The Trail

by Ethan Gallogly

“Transcendentalists believe that there is an inherent ‘goodness’ in people and nature, but that this goodness becomes corrupted by society and its social systems. They believe that people are at their best when they’re independent and self-reliant. The

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

“Pain is temporary, quitting is forever.” I’ve

because of bay leaves,” he said pulling out some leaves, which he sprinkled around his tarp. “Bugs just hate the smell of bay.”

The desire to play God runs strong in many scientists and engineers, and it’s hard to know where such innovation will lead. Often the good goes hand in hand with the bad, like medicine and overpopulation. It’s hard to predict how change will affect the future. The best thing we can do is live our lives to their fullest now and be the best person we can.”

Then it hit me, and I stopped in my tracks. I was feeling paranoid about some million-to-one amoeba, while Syd had a genuine one-to-one chance of dying from a very real cancer.

“Muir wrote, In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.”

Real victories and satisfaction come from pride in our achievements. When we cheat, we’re really cheating ourselves. Even though your reasons are understandable, you still made a series of bad choices.”

Up here watching the progression of colors over the peaks was our evening entertainment. How had we grown so apart from this simple pleasure in our modern lives? How much

more would people cherish this God-given orb if every day we paused to watch displays like these?

The first step to solving any problem is the awareness that there is a problem. I’d

It takes the right person. And it takes work. You have to listen to each other, and you have to want to put the other person ahead of your own desires, because you love them.”

“Not in my experience. If you always have to compromise, you’re either with the wrong person, or you’re not putting her needs ahead of your own. When you really love someone, you naturally think of them before yourself. There’s no need to compromise. I’m not saying it always works like that. Sometimes you have to stop and ask yourself why you want something, what is it your partner desires, and find a balance between conflicting needs that makes you both happy. It takes a lot of inner listening. But the first step is patience.”

“Chamomile’s a powerful herbal remedy that helps reduce inflammation, boost the immune response,

and is better at treating wounds than most ointments.”

But gradually the random thoughts streaming through my head had become a source of contemplation and reflection. Back in the world of perpetual entertainment, it was way too easy to get lost in the noise. But out here was all the time in the world to think and reflect. Maybe that’s what people meant by getting away from it all.

The only real thing we ever own is ourselves. Everything else is just borrowed from the universe and, at some point, we must return it all.”

When someone dies, the only thing we’re left with is the choice of whether to focus on the gap in our lives or to celebrate the joy they’ve left behind. For me, I choose the joy.

“No, not in my experience. The two emotions are opposites, and if you try to hold on to both, you’ll only have melancholy. I’m not saying I never feel sad about Katrine’s death. Sometimes the pain of her passing washes over me and I cry, or I sit silently for a time thinking of her. In the end, it’s the remembrance of the joy she brought into my life that consoles me. Prolonged grieving over a loved one is just attempting to cling to something that’s gone, but the joy that they’ve brought us is something that can fill our hearts forever.” Was I still grieving

Maybe the secret of relationships was just observation.

enjoying being with someone you loved, while not trying to achieve anything. Like balancing stones.

“It’s exactly like that. The calm and clarity that come from meditation and long walks is very similar.”

“That’s normal in the beginning. Simply accept the distractions, then focus back on your breathing. Watch your breath rise and fall.

Observe it come in and go out. If you have thoughts, acknowledge them, then let them wash away like the waves on a beach.”

Why are people always so focused on arbitrary goals, instead of paying attention to where they are now?” “What happened to hike your own hike?”

“Maybe, but hiking should be what Zhuangzi called, carefree wandering. You know there’s an often-quoted passage reputed to have come from Muir,” he said and then recited,

People ought to saunter in the mountains—not hike! Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, “A la sainte terre,” “To the Holy Land.” And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers

ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them revere...

