shells, star fish, what I believe was a washed-up hammerhead shark (!!), and more sand dollars than I could count.

When I finally gave up on my hunt for sea glass, I headed back across the dunes and onto Willow Pond Trail, where I walked east to west across the island. It was somewhere on this trail, in a bright patch of sunlight, when I saw something long and black move quickly in the tall grass. My eyes darted to the movement and the black thing slithered away. I tried to convince myself that it was a big lizard but the shape wasn’t right, the movement wasn’t right. It could only be a snake.

My mind began to play tricks on me as I continued to walk, and I jumped every time the wind blew. There may not be any bears on the island, but there were certainly snakes, and crocodiles, too (the park ranger pointed out a trail that led to a lake where I might be able to spot one, and I gave a fast “no thank you”). But that brief and harmless snake sighting proved to be the most nerve-racking experience during my time on the island; all things considered, that’s not too bad considering it was three days spent in the great wide open.

I continued on a network of trails, weaving across and up the island, my destination was Plum Orchard, one of the existing estates that Lucy Carnegie had built for one of her sons. And just before I reached Plum Orchard- when I was still on the trail but felt like I was miles away from anything- I heard another sound, saw something moving, but this time it wasn’t a snake. It was an elderly man on a motorized cart, wearing a wide brimmed hat and a light green polo shirt. I scooted off to the side of the trail to let him pass, but he stopped the cart and began to talk to me.

He seemed happy to learn that I was here for more than a day trip and that I was camping on the island. And then he seemed thrilled to hear that I was from Philadelphia.

“Philadelphia!” his voice lifted. “How in the world did you hear about us?”

We talked for a few more minutes, then I hesitantly asked, “Do you live on the island?”

He smiled before he replied. “No, but I’m part of the family who originally owned the island- the Carnegies- so I come here for a few weeks of the year with my kids and grandkids.”

It was now my turn to be thrilled. He told me that these were the 5 most beautiful days of the year in Georgia, that Plum Orchard was just up the road and I might be able to catch a tour of the property.

He gave me a firm handshake and then motored off down the tail, while I continued to walk. And within a few minutes, Plum Orchard came into view and, in yet another stroke of luck, as I walked up to the sprawling porch I saw that a group had gathered and a tour was just beginning.

The day had been about as perfect as you could get, but somehow- after breaks on the beach, hunting for sea glass, the tour of Plum Orchard, lunch at a picnic table in the shade- it was 3:30 and I still had to walk back to my campground. Supposedly, Plum Orchard was only 7 miles from SeaCamp, but I nearly doubled that distance with the winding, topsy-turvy route I’d taken on the way up. So I chose a more direct path on the way back, walking mostly on the Main Road (one more bit of almost incredible luck: just as I was wishing that there could be a side trail to take that would split up my time on the main road, a side trail appeared. What are the odds? I think it was called the Old River Trail, but it wasn’t on either of my maps, and by the look of the signposts, it seemed rather new. So I took it and it while it may have added just a bit of distance, it ran mostly parallel to the main road and was beautiful).

Despite the island being almost totally flat, the last few miles of my walk were exhausting. By the end of the day my phone was reporting that I had walked 28 miles. 28 miles!! When had that happened? I stumbled into my camp and nixed my plans of going back to the dock to watch the sunset. I ate dinner, crawled into my tent, read for a bit and was out by 9pm. And, thanks to the hours of fresh air and walking, I slept like a log- totally undisturbed by the lumpy ground or the rustling in the palmettos.

What a fine and lucky day.

Horses and Castles and Freeze-Dried Food; Cumberland Island Adventure Part 2

March 27, 2016

My first order of business- after arriving on Cumberland Island and setting up camp- was to explore my surroundings. Sea Camp (where I was staying) was at the southern end of the island; only a quick boardwalk stroll away from the beach, and about a mile and a half from the ruins of Dungeness, the old Carnegie estate.

