Kentucky

Politics on the Camino

In the United States, it’s a long-standing tradition among long-distance hikers to celebrate the Summer Solstice by hiking naked.  Because it didn’t quite seem appropriate to walk through tiny Spanish towns in the buff, I decided to commemorate the longest day of the year by taking a zero and heading by bus to San Juan de la Pena, a monastery built into the side of a cliff a millennium ago, with additions built onto it and onto it again, a testament of faith through the various architectural styles of the last 1000 years.

From the old monastery, I hitched a ride down to the sleeping village at the base of the mountain, where I enjoyed talking to a local ceramic artist and looking around two small churches.  When the couple who’d given me a ride into town were done their supper, they offered to take me back to Jaca.  It was perhaps a 30-minute drive, and, in broken English and more-broken Spanish, we spent the time talking about the upcoming Spanish election, where (just as in the then-upcoming elections in the US and UK) the country had the potential to set off in a very different direction.

With the US election results in, I’m reminded of the many Europeans I spoke with this summer who — without fail — asked some variant of “How could America support Donald Trump?”  Many asked why we couldn’t elect Bernie Sanders.  (I explained that I’d tried.)

As I wasn’t able to describe abstract ideas in Spanish, French, Italian, or German, I had to save my more elaborate responses for pilgrims and hospitaler@s who spoke fluent English.  I explained the dissatisfaction in our country and the fission of the traditional parties.  (Once Brexit happened, it was easy to point to other examples of conservative undercurrents.)  The response from my conversation partners was often something along the lines of hope and faith, a certainty that our young but powerful country would be wise enough not to give the nuclear codes to a volatile demagogue.  I wasn’t so certain.

Lacking wealth (and, often, health), straightness, and maleness, I’m afraid about the future of our country, especially now that our highest branches of government share one political party, making checks and balances far less likely.  Like many other liberals, I’m appalled that our next president will be a man who has mocked just about every minority in our nation, from women to Muslims to people who are disabled.  Presidential elections aren’t, as some take comfort in claiming, distant races free of repercussions for us average Americans.  Obama’s choices helped give me health insurance, helped keep a gas pipeline off my employer’s land, and helped ensure my friends could get married.

Soon, we will all live under a red president, a red Senate, and a red House of Representatives.  In Kentucky, we will also live under a Republican governor, with a red State Senate and a red State House of Representatives.  Our Washington Senators and most of our Representatives are Republicans.  In fact, there is one lone blue politician advocating for my county.

Wait.  Scratch that.  I just fact-checked myself and learned that, while our Democratic State Representative had won locally, he lost in the other counties.  So, that leaves Republicans, from Rand Paul to Donald Trump, attempting to protect our best interests.  We’re screwed.

I’m glad I got to see the AT while there were still mountains in Appalachia.

There are memes circulating about this election claiming that it was a case of hope vs. hate, but I disagree.  I live on the edge of Appalachia, in a state that went overwhelmingly red yesterday, but it’s not hate that I see everywhere; it’s a desire to be heard.  As Jonna Ivin wrote, “I know why poor whites chant Trump, Trump, Trump.”

Four years ago, I often said ruefully that when socially liberal people voted for Mitt Romney — oh, how I’d take him instead today! — they were deciding that their money was more important than other people’s rights.  Today, while the backing of Trump by wealthy voters is wholly unpalatable to me, I feel sympathy for — and even some empathy with — the poor who voted for Trump.

Classism is still very real in the US, and I have neighbors and coworkers who voted for Trump because they felt that he spoke to them, rather than about them.  He didn’t tell them they were uneducated hillbillies; he managed to inspire them and led them to believe that he’d change the narrative of their lives.  Like progressives hoping for a brighter future, their votes were also cast in hope.

That is the problem.

Yes, racism and bigotry may have bolstered Trump’s results significantly, pointing to insidious problems that we should make great efforts to solve.  However, hope for economic opportunity also figured into the results, and getting at the root of that is both more difficult and less complicated than eliminating hatred.

