Claire Henley: Adventures West (A Triggering Fall)

  • Sunday, October 4, 2015
The yellow hills
The yellow hills

(Editor's Note: Chattanoogan Claire Henley started an adventure of a lifetime on the remote Pacific Crest Trail in April. Along the way, she had many adventures and found herself a husband named Big Spoon).

“My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;/ A wave of longing through my body swept,/ And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,/ I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.”

-Claude Mckay, “The Tropics in New York”

It was a day unlike the rest, the day I hit the wall. By mile 832, we had been on the trail two months, and it was Big Spoon’s birthday. June 22, another day of life. I woke at sunrise, turned over in my sleeping bag, and kissed Big Spoon on his bearded cheek. “Happy birthday, Caleb,” I said as his eyes started to open.

The river ran next to our camp. We bathed in it the night before, the water so cold it woke our weary souls. After washing, Big Spoon lit a fire in the stone pit. We stood by the heat and spun around like marshmallows on a stick to dry off and get toasty. A doe was grazing in the grass. The bright orange flames from the fire cast light on her graceful silhouette. It made me think of home, how the deer would leap, fully alert, through Tennessee’s vivid hills.

Something troubled me. I didn’t know what, but it had started several days before. In the morning, as I put on my shoes, I noticed an unsettling chunk of rubber sole flapping from the heel. The sole hung from my shoe like a loose tooth from gum. I ripped it off and slipped it in my shirt pocket to glue back on later. I swept my thumb over where the grip had been. The heel of my shoe felt dangerously slick.

It took me longer than usual to get moving. We were in the John Muir Wilderness and before us rose John Muir Pass–a six mile scramble up rugged crag. No clouds clotted the azure sky. It was a clear day that called us to join it, but I lingered by the ash from last night’s fire and asked Big Spoon, “What would you be doing today if you were at home?”

“Tradition has it I go on a birthday hike,” Big Spoon said. “Usually to Delaware Water Gap with my brother and friends. Then we go to Hotdog Johnny’s. It would be wrong to go to Deleware Water Gap and not stop to eat at Hotdog Johnny’s. They have the best dogs around,” he reminisced.

When we finally hit the trail, I lagged far behind. The scenery was spectacular. Towering cliffs, textured talus, and tiny purple petals springing from deep, stony cracks painted my winding way. Big slimy tadpoles with bent legs lay on the dirt bottoms of every creek. A mother grouse and her chicks meandered down the muddy banks. However, though I walked through a land of dreams, something big was building  within that blocked my ability to see what I was seeing and enjoy.

A full, charging creek blocked the trail one mile from the top of the pass. It was the roaring runoff formed from the melting of High Sierra snow. By this point, I had forded many creeks, but none so loud and intimidating as the one before me now. I neared the crossing and saw Big Spoon waiting on the other side. A precarious path of gray stones spread across the water. I steadied my trekking poles in the rushing creek and leaped onto the first stone. It wobbled, so I quickly jumped to the next rock. The shifting weight of my pack threw me off balance. I took another hurried step, this time on a smooth rock that jutted out from the creek at a slant. Then the unexpected happened. My shoe with the torn off sole slipped on the slanted rock. I lost my balance and crashed into the creek. My elbow caught my fall. It slammed into the rock bottom; a chilling pain zapped through my bones. Big Spoon hastened towards me, but I put my hand up to let him know I was okay. Then I stood up, my body shivering and elbow pounding like a hard knock on the door, and I waddled through the waist-deep water to where Big Spoon stood, his arms reaching to pull me out of the cold.

I really thought I was okay. But when Big Spoon gripped me in his arms, I felt my face contort, my eyes bunch up, and I started to cry. Big Spoon unstrapped my wet pack from my back and held me very close.

“Did that scare you, Claire?” He kindly asked.

“I fell. That’s all. I fell in the creek,” I wailed. “But really I hit the wall. It’s been bottling up.” I was hysterical. “And now I see what it really is. I miss my home. I’m homesick.”

And I was. I just realized. Colliding into the swift moving creek knocked this awareness into me. I had been gone for sixty days. I had been gone and walking upon physically–and mentally–draining terrain for sixty days straight. I missed my home. I missed my family. I missed the comfort of civilization that seemed so very far away.

Big Spoon sat me down. My sopping shoes dripped onto the trail as I continued to cry into my husband’s faded shirt. His shirt felt like a bandana–soft, absorbent, and trusted for its strength. Big Spoon didn’t say anything but held me and let me cry. My tears had been building for a while. And now they fell like a heavy rain. Each tear triggered a thought. I sat in monumental wilderness, but in my mind I was sitting by one of my dad’s front yard fires. In my mind, I was having dinner with my mom at Rice Box, our traditional spot for mother-daughter dates. In my mind, I was talking to my brother over a beer about what we were doing in life and why. And in my mind, I was listening to my sister sing. My sister. My little sister, Locksley. We had always been close. Not your average sisters, Soul Sisters, we called ourselves. I had told Big Spoon so much about Locksley, in fact, that at one time he said we would have to have a room for her in our house someday. Locksley had been studying abroad in the Czech Republic when I left for the PCT. We hadn’t seen each other in seven months, the longest we’d ever spent apart. I cried, and thought of her beautiful voice. Locksley sang more than she spoke. She had a voice like a fine summer day–you never wanted it to end.

“There, there,” Big Spoon said after several minutes of me crying into him. “Don’t worry. This trip is making us see what really counts. I’ve been homesick, too, you know? Really homesick at times. But this trail is guiding us into new realms each day, physically and emotionally. And it will guide us back home in the end,” he said.

“I’m so sorry to cry on your birthday,” I replied through staggered sobs. The absurdity of this made Big Spoon laugh. He tried to stop but couldn’t. His laughter dashed into me, and I started to laugh, too. We were in the midst of profound beauty; my elbow was swelling up; it was Big Spoon’s birthday; and I had been crying because I was homesick. But now I laughed and laughed.

“You love to suffer, Claire. Did you know that? You really do. I’ve never known someone who loves to suffer as much as you,” Locksley said to me when I talked to her on the phone several days before in Bishop. She missed me like I missed her, and she didn’t understand why on God’s green earth I wanted to walk 2,650 miles through desert, mountain, and stone.

“But it’s wonderful out here, too, Locksley,” I said. “It’s not about the suffering, but about the journey. I’m on a quest, a walk of life. And at times it’s really hard. But at times it’s just so grand.”

And that was the truth. At times the trail was so spectacular I thought to myself, this can’t be real. No matter what came my way, I knew I wanted to do all I could to finish this profound trip.

One mile after my fall, Big Spoon and I stood at the top of John Muir Pass. Our hearts pounded from the steep ascent, and together we looked out on the peaks and valleys of our world. How grateful I felt to be Big Spoon’s wife. I reached for his hand and it hit me right then: home was right by my side.

John Muir Hut atop John Muir Pass
John Muir Hut atop John Muir Pass
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