The known history of Cumberland Island stretches back about 4,000 years ago, to indigenous peoples, the Native American Timucua group, Spanish missionaries, French pirates, English generals, Revolutionary War heroes. In the late 19th century, Thomas and Lucy Carnegie bought land on Cumberland Island (and eventually the Carnegie’s owned up to 90% of the island); they built a 59-room mansion called Dungeness, and later Lucy had other estates built for her children. The Carnegies left the island after the Great Depression and everything sat, abandoned and empty, for years. Dungeness burned in the 50’s, leaving only structural remains behind.

Dungeness was my destination for the day, and I planned a wide loop from my campsite: a walk on the beach to get down and over to Dungeness, and then a walk back up to the campsite on one of the many trails that ran through the island. During our ranger talk that morning, we were told that the loop from the Sea Camp dock, to the beach, to Dungeness and back was about 4-miles. By the day’s end, somehow, I had ended up walking 14 miles (and this would be a theme for me on Cumberland Island… I was seriously doubting the distances on their maps).

But did it matter that I walked much more than anticipated? On a place like Cumberland Island, walking around was one of the easiest things to do. The paths are all hard packed sand and just about totally flat. The weather for my three days on the island climbed from mid-60’s to mid-70’s and was nothing but sunny. If I walked on the trails, I was nearly always under the shade of the live oak trees, and if I walked on the beach, I was nearly always graced with a pleasant and cooling wind.

So I found myself wandering here and there, back and forth, exploring every nook and cranny.

And by the time I got to Dungeness, I was enthralled. Wild horses were everywhere: slow moving or standing still, in small packs of twos or threes. They stretched in a line across the great lawn of Dungeness, and it was an eerie and surreal sight: a water-less fountain, chimneys climbing to nowhere, the only thing that seemed alive were these horses, appearing and disappearing before my eyes.

There were other people here, too, but not many: I’d read that only 300 people were permitted on Cumberland Island per day. This added to the serenity and deserted feel of the island; while more people were concentrated at the ruins and on the beach near the dune crossings, it never felt crowded or crazy or loud. There were no vendors, no tourist gimmicks, no large tour groups. Instead, it felt like I had somehow gained access to a place that not many people knew about, that not many people could get to.

And for a long time, this was the case on Cumberland Island. The Carnegies owned much of the island until the 1950’s, when they had the National Park Service come to check out the land. Over the next 20 years, there was some back and forth with plans for the island: efforts to designate it as a national seashore, then the interest of a developer, then another push to protect the land and keep it largely undeveloped. In the 70’s, the Carnegies sold it to the federal government and the National Parks Service, though there was a deal that allowed any living member of the Carnegie family in the 1970’s to retain their rights to the island through their lifetime. So now, the descendants of Andrew and Lucy Carnegie are still there (at least from time to time), and the island is also open to the public, but it remains a place of solitude, even wilderness.

And that was apparent with nearly every step I took- worn, wooden signs pointing towards crumbling cemeteries, armadillos scurried through the palmettos, miles and miles of sand and ocean without another soul in sight.

My day frittered away like this: crossing back and forth over the dunes, looking out over saltwater marshes, collecting firewood as I walked down a trail. When I’d first arrived and set up my campsite, I thought to myself, “The only limit on my time is the setting sun. I have all day to go anywhere, to do anything.” In a way, I had experienced this on the Camino de Santiago: time slowed there, and simplified. Here, too, there was a simplicity. Time didn’t matter so much, there was no schedule, there was no inside versus outside.

But to be honest, at first, the “no inside” thing was hard. That entire first evening, after exploring the island and returning to my campsite, I felt a little restless and off. My nerves returned: I worried that something would go wrong with my stove, that I would be cold at night (already, the early evening temperatures were down in the 50’s), that a wild horse would storm through my camp.

My stove worked fine (I’d bought a Jetboil Flash and it worked like a dream. My blogging friend Drew wrote up a great review, and just maybe it was his words that sold me on this particular model), the tip of my nose was cold while I slept, but my sleeping bag and sleeping pad and clothing layers all did the trick, quite nicely. And while I slept fitfully all night- tossing and turning and trying to find a comfortable position- as far as I knew, no animals had barged their way into my campsite.