You don’t need me to tell you that our system is messed up, that our country is heading in a frightening direction; I’m certainly no authority, and I’m sure you worry about our trajectory yourself.  But, it is high time we reconsider who our opposition is:  There’s a whole lot more that my fellow impoverished Kentuckians have in common with seasonal Mexican farm workers than the election results indicate.

Amid all of the sadness and anger of yesterday, I saw the best side of America, too, when an 18-year-old waiting in line at the polls behind me gushed to her mother, “I’m about to vote for the President of the United States of America.”  Her enthusiasm, her hope, her passion choked me up.

In closing, I don’t have a conclusion — we’re all months away from that — but I have a beautiful quote from the Talmud:

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

 

Finding My Way to Orienteering

I think I may have found a new outdoor athletic passion.  On the registration form for Orienteering Louisville‘s Return of the Otter meet, there should have been a disclaimer warning about addiction.

A few months ago, I had no idea that orienteering was a sport.  I was still planting trees up in Vermont and dreaming of my upcoming thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.  I was researching desert hiking, West Coast flora, wilderness first aid, and compass skills.  Looking for some instruction regarding the latter, I googled “compass class.”  Because Google thinks class and course are synonymous, most of the resulting links were about compass courses, which weren’t instructional but rather routes through the woods that people followed with maps and compasses.

Intrigued, I clicked from one website to another, reading through lots of orienteering jargon to figure out just what orienteering was.  How had I never heard of the sport before?  How, in all the time I’d spent outdoors and with adventuring types, did I not know anyone who’d mentioned it?  What was I missing out on?

While I’d hoped to attend a class teaching compass work with a bunch of other newbies rather than head off onto a competitive course and figure it out as I went, I vowed to embrace vulnerability, venture to a different edge of my comfort zone, and attend an orienteering competition once I returned to Kentucky.

The first opportunity I had was this weekend, when the nearest orienteering club hosted a meet roughly 2.5 hours away.wpid-wp-1426456080184.jpeg

Excited and nervous all at once, I waded down our very long and very muddy driveway in the dark to get in my car and make it to the meet in time for Orienteering 101.  When I entered the meet headquarters building, I was immediately greeted by warm and welcoming people, and I began to feel just excitement.

Louis, an older member of the group, took me through the basics of the sport.  There were maps with more detail and more symbols than I’d ever seen; a map lover at heart, I was fascinated.  There were courses of various levels and hieroglyphic markings denoting the various “controls,” or checkpoints, along each.  Then, there were these magical devices called “fingersticks” that recorded each participant’s journey through the forest.

I decided to enter at the advanced beginner level, cleared and checked my magical fingerstick, plunged it into the start control, and headed off into the woods.

Three minutes into my first run, I was covered in mud, my feet were soaking wet, I had a scratch on my leg, and I had decided I loved orienteering.

Yesterday and today, I attempted four courses. I completed my first in surprisingly good time, was less speedy and more tired on my second, and couldn’t complete the third yesterday. During today’s long events, I attempted the 8km orange course (which was more difficult than either of the courses I’d completed), but I had to stop halfway through because I was too tired and had a very sore IT band. Basically, I wimped out, but, given that it was only 10 days ago that I was able to start working out (lightly) again after this past Lyme flare-up, I was proud of myself for running through the woods for a few hours.

I was more proud of how much my orienteering skills had improved in two days. I’d gone from being unable to confidently take a bearing to being able to navigate (by either compass or landscape features, albeit a bit slowly sometimes) to controls sprinkled throughout the forest. On today’s orange course, there were a number of controls that I couldn’t see from the place in the forest I’d arrived at while searching for them, but I was confident in my navigating and simply looked over a knoll or into a ditch to find them nearby.

Conversational blue blaze: I am a firm believer that the right level of confidence is essential in outdoor adventure settings. While it’s important not to be overly confident and get in over your head, it’s also important not to have your actions rooted in fear.

