Days 115-119: Rolling With The Punches

Well, NYC was amazing and stressful, classically so.

Cool Breeze and Moscow picked us up from Mountain House Tavern in Branchville — which has amazing food and I highly recommend stopping and eating there. We had a lovely drive into the city where they dropped us off at my parents’ house. Achilles met my mom! We left our tents to dry in my courtyard and I dropped off my pack and filled two tote bags with fun outfits to wear.

We made our way to Greenpoint (where I grew up) to pick up keys from my friend Nick who was kind enough to let us stay with him. This is where Achilles first learned how many people I know just from walking through Greenpoint. On our first walk-through, we saw at least five of my friends within the same two blocks.

We grabbed the keys, went to Nick’s place in Sunnyside, and showered the trail off of ourselves. We got dressed — I had taken Achilles thrifting for an outfit to wear in the city — and headed back to Greenpoint for a night on the town.

The next morning, Achilles suggested we stay an extra day in the city.

I know — I’m as shocked as you are. Mr. Miles Anxiety himself. To be fair we had a lot of things we wanted to get done that day and he saw my scheduling anxiety for the first time before making the call, so we split the plans into a far more manageable two day arrangement.

Achilles needed new shoes, so we took the train into Union Square and walked downtown to the SoHo REI. On the way, we stopped in Washington Square Park to see my dad, who sells his art there, and hung with him for a hot second while I let Achilles revel in some of the fame my dad’s given me from talking about my journey to all his park friends.

REI was a let-down, unfortunately.

They didn’t have the shoes Achilles was looking for. Which is a shame, as he’s now had to order them online and by the time he gets them he’ll have 900 miles on his current pair of Ultraventure 3s. Those poor shoes have no tread left.

As I was sitting at REI, the beginning of some huge drama between some friends and I also took place over chat, but that’s a whole other thing. More than anything, it just caused me an insane amount of stress and had me constantly stifling panic attacks for two days. Luckily, none of that ruined our time in NYC.

The rest of Monday was filled with fun plans I’d made for us and had been looking forward to since we first started talking about visiting the city together.

We went to see Jurassic Park at Rooftop Cinema Club — those last 20 minutes with the raptors always send me back to being 5 years old, watching the movie from behind a couch because I was terrified of those clever girls. Then we went to Banzarbar to see my friend Nate behind the sticks, where we had a quick bite and some incredible cocktails. While we were there, the aforementioned drama escalated to its highest point, and Achilles consoled me while I tried not to stress out as hard as I was.

We went from there to my old job, Pencil Factory, where my friend Lenz was behind the bar hosting Myspace Mondays, which Achilles and I were stoked about. I’d told a bunch of my friends we were gonna be there and he got to meet SO many of my favorite people!! Including two of my very best friends, Natty and Elliott. Achilles had heard so much about Elli that he made a b-line for him immediately and they seemed to connect well. Everyone loves Achilles! Especially Cool Breeze and Moscow, who met us there and hung out for a bit.

The next day, we started with the Museum of Natural History.

Moscow met us while we were on the 4th floor, where all the awesome dinosaurs and fossils are. I was still processing a lot of the stress from the day before, but being at the museum helped.

I used to go there all the time as a little kid with my dad, and we would make our way through the exhibits that scared me so I could get used to them and enjoy them, since I really wanted to feel comfortable enough to experience them all. We would sketch the blue whale, hang out in the dinosaur exhibits, check out the African elephants. I hadn’t been back in years, so reconnecting with my childhood wonder and nostalgia was nice.

We saw the new wing and the new hall of gems and minerals — which is WAY bigger than the old one.

Then we walked through Central Park with Moscow, stopping at Bethesda fountain for a bit and taking in what summer in the city is like. We listened to a man sing some Frank Sinatra, saw a guy playing the drums in the coolest way, and I made a wish at the fountain. I love Central Park in the summer.

We went back to Greenpoint that evening. Achilles got to see the park I used to hang out at as a teenager with all my friends, and had his first NYC slice at one of my favorite slice shops (Paulie Gee’s). Then we grabbed drinks with a friend of mine before heading back to Pencil for Honky Tonk Tuesdays so I could say bye to Lenz before we headed back to the trail. One of my old coworkers stopped by to see me before I left too! And Honky Tonk night was incredible. Achilles had a moment of feeling slight disdain for what he felt was the closest thing to cultural appropriation he could get as a white dude from Texas before being reminded that Lenz is also a Texan.

The drive back to trail with Moscow was so pleasant.

We listened to some music a friend of his made, and Mercy Bell is now in my Spotify rotation because holy moly is she talented. We got back to Branchville around 4pm and Achilles suggested we just stay at a motel for the night (which I was happy to do). We tried to UberEats 7 Eleven at 8pm, but there were no delivery drivers… so we took a sidequest to 7 Eleven ourselves and got slurpees and an honestly absurd amount of snackies.