I woke up early and wandered down to the beach just in time to see the sunrise, and I stood alone, no one in sight for miles, and watched as the sun peeked over the tip of the ocean, far off on the horizon. I thought about my first day and night of camping. They had been, for all accounts, a success. And as I watched the golden morning light shimmering over the water, I wondered what my second day would bring.

Beware the raccoons!- Cumberland Island Camping Adventure, Part One

March 25, 2016

I’ve mentioned here before that I have next to no camping experience, but also that I got a tent for Christmas. One of my goals for 2016 was to take the tent out into the great unknown- “into the wild”- and use it, and I’m here to report that I survived my first ever, solo-camping trip.

I would almost go so far as to say that not only did I survive… I thrived. Though that might be pushing it a bit. Still, I’m racking my brain to think of something that went wrong, something I was woefully unprepared for, something that made me say, “I’m never going camping again!”

There was nothing. I wish sleeping on the ground had been a little more comfortable… and three days without a shower is a little much (there were cold water showers at my campsite, but I chickened out)… but this is camping. Being clean and sleeping comfortably are things I do in my every day life, and if a little dirt and discomfort were my biggest worries, then I’d say that my camping trip went pretty well.

But really, this trip ended up being about so much more than learning how to sleep and eat outdoors. It was elevated to another level by the location: Cumberland Island, a barrier island off the southern coast of the US state of Georgia. At 17.5 miles long, it has stretches of undeveloped beaches, salt marshes, maritime forest. It was designated a national seashore (and national park) in the 70’s, and is largely unspoiled and unpopulated. There is no bridge to the island- you need to take a ferry- no paved roads, no amenities. There are a handful of private homes but most of the island is designated as a wilderness area. There are birds and turtles and raccoons and armadillos and several hundred wild horses, that roam all through the island.

I’d anticipated that I would be blogging while I was there- that, since I was alone, I’d have nothing to do in the evenings and would use that time to write. But somehow, the days just slipped away and before I knew it, the sun had set and it was 8pm and I was ready to tuck into my tent with a cup of wine and cookies and my book (yeah, I brought a bottle of wine. I liked the idea of toasting my camping success each evening! So, not totally roughing it just yet).

Now I’m back, to my comfy and cozy apartment, and I imagine that I’ll devote a few blog posts to this trip. So here is part one: “Beware of the raccoons!”

I heard this warning multiple times- from a girl on the ferry ride over, from a park ranger giving us an orientation when we got to the island, from campers who had been there before.

“The raccoons are sneaky,” said an 11-year old girl on the ferry. “Last year, they took our pasta, and that was my favorite meal!”

I never got the name of the girl on the ferry, but she befriended me instantly (I always seem to make friends with the kids), and talked my ear-off on the 40 minute ride from St Mary’s to the island. She told me that this was the second year her family was camping on the island; she reported that last time, she’d pet both an armadillo and a horse (statements that I’m now questioning, considering how fast armadillos scurry away and by how many times we were warned to stay away from the horses). “I love this place,” she said, a slight southern accent to her voice, her blue eyes opened wide. “I hope we get campsite eleven again, that’s the one closest to the beach.”

As she talked, I found myself growing increasingly nervous. I’d felt the nervousness in the days leading up to my trip, and on the night before I began the long, 12-hour drive down to Georgia, I questioned what I was doing. Laying in a warm bed, four walls around me, a kitchen full of food and a bathroom with a hot shower, I wondered why on earth I was going to go camping for 3 days. This happens to me from time to time- I decide to do something and throw myself into the preparations, then just before it’s time to leave I get overwhelmed with the reality of what I’ve gotten myself into. I begin to think I was crazy to want to try something new, I begin to think that it would be so much easier to just stay home.

But that’s just fear talking: I hear it a lot, but I’m getting used to how it sounds. I’m also getting used to ignoring it, and then going and trying something new anyway.

