the story
“There’s about 1000 black bears in the Catskill Mountains. If you see one, don’t approach it,” the sign read at the front of the trailhead.
Panic ripped through me and my heart began to beat faster. I shook my head. I knew I shouldn’t have read that sign.
It was my birthday a few weeks ago and this time around I’d decided to do a solo trip to the Catskills. I rented a car, drove three hours upstate and into the mountains, and stayed at a boutique hotel so I could touch grass, breathe in something other than the smell of trash, and hit pause on my crazy (beautiful) city life. On my birthday I told myself I’d go on a hike, all by myself.
I’d been doing things that scared me a lot lately, simply because I’d never done them before and I wanted to prove to myself that I could. Renting a car, navigating a new place all alone, and a solo hike in a matter of a few days were all activities that were pretty anxiety inducing for me. I’d conquered the first two (turns out renting a car is freakishly easy) and now here I was at my hike. Scared for dear life.
The way my plot line works, the universe loves to send me a good plot twist to really shake things up. There were black bears in the Catskills. Of course there were, and it would be just my luck to encounter one in the middle of the mountains with no protection, cell service, or anyone to brainstorm an escape route with.
Just go. Keep walking and you’ll shake it off.
Every crunch I heard, I flinched. I found myself blazing through the trail, scared to look up or around me for fear that I would lock eyes with a damn bear. I was freaking out, my anxious thoughts propelling me forward on the trail at a pace that was way too fast. I briefly locked eyes with the first hiker I encountered. He looked shocked to see me there. That was reassuring.
About twenty minutes in, I stopped myself and began to breathe as deeply as I could. Trying on the grounding technique I’d just learned in teacher training, I looked around and noted my surroundings to help bring me back to my body. Tree. Plant. Stream. Dirt. Rock. Chipmunk.
Alright girl, we can’t do the whole trail like this. You need to trust. Trust yourself, trust the nature and creatures around you, trust that the Universe is not going to let anything happen to you. Nothing is going to try and hurt you. Breathe.
I began to walk again, slower this time. I got a feel for the trail and learned to find the nearest marker that assured me I was on the right track. I turned on music to distract me from hearing every single sound of the forest and felt myself begin to relax. Sinking into the moment, I took in everything around me. The leaves on the tall trees became more vibrant. The smell of the forest energized me. The sound of the streams nearby brought me peace.
One thing about the Catskills. A “moderate” hike is actually pretty hard. Finishing up mile two of a nearly non-stop uphill trail, I was out of breath and running low on water. I pushed myself forward. The next people I passed told me there were thirty more minutes left to the top. The panic creeped up again. I was at my lowest energy level, in fact, I was on Day 2 of my period. The girls know. It was not the time for overexertion. I felt terrible.
See, this is what happens. You push yourself way too hard after your intuition tells you to stop and then you get hurt. What are you trying to prove? Do we really need to keep going?
The voice in my head was LOUD, chile. And the answer was no. My goal was complete. I got what I needed. I’d taken myself out of my comfort zone by hiking all the way up there solo. Now every single part of me was telling me to turn around and go down. So that’s exactly what I did. As soon as I made the decision my soul felt lighter, happier, relieved. That’s how I knew it was the right one.
the lesson
Trust your life path. It’s no secret that the beginning of my year was turbulent to say the least. With how many twists and turns I’d endured, I found myself on the trail bracing for another experience that would throw my nervous system off balance. There was so much I didn’t know going into that hike and it scared the hell out of me. My mind was doing backflips trying to arrive at the worse case scenario and I drove myself crazy. The moment I surrendered as best I could was the moment I began to feel better.
Trust nature. Turns out, I’ve been a city girl for so long that a hike in broad daylight with practically no people around is scarier to me than walking home in Brooklyn by myself at 10pm. The peace of the mountains freaks me out more than hearing folks in the neighborhood get into it in the middle of the street. This isn’t good or bad, but funny that the chaos of NYC is more comforting to me. For a lot of us city people, being out in nature isn’t the norm. There’s a huge disconnect there, and I’ve realized I want to spend more time discovering peace through stillness rather than feeling at home in chaos.
Trust your inner compass. If we’re being really honest here, I have a habit of listening to my intuition only 60% of the time. The other part of the time I’m so attached to the outcome and the happy story I’ve made up in my mind that I choose to be delulu and keep going. What hit me on the trail that day was how much a pattern like that has and could continue to hurt me. If I’d kept going, I could’ve gotten dehydrated. I could’ve tripped and hurt myself. Hell, I could’ve run into that black bear I was so scared of. Every signal in my mind and body was telling me no, this was not the time to reach the top of the mountain. And yet, I wanted to avoid the shame of not having made it to the top. The sparkly destination point I’d made up in my head. My fear of “failure” was so strong that day that I almost pushed myself over the edge when there was no reason to.
the light
The day I turned 28 was amazing. I practiced yoga on the deck of the hotel’s little wellness center. I hiked a trail that taught me way more about myself than I’d ever expected. I laid in a cozy king bed for hours watching Bridgerton and gazing out my window at the mountains, happily devouring White Cheddar Cheez-Its. I had the most delicious dinner for one while chatting with the bartender about how he went from living in NYC to upstate. I was asleep by 10:30pm. I don’t always feel different the day I turn a new age, but this time I did. I have my sheer devotion to doing the most and the mountains to thank for that.
In the spirit of this new lap around the sun, my goal is to operate on 75% intuition and be 25% delulu. I don’t need a perfect score and it takes awhile to change patterns anyway. I’m in a season of setting attainable goals, okay?! Here’s to 28 🥂
my matcha moment 🍵
My birthday week happened to coincide with our sessions on trauma-informed yoga in my teacher training, and one of my instructors shared something called the Learning Zone Model with us. It depicts three different zones: comfort, growth, and alarm. There is always space to venture into the unknown, try something new, and grow from that experience. If we venture too far too soon, however, it’s counterproductive and may make you feel worse. The next time you’re pushing yourself towards something and it starts to feel a little out of hand, maybe take a pause and ask yourself: are you growing, or are you going too far, too fast?