A Grand Idea

Before I moved to the Phoenix area, I could never have imagined roaming around in the desert alone. My personality is one of incredible capacity to imagine the worst-case scenarios in just about every circumstance. With an eye toward the unlikely (but possible!), I am rarely caught off guard, but it also takes a lot of conscious effort for me to step outside my comfort zone these days.

Equal to my ability to quickly roll the tape of anticipated, unwanted outcomes is my ability to put myself in someone else’s shoes. A wonderful quality, no doubt, it helps me connect with and care for others. But in the midst of what feels like global and national chaos, as social media brings the entire world’s tragedies and judgments instantaneously to my eyes, as I binge true crime podcasts and hold space at my work for people in the midst of devastating and life-altering health conditions, these qualities kind of suck.

I grew up a very empathic child, deeply uncomfortable with others’ unresolved pain and yet wide open to it as I put my young mind to work trying to solve grown-up problems. Like most children and teenagers, my awareness of the nuances of complex emotional experiences was limited. As we do at every age, I viewed the experiences of others through the lenses available to a 6, 8, 12… 15-year-old. I took on the much-too-heavy burdens of others because my sweet little heart wanted to ease the aches of those I loved, not understanding that just as no one can solve the problems I face today on my behalf, I wasn’t going to fix theirs either.

Being out in nature is one of the few places my mind quiets. Swinging in my hammock between two shade trees, reading a book and listening to the tempo of the forest beat to the rhythm of the wind through the leaves or wandering down a dusty desert trail, delighted by the tall saguaros and blooming ocotillos, are some of the few places I feel truly at ease. I know I am not alone in this feeling. The vast number of people through-hiking long trails, taking on daring outdoor adventures and living out of their vans is evidence of the power of nature to still us and remind us that the pressures we often face in daily life are around us but not of us.

I grew to love South Mountain when I started trail running in 2018. At the time, I was on a mission to live more intentionally and less passively. After reconnecting with some family friends, one of whom was a passionate and experienced hiker, I caught the hiking bug and realized immediately how a big outdoor project has the potential to strengthen one’s mind, body and sense of self. With help from this friend, I set my sights on a Rim to Rim crossing of the Grand Canyon (North Kaibab to Bright Angel) on Memorial Day weekend the next Spring. Years prior, I had completed a marathon and a handful of half marathons so the distance (just over 24 miles) wasn’t completely out of reach, but the punishing vertical loss and gain would require a lot of preparation for me.

This began my hiking tour of the Phoenix area. All the top hits were on my list: Piestewa, Camelback, Peralta, Holbert and Mormon trails, Tom’s Thumb and Flatiron. Slowly but surely I built my climbing legs though, much to my dismay, there was always a part of me frustrated that other friends and people in the community experienced these trails as fun, easy climbs while I felt like I was working so, so hard. Objectively, these were all incredible accomplishments and there are many out there that would view my performance as impressive, but that’s the risk of progressing in any pursuit, at some point, you can lose touch with the novice version of yourself that saw your current abilities as incredible and see only the bar shifting just out of reach ahead of you.

Through the late winter, as I spent more and more days out on the trails around Phoenix, Tucson and even Prescott, alone or sometimes with my family friend, I began to fall in love with the trails on South Mountain. Close to my home and easy to access from many different places in the city, SoMo became an easy place to get in some miles. In January, I began to inject a little running into my hikes. Whenever it felt good, with no pressure to run any specific pace or distance, I would bounce along a downhill single track or jog a little uphill. It was all fun and a great testament to the work I had been putting in for a few months. Long before I had any other trail runners with whom to compare myself, I just felt strong and, dare I say, a little happy?

This decision to hike the Grand Canyon, to stretch my physical abilities to a limit I hadn’t been aware I could reach, would turn out to be one of my favorite decisions of my life. I couldn’t imagine at the time the people and places I would encounter because of that choice. In the coming months, I would go on to join a wonderful trail running community, meet some of my greatest friends, begin some of my deepest relationships and develop a love of adventuring in the outdoors.

This community and these adventures would start to fill a piece of a giant hole I’d felt in my life and myself since I was a child. For the first time, I felt a part of something. I felt like I might just become the person worthy of the life I’ve been dreaming of, always out of reach, always beyond my grasp. So while I leaned heavily into the bit of relief I felt at having found and cultivated this part of my life, little did I know that only a couple of years later, my self-worth now buoyed by this new version of me, I would begin a rapid descent to the lowest point in my life so far. The Summer of 2020 was waiting.