Not feeling any love for the trails

Lake Isabella, near Kamilchee

The title says it all, just not feeling it.  I’m not enjoying hiking right now.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  One reason is that I’ve hiked all the local trails so many times that it never feels like an adventure anymore.  Another reason is the crowds.  Twice as many people hike now as did ten years ago according the Seattle NPR. 

  That means more people on the trails and less solitude for me. 

I can go off trail to avoid the crowds, but there a huge problem with that now.  Ticks!  Ticks are mostly in off trail locations such as in the grass on old logging roads and in the brush anywhere near Lake Cushman.  I don’t want Lyme disease!

Another problem is a recent loss of income from my photography.  I worry about racking up the miles driving my car to and from distant trail heads.   I can’t afford the gas or the wear and tear on my car. When I try to hike close to home though, I’m in tick country.  Mount Walker is good for its bus transportation and it is a pretty trail, but this time of year the road is open and it’s too crowded.

Another reason, maybe the biggest is that I am depressed.  

My home situation is very hard.  My spouse is on hospice and grumpy as hell all the time.  He argues and argues and argues.  The fact that my spouse is dying is of course stressful too.  It is so sad to see him slowly deteriorate.   He is down to 95 pounds now and his frame is 5’10”.

Losing my favorite source of photography income gave me many mixed feelings.   Anxiety, sadness and anger come up whenever I think about it.     The loss of that creative outlet for me is not good for my development as a photographer, this loss also came with a loss of status in my community as the newspaper’s photographer.  So it’s not just the loss of income that plunged us into poverty that is upsetting me and causing me anxiety.

Another major stress in my life is my 14 year old daughter.   Whoops, I mean son.   Major, major stress there.

Lastly, with my husband being ill for so long, there is something I’m missing in my life, but I’m not looking for anyone to fill that need, so don’t even go there.

My  existential terror is always lurking in the background, but it really comes to the forefront  at times like this.  I think about death a lot, I mean every day. 

Speaking of death,  last week I learned that my step-father has been dead for over six months, he was my last major connection to my mother.

So I’m depressed, anxious, broke and I’m going to die someday.  Okay not broke, but our monthly income puts us well below the poverty level and I don’t want to have to dig into my savings month after month.

I have cheered up a little bit this week though since I bought a Kayak and a cheap set of ropes to put it on my car with.  There are a lot of little lakes nearby, that are much closer to me than any trail head.  I don’t have to drive far at all to launch my Kayak. 

So now I am exercising my upper body instead and I have not yet been brave enough to take a good camera into my kayak, so the photos won’t be that great, but I’ll post them anyway.

I will probably start enjoying hiking  again in the winter when the crowds and the ticks are gone.  But for now maybe I should change the name of this blog to a name that a face book fan invented for it.  Floats with Flotsam instead of Walks with Moss.    

Under Lake Isabella

Lake Isabella

Island Lake

My second hand Kayak