What I Did This Summer: Hiking

When skills come easily for you, you don’t learn to push through the hard things.

You also learn to avoid anything that you aren’t naturally good at.

School was easy for me until one day in the fourth grade I ran into the brick wall that was long division. Two digits on the left of the little frame; four or more on the right. It didn’t make sense. Write a number on top, write another below--I couldn’t understand it, and I dissolved in tears.

I cried about everything back then, so that wasn’t so unusual. Facing a math concept I couldn’t immediately understand—that was something new. I would never advance another step in arithmetic, I thought. It would all stop right here at long division.

Dad was my teacher. He found my theatrics amusing but he wasn’t unkind. He had me stay in at recess and explained it further, and I began to understand. The numbers started cooperating—on top, multiply, down below, subtract, repeat. I recall going back outside in something of a daze. I had pushed through, and I wouldn’t be stuck at long division for the rest of my life after all.

Otherwise, I don’t recall running into an academic impasse again until 11^th grade chemistry when I didn’t do so well on a quiz and slammed into the wall of needing to study for the class. Whoa. I couldn’t just slide through with a quick read on the bus.  I learned my lesson and did well in the class.

Pretty flowers to keep you reading this long prologue.

At the same time that I was breezing through most things academic, I was enduring the daily humiliation known as Phy.Ed. and the monthly tortures known as nursing home visitation with the church youth group, in which I perfected the art of air singing, hoping that everyone thought that that nice alto from Ruth Yoder to my left was actually from me.

I learned:

1.       I am good at academic and creative things, therefore I should choose those pursuits as much as possible.

2.       I am not athletic or musical, therefore I should avoid anything involving physical activity or music.

Fixed mindset, it’s called. It turns out to be a bad way to live life.

Growth mindset is a better way to live. You can learn to do things for which you lack natural talent. It takes planning, work, and slow, incremental steps rather than intuition and osmosis. It will take you longer than it will others, and you’ll have to work a lot harder. But you can both reach the same goal.

This is how I learned to have a growth mindset about hiking.

I’ve never been diagnosed with any physical limitation besides asthma, but I wonder if I have some strange malfunction in muscles or mitochondria, because I’ve always been slower and had less stamina than other women, and not only in Phy.Ed. One summer in Ontario, in one of those personal-growth exercises that missions like to inflict on their people at orientation, a bunch of us moms were dropped off three miles from camp and told to walk or run back. The other women, some significantly older and plumper than me, took off jogging. I dragged along alone, walking slowly, far behind the others, unsure if I would survive.

Most of the time, I've avoided situations that would highlight this unflattering truth about me.

A few years ago, as our son Ben began to go on more and more hikes, I slowly absorbed the truth that I am living in a beautiful state filled with breathtaking hiking trails, and I am sitting here in the Willamette Valley and walking down to the warehouse now and then.

It’s like if someone would pay for my dinner at Sizzler and I'd sit there among all those lavish buffets and eat a peanut butter sandwich I dug out of my purse.

A year ago in June, Ben said the mountain meadow flowers are at their peak, and I really ought to go with him to Horse Rock.

Ben the hiking expert who wants his mom to see the mountain meadow flowers.

When you only tackle tasks that come easily for you, you don’t learn to handle the humiliation of doing something badly, in front of others.

We were not far up the trail when I was already breathing noisily, stopping to rest, and turning red. It isn’t fun to look this pathetic when you’re with a bunch of teens and twentysomethings casually loping up the mountain like goats.

So I told begged commanded the others to go on without me.

I made it about halfway to the top, feeling triumphant but completely bushed.

I made a resolve: on my 56^th birthday, I would make it all the way to Horse Rock.

Later that summer, the girls and I took a long walk at Shore Acres, near Bandon. They are all excellent walkers, as Miss Bingley said of Elizabeth Bennet, and once again I puffed along behind.

I had a double goal--Horse Rock and keeping up. When a skill doesn’t come naturally, you have to plan it out, step by step. I started timing my walks, starting with 10-minute slogs to the railroad tracks and back, then slowly increasing.

All winter, I walked on the treadmill in the laundry room, one of the most boring activities ever. I’m not savvy enough to do much with podcasts, plus there’s no wifi out there. So I listened to old Knox Brothers and polka cassettes. 

Eventually I’d walk a mile, varying my speed and the angle of the treadmill. I wasn’t terribly ambitious or consistent, but it usually got done, grudgingly. I wasn’t sure I was getting any stronger or faster.

Summer came. I went back outside for walks and even jogged for short distances, dripping hairpins on the asphalt with tiny clinks.

