(dis)comfort

 

I recently found the YouTube videos of a woman who backpacks in the White Mountains.  She is older like me, hikes slowly, and camps out on mountain tops in winter.  Her aim is solitude, aliveness, sunrises, and sunsets.  Her pictures of the night sky full of stars are amazing.  On one winter’s overnight on a mountain top, she shows us how she sets up her tent, packing down a square of snow with snowshoes and a shovel, burying tent stakes under snow, blowing up the sleeping mats and unrolling the heavy down sleeping bag.  Temperatures drop close to zero after the sun sets, early, even as the wind of the day dies down.  She heats a cup of water from her little red stove, so happy that it works, and mixes it in a freeze-dried bag of noodles for dinner.   Layered in thick down jacket and pants, a balaclava to cover her head and face, the heat packs tucked into boots, she sets up her camera to capture the explosion of stars in the dark night sky.   She is not without fear on this cold night but still excited and fully open, inspired, connected to the cold, the snow, the ravines, and stars.

That kind of aliveness is appealing to me.  I wonder if I might, like her, go out and away to find it again.

I was 15 the first time I went camping.  It was a winter Outward Bound trip in Maine.  I have such vivid memories of those ten days so many years ago learning how to set-up a tent in the snow, stay warm in below zero degree nights, wearing layers during the day to stay just the right temperature. Outside for ten days, I recall seeing the sky as if for the first time the clouds changing shape and blowing with the wind, the varieties and expanse of blue, the multitude of stars.  On our three-day solo, the longest I had ever been alone, I came to sense a presence near and with me even in the cold, snowy, solitude. But there was also discomfort. The restless nights sleeping with two others in a small tent.  The getting up to pee in the middle of the frozen night. Putting on those cold boots in the morning.  The courage I felt after this trip came from the struggle and the beauty of it, the wildness and vulnerability that comes from living in a tent.

The actual experience of the cold, the long dark winter night so different than watching a YouTube video comfortably from the couch!  Yet, I fear for this culture that more and more of our experiences are coming through screens fooling us into thinking we know what it might be like to camp in winter, cook a frittata, skinny dip in a cool mountain stream.

I hadn’t backpacked in 40 years until last May when I spent five weeks trekking in the Nepali Himalayas.  This renewed longing to be in the mountains surprised me as did the many years I had been away from them.  Once I began hiking again, the mountains pulled me deeper in to be closer to the wind and sun, the rocks and ravines, the strength in my legs and lungs. I yearned to break free from the routine and habit and the strong tug of comfort to feel my aliveness.  Not day went by in Nepal when I did not feel physically uncomfortable, struggling with the fatigue of trekking in the high altitude, the miles of hiking day after day.  And the fear of injury or illness when medical care was several days journey away.  The last days of the trip were particularly brutal with 90-degree heat and humidity, dust clinging to my skin, flies covering our food. 

And yet, in all of the discomfort, emptiness, and inability to absorb all that was so strange, maybe because of this, I am grateful by and transformed by all of this experience.  It is what it feels like to be alive and more fully present and engaged in this unfolding life, to come closer to others and to God when there is less of one’s comforts to hold onto, a more clear experience of our frailty and courage.

I don’t think I am quite ready to go out winter camping again, but I do plan to hike in the mountains this winter to feel the cold, the ice underfoot, the heaviness of the pack.  And backpack again come spring!