By the time I was on the ferry my nervousness was mixed with excitement. Dozens of people were crammed in the cabin of the ferry- it was windy and cold outside, so we all squeezed inside, standing in the aisles. As the 11-year old continued to talk, I looked out the window: we were surrounded by blue water and strips of green land, deep colors with sunshine washing over everything.

Once the ferry docked at Cumberland Island and we all unloaded our stuff, the day-trippers went off to rent bikes, to trek over to the beach, or the ruins of the old Carnegie estate (more on that, later). The campers had to gather together for a quick talk from the park ranger, and then we were assigned campsites.

I felt a little awkward, sitting among groups of people: families who were loud and laughing, couples sitting close together with great, hulking backpacks. Everyone seemed surprised to find out that I was alone, and maybe moreover, that I was a girl and I was alone. But the woman next to me smiled and introduced me to her college-aged children, sitting behind us. And the 11 year old girl was in front of me, and gave me a high five and whispered, “Good luck” when I went to the front to get my campsite.

I chose the smallest site, and set off for the half mile walk to the campgrounds. I was loaded down with my stuff- my Camino pack on my back, a smaller backpack strapped to my front, a large duffel slung over my shoulder. But as soon as I moved away from the office building and began walking down the path, all of my fear left me, and I walked with a big smile on my face.

I was surrounded by so much beauty: a hard packed sand trail, bordered on both sides by a dense layer of palmettos- “little palms”- with their long, bright green leaves. Overhead were the twisting, gnarled branches of live oak trees, covered with draping Spanish moss, and the sunlight filtered through, giving off a shimmery, magical kind of light.

And once I got to the campgrounds, it was even better: those palms and the the Spanish moss were everywhere, creating natural borders between the sites, and a canopy of branches and moss casting shade over the ground. My campsite felt perfect- just the right size for one or two people- and I was able to set up my tent in a little area that was tucked away, totally invisible to anyone passing by on the path. I quickly stored all of my food in the food cage, and loaded up my pack with basic hiking/exploring supplies: lots of water, items for lunch, a first aid kit and a towel for lounging on the beach.

Just before I set off to explore part of the island I looked back: to my tent, hoping that I staked it down right, that a gust of wind wouldn’t knock it over. And to the food cage that held all of my food for the next three days, that I hoped was secure and raccoon proof. To the picnic table and the fire ring and the draping Spanish moss. This was home for the next few days, and I felt amazed and lucky that I had gotten myself there.

Stay tuned for more of my adventures (including some of those wild horses, a big black snake, and a Carnegie).

Daylight and Writer’s Block

March 13, 2016

I sat down at my kitchen table, just past 6:00 pm, my usual time. I poured a glass of wine and loaded up Ryan Adam’s ‘1989’ cover album onto Spotify and I pressed play.

This is how I write my book. It’s happening in very, very small increments, from day to day. My kitchen table, sometimes a glass of wine, always the Ryan Adams music.

But right now it’s a bit after 7:00 and I’ve written just a couple of really bad paragraphs, and mostly I’ve just stared out the window or I’ve gotten up a few times, and peeked at the bread that’s rising underneath a dish towel at the other end of the table.

Some days are just not good writing days, but this has been a particularly bad one, so I hopped over here, to the blog, instead.

Twice a year in the US we have daylight savings time: clocks one hour behind in the fall, one hour ahead in the spring. We sprung ahead last night, and while I don’t like losing an hour of my day, I love this time change. The days have already been stretching out, longer and longer, but now daylight will extend well into the evening and for me, this means a return to life.

I always hibernate a bit in the winter, and this winter was no exception. Despite the mild days and very little snow, I took advantage of the darkening late afternoons by coming home, hunkering in, and getting to work on my book. The progress has been slow but it’s also been steady, and right now, I have a pile of (virtual) pages, something that’s actually beginning to resemble a book. Well, probably I’m getting ahead of myself- mostly it’s just pages and some of it strings together but other parts just hang out alone, waiting for something to come along and connect them to the greater whole. I have a long way to go, but all of this winter writing has been getting me somewhere.

