Claire Henley: Adventures West (Time To Get Going)

  • Saturday, August 29, 2015
My writing station in the kitchen
My writing station in the kitchen

(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. Here is her story beginning in March).

“Now Faith…is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”

–C.S. Lewis

The past few mornings, I’ve woken up with Tom Petty’s lyrics in my head: “It’s time to move on, time to get going. What lies ahead I have no way of knowing.” Now that I’m down to two weeks before I start the PCT and have done all I can do to get ready, the next thing to check off my list is “get going.” This being the case, my upcoming path confronts me for the first time without anything in its way. And it feels like being stared down by a bull about to charge.

The PCT isn’t something I’m planning now, but something I’m actually about to do. This reality slammed into me like a sumo wrestler yesterday when I finished putting my resupply boxes together in my room. Over the last five months, the boxes proved to be my biggest project that required buying food in bulk, separating it out, sorting maps by trail sections, looking up post office addresses along the PCT, assembling the boxes with food, maps, and gear, and having the post office here weigh them for an estimated shipping cost. There are 14 boxes total my mom will mail to various locations on the trail at various times for me to pick up when I reach certain towns. It took money, math, research, and time to nail down this resupply strategy. For several weeks the boxes were all I thought about. And now that they’re finished—my last big thing to do before setting foot on the trail—a sense of relief has come over me, sure, but also—unexpectedly—a sense of fear.

Nothing stands in my way of the PCT now except the PCT itself. So, now, I plainly see the fat beast of a mission I have accepted. This got me thinking about home: how daunting it is to say goodbye to everything I know to greet alien lands. Soon, I’ll scramble from this southern safety net for a 2,650-mile walk in the far pacific wild. I dread to leave some things: like my warm bed, hot bath, fresh food, and clean clothes. I ache to leave others: like the Tennessee River, Chattanooga green, and my cat, Leona, curling up on me to sleep. Certain things I’ll miss: like Honest Pint with Ashlyn and Chelsea, Sunday songs at the Woodland church, and writing by the window as the sun comes up and lighthearted birds start their day. Then the rest I’ll long for: like talks by the fire with my dad, cookouts on the deck with my mom, the pub game of pool with my brother, Eric, and the long highway drive with Locksley, my sister.

Last night, I had dinner with my mom at her house on Crestwood Drive—the house I grew up in, buried in the trees. We sat on the back deck in the ripe spring weather, eating steak and drinking wine, and with large emerald eyes my mom looked at me as deep as the forest beyond and said in her affectionate way, “I know you’re going to hike the PCT, Claire, but please don’t go. Please stay.”

She was only voicing motherly love and wasn’t really asking me to stay, but I responded resolutely: “It’s scary, Mama. But this is my path. And I’m going.”

With Easter approaching, I’ve thought again and again about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was the night before his crucifixion, and he was distressed to the point of asking God to let him off the hook. “Take this cup from me,” Jesus prayed. “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Though fretful, Jesus gripped to his faith in God and followed through with the master plan to die an Innocent’s death. And he followed through exactly because this was the plan he spent his thirty-three years on earth preparing. So when quick and combative feelings intruded, Jesus trusted the good and solid plan over himself: no mood could alter his fated course. He died on the cross then rose from the dead. As a result, we, too, may someday rise.

Thankfully, my master plan to hike the PCT is on a much smaller scale than redeeming the human race. But I admit my anxiety over the event. With two weeks left before I begin, heavy worry crashes into me. What if I can’t find water in the desert? What if I run out of food? What if I fall and break an ankle? What if I get lost and am all alone?

These doubts smother my faith in my course, and I want to cry out to God, “Father! Take this cup from me!”

However, in this moment of my distress I remember, like a breath of fresh air, the day this past December when I confirmed my belief in the PCT’s goodness. It was a cold day and I sat inside at my desk, looking up pictures of the trail. I came across a heavenly shot of Mt. Whitney—the tallest mountain in the contiguous U.S., rising to 14,505 ft. And, oh! How I wanted to stand at those heights and touch the royal skies. A rooted joy sprung within me when I realized the PCT carved the way.

The rest is history and now it’s near time to walk. I can’t know what will happen, but—though the unknown path before me snarls and bares its teeth—I will go in faith, clinging to the belief like armor that because I previously determined to take this hike, then worked away to see it through, the result of actually taking it won’t be harmful, but good.

Nevertheless, the questions creep in: What if I just didn’t go? What if I just stayed home instead? And though the questions are fair, if acted upon, they are fatal. For the PCT has become my fated course—the one I’ve believed in and strived for. So to back away now, when it’s right there in front of me, would give my opponent, Uncertainty, the upper hand.

Which makes me then ask: Would I rather let fear of the unknown trample me to death? Or should I have a little faith, and take it by the horns?

* * *

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

Putting together the resupply boxes
Putting together the resupply boxes
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