Why I'm Not Hiking The Appalachian Trail

“Do the right thing, not only when it’s easy but when it’s the hardest damn thing in the world.”

 

    My whole life, I have dreamed of hiking the Appalachian Trail. I love hiking, and the idea of spending six months living in the woods while traveling the entire East Coast. I always dreamed of completing the trail the summer after I graduated from college, but this plan changed when I spent the last semester of my senior year on medical leave from school. However, over the year since then, I decided I wanted to try the trail.

    At first, it seemed like an unreasonable goal. But maybe because of that, it also seemed like an incredible opportunity. I read five books on the Appalachian Trail, along with books on the Pacific Crest Trail and countless blogs. I hoped that the trail would give me a chance to regain my strength, both physically and mentally. I wanted to challenge myself, to prove that I would be strong enough to embark on such an intense journey. I also hoped to get to know myself better through spending six months alone. I craved adventure-after spending a lot of the past two years in bed resting or at various doctors appointments, the idea of living my days alone in the woods seemed like a fantasy.

    I prepared for the trail. I hiked five days a week with a 35 pound pack. I would drive to nearby forests to hike mountains, or climb the steepest hills in my neighborhood over and over. Just having this goal, I was able to progress from considering a two mile walk a lot of exercise to hiking nine miles with a full pack. In addition to physical preparation, I bought supplies. I spent hours researching the best types of gear, the most essential items to pack. I spent hundreds of dollars at REI and on Amazon ordering gear.

View from Training Hike

    But now, the gear is sitting in a bin on the floor of my room. And my pack sits in my mudroom, unused except for training hikes.

    When I postponed my hike in March this year (a week before I planned to start), I expected to begin my hike later this summer. Up until earlier this week, that was my plan. After deciding traveling to start might be too complicated, I decided to start in Massachusetts and work my way through New England first. Even this weekend, when Massachusetts announced they wouldn’t be opening trails for camping this month, I thought I would still do it. I would start in Pennsylvania, as that seemed to have the most things open.

    But the more I read about it, the more it became obvious to me that I couldn’t do it. Towns posted on their Facebook pages that they would arrest anyone they found on the trail. State parks closed all shelters and facilities. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy opened most of the trail for day hikes, but urged all hikers to stay local. Technically, as long as I didn’t go on the closed parts of the trail, what I was doing would be legal.

    But that doesn’t make it right. The more I thought about all of the towns I would walk through, the grocery stores I would stop at for food, the hospital I would go to if I broke my ankle, the more I realized how many people I would be putting at risk. I wasn’t concerned for my own health, I am young and healthy, it is unlikely that I will get sick. But I can’t be responsible for getting other people sick.

    For the whole epidemic, I’ve tried to be responsible. I haven’t gone anywhere non-essential, told my friends I would only see them virtually, and I always social distance. I even talked to my boss about stronger social distancing policies at work, and I have been known to back away from people who come near me in the few times I’ve been in public. I live with someone who is at a very high risk for serious complications from COVID-19, so the idea that I could put them at risk is a huge responsibility. The thought that just by bringing certain germs into the house I could make them so sick is terrifying.

           

    When I thought about backing away from people I see in public, or getting annoyed at the runner who passed me without warning me or giving me space, I knew I couldn’t go. All I can think about is the hospital workers who have risked their lives for months to keep us safe, the families who have watched love ones die without seeing them in person, the high-risk patients who died too soon. I can’t do something that would put these people more at risk, or that would make their jobs harder.

           

    It’s been hard for people to understand why this is so upsetting to me. “But it’s your choice,” they tell me. But it isn’t really. We aren’t blaming the seniors who are upset about missing prom or graduation, and that’s only one night. We aren’t blaming the people who didn’t get to start new jobs, or saying that they are choosing to keep their lives the same. But some of us have to make the decision for ourselves. And I am so grateful this is the decision I’m making: I’m not deciding if I feel safe going to work or if I should take a loved one off a ventilator. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a small decision. But it’s still important.

    It’s important because this is how we’ve all been called to respond to the pandemic, and as more time passes and things start to reopen, we have forgotten. We have forgotten our responsibility to others and the risks we create by doing what we want. I want to acknowledge everyone who has postponed plans for the sake of others: Thank you. For those of you who are struggling with such decisions, I wish you the best of luck. It isn’t easy, and it never will be. But all you can do is what you believe is right.

Beginning of Summer at the Farm

            Last week felt like the beginning of summer. The weather was beautiful-cooler mornings but getting up to the 80’s and 90’s in the afternoons. Most days were sunny, but then this weekend we got enough rain to keep the plants alive.