Maybe his frustration was simply a

universal compassion for everything the modern world had given up in its pursuit of speed. You can’t hurry up and relax, Pop used to say. While walking out here time and consciousness expanded. There was something special about traveling on foot. It’d taken me weeks on the trail to see this, but the real value of wilderness lay in its expansiveness. In the space and solitude it afforded for reflection. It was a universal yardstick. A place to gauge our humanity and measure our very souls by. A space to reorientate ourselves and re-create our spirits.

“One summer when I was about forty, I was up in the Yosemite backcountry taking photos as usual. When suddenly it dawned on me that I wasn’t able to see Yosemite anymore. All I could see was how this meadow or that sunrise would look like in a photograph. I had lost all personal awareness of my true surroundings.” “You mean your lens was blinding you from seeing things through your own eyes?” “Exactly. And not just seeing—feeling. From then on, I left my camera at home, except of course on family vacations, so that I could directly experience everything around me.”

“Edmond Hillary, the man who first climbed Everest said, It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” We continued on, walking together in spiritual silence.

That bear probably experienced nature more directly than we ever could. Maybe that was the secret of walking in the woods and the meditation Syd was teaching me—directly experiencing, without language. Maybe all philosophical musings were just attempts to express with words what words never could express?

Just like everything I read about the trail hasn’t been the same as hiking it. And even then, it won’t be the same for everyone, or even every time.”

Climbing to this lofty height, all is dwarfed within my sight.”

’Cause when you’re backpacking everything is simplified. You take only what you need, and that’s what you’ve gotta make do with.”

“What you’re saying is, out here in the woods you have no desire for any additional material items, because you’d have to carry them.” “Sorta,” I struggled to make sense of my thoughts, “but it’s more than that—the actual desire is gone too. Except maybe for better food and wishing I’d brought a jacket, I don’t find myself thinking about things I wanna buy, or how to entertain myself. Out here there are no distractions.” “You’re in the moment.”

there’s nothing you need to worry about—no place you need to be other than where you are. You have all the time in the world to reflect and simply experience the present.”

Even on the trail, there are many people who can’t let go of their goal-orientated mentality. And it’s sad, because it is precisely chasing after some arbitrary goal that prevents us from really experiencing the world. Like me with my photography.”

But the key is flexibility. We got lucky in our timing at MTR, but if we had missed our reservation, then I would have let it go. If our food ran low, we could have found a workaround. Hike your own hike also means make your own trail. Living in the present doesn’t mean abandoning all goals and directions—it’s good to have some idea of where you’re headed. But it’s more important to be open and flexible enough to change direction when you need to.”

Muir once wrote, I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

All of my energy gets wrapped up in how good I’ll feel later, and I simply can’t enjoy where I am, like I do here.”

“The Buddhists call such distractions Samsara, the world of false illusions. People chase these illusory desires, only to discover they’re still unhappy.” “Like trying to hold on to those waves of pleasure you talked about.” “Exactly,” he smiled, the sun reflecting momentarily off his eyes, “that’s Samsara. The trick that endless goals and desires plays upon on our mind. True happiness is always found in the present.”

loving also means loss.

But it’s not about how long we live, it’s how we live that matters. Walking

is, This trail isn’t a trail, it’s our lives. And we must constantly stay present, focused, and aware. It doesn’t matter where the trail ends—all that matters is where we are now and how we choose to live in this moment.”

True experiences can’t be expressed in language, they must be felt, like poetry. Pop used to say that the beauty of poetry isn’t in the words—it’s in the space between them. Didn’t Frost once say, Poetry is what gets lost in translation?”

If a man lives, it is a certainty he will die. Therefore, it is foolish to think of death as if he were a foe to be vanquished. He will come when he will come. The point of life, the point of a good play, is not knowing the ending. The point is to be present and live life to the fullest. To enjoy the play. Even when parts are painful or scary, they’re part of the experience. The trail. The hike. Our lives. This is what it’s all about. This is the meaning of life. To be present and not to chase some meaningless

The meaning of life is simply to be present during the journey. There is no goal, just the path.”

I’d mounted his shovel up on my wall to remind me to live each day as if it were my last and cherish the time we have.