Adventures: Hike Week

This is hike week. Don't get out your calendars or google it. It is just hike week for me. The surgery to fix my innards will occur in just a little over two weeks, cutting my summer a little short. So I find myself with just under three weeks of summer left, and very little enjoyment of the outdoors had. Hike week is my first attempt at remedying that situation.

Do I really care about enjoying the outdoors? Well. That is complicated. It is not the thing that I am most interested in spending my leisure time experiencing. And yet . . . there is enough of the "out-Dorsey" culture embedded in my complicated psyche, and enough of a true appreciation for the amazing natural beauty of the PacNW, that I feel deep guilt every November when I realize that another year has passed without my having made much of an attempt to enjoy what is right outside my door. Add that to the inevitable guilt I feel for every day I do not exercise, and it seems a much better idea to just get at it.

I started hike week with a trip to Forest Park yesterday (the largest wooded city park in the U.S.--over 5000 acres located in NW Portland). I chose the Wild Cherry-Alder Loop for my first route. According to my guidebook, this hike is 4.9 miles, climbs to a total elevation of 450 feet and is considered "easy." Hmm. Not easy enough, as it turns out. What the guidebook fails to mention is that almost the entire elevation must be scaled in a half mile section of the loop, early on. The guidebook describes this part of the hike as an ascent characterized by "gentle switchbacks." Um. Absolutely not. There are mostly steep uphill sections, broken up with long, slightly less steep switchbacks at random intervals.

I thought I was going to die.

I had to stop often during this section of the hike. And it got me started thinking about why I don't hike more often. Or why I haven't traditionally liked hiking much in the past. The truth is sort of horrible. It isn't that I don't like nature (because, really, how can anyone not want to spend a couple of hours surrounded by quiet, deep green that smells like blackberries--at the lower elevations--and licorice up higher?). It isn't that I'm too lazy either. Or that I'm somehow afraid of anything I might find in the woods. The truth is--I'm embarrassed. I find hiking, like I find most forms of exercise, really humiliating. However, somehow hiking is worse. Maybe because it is "just walking" and so shouldn't be as hard. Or maybe because it is social in a different way than an exercise class or a group sport (and more social than swimming or running). But I could tell you many stories about being on hikes that made me feel deeply, deeply ashamed.

I don't care about getting dirty. Or red-faced. Or sweaty. But I care a lot about how hard it is to breathe. I care a lot about the fact that I have to stop to catch my breath. When I am doing this with someone else it feels awful. I feel weak. I feel exposed. I imagine what the person I am with is thinking: She is pathetic. She is so weak. How could she let herself get THAT out of shape? Even when I am alone, I dread passing someone on the trail. I walk as quickly as I can past strangers, shoring up just enough breath to say hello, no matter what it costs me, so that they might not notice how out of breath I am, how slowly I am moving.

Myth Number Two: Fat people have no pride. I have recently spent a lot of time with someone who is very, very athletic and fit. She makes comments, rather often, about people's appearances when they are out and about. When she makes these comments to me, they are usually about makeup or hair or clothing. But I have noticed that these comments are very often directed at overweight people. She asks, "don't people have any pride in the way that they look?" She means, "aren't fat people embarrassed to walk around being fat?" Yes. They are. Or many of them are. I am. But I am also aware of the fact that I have to leave the house. I have to interact with other people. In order to do that, I have to find a way to NOT be so self-conscious about the way that I look that I can't function. And so I buy cute glasses and colorful knee socks and smile and make eye contact and I pray that it distracts everyone from my weight (knowing deep down that it doesn't--that it can't). And I try to look confident--as if it is all part of my plan--the style, the attitude, the weight.

You may be wondering what this has to do with hiking. Here's the thing: I spend so much of my time trying to make it seem like I don't have a problem. Like there is nothing wrong with me. Like my weight doesn't cause me physical or psychological discomfort or challenges. And, in many ways, in terms of the day-to-day, I'm able to perpetuate that myth--if only to myself. But hiking exposes me completely. I physically cannot keep the narrative going. It is obvious to me and to whoever I am with that I am struggling--and that it is a direct consequence of my weight.

No matter how nice the day--no matter how beautiful the view--no matter how good the company--it is hard for me to be up for that kind of humiliation.

This week is about getting out and making the most of my short summer. And it is about getting in some fitness before I'm stuck in recovery. And it is also about doing something that is really hard and trying to come to terms with my limitations in a public kind of way.

I noticed a lot of things while I was at Forest Park--the banana slugs. The Oregon Grape plants heavy with fruit. The smell of the forest. The vole burrows. But I also noticed that I was the only overweight person I saw in the two hours I was there. Ultimately, I have to feel good about the fact that I was there. And that I hiked the whole 4.9 miles. And, that, while I had to stop and catch my breath from time to time, I didn't STOP.