            During this time of stay-at-home advisories, I am appreciating my job more than ever. I get to work outside everyday, interacting with my friends and growing plants that feed people. This week felt especially great-I had some incredible interactions with wildlife and it was the first week of harvesting many summer crops.

            Monday morning started out amazing. On my drive to work, I passed two young deer, one of whom ran across the road while the other hid in the bushes. After waiting to give the other one a chance to cross, I kept driving, hoping they’ll reunite. Luckily there wasn’t a lot of traffic at 6:30 am, so I wasn’t too worried about them getting hit.

            As I drove up the driveway to turn on the water at the farm, I kept seeing more wildlife. A small woodchuck lazily chewed the grass along the driveway. He looked up at me, staring with his mouth full, as if I didn’t concern him at all. As I kept driving, I passed the cows, horses, and chickens that also live at the farm.

            As I was weeding the onions, I was greeted by a true sign of spring; a bird’s nest. This is a killdeer nest, so anytime you go near it the mother will screech at you to scare you away from her eggs. As I got closer, though, she ran away, faking injury so that I would hopefully follow her. Instead, I got to see her nest up close before leaving the area so she could return to her nest without fear.

Killdeer nest with four eggs in the onlions

            Not only were the wildlife a highlight of the week, but it was the first harvest of many summer crops. To me, nothing says summer like fresh snap peas. And this week, after weeks of planting, trellising, and waiting, they were finally ready. After I picked them for hours, I finally got to sample my first one of the season, and was reminded how much a simple food can capture the joy of a season. It was so sweet, yet also felt filling and hydrating, the perfect food for a summer day.

First snap peas of the summer

            Besides snap peas, I also harvested arugula, spinach, mixed greens, mizuna, and many herbs this week. In my backyard, we have so much lemon balm, a delicious perennial herb that spreads every year. After watching it grow faster than anything in our yard for weeks, I finally decided I should try eating it.

            Exhausted after a busy week, I didn’t want to make something too complicated. Instead, I found a recipe from Health Starts in the Kitchen to make lemon balm iced tea. It was extremely simple, I picked stalks of lemon balm, washed them, and put them into a mason jar. Then, I added about a tablespoon of honey and poured in boiling water. You can leave it to brew for 20 mins to 12 hours, so I left it overnight. When I came down in the morning, I filled a glass with ice and poured myself some tea. It was absolutely delicious- it was sweet, citrusy, and refreshing.

Lemon Balm Iced Tea

            Not only did it taste delicious, but I googled it, curious if it had caffeine. In retrospect, that was sort of a silly question because it’s just herbal tea, so it isn’t caffeinated. But I’m glad I did google it, because I learned that lemon balm tea is used to relax people before sleep, to calm anxiety, and relieve depression. It’s even proven to lower blood pressure and solve other health problems (Read more from Organic Facts here ). I will certainly be making this tea into a staple for the summer-so simple to make, yet delicious and healthy.

            All in all, it was a great week on the farm. Beautiful weather, interesting wildlife encounters, summer veggies, and enjoying refreshing herbal tea. Curious about life on the farm? Stay tuned for more updates this summer about life as an organic farmer.

Why Purple Garlic?

Heirloom garlic

       For me, garlic is art. It reminds me that simple things don't have to be boring, they can be special. Garlic shows me of the natural beauty that can come from growing through new situations, and it reminds me to observe the beauty of each present moment.

       I always thought garlic was white. My family usually bought pre-minced garlic, but sometimes they bought large white bulbs from the grocery store. Even though the color was plain, I was always intrigued by the layers and the forms of these white bulbs.

White garlic from our farm

        But then I started working on an heirloom garlic farm. Here, garlic isn’t just white. Sometimes it’s purple, pink, or yellow. It has names like “sunset” and “burgundy”. I didn’t know that garlic, a food I ate almost every day, could come in different colors. How could I have missed such a beautiful occurrence, right before my eyes? How could I have eaten garlic from a jar, grown around the world and soaked in preservatives when I could grow something so magical in my own backyard? 

Different varieties of garlic in different colors and patterns

      

        When I tell people about my job, a natural question is, “What’s your favorite vegetable?” My immediate answer is always garlic. Not because of the taste (although I love the flavor), but because of how it’s grown, because of the varieties, and the stories.

       To grow garlic, you bury a clove. One clove grows into a new bulb of garlic. Unlike most plants, you plant it in the fall, usually late November. Garlic needs the cold winter weather to form its unique shape. It only gets strong enough to form cloves (next year’s seeds) by surviving the winter.

