Japanese warrior monks would sit under ice cold waterfall to toughen (and mentally cleanse themselves). As you might have noticed I have found it hard to adapt to life on trail and the purpose and meaning of spending 5 months away from kids and family to be here.
Mrs M gave a coaching session over the phone. What do I want out of this? Why aren’t you happy? To some extent I might have been more in love with the dream of doing it, rather than the concrete act of doing it. Also, the delays, I was meant to do this in 2020, makes it feel like something I “scheduled” to do, rather than something I want to do.
So what’s the motivation for doing this? Back to the Japanese warrior monks. I’m sure they didn’t enjoy sitting under ice water. Perhaps the motivation for this is how far can the body be pushed physically and how will your mind react to being deprived of every day luxuries, have to go through loneliness, fear of heights, steep snow, dealing with pain and suffering. Will suffering lead to mental toughening? I guess this whole thing is a long meditation retreat. On with the robes!
In other news, a very relaxing day in Etna. Most places closed on Monday here. So I had coffee and omelette at the coffee place and lunch and dinner at the brewery.
Most of the day I was spent drying gear, buying provisions, and “helping” the antique car gang with repairing their cars.
A local hiker (Robert) showed up at the motel room next to mine, we went together for dinner, with his dog Pi. Enjoyable conversation and great food. Robert was half Swedish with both grand parents having immigrated from there. He had never been, but I think I convinced him to go over and find relatives and do some hiking. At 72 his main interest, when he wasn’t crab fishing or hiking was surfing! He spent most of his days at the beach. Now how Californian cool isn’t that!
Jaclyn, the motel owner volunteered to take me the 16 miles back up to the trail. So all set for the hike into Seiad Valley. Quite a bit of snow, so we’ll see how it goes.
