“What seems to be happening at the moment,” writes mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn, “is never the full story of what is really going on.” I considered these words as I hiked an unfamiliar section of the Appalachian Trail with no idea how long it would take me to find a campsite. My tent and sleeping bag were strapped to my backpack as I carried more weight than I was used to. I’d been backpacking many times, always with a friend or boyfriend to share the load. This time it was just me and my dog, Ellie, a black, long-haired mix of nervous reluctance who urged me forward up each hill. My pack was heavy, my legs slow. I wasn’t out of shape, just tired. My whole life had been an uphill slog for the past few months. I was grieving a breakup and feeling lost, looking for answers that would direct me back on course, seeking footing both in life and on the trail, where I took small steps and used tree roots and rocks like stairs. I was only halfway up the mountain, a few miles in. Or maybe it wasn’t a few miles.  Maybe it only felt that way. Time, speed, and distance were hard to measure. My right knee, scarred from three surgeries, took the brunt of it. But, hey, look at me—I was doing it by myself. The struggle was part of the experience. 

A cool breeze blew, and the temperature dipped slightly, a welcome respite from the July heat. Day hikers passed me on their way down, headed back to their cars. I felt as if they could see the loneliness I carried on my back with the rest of my gear. So far, my trip was not going as planned. Because I had no plan. The consequences of that were becoming evident. The sun was low on the horizon. Storm clouds were rolling in. I was without a map and without a structure—no schedule, no timetable, no rules I was adhering to except my own internal rhythms.

I’d chosen to backpack alone for the physical challenge—I was forty and still wanted to be twenty-eight. Emotionally I wanted to prove to myself that I was not undone by the end of that relationship. And the hike was a spiritual challenge. I wanted an epiphany, a lotus-tree revelation, the kind of insight that comes with arduous experience, which is a fancy way of saying I wanted to feel better. I was full of want for so many things: Security and love and self-esteem, which I thought could come only from outside of me. A more fulfilling career but also, paradoxically, more time to write. The sense of relief I found in wild places. The clarity that comes from being in complete darkness. I wanted to look up at night and see the vastness of stars. I wanted to banish the part of me that felt weepy and return to feeling inspired and empowered, to come off the mountain changed. After two days.

I believed this was possible because change is what happens to people who journey into the woods. Fairytales, books, and movies promise it. My past experience had shown me it could happen. Science says walking in nature creates a biochemical shift in our bodies making us feel less stressed. Maybe it’s something the trees emit, or the miles of fungal filaments beneath our feet, sending signals underground to a multitude of living organisms. Maybe they’re even sending signals to us, the plodding homo sapiens who do not understand their language.

Survival demands change, and I believed that my future-changed-self was somewhere in those woods where trees are unbothered by heartache. I wanted to be like the trees: to stand tall, rooted in the ground, and convert sunlight into strength. I wanted the strength to overcome.

***

There is a Buddhist story about a student who wants to achieve enlightenment. The student goes the master and asks, “Master, how long will it take me to reach transcendence if I meditate four hours a day?” The master answers, “If you meditate four hours a day, perhaps it will take you ten years to reach transcendence.” The student asks, “What if I meditate for ten hours a day? Then how long will it take?” The master answers, “If you meditate for ten hours a day, perhaps it will take twenty.”

When I first heard this story, in my early thirties, I didn’t understand it. I was someone who tried hard. I tried so hard. This backpacking trip was me trying hard to transcend lost love.

***

My best—and worst—backpacking experience had been an Easter trip with a friend. We backpacked for four chilly April days, three of them in the rain. On the last day, it poured. As we crossed a swollen and rushing stream, I lost my balance and fell in. I emerged cold, wet, and shaking. My friend, who was also cold and wet, was less than sympathetic while I sat on a rock and cried, futilely ringing out my socks in the rain. We were still three miles from the car, but I wanted to quit. I was done.

Realizing I needed something more than self-pity to keep me going, I tried using prayer like a mantra, meditating on the meaning of each word.  I didn’t normally pray, but I was willing to try. I recited the Lord’s Prayer, one of the only prayers I knew, concentrating on one word at a time: “Our father, who art in heaven. . .”  When I reached the phrase “on earth as it is in heaven,” I stopped.  As it is. At that moment it was rainy, cold, wet, and frustrating. I couldn’t have been any wetter if I’d tried, yet I was spending all my energy resisting the rain, wishing I could stay dry.

“As it is” became my epiphany. The last few miles of that soggy four-day trip were beautiful: wet, sloppy, angry, joyful, and triumphant. I splashed through every stream and laughed all the way back to the car.

That’s what I wanted from this trip with my dog. With each step, I was searching for myself, for my new life, for renewed confidence, for my next boyfriend and ways to win back my old boyfriend, all at once. My mind scrambled to construct scenarios where my ex and I might reunite, but my imagination wasn’t strong enough to picture the impossible.

Ellie pulled me to a plateau on the trail, and I looked up. Gray storm clouds were blowing in fast. I had thirty minutes to find a campsite and pitch my tent. Maybe less. I chugged some water and plodded onward.

