Claire Henley
(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).
“But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
–U2
After putting up my first post on preparation, an insightful reader noted that preparation is important, but it is the “Why” that will see me through my toughest days.
This got me thinking. Why am I hiking the PCT?
I took the matter to my dad who is a talented artist, and who sees things differently—clearer and at great depth. “Why do you think I’m hiking the PCT, Dad?” I asked. It was a crisp springtime night last week, and we sat on the patio at home on Manning Street, next to the fire pit my dad fashioned out of a broken wheelbarrow. The salvaged metal barrow supported lively flames that sailed towards the growing stars.
“Why do you think you’re hiking the PCT?” He responded, watching the fire.
I gave the standard reasons: “For freedom, for nature, for challenge, for truth.”
“Yes, of course,” Dad contemplated and leaned back to look at the stars. “But maybe there is another reason. Maybe there is a deeper Why.”
“A deeper Why?” I asked, confused, not having considered an incentive deeper than truth.
“Yes, Daughter, a deeper Why. The reason behind the reason,” he said then suggested I research the first person who hiked the PCT, and why.
That night, I hopped on my laptop at my desk and investigated. Little existed on the topic, but here’s what I found. The Pacific Crest Trail Association acknowledges Martin Papendick as the first person to thru-hike the PCT from July 4 to December 1, 1952. He was a WWII veteran who walked from Canada to Mexico, on a slightly different path from today’s PCT, in 2,275 miles. In 1951, he became one of the first to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. He needed a new adventure after his Eastern U.S. feat, and so set out on the Pacific Crest.
“Can you read between the lines, Daughter?” Dad asked the next morning in the living room when I told him what I learned of Papendick. Being the son of a WWII veteran himself, he immediately understood the deeper Why to Papendick’s trek, stating, “War is Hell. My daddy said so. After the war he became a missionary overseas, planted hundreds of churches in Turkey, Israel, and Greece. Martin Papendick walked thousands of miles. Do you see? They were on quests to rid themselves of the horror they’d been through. Quests to squash their demons and seek better lives.” He paused then directed his next words at me like a compass: “And I see it like you’re on a quest now too, Claire.”
But a quest for what?
To try and figure this out, let me give some history. I grew up in Christian homes. I say “homes” because my parents divorced when I was 10. Even after the divorce, my mom and dad argued on this or that, but the crucial thing they agreed on was God’s love—how it is the gift of life—and they taught this love to my younger siblings and me from the beginning of our days.
However, being the oldest and innately domineering, I didn’t trust God’s redeeming love, but put it on myself to fix my severed clan. I drove my sister everywhere, did my brother’s laundry, held my mom when her mother died, and cared for my dad when he had surgery to remove bulging discs. I became the backbone of my family. Without me—I believed—they would crumble.
I’m not trying to make myself look good by telling you this. Rather, I’m trying to show that for many years I overloaded myself with pressure to make things okay. I even applied this pressure outside of my family life. I studied hard to make straight A’s, practiced long to excel in sports, woke before dawn to polish my writing, and took on more work than the average employee to prove my worth. I did all of this believing everything was fine as long as I had control of outcome. But the truth is everything wasn’t fine. By fighting to keep everything under my reign, I stationed myself in my own backbreaking war. And the outcome was always the same: A hell that robbed me of precious life.
Mercy came the spring semester of my junior year in college when I studied abroad in Angers, France. I was 21, and it was my first time to move away from home—in a foreign city across the globe, no less—and my first time to truly trust God, instead of myself, to take care of me and everything else. I cannot tell you the fullness of life I tasted on that trip. But I will try.
During my time abroad, I lived among cathedrals and chateaus, commuted on cobblestone roads, listened to French exchanges, smelled baguettes from every bakery, drank wine straight from the vineyard, and picnicked by the elegant Loire. I traveled by train all over Europe and experienced once-in-a-lifetime things like skiing the Alps, scaling the Eifel Tower, walking the halls of Versailles, and standing before the Statue of David. I ate tapas in Granada, rode water taxis in Venice, crawled through ancient catacombs in Rome, and in the Vatican gazed up at the Sistine Chapel. I made some of the best friends of my life from all over the world as I immersed myself in abundant cultural richness of which I savored every drop. To put it plainly, my magnificent trip abroad was the first time I truly lived. And it was the first time I discovered that when I surrender my control to God, not only is everything okay, it is profoundly better.
I didn’t expect to dig into all of this. But now that I have, it makes sense in terms of the deeper Why to my PCT pursuit. I’m on the quest for a better, more meaningful, and liberating life. A life not fulfilled through my domination, but through trust in God and His resuscitating love. See, over the last 2 years I’ve worked for an insurance corporation inside a cubicle, Monday through Friday, 40 hours a week. It’s been a great job and I’ve worked with wonderful people, but sitting all day inside my tightly-fitted windowless box has been suffocating. “There’s a whole world out there!” My soul screamed, for which reason I’d turn to the verse taped to my computer that said, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
My dad says timing is everything. And though there have been restless days when all I wanted to do was get up and go, I know the last 2 years have been my time to “be still” and wait for God to direct me.
Well, I’ve been directed now. Now is my time to move—or hike, to be more specific. And I will go, trusting God again over myself, because God loves me. He works to free me from my earthly chains and usher me into His eternal gifts.
Today was my last day at work and a bittersweet event of farewells and clearing out. Over the course of the week leading up to today, I brought home the pictures, postcards, and supplies that personalized my cube. The last thing I left to bring home was the plant my dad gave me one year ago when I started a new position in the company. “A little plant for your new beginning,” he said then handed me a small clay pot with two popping stems he snipped and replanted from his favorite philodendron. In one year the two stems have grown to seven draping feet of vine sustaining forty-five bright marbled leaves. And a forty-sixth on the way. I measured and counted before removing the plant from my cube because I couldn’t believe how in just one year the tiny sprigs grew to be a flowing beacon of life.
And I realize now this is the growth for which I am hiking, the purpose for my faith based quest, and the deeper Why that will see me through my toughest days on the PCT: for life, life, nothing but life.
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Claire's first book on her adventures while living in Colorado can be ordered here:
http://www.amazon.com/51-Weeks-The-Unfinished-Journey-ebook/dp/B00IWYDLBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394801373&sr=8-1&keywords=51+Weeks