Thru-Hiking at 69: A Pilgrim’s Journey on the CDT
Forty-one years passed between my first thru-hike and this venture on the CDT. When I was 28 I had just left one life, a life I had loved and needed to grieve. The AT was for me the liminal space between lives; the womb of my dying and my rebirthing. I needed to discover my body again after six years as a nun. I physically needed to walk the rhythms of prayer and discovery.
But this was before the days of ultralite gear, so I carried 40-45 pounds in my external frame Jansport. I wore the wrong boots which gave me blisters every step of the way. As I walked I cried for the pain in my heart and the pain in my feet.
Now approaching my 70th birthday I wanted to bookend that hike
Hiking the CDT as an Older Woman
As an older person I wanted to see what this aging body could still do out there carrying on my back everything I need to survive. I also wanted to disappear, to be invisible. It is a way of practicing mortality.
Some day it will be absolute. I was impacted by the moon eclipsing the sun last spring and the word “eclipsed” was meaningful to me preparing inwardly for this. I wanted to be eclipsed by wilderness.
And I wanted to go listen deeply to the wilderness to learn how I should be in the world in my final decade or two. What do I need to know? How do I need to open differently to welcome this last season? I wasn’t absolutely sure I could do it, but needed to try.
I was clear I was not a thru-hiker but a pilgrim.
Hiking solo as an older person also required a different mindset from the beautiful, young, strong, fast hikers who occasionally passed me by. I was clear I was not a thru-hiker but a pilgrim. That meant allowing the reality that was my body to encounter the reality that was the wilderness.
I promised myself that when I needed to rest I would rest; when I needed to eat I would eat. I would actually look at and see what I was passing through, and at day’s end not pay (much) attention to mileage.
Of course given the reality of desert
the next source of water became the tyranny which often guided mileage. I learned what it meant to be thirsty as some of my “reliable” water sources were so thick with cow poo I could have walked over them! And not even the Sawyer squeeze can filter out the unique, delicate flavor of cow saliva.
The Reality of Thru-Hiking in Your late 60s
I began at Crazy Cook with the intention of hiking the entire CDT through NM. That was all.
See how that went.
But life off-trail kept intervening and I realized I needed to do this in sections. The support of my husband Eric who drove zillions of miles carting me to and from trailheads made this possible, and I fell in love with him all over again.
It also let my body recover from the constant pounding on the rocky trail. I remembered the glory of showers, flush toilets, cold beer, and human company. These pauses allowed me to reflect on the last section and be mindful of its gifts.
Encounters with Kindness on the Trail
And what gifts!
I learned to receive the kindness of strangers.
A truck driver who, on a dusty road walk, rolled down his window and wordlessly handed me an icy Gatorade. Radar, a wild man who restocked the water caches and replace a faulty power cord. Mellow, Farland, and Elaine who carried my pack over vertical cliffs to avoid chest-deep crosses of the Gila and told my terrified self where to find handholds; the dear young man who, as I started to cross the river, placed himself unobtrusively downstream of me, ready to catch me if I slipped. Intense and intimate conversations with total strangers while we shared dried mango and water.
Gifts from the Wilderness
The land gave its gifts also, and I was slow enough to witness them -
The low light on the gray cliffs;
the bear cub that wanted to be friends until its mother drove him away; the way the Gila trout gleam in the morning light; the tiny jewel of red, orange, and turquoise of the bottom of the river - I still have no idea what they were. I worshiped at springs.
I ate wild berries and dipped my hot, sticky body naked in a pool surrounded by wild mint. (Eric said all the animals downstream would have to filter their water after that!) I heard a wolf howl in the night, owls in conversation across the canyon, the song of the river, and listened to silence as deep as the ocean.
I learned to be lost
I got lost. More than once.
I missed the pink Gila River Alternate.
I went more than ten miles into the burnt-out Aldo Leopold Wilderness before Eric texted me that I was way-off course.
(There are NOBO’s, and SOBO’s, and I invented WOBO’s: “Way Off Bound!”)
Since I was still on the red line, I did not realize it.
I lost two days, food, water, and power: a costly error.
But it too had gifts: firstly, I did not beat myself up: use words like “stupid,” “idiot,” “incompetent” as weapons against myself.
I rationed my coffee, prayed, took a deep breath, hoisted my pack and turned around.
Other gifts: I found a dropped hoodie, heavy and warm from NASA which kept me warm(er) on those frigid nights in my inadequate sleep system.
I passed by a Benedictine Monastery twice and heard their bells ringing both times. The landscape, outside of the burnt areas was gorgeous and I got to see it from both directions.
And I learned I really needed to pay closer attention to FarOut when looking for turn-offs!
Listening to the Voices of the Desert
There were some very liminal times; moments out of time even, especially in the desert portion.
I heard voices.
Not words, not narratives, not wailing or singing, but just tiny snippets of conversation. Sometimes male voices, sometimes female. Nothing I could understand. It wasn’t cows or birds or wind. It carried consonants. And there were no people for many miles. To me it felt like the desert was offering me a memory, that here people once lived, and here is a glimpse into a conversation that might have happened yesterday or a decade ago, or 800 years ago. It was a gift. I was not frightened. I just opened myself and listened without trying to figure it out.
There were very boring times
Long miles of road walking with no distractions. I sang through many songs, liturgies, even an opera as my attention scrambled for something to hang on to.
These were dangerous times because it was then that the inner critic (I call her Sr. Mary Guilty) rose up and gave me a hard time for being there.
The inner critic said:
“You should be home working."
"You should be taking care of others, not out here being selfish."
"All the important things aren’t getting done because you’re gone."
Maybe you know that voice.
The times of boredom were the times I had to do my hardest inner work, to regain perspective and - not silence her voice, but wrap it into the whole experience and know that if it held the kernel of truth then it was a small part of this other truth that I needed to be here, deserved to be here, was welcomed by this wilderness.
The work would still be there when I got home. Now was the season for walking. Now was the time to give myself this gift of time and spaciousness. I am almost 70. The world is heating up. The water is leaving. We have an incoming president who has no relationship with wild beauty and so has no compunction about destroying it. If not now, when? So I tucked Sr. Mary Guilty into my deepest pocket (she does have a few gifts also) and kept going.
Preparing for the Next Chapter on the CDT
Now it is winter in the western mountains of NM where I live. I am rethinking gear, switching off desert gear for higher elevations gear; summer gear for spring gear. I will pick up the CDT again at Pie Town on April 22, two days after Easter. I can think of almost nothing else.
I want to feel the trail under my feet again. I got micro spikes for Christmas. A zero degree quilt (I will NOT be cold again!). To accommodate the heavier quilt and puffy I will just use a UL tarp. This year I will retire (again) from my work so that I am free to walk to Colorado (in two sections) without Sr. Mary Guilty niggling at me about all the people I’m letting down by walking. It would be so cool to cross the Colorado line on my 70th birthday. Unlikely.
I’m no longer a perfectionist.
Close is good enough. I am pilgrim. The CDT is my priest.
by Carolyn “Canyon” Metzler