We passed a cluster of campsites, all of them taken. I didn’t know how far I’d have to hike to find more, so when I spied a flat, cushioned spot among the pines halfway up the next rise, I stopped. It was not a designated campsite, but it was mossy and protected, surrounded on three sides by an old stone foundation. Maybe there had been a house there whose walls had fallen long ago. However it had come to be, it was far enough off the trail that I’d have some privacy, but not so far that I’d get lost. I was going to be fine.

***

One way to tell this story is to say that I found a mossy spot that looked comfortable and safe, and if I’d been able to read my surroundings, I might’ve seen the error in my thinking, the warning carved into the landscape. Another is to say of course I pitched my tent in an old foundation with crumbling walls on this trip that I hoped would fix my crumbling life after my break-up.

Two months earlier, I’d been building a foundation with a man I thought I would marry. We had lived parallel lives before we’d started dating, sharing experiences familiar to many alcoholics and addicts: one-night stands, restaurant and bar jobs, car wrecks, fires, encounters with the police. We’d both miraculously survived and been sober for ten years. Our relationship was intoxicating, but in a good way. For the first time in years, the knot in my stomach untwisted. I felt loved, I glowed, I knew what the future held. I had never been married and was excited to be on the brink of everything finally working out.

Then my boyfriend told me he didn’t love me anymore. In an email.

Like ground ruptured by an earthquake, I split apart. It didn’t matter that my ex was clearly caught up in his own pain. I blamed myself. I believed the breakup was my fault, and I should’ve known better. (Except how? How could I have known things that I was still learning?) I tried to out-think my low spirits, as if overcoming depression were a matter of self-control.

What I can see with twenty years’ hindsight is that he lied to me, and I believed him because I wanted to believe him. I’d fallen in love with potential.

My grief over that relationship eventually became many other griefs: other breakups, lost opportunities and jobs, deaths of friends and family, the collective loss during the pandemic, the psychic split of our country. Back then I didn’t understand how much more loss was ahead.

Oh, my tender-hearted younger self. I feel great compassion for that forty-year-old woman who was trying hard to be positive and strong. I’d read an article about being positive in the face of loss (this was 2007, before the term “toxic positivity” had been coined) and I understood I needed to build up my strengths. Positivity was supposed to be a way to avoid sinking into “learned helplessness,” the psychological state where people feel they’ve lost control over their lives and feel powerless to change it. Those ideas resonated with me. Things have happened, and I’ve lost control, I thought.

I got my tent put up before the rain came and even made myself a cup of tea and heated a packet of dried soup. I hung my food in a tree just as it started to sprinkle. When I zipped the tent flap to settle in for the evening, I could hear the steady patter of drops on the nylon roof. As the rain came harder, Ellie sat by my feet, her ears pricking at the sound of thunder.

I got out my journal and wrote by flashlight, trying to tease answers from this attempt to start over. None of it should be happening, I thought. Something’s not right. Things should be different. And, in my lowest moments, I don’t want to live through this.

I woke to a loud clap of thunder. It was pouring outside.  When I rolled over, my hand landed in a puddle of water, and my sleeping bag was wet. I found my flashlight in the dark and discovered the stone foundation had formed a depression where rainwater had collected and was pooling around me. I struggled into my raincoat and slipped on my boots without tying them. The night was wet and black, except when lightning brightened the sky. In the downpour I dragged my tent to higher ground while Ellie stood at a distance and watched.

This was not the as it is I wanted.

When I turned to get Ellie into the tent, I didn’t see her. I called her name and swept the beam of my flashlight in an arc around the woods until I caught the reflection of her eyes. “Come on, Ellie!” I yelled. She disappeared behind some bushes near the trail. This was not the first time she’d gotten spooked by a storm, and I knew that if I chased her, she’d run further. My dog—like love, like happiness—did not come on command.

So, I moved slowly, careful not to trip on my untied laces. Both sides of the trail were flanked by mountain laurel, and the long, wet leaves slapped me as I passed. At times I could hear Ellie’s tags jingle somewhere ahead of me in the dark, but the patter of rain hitting the leaves masked the sound of her movement. I couldn’t find her in the flashlight’s beam, couldn’t tell if I was even going in the right direction.

I stopped. I tucked the flashlight under my arm, and pulled a few soggy dog treats from my pocket. “Here, Ellie,” I cooed, holding the treats out for her. After several minutes, she came toward me, cautiously backed away, then finally inched close enough for me to grab her collar and hook on her leash. “Good girl,” I said, and I stroked her wet head. If only my epiphany could be bribed.

By the time I zipped the flap closed again, Ellie and I were soaked. The smell of wet dog filled the tent. She shook her coat, spraying little droplets of rain over everything. I changed out of my soggy clothes and tried to rest, but rocks and tree roots poked through the tent floor like mean knuckles that lodged in my back. I slept in contorted positions.

Contortion, accommodation—these were my strengths. They were also what made me settle for the wrong relationships and jobs until accommodation became a habit.

