I had just finished a beautiful and exhausting hike yesterday a little before 1PM. I was driving out from the trailhead beginning the five mile treacherous pot-hole dodging trek back down a forest road. Imagine if we actually allocated a few bucks from each of us to maintain the roads to access these national treasures? I spent several hundred bucks a few years ago replacing a set of tires because we don’t do that….but I digress.
I could already feel the pillow beneath my head upon arriving back at the cabin (after a shower of course!). 2500 feet of gain in an eight mile round trip to Yellow Aster Butte is harder than it was just a few years ago….I secretly think they are raising the Butte a few feet each year. But, why is that woman waving me down? Oh crap, she wants me to jump her van. But I am so tired. Of course she doesn’t have cables, I really hope I somehow misplaced mine. Someone else can help her, I’m too tired!
But no, I have cables. As a matter of fact I have two sets? I bet one is supposed to be in our other car. That means I too drive around without jumper cables….get off your high horse Ray!
After a series of U-turns on a narrow mountain road I am positioned as close as possible to her van battery ( I told you it wouldn’t work the way you proposed, damn, I got some nasty to get out of my veins). I forgot to mention that the woman was the same one that talked loudly to her boyfriend the entire hike. I could hear her from five hundred feet away, the only thing disturbing the sound of distant waterfalls and marmots and rustling grass. I actually wore ear plugs. I could have simply stopped for five minutes to allow them to get way ahead of me, but I think I needed to remain in victimhood a bit longer. The biting flies of course didn’t help the case for just hanging out to allow them to get ahead. We will revisit talking loudly in a future still-to-be-written post.
I jumped her (van) and I headed out. I have used my jumper cables over the last thirty-some years exclusively to jump other people’s vehicles I am pretty sure, at most once for my car. It would actually be more efficient for me to not carry cables, I wouldn’t have to jump other’s cars and could rely on others cables to solve my once every-several-decade problem of my dead battery. But I can’t do that. I also can’t lie. I also need safety plans and even back-ups to safety plans (how many bottles of sunscreen are there between my vehicles and hiking bag? Don’t forget the secret small inner-bag bottle in my green hiking bag. Do I also just need to feel superior? Do I need to sprinkle little victimhood traps here and there in my life as treats for me? I also carry painkillers and ankle wraps and bandages and all kinds of other stuff in my hiking bag. I have given all those things to others as well.
Do I treat the world as one big co-dependant partner, unknowingly to them of course? Did yesterday say more about me or the woman with the dead battery? Why do I need so desperately for people to say thank you to me for holding a door or stepping to the side to allow them to pass the other direction on a narrow trail? Do I lack self-esteem? Am I looking for it around me….being overly nice to people just fishing for the complements….the validation? Or do I think too much of myself, am I just trying to set people up for failure so I can say, yep people suck?
I guess that is the beauty of life. Maybe before I leave this blue-green oblate spheroid I will figure some of this out. At a minimum figure out who I am. It feels like self-discovery and personal growth follow a fractal-like pattern…..making tons of progress only to find myself right back at the beginning. All I know is that the weather is beautiful today, I have food in my belly and a roof over my head, and that I am grateful that I still want to figure out who I am. I have not become bored or disillusioned with who I have thus far found.