When we got back, we fell asleep watching TV. We slept in this morning and didn’t leave the hotel til after 11AM. We had coffee and pretzels at Mountain House, and I connected with my uncle to see if I could make seeing him and my cousins before I get back on trail work since they live about 20 minutes from Branchville. Achilles went back on trail an hour ago, and I’m waiting here to grab dinner with the fam tonight and then staying in Branchville another night before getting back on trail tomorrow. With NYC out of the way (I’m so excited to not have to go back until we summit), we parted with a “see you soon”. For the first time, we really don’t know when we’ll see each other again before we finish. Which is fine, as we’re enjoying doing our own things and will get to see each other on our victory lap, and are going to New Orleans together for Halloween, and I’m flying him out to NYC for New Year’s.

This time, I do have some words of what I guess you can call wisdom.

It’s hard to explain what we’ve all experienced out here. Most of us plan to do this thinking it’ll be like Wild or A Walk In The Woods. We expect so much isolation, no cell service, to take this journey completely on our own and grow through that. Most people I’ve spoken to never expected to find family, or how time works differently out here (“trail time”, as my friend Ketchup calls it). There are people out here who knew me better after a month than some of my best friends and family back home. We gut ourselves to strangers and bond through the turmoil and hardships out here. In the Smokies, I learned through the support of my friends that I’m not a burden for my disability — something that’s taken me years to come to grips with in real life but only a few weeks on trail. After the Smokies, I learned that I don’t have to be friends with anyone I don’t want to be, which I have often denied myself to make those around me more comfortable.

I learned to detach and self soothe better than I ever have before when Achilles and I stopped hiking together, and I’m grateful for the pain that’s helped me grow. I know I’ve heard from other hikers on trail and in trail updates on here that tramily and trailmance separations have been hard for us all. You connect so hard so quickly with people out here, and it’s so hard to separate expectations from what ends up as reality when you’ve been excited to hit all these important milestones with the people you’ve come to care so much about. My autism made that even harder, as I like when things go according to plan and struggle greatly with transitions. But overcoming that has been insanely transformative. It let me get to a place where I’ve decided to be on my own and have been loving the isolation — something I’ve long struggled with, to the point where one of my friends pointed out that it’s never been good for me to be alone with my thoughts until now.

I’m grateful this journey didn’t start the way I expected it to, and that it’s stayed unpredictable. The challenges, hardships, and curveballs thrown at me have all made me a better version of myself, have all made me better at loving myself and being kind and forgiving to myself when things are hard. I’m grateful for the cell service being better than I expected, as it’s allowed me to share this experience with folks back home while I make my way to Maine. I’m grateful to be hiking alone and planning my hike around nothing other than what will make me happiest. I’m grateful that I was able to hike with Achilles and Team Vortex for as long as I was, to have been planning our hikes around each other when it worked for us, and I’m proud of myself for doing my own thing when I found myself enjoying what we were doing less than I had been before.

I’m grateful for all of the people who I’ve connected with out here, as I’ve learned so much from them. I had no idea what I was doing when I started. I’d never backpacked, or overnight camped even, before starting the AT. I came in overconfident in my bravery on trail — and started to overcame the difficulty I have asking people for help when I need it and embarrassment I feel from it on my first night out here. It took me weeks to be able to spend a night alone in my tent without being anxious. It took me months to get over my bearanoia. It took me hundreds of miles to be happy hiking alone. But those hardships and fears had to take their time to run their course. I’m not magic, and it’s astonishing to me that things I’ve struggled with my whole life took such a short time to overcome. Trail time is different. Days are weeks worth of growth when all you have is your own mind as you walk miles and miles and miles every day. Weeks spent with friends when there’s no pretense, no way to hide who you truly are, turn into finding family faster than anyone off trail could ever hope to understand. We all know it. We’ve all talked about it often. The woods are freeing, the mountains push us to our limits and allow us to see how far we can truly go — how far we can push ourselves in the hopes of understanding ourselves better.

1300 miles in, letting go of expectations and embracing the unknown still permeate the experience.

Radical rejection is still abundant, just as much as it was in my first trail update four months ago. I am still a new version of myself every week, and I love each improvement more than the last. I have never in my life felt more confident in myself, my wants and needs. I have never needed less reassurance or validation from others to know that I’m making the right choices for myself.

To those who disagree, I respectfully wish them well on their journeys out of my life. To those who can’t or won’t see the levels of independence I’ve reached, especially in the last month, I no longer trust myself less than I trust them. Occasionally I find myself wishing that they could see that as the growth other friends, both on trail and back home, are able to see. That it wasn’t taken personally how impossible it is to describe how quickly things work out here — both relationships and learning lessons. That you truly cannot understand what it’s like out here until you yourself walk for hundreds of miles through the woods. But mostly, I recognize that as much as I love those people I also don’t need them to see or believe those things to know that they’re true and real. Not because I don’t want to hear the concerns or because they don’t matter to me, but because I trust myself and believe in myself enough to keep myself going. And that is the biggest way in which I believe I’ve grown out here: dropping my codependency on outside support.

Let’s go in the garden

You’ll find something waiting

Right there where you left it, lying upside down

When you finally find it, you’ll see how it’s faded

The underside is lighter when you turn it around

Everything stays, right where you left it

Everything stays, but it still changes

Ever so slightly, daily and nightly

In little ways, when everything stays

— “Everything Stays” from Adventure Time