If you live in San Francisco long enough, you’ll forget this is a very strange place. I can tell you without any equivocation that a guy walking with a white tipped cane is absolutely, like, the ninth most interesting thing you’ll see in my neighborhood. On my walk to work, there’s a placard outside a… let’s call it a variety store… proudly proclaiming, “We Buy Porn!” Around the corner, at the entrance to the Castro MUNI stop, the homeless guy by the bus shelter calls out, “Kidney? Harvest your kidney? Sir, may I harvest your kidney?” What I’m saying is that when the mannequin in the front window of the Goodwill store is dressed with a tuxedo top and a pink chiffon ballerina dress bottom, seeing me making my way around a construction pylon with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cane in the other is just not goig to be on your radar.
I also think San Francisco must be the birthplace of Competitive Leisure, the idea that you can’t just have fun. You have to have more fun than everyone else, or it doesn’t count. It means if you come to work on Monday and someone asks you… with that slight note of a challenge in their voice, “So… what did you do this weekend?” what’s really going on is they want to compare their weekend to yours, and if your answer is anything less than kayaking the American River while wearing a sixty pound weight vest, stand up paddleboarding in the shark infested waters of the Farallon islands, or at least finishing a century ride or two, then you’re just not, in the parlance of every single online dating profile in the 415 area code, “taking advantage of everything the Bay Area has to offer.” This is the only place I know where it’s possible to “win” yoga. No wonder there are so many therapists here. They’ll never… ever… run out of clients.
I have to admit that, for me, the idea of therapy has never been appealing. I can absolutely see the value in it, but it always seemed something akin to renting a friend in fifty minute increments. For me, getting outdoors… yes, taking advantage of everything the Bay Area has to offer (sigh) has always been the only kind of therapy that works. Oh, I could wax poetic about the beauty of nature, the peacefulness of the outdoors, the harmony of it all. That’s all very nice, but very secondary to the simple challenge of “can I do this?”
So I suppose I, too, fall prey to Competitive Leisure, only against myself. It’s also possible that an actual therapist could have gotten me there faster. Natch.
Tackling a good trail, or even a bad one, has always been confirmation that no matter how much sight I’ve lost over the years, there would be a workaround for everything I’ve wanted to do. I first started serious backcountry hiking when I lived in Colorado, and it’s been a long and lasting relationship… perhaps the only successful one I’ve ever had.
How about now?
Here I am, and I’ve set this challenge for myself, and for the people in the team I’m building. Let’s explore the world through colors. Let’s make it interesting, and let’s make it tough. It has not gone unnoticed that this is pretty big talk for someone who just learned how to sort the laundry and pick the right color shirt in the morning. I’ve been my own worst skeptic here. “You want to climb Uluru?” my inner critic says. “Let’s see how you do getting to the Trader Joe’s at Geary and Masonic, okay?”
So this past weekend at Land’s End was kind of a big deal. Me putting my money, or at least my trekking pole, where my mouth is.
I have to say this: I had the perfect hiking partner. I’ve known Loren since the seventh grade. Avid outdoor explorer doesn’t begin to cover it, and a writer by trade. Agreeing to help me figure out some new hiking skills when vision suddenly becomes second, or even third or fourth, on the list of useful senses in a pinch, is pretty well above and beyond the call of friendship, but she didn’t hesitate for a second. Trust me, you want to be Loren when you grow up. I know I do.
However, I’m sure I gave Loren more than a little cause for concern at the outset. Me too, actually. I was, to be sure, curious to see how a trekking pole would compare to a cane when it came to navigating a trail, and it was clear that there was going to be a learning curve with little room for error.
The first hundred or so yards was an easy concrete path, much the same as any city sidewalk, but that quickly gave way, first to unpaved gravel, followed by the trail proper, and it was obvious a trekking pole works completely differently than a cane. You sweep a cane from side to side in a arc roughly shoulder wide, and obstacles like curbs, stairs, walls and street signs become navigable obstacles. Yes, there’s a degree of randomness that is exceedingly difficult, and I can’t say I’m anywhere close to mastering it yet, but more often than not, the price of a misstep is usually not much more than my pride. The spike of a trekking pole, however, is not made for sweeping. It’s made, of course, for spiking. From the moment we moved past the pavement, it was clear this little escapade would involve a whole new skill set. We had chosen the Land’s End trail on the western edge of San Francisco, because it’s a trail I’ve hiked dozens of times. Even with the fairly limited sight I had before (about 20/400), it was an easy hike with relatively simple challenges.
Those challenges loomed a bit larger now. Most of the Land’s End trail hugs the shore of the Pacific Ocean and the entrance to San Francisco Bay… the land’s end, as it were. The hillside drop-offs, Loren noted, would not send me, as I had joked, careening into the ocean, but into steep ravines where it would be impossible to break your fall until you hit the rocks and boulders that would break it for you, along with several bones you might prefer remain in their original factory condition. If you’re lucky.
A real life version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (“I can’t swim!” “What are you, crazy? The fall will probably kill you!”) was not part of the itinerary. As I fumbled with the pole, trying to make it act like a cane and, I might add, failing, I’m pretty sure we were both wondering if this was a good idea.
I am happy to report it worked out, and it was an amazing day. I’m completely aware that what I’m about to say is way hyperbolic and more poetic than it needs to be, but here it is: I found myself at the land’s end.
Here’s what we did. We found that the best way to handle the trail was by walking single file. After a bit of practice, I could orient myself as to the best place to be on the trail based on the sound of Loren’s pole as it touched the ground. By calling out specific obstacles and curves as we approached them, I could adjust accordingly.
Over, under, through. I can’t remember where I first heard this phrase. It was either from a friend of mine in the Marine Corps… or Sesame Street. Definitely one or the other.
It works. Over small or flat rocks on the trail. Under overhanging branches. Through passages of brush and low scrub.
Still… stairs. Oh my, the stairs. There’s just no way to evenly set stairs into a trail, but we were able to build up a rhythm that worked. It wasn’t pretty… in fact, if you had seen it, you would have assumed I was working my way back from a bad ACL tear instead of a retinal disease… but it worked, and we covered the four miles of the trail – about a mile and a half each way, plus a side trip to Mile Rock Beach – in about two hours, and I’m counting it as a big W. Plus, while I’m not big on the cliché that “the other senses take over” when sight disappears or is diminished, I have to admit that the sounds of the hawks overhead, the distinct feel of the change in the air’s ambience when the view opened up as the forest cleared, even the smell of the brush and flowering plants… these were all aspects of the hike that had not registered with me before today. I’ll never be so disingenuous as to say that something like the view of the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning fog – a signature aspect of this hike for most – isn’t something I miss terribly, but I do appreciate the very rich flavors from this version of the hike.
There’s still so much to do, and so much to learn, but without getting too ABC After School Special about it, what I really learned this past weekend had nothing to do with trekking pole techniques. It had everything to do with communication, trust and friendship. Being one set of eyes for two pairs of legs is no easy task, and I had the good fortune of tackling this with a friend who was willing to take that on and help me figure it out. So, really, these first steps were so very much not about anything I was trying to do as much as it was about what a good friend was able to give. Patience. Empathy. An open mind. The good stuff.
I think there’s an amazing road ahead, and not a single step of it happens with only one pair of tracks on the trail. Sooner or later, I’ll wear out my crayon metaphors, but here’s one more – there’s a reason there’s more than one crayon in the box. Long live the palette.