All of the little result print-outs I got from the weekend declare that orienteering is “the sport for the thinking runner.” That really seems to be a perfect description! This meet was point-to-point style, and the thinking comes in when you realize that the shortest route to the next control isn’t always the fastest; it’s essential to consider alternative routes to avoid obstacles and the chance of getting lost. Some meets are called “rogaines” or “score-os.” Those have mass starts in which all participants go into the field for the same amount of time; each control has a point value, and participants choose which controls to search for.

By the end of this weekend’s meet I was bruised and bloody and sore and exhausted but completely exhilarated. I got in my wagon, turned on the radio (to “Carolina in the Pines”), and headed east, oddly unable to stop mentally transforming the “lone trees,” “gullies,” “knolls,” and “man-made objects” I passed into features on a topographic map.

To learn more about orienteering, visit Orienteering USA’s website.

A One-Way Ticket on an East-Bound Train

When I was a teenager, I wrote my bucket list.  Since then, many items have been crossed off as I’ve accomplished them, and I’ve added others as I’ve learned more about what I would like to learn, do, and see in my lifetime.  One of my favorite things to do is to string together the crossing-off of several items, so, when I had the opportunity to begin hiking the Appalachian Trail (a bucket list item) by riding a train (another bucket list item), I excitedly bought my one-way ticket east.

At Red River Gorge on a Pre-AT Hike

At Red River Gorge on a Pre-AT Hike

Soon after I learned about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, I began researching and planning for a hike of my own.  Initially, I’d intended to set off solo, but the thought of doing so scared me.  When talking with my college friends in the wee hours of the morning one night, I mentioned my hiking aspirations, and a friend jumped at the opportunity to join me.  One thing led to another, and a few months later we started walking from Harpers Ferry, WV, the traditional halfway point of the trail, to Maine’s Mount Katahdin, the trail’s northern terminus.

Getting to the trail was an adventure in and of itself.

Because we had a narrow window of time between my last day of college and the day my friend needed to be back for his RA duties, we determined that we should depart for the trail as soon as possible.  As a result, on May 24, 2011, I took the last final of my undergraduate career (in Field Botany), packed out my dorm with my family, stopped by the gear store for some last-minute additions to my already-bulging backpack, finished preparations for the summer’s adventure, celebrated my 22nd birthday at midnight, and caught the 3:00am train to Washington, DC.

I’m a morning person, but 3:00am wasn’t exactly my preferred time of departure; that was simply the time the only train eastbound from Kentucky to DC passed by.  The drive from my family’s hobby farm to the train station was roughly an hour.  And, I use the phrase “train station” loosely.  At that time, anyway, the Maysville, Kentucky, Amtrak station was an eerie, run-down building, with doors that wouldn’t close and lights that wouldn’t light.  The lights that did work cast a yellow-green glow over everything and, on top of the late-night hour and lack of sleep, made the start to the trip feel rather ominous.

Just as we were beginning to wonder whether we were actually in the right place, the train pulled up.  Without having our tickets checked, we were ushered aboard.  I hugged my mother and sister goodbye and waved to them as we rushed out of sight.

My friend, sleeping in Union Station

My friend, sleeping in Union Station

The rushing soon stopped, as can only be expected from quality American public transportation.  We ended up getting to DC several hours after the last west-bound commuter rail had left the station, and the next train heading to Harpers Ferry wasn’t due to depart until the following afternoon.  And, thus, a barely 22-year-old girl and her 18-year-old friend, neither of whom had traveled far from rural Kentucky since they’d stopped holding their parents’ hands, spent the night in Union Station.

I kept the first watch that night, and we switched roles every couple hours, allowing each other to get some shut-eye.  I remember almost nothing from the following day, save the ride in the commuter rail, during which another passenger instructed me at to how I could use my trekking poles for self-defense in the woods.

At some point en route, I learned that my mother had reserved a hotel room for us in Harpers Ferry, and I remember falling sound asleep soon after touching the mattress.  It’s amazing to think back on that night knowing what would await me beginning the very next day and realizing how little I knew what to expect and how much I would change.