 How to Be Together; How to Be AlonebyKatherine HauswirthAngela and Duffy were still basking in their new relationship when they stumbled on yet another thing they shared: wanderlust. It was a very particular breed of wanderlust, not just an intense longing to tour a far-flung exotic realm. This variety of wanderlust wants to propel itself. More specifically, it wants to walk for a protracted—some would say ludicrous—period of time. Angela first spied an acutely worn and warped copy of The Pacific Crest Trail by William R. Gray in Duffy’s parents’ cabin. The guide started something that took on a life of its own, documented in alternating his-and-her chapters in Angela and Duffy Ballard’s coauthored book, A Blistered Kind of Love. The narrative doesn’t prematurely spill the beans on whether they make it through all 2,655 miles of the trail from Mexico to Canada, but I got a hint at another outcome of the trek when I learned that the coauthors hadn’t started out with the same last name. They were dating and starting to get serious when they agreed to hike northward together. Footing it up the Pacific Crest is certainly an unorthodox way to take it to the next level. The planning stage of the Ballard’s epic wander involves reading voraciously about the trail, the wildlife, and a wide array of outdoor-oriented products. All sorts of emergencies have to be anticipated and discussed. There is a lot of activity surrounding food and gear—gathering it, weighing and sorting it, mailing packs of it to key post offices along the route. And then there is family strife—Angela’s parents fail to see the promise of the ambulatory romantic adventure that seems so obvious to the starry-eyed couple. A Blistered Kind of Love can be seen, according to the reader’s predisposition, as a loose guide or as a cautionary tale regarding the Pacific Crest Trail. But the book has another layer just below the cumulative grime from months of daily twenty-odd mile hikes. From the pre-trail agenda (oddly reminiscent of the wedding arrangement marathon some couples undertake) to the sweaty push for the end zone, lay a bevy of insights into the alternately perplexing, vexing, and blessed state known as coupledom. Another man by the name of Gray is quoted more than once in Blistered. Unlike Pacific Crest chronicler William Gray, John Gray’s terrain is the Great Divide—that is, the divide between the male and female outlook (aka Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus). Over the miles, Angela comes to understand that she can’t vent about her emotions to Duffy in the same way she does with her girlfriends, because Duffy, being male, would be frustrated by his inability to “fix” the sources of her angst. Duffy stores some of Gray’s impossible-in-the-wilderness tips like “Offer to make her some tea” for the return to civilization, but for life on the trail he appreciates a reminder from the Tao Te Ching: “All that is negative and injurious to your relationship is born of fear . . . If you would live in love, do not be afraid.” Recognizing the driving force of fear helps to soften some judgments and actions that would have otherwise been quite harsh. Angela fears being left in the dust by her long-legged beau; Duffy fears failure. Survival on the trail demands compromise and fast forgiveness in parallel with a sped-up emotional learning curve. Yes, a long walk is a powerful lesson in how to be together, and also how not to be together. Being together is an art; staying together is a real labor of love and sometimes just a real labor. The Catholic Church has pre-Cana, a course that incorporates advice from married couples into sage counseling for engaged couples. For couples that are less religiously inclined and more outdoorsy types, Blistered Kind of Love offers another valuable source of wisdom on togetherness born from the true grit of this pilgrimage along the Western edge of North America. Despite the obvious adventure, there was a certain mundane quality that runs through in A Blistered Kind of Love. It is a reflection of the fact that coupledom, the long-term kind anyway, leans by its very nature toward the mundane. There’s got to be give and take, tit for tat, in order for both parties to feel fairly represented. The payoff, if the couple is lucky, is companionship, compatibility, and an expanded perception of the world. But the tradeoff may be less time for self-realization, less space for the profound. In the spirit of profundity, I ask: if Angela or Duffy fell in the forest and there was no one to hear her or him, would she or he still make a sound? In other words, what would the ultimate impact be if you chose a solo trek through a grand natural setting? Who would be your sage, your Sherpa, your counselor? There’s a book for that, too, a volume that would take up a lot less space in your backpack than A Blistered Kind of Love. But don’t be fooled by the slim read, because John Muir’s well chosen words pack a lot of punch. Northwest Passages is actually a compilation of Muir’s most compelling words on the passionate love affair he had with the wilds of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. He would have disdained Angela and Duffy’s Pacific Crest coupledom, especially the chatty parts. In a letter to his wife, he declared, “Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.” The man is said to have climbed often with just bread and a blanket. Lucky for Muir and lucky for the National Park Service he helped to promote, Muir’s wife understood and supported his solitary wanderlust for natural Western vistas. The guy sure knew how to be alone; something about the mountains fired his very soul. His hike-inspired prose reads like a vision quest, not the hallucinatory variety but an upward-marching, pulse quickening, eyes-wide-open version. Muir’s words help convey something that’s become an elusive commodity: genuine wonder. As a society we are jaded by the panoramas that have gradually crossed from the real valley to the picture postcard to HDTV complete with eagle wings flapping in surround sound. There’s a place for the NatGeo channel, but Muir’s impressions, spawned by solitary contemplation and penned below the open sky, are the real deal. If you are going to be alone beneath the heavens, do it like John Muir and appreciate it full throttle: The deeps of the sky are mottled with singing wings of every color and tone—clouds of brilliant chrysididae dancing and swirling in joyous rhythm, golden-barred vespidae, butterflies, grating cicadas and jolly rattling grasshoppers—fairly enameling the light, and shaking all the air into music. Lessons learned this week: be alone, be together, be outside, climb higher, think a lot, read a lot, begin again. Being alone is a waste if you don’t spend a good part of the time being really present. And it turns out the same can be said of being together. I’m a bit stymied by what exactly chrysididae and vespidae are, but I feel moved to head in a general Northwesterly direction and seek some right now. Feel like a walk? Books mentioned in this column:
Katherine Hauswirth is a medical writer by day and a creative writer by stolen moments. She writes creative nonfiction and poetry. She is the author of Harriet’s Voice: A Writing Mother’s Journey and contributed to the anthology Get Satisfied: How Twenty People Like You Found the Satisfaction of Enough. Her current blog is The Year I Said No, an adventure in making room for a richer life by learning to say no to things that get in the way. Katherine has been published in many venues including The Writer, Byline, The Christian Science Monitor, Pregnancy, The Writer's Handbook, The Writer's Guide to Fiction, Women of Spirit, Wilderness House Literary Review, Poetry Kit, Eat a Peach, Lutheran Digest, and Pilgrimage. A Long Island native, Katherine lives with her husband and son in Deep River, Connecticut. She can be reached through her website, Harriet’s Voice: Home Base for Writing Mothers, or at khauswirth [at] sbcglobal.net.
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