Epilogue

Over a month has passed since Nancy and I backpacked for 7 days down Kanab Creek in the Grand Canyon. I've written a report for each day, and I hope to share them with others at some point.

This is the time to wind everything up and perhaps share a lesson or two I have learned on this adventure. Yet I feel stymied, stuck, like my brain's eyes are crusted shut and I can't open them enough to really see what that trip meant to me, what I learned from it.

One true thing that I learned, repeating it to myself and to Nancy many times of the trip, is that I am not going to put myself through such a difficult, challenging physical experience ever again. I have always loved a challenge. I walked right into each challenge because I wanted to go there, because something inside me loved the feeling of meeting the challenge and succeeding. More often than not I actually succeeded, and to be honest, I unconsciously chose challenges that I had a realistic chance of meeting and surpassing. I was all about being physical - yeah, I can climb that rock, scramble up that slab, jump across that crevasse, pull myself up that slide... and I loved the feeling that being able to accomplish the challenge engendered. I relished it, found great joy, and it was one place where I really loved myself.

Now, in my 61st year, I ran smack into a challenge that left me breathless, exhausted and in pain. I had felt moments of the same kind of fear during my 50's when I was hiking all the time, but not as clearly or as often as I felt it on this trip. Not being able to stand up under my own power was more than a slap across the face. I really can't do this stuff anymore... I'm not as strong, not as agile, and not as willing to suffer just to say I climbed that mountain or I got over that boulder or I traversed that ice field.

As I sit with what I have learned about myself I feel a part of me that is most deeply me still trying to hold on to what I was and could do years ago. The saner, more gentle, less competitive part of me is finally letting go. I am not what I can do. I just am, however I am, older, with sagging skin and muscles that can't work hard for hours and hours on end. And each day I am letting myself love that older person, letting go of the need to be perceived as strong, brave, and daring. I don't have anything to prove to anyone. It's time to ease back on the throttle and live more closely aligned to the whole idea that It's Not About the Hike.

I am on the grace wave, and this time I am swimming with the current instead of trying to swim against it...just to prove that I can.

There were more lessons, and they will slowly make themselves known or be integrated into my being in time. I have no regrets.

And the best part of this trip, and it was huge, was spending time with Nancy, reconnecting, laughing, talking, crying, and feeling vulnerable and scared. Our friendship has an amazing history and I am happy to be blessed with her love as I explore who I am as an older person, a wiser person, a joyful person.