The first night in the wilderness is often the hardest, and this was no exception. I climbed up a steep trail to the wilderness campsite we had a permit for. We set up camp with no one else around and took off to explore the area.
Between the lake I could see from my tent, the gorgeous trees surrounding us and the starry sky overhead, I knew this trip was going to be one I would think about for a long time.
I just didn’t know which parts would be sticky ones.
In September, I spent 7 days backpacking in Washington. Three nights in Mt Rainier National Park, one night in Goat Rocks Wilderness and 2 more nights back in Mt Rainier.
I spent months planning the trip. Permits, trail options, gear, mileage, weather and more. There was so much to do before we ever put our packs on.
But I was surprised to find that what stayed with me the most when I got home wasn’t the view (although those were EPIC).
It was how quickly I settled into a simple routine in the mountains.
Life at home is rarely still.
I work full time as a nurse, have 2 businesses to run, a home to keep up with, and two teenagers to manage. It’s an endless list of responsibilities and requests for my time.
Even on my days off from the hospital, I’m working on writing or paying bills for our real estate business. There is a long list of things that require my attention.
Backpacking stripped almost all of that away.
I woke up, made coffee and breakfast, packed up my tent and gear and walked. A lot.
We often took the time to take in the view one more time. One morning, we missed a bear in the campsite next to us by minutes, because we had taken our coffee out to look for mountain goats just outside of camp!
Eventually we would hit our destination for the day and stop to set up camp, eat dinner with a view, read a few pages of a book in my tent and get to sleep.
Then we would do it all again the next day.
My world became smaller, but in the coolest way possible.
I wasn’t thinking about what was waiting for me at home. I was almost completely focused on what was in front of me. Although I’ll admit I made a tearful call home mid-week when we hit town for coffee while we drove out to Goat Rocks.
I was thinking about the trail, the pivots we made, how amazingly cooperative the weather had been, and where we would find the next water source.
I surprised myself at how quickly I adapted to trail life... and how much I liked it.
And something I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did?? The freedom that came with being unreachable.
Large stretches of the trip were out of cell phone service areas, and we were completely disconnected from home.
We might get the intermittent bar or two and get a text out, but phone calls were out of the question, unless in town.
I just couldn’t be reached.
I wasn’t making some big point to be unreachable; it was just the circumstance, and I leaned into it.
There was something incredibly freeing about narrowing the decisions I had to make in a day and not letting my anxious mind create drama from what goes on around me.
I love my family. I love my job. And I love my home.
And I’m also very accustomed to being available 24/7, keeping track of everyone’s things and thinking ahead about what everyone needs. It’s the perfect recipe for decision fatigue.
I’m usually trying to get appointments into Google Calendar while texts are flying in from a teen looking for something at home.
Out there, I couldn’t do any of that.
For a little while, I wasn’t managing all those moving pieces.
I was just a girl out hiking a new trail.
I don’t think I realized how much mental space those things occupy in my head until they were gone. And once I became aware of it, it opened up a new space for me to just be, inside my head.
The other thing that has been sticking with me since I came home was more physical.
I knew this trip would challenge me physically. I trained where I could, missed loads of workouts and felt guilty, planned routes and got outside as much as possible before the trip within an already full life.
But truthfully, nothing compared to just getting out with a 28-pound pack on my back and hitting the trail. Day after day I showed up and got stronger.
The miles added up (almost 50).
And so did the elevation (over 9300 ft gain).
There were some hard climbs and tired legs (but I loved the switchbacks of the western trails!). I was always happy to hit camp at the end of the day and take my pack off.
But every morning I got up and we did it again.
And by the end of our trip full of pivots, I had done more than I really believed I was capable of.
Not because any one day was impossible, but because I had never done this many days consecutively before.
And that’s something I’ll be reminding myself of the next time I’m on a tough hike, and my mind starts its unhelpful chatter.
I didn’t know what I could do until I did it!
I’ve been home for a little over a month now.
The routine is back. Work is busy. The house still needs my attention. There are dinners to cook, appointments to remember, and laundry that barely makes it into the dryer half of the time.
And I still love being home.
I don’t dream about leaving it all behind and living on a mountain.
But I do think about how good those simple days felt pretty often.
How much I enjoy being outside for entire days.
How little I missed the near constant decisions that need to be made.
And how proud of myself I was to see that I can do more than I thought.
I went to Washington looking for beautiful hikes and a little adventure.
I found both.
But I also came home with a new sense of how much I enjoy a simple day with a quiet routine, alongside an occasional adventure.
I think I’ll look for more of that next year.
Thanks for sharing such a vivid recap of your adventure! I really enjoyed it! Tons of wisdom gained.