Eventually, I knew it was time to go hiking.

At the end of May, Amy and I took a Memorial Day morning hike up what I call Hostetlers’ Hill, a happy nearby jaunt through cow pastures and woods. I made it to the top—a lot more slowly than Amy, but she was gracious and patient. The important thing was that I made it happen.

Just after my birthday, Ben took us to Horse Rock and I made it all the way to the Rock that looks like a horse's mane on the bare hillside, and then on through the woods to look out over the valley. I can’t tell you how amazing that felt.

Exhausted but thrilled at Horse Rock.

View east from Horse Rock

At the Smucker reunion, I hiked down to the suspension bridge over Drift Creek. The trail starts at the parking area and goes steadily down for a long time, and I walked it with an increasing dread. I would have to come UP all that way! So while the agile people were still inspecting the falls, I slipped away and started start walking back up, pacing myself, hoping the others wouldn’t pass me as I huffed and puffed, or, worse, what if they waited for ages in the parking lot until I finally arrived?

Drift Creek Falls

I walked to the first little wooden bridge. So far so good. Then on to the funny corner with a fence beside it. Up and up. Still doing fine. Wow! But surely the hardest part was still to come. On to the little stream over the path. On to another bridge. Well, this wasn’t bad, but surely the UPpest part was still ahead, and the crowd of fast-paced young people was right on my heels, striding at twice my speed while carrying on conversations and laughing.

Then I heard a car door slam.  I had reached the parking lot. WHAT?!

I felt silly, but seriously! When did I get this good?

We climbed up Mary’s Peak in the Coast Range when Matt was home for a visit.

Mary's Peak. Left: wildflowers. Right: Matt and Amy

When we housesat for friends near Lincoln City, Amy and I hiked Cascade Head, past a garter snake, up endless steps, and through long furlongs of woods until we reached a meadow above the ocean with a view that was truly unbelievable.

It was hard. I wouldn’t have made it if Amy hadn’t kept saying, “You can do it, Mom! You’re strong!”

The views at Cascade Head are truly breathtaking.

Ben took us to Tire Mountain in the Cascades on a Sunday afternoon, where we waited for a shower to pass and debated whether or not to skip it and go home. We stayed, and the hike was long but gentle with the ups and generous with the views.

I was so proud of myself.

Magical path at Tire Mountain.

Earlier this month, the daughters and I took another trip to the southern coast for four days. We once again went to Shore Acres and took the long scenic walk. This time, I kept up with them. I don’t think they were slowing down for my sake.

Yes!

Another day, we walked several miles to Blacklock Point. I stopped and admired the view while Amy and Jenny ventured out on that knife-sharp ridge of the point. I didn’t have the nerve to join them.

Near Blacklock Point

Two fearless daughters are out there in that circle I drew, which also represents a ring of guardian angels.

My hike still counted.

“You’re constantly reinventing yourself!” a woman told me recently. I took it as a compliment. I love the idea that this phase of life doesn’t need to mean settling into a placid routine that will continue for the next 40 years. I am free to change the things I don’t like and to learn the hard but new and valuable skills.

Stomping heavily down Powerline Road, being sporadic and not too consistent, dripping hairpins, staying home when the smoke and pollen were bad, marching determinedly on the treadmill, listening to hymns via the phone in my fanny pack, mouth-breathing and sweating, leaping like a startled rabbit when trucks suddenly passed—nothing about this process was pretty except for the sunsets and scenery.

I did it anyhow.

When I wrote a newspaper article on this subject and detailed how hard I found the “easy” hike to Horse Rock, I emailed a hiking-book author to ask permission to quote him. He replied, “I’m a little alarmed that you might need to get out walking more often.”

That was humbling. Maybe it was a taste of how the garage sale lady felt when I looked shocked that she couldn’t figure my total in her head, or when someone didn’t know that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit and I was horrified.

There is still an inherent unfairness in the fact that if I slack off for a week, I immediately lose strength and stamina, while Ben can work in his office at Oregon State all week and then hike for many miles on the weekend without any problems.

But we are choosing Growth Mindset here. It’s ok if it’s harder for me and takes much longer. I can still do it. That door is open to us all.

If I can do this at my age, with my short legs and asthma and weakness, and wearing skirts and a head covering, I’m guessing that you can do whatever you’re not good at but long to do anyhow.

When you make it to the top of an Oregon mountain, the views are beyond describing, and whatever you went through to get there, it was worth it.

I feel like I’m at Sizzler, cutting into the best steaks and tasting the shrimp.

Maybe next I’ll learn how to sing.