ART IMITATES LIFE

BY CHRISTINE REED

At the trailhead, there are flowers beneath the tree canopy. Yellow and pink and orange. Green spreads itself like a ground cloth on either side of the trail. Lodgepole pines stand tall and fragrant, closing me into their world. The sound of chipmunks scurrying through underbrush lets me know that I'm not alone.

Over several miles, I climb through the forest, gaining elevation. I grow hot, sweating through my shirt. My feet connect firmly to the earth, and my legs' muscles engage in pressing me ever upward. Every hour, I stop to eat. My body requires fuel to keep moving, and I feel each bite move through my digestive tract. I feel the calories converting to energy. I know when I've had enough and when I need more. I gulp water to combat the sweating I have done—moisture beads on my body before evaporating into the atmosphere, leaving a salty crust on my skin. I chew up a salt tablet.

When I break free from the treeline, the path before me becomes an angled boulder field. My feet press into the rock, but the rock gives nothing back. Among the boulders, marmots bask in the sun. They lumber and scamper playfully as if nobody is watching but clearly aware that I am.

I breathe the scent of melted glaciers heavily. I must inhale twice for every exhale—trying to pull in enough oxygen at this elevation. From here, I can see a great distance. The mountains beyond are clear, each ridgeline pronounced. Beyond those, the major prominences are visible, but only in generalities, the whole form a dusky blue. Farther back, another layer and another, each one fainter shade of blue than the last until they disappear into the sky. As I reach the saddle, a breeze funnels over me. It moves the wispy hairs that frame my face. It stings my eyes, and they begin to leak. I lean into the climb, hunching my body forward as I continue my progress.

My head grows light, and my legs are heavy as I near the top of the mountain. When I finally reach the summit, I smile to myself. There is nobody here. This day is my own. The silence is spacious and roomy, and I can dance around in it with my arms flung wide. I take up as much room as I want. I think my own thoughts loudly with nobody to rebut them.

Every moment is a rush of sensation; the world is something to behold. I think of my life back home, but it feels trivial, distant. Every moment that my feet follow this path is a moment of truth. I am present. I exist entirely in this space. Even when my thoughts wander, I am pulled back by the sights, the sounds, the smells, the experience of being in my body on this mountain.

Back home, I sit to write. A story about my life, my body, my feet, the trail. I know what I want to say. I want to talk about the feelings of

strong muscles working together to move me forward, the weight of my pack sitting on my shoulders, the breeze and the sun playing tag on my skin, the shameless consumption of calories that would quickly be burned up as I accumulate miles.

I want to tell a story about a woman battling with her own self-image, battling against her diagnosis, battling against what the world wants her to be, battling against what she wants herself to be. It's my story, and it needs to be told, so that I can release those battles to the world. Because it never really belonged to me in the first place, it's every woman's story that I've met; it's a story that has gone on for generations.

But telling a story is never so easy. So here I sit, before my laptop in Denver, CO. I gaze out the window at the side of an ugly brick building. I become less and less aware of my body as an assemblage of muscles that work to move me forward in the world. It is always the same temperature here. A wind never tickles my shoulders. I do not sweat. I do not view the calories I consume as the fuel to keep my body moving. I do not stand in awe. I do not see for miles in every direction the depth and prominence of the earth. I become dull—a reflection of what I see every day. Same. Manmade. Uninspired.

Creativity is an interaction between our thoughts and the world around us. If one of those things is stagnant, the most active of the other will still struggle to create. If your mind is unchanging, the most fascinating landscape will do little to spark creativity. And these unchanging surroundings challenge my mind to recall the beauty of the world and the story I want to tell.

So, I go out. Out of my office. Out of the house. Out of the city. I climb into a pine forest—one which hosts a small stand of aspens. The leaves have fallen so that the white trunks stand bare like ghosts among the evergreens. The air is crisp, nipping at my flushed cheeks as I trek upward. I unzip my jacket. I fold my knit hat and shove it into a pocket. I stop for breath and gulp water. It's easy to forget how close this nature is from home.

I see the highway below from a rocky outcrop, a strip of humanity between the mountains. Its monotonous hum and breakneck speed seem far from me now. The sky has turned a dark grey since I left the parking lot, and a lazy swirl of snow begins to descend. A few other hikers nod hello, not daring to break the silence. Snow falls heavier and coats the trail. My footsteps become a crunching compaction of snow into earth. I hear my own thoughts for the first time in a long time.

Would you be interested in writing about how you've struggled to find creativity lately? It would be awesome if you could tie it to "recharging” on the trail or in nature and how it may help.

Christine Reed is an avid amateur outdoorswoman. Her upbringing as a military brat taught her to see everywhere and nowhere as home. She didn't start hiking until after college, when she realized she wasn't sure where her life was headed and sought out a defined path on the Appalachian Trail. She's currently living in a converted Ford Transit, hiking, rock climbing and kicking around the US, and working on a debut memoir about life, hiking, and human connection.

Follow her on Instagram.

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.” -- Terry Tempest Williams

www.hikeitofflife.com