***

The next morning I woke stiff and groggy.  It was a sunny day, and after a disappointing start to the trip, I looked forward to hiking far, testing my limits, and having profound insights. I boiled some water for tea and instant cream of wheat. Then I strapped on my backpack, and Ellie and I resumed our hike.

The woods looked different in the morning, the mountain laurel sparkling with raindrops, the birds singing. Within a quarter mile we discovered two shelters just off the trail, only one of them occupied. We’d been so close! We could have had a comfortable, dry night if I had thought to bring a map, or had kept hiking, or even followed Ellie a little further in the dark. Maybe she’d been leading me to safety all along.

We hiked along the crest of hill, alone except for a Boy Scout troop that passed us going in the opposite direction. Ellie scoured the underbrush, rustling the leaves with her nose as I trudged forward. Soon, we came around a bend and I could see a long path down the mountain with several switchbacks. I took my time packing downhill, being careful with my footing. My right knee, the one with the three surgeries, was still smarting from the day before. It was unusual for my knee to hurt this early in a hike. Walking downhill was particularly hard with all the weight I carried, but pain was part of the process. I willed myself to ignore it. The struggle would contribute to the vast insight I was seeking.

After forty minutes, I rested and took a swig of water to wash down some ibuprofen. There were only two pills left in the bottle for the rest of the trip. I stretched my back and hamstrings, rotated my knees and ankles, then picked up my pack and hiked another mile before I couldn’t go any farther. I dropped my pack, sat on the ground next to Ellie, and cried. It shouldn’t be this way, I thought. The storm, the wet sleeping bag, Ellie running away, my bum knee—they all seemed like bad omens for inner transformation. I berated myself to continue: You can do it. Power through. Keep going. But I knew this downhill hike would be a steep uphill climb when I returned the next day. What if I damaged my knee and couldn’t hike back or walk at all?

This is just as an excuse to give up. You’re strong enough to keep going, but you’re choosing not to, just like you’ve done with so many other things in your life.

Ouch. I didn’t know which specific things I’d given up on in my life, but I was willing to believe that if I quit, I’d be a disappointment. It wasn’t rational but it felt true.

Ellie, an anxious herder, looked at me as if to ask: Which direction are we going?

As it was: The fresh air, the damp earth, the sun on my skin, birds singing overhead, the vista overlooking the valley below—all of it was beautiful. Trees swayed gently in the breeze, leaves fluttering like hundreds of hands clapping, applauding me for making it this far. It might have felt good if I’d been able to appreciate it. Instead I was focused on the raindrops sliding off the leaves and landing on my shoulders and the crown of my head, as if nature were pitying me with her tears. I couldn’t be a tree. I couldn’t emulate the stillness of blossoms, the patience of spiders, the oneness of honeybees, the is-ness of storms and sunlight and breezes. Under my feet the language of life was ongoing, carried by miles of fungal filaments. I sat on the ground wanting something to change.  I’d do anything to be in a little less pain.

***

The rest of the Buddhist story goes like this. The student asks the master, “Why will it take me longer to achieve transcendence if I meditate more?” The master explains that it doesn’t help to sacrifice joy and love. “If you spend ten hours meditating, you’ll miss the point of living and you won’t enjoy life.”

As it was: My hike was causing discomfort, and I wasn’t finding enlightenment. I got up, turned around, and hiked several miles back toward the parking lot. I limped with regret. I was disappointed in myself for not planning better, for not packing more ibuprofen, for quitting, for having a life that I wanted to run away from in the first place.

By the time Ellie and I reached the car, I was dirty and hungry, and I stank. My swollen knee throbbed. I still had a two-and-a-half-hour drive home ahead of me. I had proven nothing.

***

What seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. Jon Kabat Zinn continues, “For the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature’s vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers. Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others.”

I wanted my pain to mean something profound so I could be at peace. How do you know when you’re supposed to walk forward despite your wounds, and when you’re supposed to stop and accept your life as it is? My younger self was learning you don’t have to hurt yourself to prove you’re good enough; self-care is not forcing yourself to feel better. Pain can be ignored until it can’t. Persistence is good until it’s not. Life is a process of starting and stopping, sometimes living fully and sometimes missing the point.

Within a year of this backpacking trip, I met a man while walking Ellie, and I settled once more in a relationship that required my contortion. Eventually, tired of bending myself into impossible shapes to please other people, I left and started my life over at the age of fifty. I bought a beautiful old house (finally, a foundation!) and surrounded myself with things that made me feel good. I hung artwork on the walls and sat in a meditation chair and every day felt grateful for my fireplace and the way the light filtered in through my leaded glass windows and the leaves of the rhododendron bush outside. I didn’t have a television, so I could write. I was grateful to have the whole bed to myself. I had my dog and my cats and my houseplants, and when people came to visit, they remarked how peaceful my home felt. It became a refuge for me and later for a friend who stayed in the spare bedroom while trying to leave her husband. It became a springboard for another woman who moved from Australia and rented my room while she restarted her life.

I felt perfectly secure.

Then I fell in love again.