So I’m maybe all the more frustrated by the lack of focus tonight. I try really hard to guard my writing time, giving myself as many evenings as I can to sink into my routine and force out something onto the page. But in the past few weeks I’ve noticed a growing fear. It started sometime when the days began to lengthen and the sun began to shine a bit stronger, when the air felt warm on my skin. The fear whispered in my ear: “How are you going to stay inside and write when the world becomes beautiful again?”

The pattern of my life changes when winter starts to fold into spring- I go outside and stay outside, on long hikes and walks. I buy water ice and I spread out on a blanket in the grass. I plan things and see friends and show up more to the stuff that I tend to say ‘no’ to in the winter.

But what will this mean for my writing? What happens to the 6pm writing time, the mellow music and the glass of red wine, everything set up just so, so that I’m conditioned to sit down and work?

I’m not so worried yet, not really, but tonight hasn’t done me any favors. I know I’ll need to adjust my routines or find new ones, and I’m convinced that I will, because I’ve written too much of this book to stop now.

But in the meantime, I have to say, I’m so excited for warm weather and the slow approach to summer. My plans for July and August are all over the place- about every other day I come up with a new idea, and mostly, I want to do it all: another Camino. A writer’s retreat. A walk in France. A walk in England. A walk in Scotland. I fall further and further down the rabbit hole, collecting more information and ideas and items to add to my bucket list, and there are so many right now that I don’t know what to chose.

Not a bad problem to have. But before any of that, I have a mini-vacation coming up in a week, and I’ll be headed to Cumberland Island, a 17-mile stretch of land on the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of the state of Georgia. Maybe this is why I’m worried about my writing- it’s my first trip in months, and will cause a serious disruption to my very rigid routine.

But I have to say, I’m so excited to be getting away. I’ll be camping on my own for the first time: three nights in my little tent, in a reserved campsite that’s a stone’s throw from running water and showers. So for now, a perfect scenario. It’s also a stone’s throw from quiet beaches and numerous hiking trails, and maybe most importantly, instead of black bears there are wild horses. (Lets hope the horses don’t come stomping into my campsite, but even if they do, I’ll be far less terrified of them than a visit from a bear).

I still have to practice setting up my tent, and I’ve got to gather up some food and see if I can work the little camp stove that I bought a few weeks ago. But all the planning aside, I can’t wait to explore a new place and to sleep outside and watch the sunset over the ocean. And I’m also excited to blog about the trip, so even if I don’t get much book writing done in the next few weeks, you can be sure to have some blog updates about this upcoming adventure.

One way or the other, I’m plugging along. Just continuing to plug along: my book, the blog, myself, my car (oh boy, my car!), my dreams. I hope you’re all plugging along as well, enjoying the extra daylight (if you’re in the same part of the world as me), and making exciting plans for the future. See you soon.

Into the Wild: Fear and the Unknown

February 14, 2016

I got a tent for Christmas. It’s a small and simple thing, maybe the smallest and simplest kind of tent out there: long and narrow and fits a single person, white nylon and a sea-foam green colored rainfly. I had to learn what a rainfly was when I was researching tents, and I had to learn how to set up a tent, too. I opened the drawstring pouch and pulled out a mess of nylon and polyester and aluminum poles that, surprisingly, snapped into place with what seemed like a mind of their own. I tugged the material down at the edges and unzipped the large, semi-circle door and crawled inside. It smelled new and my socks squeaked against the floor as I slid them down the length of the tent and then laid there, all stretched out, with enough room to flex my toes. I was in my own little kingdom.

I haven’t taken the tent outside yet; it’s the middle of February and the coldest it’s been all winter. So it’s been sitting in my living room, all folded up and sometimes I think about taking it out and setting it up, just for practice. Because my plan is to use the tent a lot this year.

tent view, shenandoah national park, virginia

This is not my tent. But it is the tent I slept in on one of my very few camping experiences.

Before I walked my first Camino, I had a lot of fears (and to be honest, I was pretty nervous before my second Camino as well, even though I had a good idea of what to expect). I wrote a post, nearly two years ago now, about bravery and fear and what it meant to me to be afraid of something, but to do it anyway. It’s something I still think about a lot, the idea of fear, and how to move through it.

