.png)
What I Learned: Rose, Thorn, Bud
Taking this approach to what I learned from my hiking adventures is a little tricky. I mean, what's not rosy about discovery and learning? To sharpen the focus, here are the questions I'm asking.
Rose – What did I learn that opens new horizons to my view?
Thorn – What was particularly hard or scary?
Bud – Where did I get a hint of something worth exploring?
One reason I both enjoy traveling and resist it is that being away from home disrupts my routines. I depend on routines and rituals to carry me through the early mornings and the late evenings, when I don't want to have to make decisions. But I can easily get stuck, holding on to those routines and rituals with the tenacity of Gollum holding on to the Ring. Then I know it's time to break away.
My Rose of Learning from the Arizona-Utah trip was having my most cherished daily rituals broken and discovering the freedom and joy on the other side. These rituals were my "streaks" – numbers of consecutive days of doing something – which ended with my unplanned adventure on the trail in Zion National Park.
Most of my streaks get recorded, and rewarded, on apps on my phone or Apple watch, and it's those daily rewards – just seeing the count increase by one – that I wasn't willing to give up on my own. A few examples:
Apple Activity app, with concentric circles signifying daily goals for Movement, Standing (i.e., getting up and walking for at least a few minutes per hour), and time spent in Exercise. I had just reached a 700-day streak, two days before.
Insight Timer (for daily meditation): 1,025 days
SpanishDictionary.com (daily quiz): 169 days
Then I woke up in a hospital, my phone and my watch with me (thankfully) but their chargers in my car parked back at Zion. All streaks broken, effortlessly – hooray!!
Thorn: Learning about trip planning and the value of testing assumptions
As I planned details such as places to stay along my route, I made a bunch of assumptions that turned out not to be true.
Assumption: Finding places to car camp in the National Parks should be easy.
Reality: There's a difference between established campgrounds and "dispersed," i.e., remote sites. Do you want bathrooms? Then you need to book an established campground months in advance. For my first night, I was too late to get a campsite inside the Grand Canyon Park, but lucky enough to find one in a campground 12 miles away.
Assumption: Motels will be few and far between, and you definitely need to reserve them in advance.
Reality: Motels are plentiful in nearly every town along the highways. In fact, I ended up canceling that first night's camping outside the Grand Canyon. After a very long day of flying across the country and then driving five hours from Las Vegas, plus losing three hours in the time change, I treated myself to a motel room.
Assumption: I can do the trip planning all by myself without consulting anyone, even when someone else is involved and might know more than I do. This particular assumption is one that I'm so often guilty of making in my daily life that it's more habit than conscious choice.
The reality that upended this assumption was the thorniest lesson of my trip.
Six weeks earlier, based on my motel-scarcity assumption, I had booked a room not far from Cumbres Pass, Colorado, where Michael would finish hiking his final section of the Continental Divide Trail. I reserved three nights because of uncertainty about the exact day he would finish and when Rachel might arrive from L.A.
Searching the Expedia Travel site, I found a Days Inn in Española, New Mexico, about an hour and a half from Cumbres Pass. That was 30 minutes closer than Santa Fe, and Days Inn is a known brand, so I booked it.
I should have seen the red flag in the motel's policy of no change or cancellation of the reservation and no refund, for any reason.
As it turned out, Michael finished his month-long hike on his earliest estimated date, July 27th, the same day Rachel flew to Albuquerque and took a train from there to Santa Fe. Here's how that day unfolds.
It's 5 a.m. in my cozy cabin in downtown Moab, Utah, when I discover that what I thought was a five-hour drive to Santa Fe is actually close to seven hours. Ignoring my aversion to long drives, I pick up a Starbucks latte, get on the road, and take only a few, short breaks. Rachel's bus from Albuquerque arrives when I am three minutes away on the highway. I pick her up and we drive to Española. Before picking up Michael, who will arrive later by a combination of hitchhiking and a bus, we have time for lunch at Denny's and checking in at the Days Inn.
The motel is a long, rectangular building, two stories, maybe ten or twelve rooms on each level that open to outdoor corridors facing the parking lot. There are at least two dozen men outside, several of them sitting in camp chairs around a camper at the back of the narrow parking lot. Several others are walking along the corridors, as Rachel and I carry our luggage upstairs and to our room on the far end. Once we're inside, she tells me that the men were checking her out and that she had seen one buying drugs in the parking lot.
When we return later with Michael, as soon as we enter our room and close the door, he says, "We have to leave – now." Rachel gets on her phone and quickly finds a hotel in Santa Fe and books a room at a price comparable to this Days Inn – blasting another one of my assumptions (a tourist destination is always more expensive).
Michael sits on one of the beds and patiently explains the situation to me. The men live at this motel, he says, apparently by some kind of tacit agreement with the staff. They don't directly bother people during the daylight hours, but at night they might steal from motel guests.
I am clueless about all of this. I just follow my kids, and we gather our luggage and leave. Later, in our room at Coyote South Hotel in Santa Fe – which is beautiful and comfortable, as well as safe – Michael says, "Mom, I wish you had talked to me before you decided to stay in Española. I could have told you it's a sketchy town."
Lesson learned. It was a bit expensive – three nights, nonrefundable, and Expedia refused our appeal – but we could have lost so much more.
Bud: Overheard on the trail in Arches National Park
On my way back down the trail after reaching Delicate Arch, I saw a little boy, about 3 years old, carefully climbing some large rocks, making his way on hands and feet. His dad was encouraging him from behind. The boy said, calmly and with no whine in his voice, "I'm doing the best I can." Then, a few seconds later, "I need help." His dad boosted him up and over the rocks.
What a bright, hopeful Bud for me to remember and carry into my next adventures. "I'm doing the best I can," and "I need help."
Comments