Life Lessons From A Tough Hike On Lake Superior Javascript must be enabled to use this site. Please enable Javascript in your browser and try again. × Search search POPULAR SEARCHES SUGGESTED LINKS Join AARP for just $9 per year when you sign up for a 5-year term. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. Leaving AARP.org Website You are now leaving AARP.org and going to a website that is not operated by AARP. A different privacy policy and terms of service will apply.

Grueling Hike Ends With Question What Do You Have to Prove

One tough woman learns there s more to life than surviving

Susan Lina Ruggles/Getty Images Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. It didn't occur to me then to question whether pushing myself was a laudable goal. It was simply what I did. Connie and I are good friends. Her wife has a bad knee and can't backpack; my husband would rather use his rare time off to ski. So once a year, Connie and I and her two yellow Labradors go for a multiday hike. The first day began pleasantly, with a long walk through groves of beech and fir, pin oak and white pine. We could hear the pounding of the waves of the lake through the forest and smell the sweet, sharp scent of balsam. In parts the trail grew steep, and we had to remove our packs and hoist them up, then help the dogs scramble up the slope. It was hard, but we managed. Then we came to the boulders. Most of the trail onward from there was cove after cove of huge boulders. We took off our packs and squeezed between boulders, we threaded our way downhill across boulders, and we climbed over boulders. We sat down and slid on steep rocks, tearing holes in the tents buckled to our packs. Connie's legs were bloodied; I had a baseball-sized lump on my shin. We covered just 5 miles in nine hours. When we straggled out of the woods into a pebbled cove, I was so tired I could barely nod at the lone kayaker who came out to point us toward a campsite down the beach. The next day we awoke to gray skies. The bruise on my shin stretched from knee to ankle. I walked down the beach to ask the kayaker what he knew about the next stretch of trail. "It's tough,” he said. Then, “It's going to rain. I'm going to get out of here before the wind picks up.” And I can't tell you why, knowing it was going to rain, we made a fire and ate breakfast and stitched up our tents until almost 2 p.m., setting off just as a light drizzle began. AARP Membership — $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. Flowers & Gifts 25% off sitewide and 30% off select items See more Flowers & Gifts offers > We came out of the woods on top of a cliff; I took off my pack and sat down. I've had plenty of therapy. I don't know why it took an impossible hike over an impossible trail to finally show me that the answer I'd been looking for all my life was to sit down and rest. I'd had my share of Me Too experiences; I'd learned how to stand up for myself at work, in my friendships, in my marriage, with my kids. I marched at the 2017 Women's March. I taught my daughters to say no without explanation or apology. I knew Mary Oliver's poem “Wild Geese” by heart, and I knew I did not have to be good, or walk on my knees for a hundred miles, repenting. I had only to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves. Only my body was a hard animal, honed through hours of exercise boot camps and long hikes. And I had never paid attention to learning to assert myself in what was the most difficult and meaningful relationship of my life: the one I had with myself. I told Connie I was done, and I started to cry. It was primal, part exhaustion, part fear, but more — a deep, unutterable relief that I could finally let go. I had pushed myself until I found the absolute limit of what I could do, and I was tired, and I wanted to go to the cabin and take a long, hot shower and rest. And then I wanted to go home and rest some more. “We're not injured,” Connie said. “A rescue will cost money." "I think my family would rather pay for my rescue than my funeral.” "The best way to get over your fear of something is to do it,” she said. “You can do this." "I don't want to,” I said. They're the truest words I've ever spoken. We collected our packs and the dogs and hiked back to where we'd camped the night before. I sent our GPS coordinates and a message on our satellite communication device to our friend Sarah. The next day the Ontario Provincial Police came in a small boat. We waded out into the cold, rocky lake and loaded our gear and dogs and ourselves onto the boat, where two kind officers gave us big, warm coats and steered us on a choppy ride 25 miles down the lake, to the quiet turquoise bay where they'd launched, where a road awaited. The rescue was free; all in a day's work for the OPP. I'm home; Connie and I are still friends. I think often of a line from a Derek Walcott poem that reads, “The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome.” I wish I'd smiled at that woman a long time ago. I smile at her now every day. 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