A friend that I met on my first Camino told me something that has stuck with me. He was talking about his own fears, and told me the story of how he went into a forest and slept out in the open. He was so afraid of being alone and unprotected in the wilderness- afraid of wild animals, afraid of a wild man, afraid to be vulnerable.

So he decided to face the fear, and went out in the woods with only a sleeping bag and he stayed there overnight.

“Were you scared?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said, laughing. “I jumped every time I heard a branch snap. I barely slept at all.”

But when it was over, he found that he didn’t have the same kind of fear about being out in the wild as he did before.

A lot of people have stories like this, how we are afraid of something and then we face it and even if some fear lingers, it’s not as bad as it was before. Because we need to have the experience to know that we can do it, to know that it is not as bad as we might imagine. And when we do something again and again, sometimes the fear goes away almost completely.

Until a few years ago, I hadn’t ever given much thought to camping or backpacking or being out in the wild, at all. Despite having been drawn to survival stories for nearly as long as I can remember (I was captivated by the book The Hatchet when I was in elementary school, and I’m one of the few people who is still watching the television series ‘Survivor’), I was never really interested in spending a significant amount of time out in the woods.

And for a very long time, I just assumed that it was something that I wasn’t into- it wasn’t me.

But it turns out that there’s a big difference between never being exposed to something, and not liking it. Just because you’ve never done something before doesn’t mean that you won’t like it, or be good at it, or couldn’t learn to love it.

Three summers ago I went to France and stayed in the mountains in the south and hiked every day. It opened up something in me- the possibility that I might love the outdoors, and climbing things, and pushing myself. I might not even mind a little dirt and a little sweat.

Then I walked the Camino and it solidified the feeling I’d had in France, the summer before: I did love being outside. I did love pushing myself and doing something physically challenging. I loved hiking and walking and trekking. I loved the mountains.

cows and mountains, camino del norte, spain

Cows and Mountains, on the Camino del Norte

So you’d think after these experiences I wouldn’t question myself so much anymore, that I would throw myself into all things outdoors, right? And people have asked me about this, time and time again: “So, when are you going to hike the Appalachian Trail?”

And every time I would laugh and say, “Oh, maybe I’d do a few days of it sometime. But I really like having a bed to sleep in at night, and coffee breaks during my hike, and a bottle of wine in the evenings, etc, etc.”

And I do like those things. But I was also assuming that I wouldn’t like camping and roughing it and not showering and sleeping on the ground and strange sounds in the night. I wasn’t thinking about the other parts, though: the challenge of carrying everything I need to survive on my back, of setting up a little home every night, of the satisfaction of cooking my own simple meals and falling asleep under the stars and waking up to a sunrise, and all of that fresh, dewy air.

sunset, shenandoah national park, virginia

Sunset in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

Here’s the thing: I’m still not sure if I’m going to like camping, or backpacking. I have a lot of fear about it. Fear that I’m going to be too uncomfortable or cold, that I won’t be able to figure out how to use a camping stove, that I won’t set up my tent properly. That my backpack will be too heavy or that I won’t like being dirty. Bears. Or that, after all these years and after challenging so many of the assumptions I have about myself, I still don’t think I’m the kind of person who does this kind of thing. I’m not an outdoorsy person. I don’t camp. I’m not a hiker. I’m not a backpacker.

But whenever I start to think like this and the worries and the fears creep in, I tell myself to remember the Camino. Remember the Camino! The lessons come back to me in a rush. When I started out, I didn’t know a thing. I didn’t own one piece of trekking gear. I didn’t know if I could do it. I was so afraid, and then I walked 500 miles, and I came home, so confident in my ability to just figure things out. I felt capable.

So I’m facing a fear this year- I’m going to go out “into the wild” (or maybe just down a trail) with my tent and I’m going to sleep outside and I’m going to do it alone. I’ll do it with others, too, if the opportunity comes up, but I also think it’s important that I do some of this by myself.

