Rehearsing stories...trail magic

Rehearsing.
The same stories, again and again.
Remembering that which has been dismembered.

~*~
Detours.

I love them and I hate them, depending on the detour.

When I am "in the flow," allowing life to happen instead of trying to make it happen, the detours are adventures, like "trail magic" the few times I've backpacked and the many times I've hiked.

I can no longer backpack, due to the widespread nerve damage in my feet and legs and back and arms and hands and neck and jaws. I can seldom even hike, except during my good weeks between epidurals. And then no more than a couple or so miles.

My last real hike was in May, 2014. Eight miles, mostly along the Appalachian Trail through Grayson Highlands in Virginia. My beloved Grayson Highlands, where feral ponies run free; where, in 2006, I buried tokens for the life I had ended in my womb in 1978. And not just for that life, but for that season of life, including the relationship with the father and our serendipitous, bittersweet reconnection in 2006.

In May, 2014, after I received my third epidural and had hit my "good weeks," my 23 year old son and I went for a day hike at Grayson. As usual, we started at Massie Gap. We hiked together in the beginning but then I told him to go on ahead; I know how slow I am.

I made my way over the rugged terrain and drank in the views from the giant rock outcrops...
the awe...
the vastness of the sky...
the ocean of mountains...
the wind...
the sun...
the trees...
the foliage and wildflowers...
the ponies in their small herds, some with newborn foals, grays and chestnuts and creams and dapples, long silver and blond manes, and forelocks that fall into their eyes...

Wanting these moments to never end. And wanting so badly for these epidurals to keep working and maybe even reverse this nerve damage that had started in 2011 after taking a drug for a toenail fungus. But it wasn't diagnosed as nerve damage until I saw my eighth doctor in May, 2013, who told me I had polyradiculitis which means multiple nerve roots in my neck and low back are swollen at my spinal cord.

I asked the doctor if he thought I could get well. He said, "If we can find the cause, then yes, I think you can." I had been questing for answers since the onset in 2011. I am still questing for answers.

But that day in May, 2014, while on my last real hike though I didn't know at the time it was my last real hike at least for the time being, I met Jason at the Thomas Knob Shelter. Jason's trail name is Rising Tide.

I was sitting alone at the shelter when he walked up, a lone thru hiker. He was wearing one of those Gatsby, golfer-type hats. It was checkered green and white and matched his backpack. Just he and I at that shelter on the Appalachian Trail, a serendipitous encounter. He had plans to backpack the Triple Crown which includes the Appalachian Trail and the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.

We exchanged trail talk and I shared with him my dream of thru hiking the AT, but that I have nerve damage and didn't know if I'd ever be able. He then shared with me that he had been a quadriplegic just 15 years prior. He'd been injured in an auto accident. He shared how the medical field told him he would never again have use of his limbs. So, he turned to pot. "Lots and lots of weed," he said. Slowly his left side came back and then his right and then he started walking and then he started jogging on the beach, and now he was thru hiking 2180 miles.

Trail magic.
I believe.
Or at least want to believe.

~Thomas Knob Shelter, where I met Rising Tide~

"As he spoke my spirit climbed into the sky.
I bid it to return
to hear your wonderous stories.
Return to hear your wonderous stories."
~Lyrics by Yes~