Notes from my sleeping bag…

A Poem: To Be a Lady of the Canyon

Laying in the sand

Leaning on my backpack

Looking up at red rock

And a ribbon of blue sky.

A snickers bar on my chest

And an apple in my mouth

Barefoot and sleepy now

After hiking eight miles

Through muddy water.

Laying down here

In the sand

At the bottom of a canyon

For a moment of peace…

This is my most ideal self.

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I realize now why it’s so important for me to continue backpacking and why I was feeling so resistant. Though I started backpacking long before Ian and I met, I heavily associate time in backcountry with him. Sleeping under the stars on slickrock was the foundation of our relationship.

Since Ian died, I’ve been enjoying the whole eat ice cream on the couch and be comfortable vibe. To combat the overwhelming emotional waves of grief, I have sought comfort and safety. But watching Avatar the Last Airbender in my climate controlled home under a blanket isn’t the only thing relaxing thing that I love to do.

When Ian and I lived outside whether on a car camping, backpacking or bikepacking adventure- he taught me how to sit peacefully in nature.

He’d pull out his notebook and begin to draw the rocks, mesas, and canyons around us. I could never predict how long he would want to draw for. Inspiration may strike as soon as he woke up in his sleeping bag or in the middle of a hike. It could be fifteen minutes or four hours, so I learned not to rush him.

Instead, I learned to join him. To sit and write or sit and stare or get up and walk around. Either way, I did not interrupt his creative connection to nature and in return I learned a great deal of respect for the quiet and the calm.

I adapted to not always needing to move through a landscape.

Since Ian died, sitting peacefully in one spot has been a lot harder for me to access. Especially as I have committed more hours to sitting at my desk writing inside. But mostly I think because of the emotional waves that hit me anytime I stay in one place for long. I’ve spent a lot of hours sitting on a rock balling my eyes out, but this is not the same as the peace that I experienced when sitting next to Ian drawing.

For the first time in a long time, I felt that peace return on this backpacking trip.

At first, I thought this trip was about getting out of my comfort zone and leaning into the suck and the suffering. I knew we were going to be walking through cold water for eight hours a day with quicksand and mud, deep in the canyon’s shade.

It was tougher than I imagined it to be. My feet went numb after a while, and when I got the camp and finally took off my shoes, my feet were bruised, discolored, and stiff. The hiking was grueling on the toes, ankles, and tendons to constantly be pulling ourselves out of sinking mud and sand.

“I need to suffer more because I’m weak,” I said this to myself for weeks in my head, using the classic shame as a motivator to get outside. When I said it out loud in the canyon and Kayla repeated it back to me, boy did it sound silly! Of course what I’ve been saying to myself in my head is meaner than anything I’d say to someone else.

It’s easy to remember Ian as tough, strong, and resilient because he was so overwhelmingly so. He leaned into inclement weather with a brazen smile and contagious cackle. Challenging experiences in the backcountry made Ian feel alive. He giggled his way through what he called “sufferfests,” but Ian was also a man of peace, more than anyone I’ve ever known.

Laying in the sand at the bottom of a canyon with my head leaning on my backpack, listening to the canyon wrens sing and watching the muddy water cascade by- I finally felt connected to Ian’s peaceful spirit again.

Hello, old friend. Oh, how I’ve missed you!

Mallow curled up in a ball next to me with her eyes closed while I wrote and watched the willows grow their first leaves of the season.

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