Day 46: The comfort zone
The last two days wrecked me: not only because of the distance I walked, but also due to the challenges posed by the elements (wind, water, sun). Yesterday, the kilometers along the aqueduct were monotonous and unforgiving. After the lunch break, we had to walk another sixteen kilometers. After all that, one would think they deserve some rest, and that was the feeling once we arrived at the campsite: a few trees, a nearby stream, the comfort of water readily available, and above all, finally out of the area battered by the wind – this part of the Mojave Desert is indeed more covered with wind turbines than solar panels.
Unfortunately, it was all a Disney fairytale illusion. There were no comfortable spots (flat or nearly flat), and the ground was hard and rocky. The exhaustion of the day convinced me to prepare a cowboy camp night, that is, without a tent. But as soon as I finished setting up my spot, the wind reminded us that it hadn't gone anywhere and started blowing in strong gusts again. I looked for an alternative place to pitch the tent and found one about twenty meters upstream: perfectly flat and on fine gray gravel, where the stakes went in like a knife through butter and held firmly once in. Satisfied, I gave myself a quick wash – with extra care for my feet, which always gather all the dirt that manages to get into my shoes.
Around eight-thirty, we were ready for bed. Everything seemed (too) perfect when I laid down and started writing my journal. Again, it was a momentary illusion bound to last only a few hours. Around ten-thirty, the wind returned, and this time it made clear it was serious. You could hear it howling as it funneled down from above and descended into the narrow canyon where our camp was located. These weren’t gusts, but proper blasts coming every ten to twenty seconds; as if someone up there was managing to parcel the air and hurl it down into the valley. Suddenly, that beautifully compact and smooth ground became the worst place to be: each gust lifted a handful of sand that flew close to the ground, at just the right height to slip under the tent. I tried to adjust the tent’s setup, lowering it further to offer less surface area to the wind and reduce the space where the sand could sneak in. The setup improved, and the tent flapped much less, but the sand still came in far too easily. I folded a bandana like a mask to breathe less sand, and the only thing I could do was curl up in my sleeping bag and try to sleep. Before five in the morning, when it was almost time to get up as I wanted to leave early, I estimated I had slept three hours in total. I quickly realize that today's twenty-seven kilometers will be harder than expected.
This entire reflection fits perfectly with the one I made a few weeks ago about the comfort zone. Are we sure we know what ours is? In one of the videos I posted on Instagram, I said, borrowing the words of a friend and far more experienced hiker, that the comfort zone can be expanded by climbing the ladder of discomfort in small steps1. But like many things in life, even this small transformation doesn’t happen all at once. As when processing grief, we go through different phases; here the first one involves acceptance: we’re lying in our tent while outside the wind has no intention of stopping; with every gust, a handful of sand covers and fills everything the tent contains, including ourselves. What can we do? We can curse, shout, cry, leave the tent to seek someone’s company, but none of that will change the situation. The only thing that can give us (a meager) mental relief is accepting the present condition: it’s a mindfulness experiment in a situation far from relaxing.
It’s something the trail is trying to teach me: any change we want to make in our lives must start with accepting the current conditions. The problem is that we are unaccustomed to this; we’re impatient in everything, addicted to the possibility of changing anything we don’t like about our lives, and we expect to be able to do so immediately, with no effort or discomfort.
We may call it a kind of mithridatism.↩