I’ve been researching places where I can go camping, and I’ll probably start out with car camping first, then maybe I’ll look for a bigger backpack and try out a couple days on a trail somewhere. Baby steps, single steps- I’m a big fan of them as you know. Maybe it will all lead up to something bigger, or maybe it won’t.

But none of that really matters right now. Now, it only matters that I’m going to try. I hope to write about my experiences of going out into the wild, and share them here. I have a little spring break coming up in March, and some ideas brewing, so stayed tuned!

Happy Winter: Baking Cookies and Setting Goals

December 21, 2015

The first day of winter and the shortest day of the year is either today or tomorrow (every year I always get a bit confused!); in any case, the winter solstice is upon us. Christmas is upon us, New Year’s is almost here, too. I was going to come home from work today and bake some chocolate chip cookies, but as usual, I forgot to let the butter come to room temperature. Every single time! So I’m sitting in my kitchen (where I usually sit when I write), next to a little heater with two sticks of butter close at my side. Every once in awhile I press down on one gently, to see if my thumb can make a print. Not yet.

So while I wait for the butter and the baking, I’ve decided to write a post about my goals for 2016. Because it’s that time of the year, and I love setting goals and reflecting on what I want for the upcoming year.

And this year, I want a lot. I was thinking about this as I hiked the other day, and I ran through the list in my head: the places I want to travel to, the things I want to write, the adventures I want to go on, the new things I want to try. Post-Camino #2 has me in a different sort of place than Post-Camino #1 had me in. This time around, while I’m still a little anxious to figure out where the next phase of my life is going to take me (and to figure out how to get there), I don’t feel as restless as I did a year ago. Right now, it feels a lot easier to just be where I am right now, and not wish away my present hoping for something great for my future. I’m still working towards other things, but I’m also trying to pay attention to where I am now.

It’s a work in progress, and one that I hope to continue in 2016. So my mind is filled will all of the things I want to do with my life as it is, so that I can try to be living as fully as possible. Even if I’m not a published author. Even if I’m not trekking around the world. Even if I’m not tucked away in a cabin in Maine, writing and hiking and kayaking. Maybe I’ll have some of those things, some day… but right now, here are the things I want to do where I am right now (and maybe some of these things will get me to those other places? Only time will tell).

Travel: It’s always fun to have travel goals, and these are just a few places that I’d love to explore sometime soon (and just to note, there’s no way that I can do all of this in one year. But these are some ideas). My own stomping grounds are up first:

New Orleans- This city has been at the top of my US list for awhile now, and I think it can be entirely do-able over a long weekend. Especially since I have a good friend who will be at a conference down there in March…
Asheville, North Carolina- I hear the most amazing things about this city, and over the years, several people have said to me, “Nadine, you would love it there.” Artsy and outdoorsy, and there’s probably good coffee, too. Which sounds perfect. I have a couple of friends who live a few hours away, and I’m hoping I can combine a visit with one or both of them and a few days in this city.
Acadia National Park, Maine- I love love love Maine, and it’s been two years since I’ve been up there. And while I’ve explored the southern, coastal parts of the state, this is a Maine-destination that’s still on my list. I dream about renting a cabin for a week and having my own mini-writer’s retreat.

And now going out of the country…

Guatemala- To me, this sort of seems like a random choice, but I think sometimes travel destinations are a bit random. Several months ago I just happened to read two separate blog posts about Lake Atitlan, and my jaw dropped at the stunning photos. Then I started doing a bit of research and learned that there are several multi-day hikes/treks that lead to the lake and my mind starting swirling with ideas. With Central America being not too too far away, could I make this a spring break trip? Maybe.
Camino #3- I’m not sure about this one, but I bet that no one is surprised that it’s on the list. I keep saying that if I go back for another Camino, I’d like it to be in France (and maybe, somehow, with at least a few days in Spain. Because it doesn’t feel right to do a Camino and not have café con leche and tortilla breaks). I’ll have another two months off this summer, and another Camino feels like a solid option.
Tour de Mont Blanc– I’ve been reading about this a lot lately, and I’m excited. It’s a 10-12 day, 170 kilometer journey, and passes through France, Italy and Switzerland in a circuit around the 15,770-foot Mont Blanc Massif. There are huts to sleep in at night, and warm meals that I don’t have to cook myself. It sounds like an amazing challenge.
Writer’s Retreat in France- If the work on my book continues at a steady pace through the winter and spring, I have a feeling that I’m going to be thick in the writing process come summer. I could interrupt all that work and go traveling, but part of me wonders if I’d like to combine the traveling/writing, and doing that at La Muse (where I stayed in summer 2013) could be perfect.

