Hiking and the Brain

I went to sleep early last night because I knew I was going on a hike today. I shouldn’t have wasted my energy. My overactive depressoid brain woke me up two hours early and then fussed over stupid shit and wouldn’t allow me to go back to sleep. And just so you know, putting your pillow over your head works for blocking light and the noise of cats licking their nether regions, but it doesn’t do shit for shutting up an overly active brain. It’s like having a 2-year-old in the house. They don’t know it’s the one morning in the week when you can sleep in. They just know it’s morning and they’re bored.

Stupid brain. Maybe I should just take sleep off my wish list. I hope for 6+ hours a night. I rarely get it. Not by choice.

Anyway, I got all my hiking stuff ready and headed out for the meeting spot…we drove out to Cuyamaca Rancho State Park to climb Stonewall Peak…

I’ve climbed this one before, at least once, maybe twice…right after the divorce, I hiked a lot with the Sierra Club local singles group. I was young then…no really, I was. This hike today was with a local women’s hiking group.

The weather was cool, but not freezing, and the day was beautiful, blue skies and bright autumnal weather.

Great views…sometimes the weather conspires against, especially this time of year, but today was perfect.

There is an 850-foot elevation gain from the parking lot to the top…

It took us an hour to do the first 2 miles…we weren’t walking super fast, but not slow either…

We weren’t even halfway through the hike at this point, but we stopped and ate, and then headed down for the back half of the trail…

Instead of going back the way we came, we went down the northern end of the peak…

Which was gorgeous, despite being full of trees that had burned in the Cedar Fire of 2003, which raged through this area…in fact, I hiked another peak in this area the week before, and then three weeks after, went through (illegally…because fires were still burning inside the trunks of some of the oak trees) and was devastated by the loss of the big oaks. I have pictures somewhere of before and after. So walking through a valley like this is a little like walking through a graveyard…

A beautiful graveyard…and then you notice these little guys…

Tiny little trees shaded and protected, growing…and you see some that were burned halfway up the trunk, but survived and seem to be thriving.

And at some point, the brain stops remembering all the stupid shit that woke you up before 6 AM and it’s just staring at the trees and the path and the oak leaves that had fallen on the ground and the patterns in the rings of the trees that had been cut to clear the trail post-fire. And the clouds in the sky and the smell of the skunkweed and the burnt log that looked like a bear and the taste of the sandwich and the sight of an expansive view. And the brain stops being such a fucking 2-year-old and starts to resemble Kathy again.

Some of the trees look dead but have new branches coming up from the trunks, surrounding the old, dead wood.

And some parts just seem completely untouched by disaster.

It’s a beautiful area, no matter what. Charcoal and all. Five miles, a little less than three hours. My brain left all the stupid behind and I communed with nature and a few humans. If I could do that and draw every day, I’d probably be almost human pretty damn quickly.

Not really a plan I can stick to at the moment…but I can certainly try to add a few hikes a month to my therapeutic plan.

I came home and rushed through school stuff and grocery shopping and we went out to dinner with mom, because dad was still in an airport in Texas…managed meditation and cutting out of Wonder Under. Midnight approves of the newly cleaned-off table (OK, I did not get everything cleared off, but quite a bit of it, plus I washed the table runner that she loves to deposit her hair on, so that’s a plus).

Meditation talked about communing with our own minds as being helpful with knowing what’s in the minds of others. I’m usually pretty good at that, although the few times I’ve been slammed by NOT knowing were particularly devastating. Mr. Meditation talked about Being There for the experience…I did that successfully this weekend, I think…mostly. I just need to translate it into my whole life, and maybe kick my brain back into a mode where sadness doesn’t overwhelm me. I had my moments today, trust me. I felt it in the post-hike exhaustion in the car…my brain crept back in and was trying to drag me down. In the grocery store. On the phone with a friend. It’s a relentless beast. But he says that I can better understand where people are coming from, empathize with them…he talked about most people conceptualizing, thinking about how they THOUGHT someone would feel, instead of KNOWING how they feel, and how this practice helps with that. I got caught in that this year…someone assuming they knew what I was thinking and feeling, and actually ignoring what I was saying and all the evidence that was there to make assumptions about what I thought and what I would do. I hate that. I do have a pretty good sense of what I think and feel, and I’m pretty good at saying it. I appreciate those who respect me enough to actually have the conversation with me before assuming they know what I would do. I had a couple really respectful, human, responsible, and mature conversations today…and it reminded me that is how they should all go…not behind my back, talking to other people, guessing at what I think. Fucking ask me, man. I’ll tell you. And you don’t have to agree with me, but if we’re talking about MY mind and how it works, I hate to tell you, I know better than any other person on the planet.

I did an hour of cutting…

Look any different? Fuck no. It will. Maybe.

I’m exhausted…physically, emotionally, whatever. I’m going to bed early again. If my brain really loves me, it will let me sleep.