Writing: The writing goals sort of feel like the most important ones in 2016. I’ve gotten a good start on them in the past few months, and I’m hoping that I can continue just as strong into the new year.

Write a rough draft of my book- Oh boy. Can I write an entire book in a year? It feels so daunting and impossible, and yet… in the past month, I’ve seen just what 1,000 words several times a week can do. If I’m consistent and just keep plugging away, I can have a very rough draft written, maybe even by the summer. And that is maybe the most exciting thing I can imagine right now.
Build my blog!- Well, first, I suppose that I need to start blogging again. And then, once I get back to more consistent writing, I’m curious to see if I can do more with this. I’m not exactly sure what I’m envisioning… but maybe buying a domain and getting some hosting and working on the site design. Maybe making this a site that can be a resource (and a fun read?) to more people.
Essays and travel articles- I’ve been working on these over the past few months, and I want to keep at it. I love writing personal-essays, and I’ve submitted a few and plan to submit a few more. It’s another way to flex those writing muscles, and it’s been a lot of fun and a great practice.

Adventures/Trying New Things/Social Stuff:

Visit 30 coffee shops in Philadelphia: I thought up this goal when reading an article I saw on facebook the other day. It was a list of the top Philly coffee shops, and since I LOVE coffee and always talk about how I don’t get into the city enough, I thought this would be a great goal. Especially for the winter months when it’s hard to motivate myself to get outside and do anything. I have a friend who’s willing to tackle this with me, and I think it’s going to be a great way to explore different areas of my city. (Plus, since one of my goals is to blog more, I figure that I can write about some of these visits).
Go camping (with friends, by myself): I’ve gone camping the same number of times that I’ve walked 500-miles across Spain (that would be twice). I’m still not sure how I feel about it. The Camino wasn’t exactly luxurious (not at all when staying in some of those albergues!), but with a roof over my head and a mattress to sleep on, there was some degree of comfort. I get a little freaked out when I’m in a tent- I hear one branch snap and I think a bear is about to attack. But at the same time, I love the idea of camping- being out there under the stars, your body flush with the ground, waking up to fresh air and birds chirping and a rising sun. So I think I want to get myself a small tent and try this thing out (who knows, if I love it, maybe next year I’ll be adding ‘Hike the Appalachian Trail’ to my list…)
Run a 5k in under 30-minutes: I ran a 5k in October, and it was the first race I’ve run in my life. I did a lot of preparation for this, and I was beyond nervous. I’ve never liked running, it’s this big, daunting thing. But I did better than expected, and it was fun to push myself and to try something new. My time was just under 31 minutes and there was part of me that wondered what it would be like to train more, push a little harder, and run another race and get a better time. I think this is how most people get hooked on running! There are two races in the spring that I have my eye on, and at the very least I want to do both of them. Finishing in a better time will be a bonus.
Do more with the local Camino group!: The Philadelphia Chapter of America Pilgrims on the Camino just formed a little over a year ago, but it’s growing quickly. I’ve gone to a couple meetings and recently led a hike, and it’s fun to start to see some familiar faces and to make some new friends. The fact that we’re all connected in some way to the Camino is just icing on the cake. There are a lot more things planned in the coming months, and I’d love to keep attending these events and making more connections.

Okay, that’s more than enough for now. The butter is soft and if I don’t make the cookies now, it’s never going to happen. So, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and happy goal-setting if that’s the sort of thing you like to do at this time of year. Share some of your own goals with me, I’d love to hear them!

Next Post: Loving and Letting Go