Garlic cloves for planting

       The summer is really the season for garlic. Usually in late July, it is time to harvest garlic. Harvesting garlic was the moment I really fell in love with farming. It was the moment when I wondered how anybody could even think of doing anything else with their lives.

       When you harvest garlic, you first dig underneath it with either a pitchfork or undercut it with a tractor, to loosen the roots from the dirt beneath them. Then, you reach your hands into the rich soil, digging purely guided by the feeling of the plant and the soil, until you can firmly grab the garlic. For some varieties, you can grab it higher up along the stem before gently pulling it out. For others, you have to dig until you’re holding the entire bulb in your hand so that it doesn’t rip off the neck.

Fresh garlic lined up to wash

       When you pull the garlic out of the ground, you have to be extremely careful. This isn’t a rock you’re digging up. This is a fresh bulb, which has lived under the earth for months. You gently pull the stem up, releasing pressure when there’s too much pullback from the roots, a sign that you need to dig around it more so you don’t break the neck.

       When you handle this fresh garlic, it isn’t something you just toss in a harvest bin. Fresh garlic bruises extremely easily, which causes it to rot when it’s cured, so you have to treat the bulb like an egg, placing it gently where you want it to go.

       While you can eat garlic fresh from the ground (called green garlic), it’s usually cured, which means dried out, for about six weeks so that it hardens and can be stored much longer. This, too, is a process incorporating community, art and tradition.

Garlic drying in the greenhouse

        Sometimes soft-neck garlic varieties (they have flexible stems instead of the harder ones of other varieties) are dried out by braiding them. These braids can be woven with dried flowers to add color, and bulbs of garlic can be cut off when you're ready to eat them.

Garlic braid

       For me, the growing and harvesting of garlic is the magic that makes garlic more than just a vegetable. It embodies everything beautiful about farming: growing a new plant from a tiny seed, surviving a long winter to blossom the next summer, digging this new bulb out of rich soil. Garlic holds a story, a life of its own that culminates in a beautiful bulb with a powerful flavor.

7 Books about Mindfulness and Meditation Everyone Should Read

            Over the last few years, I’ve started reading more about mindfulness and meditation. It’s one of the best ways that I’ve learned more about meditation and different practices. It also inspires me to build a stronger practice by showing me the potential of meditation in one’s life.

            These are some of the books that I’ve found most inspiring:

1. The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by BeingPresent to the Life You Have by Mark Nepo

The Book of Awakening

            This book is calendar based, each day has a quote, short reflection, and meditation. It was written by Mark Nepo, a poet and teacher, after recovering from his fight with cancer. He shares his journey of living in the present moment by helping readers awaken to their lives.. For me, it has been an incredible way to start each morning by reminding myself of what’s most important.

           

2. Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh

            This is a beautiful book filled with short passages reflecting on various themes. Thich Nhat Hanh, who has sold millions of books with his Buddhist teachings, describes ways to be present during your everyday life: while you brush your teeth, in the car, or folding laundry. It’s filled with entertaining stories and brilliant life lessons.

3. Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie

            This book describes the life of Tenzin Palmo as she spends over 12 years living alone in a cave in the Himalayas.  She details not only Palmo's experiences in the cave, but her journey to the cave after growing up in England, as well as the ways she has since worked to advance Buddhism for women in the West. It’s an eye-opening story of how mindfulness changed one woman’s life, and how she has used that to change the lives of many others.

4. The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh

            This book is a practical guide to meditation. Like many of his other books, it is written in a poetic language. It simplifies meditation, making it easier for beginners to understand, before diving deeply into principles behind meditation that are insightful for any level practitioner. Above all, he describes how to discover the joy in meditation.

5. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Timesby Pema Chodron

            This book guides readers through facing difficult times and helps readers learn how to emerge stronger from challenges. It helps readers break problematic habits, communicate more effectively, and practice compassion and courage from their difficulties. Many of Chodron’s over 20 books belong on this list, as they are an excellent guide to mindfulness, but this book particularly guides readers mindfully through life’s challenges.

6. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart ofa Buddha by Tara Brach

            Brach’s book offers a path to freedom from the suffering we all face by not accepting ourselves as we are. From her over 40 years as a meditation teacher, and her experience as a clinical psychologist, she gives practical steps people can take to accept themselves. Through clients’ stories, traditional Buddhist stories, and personal experience, Brach guides people to live more compassionately, opening themselves up to helping the world.

7. 21 questions for the 21st century by YuvalNoah Harari

            This book looks at the biggest problems that will come up this century-sociological, technological, political, and philosophical- and how we can hope to solve them. While it’s not about meditation, meditation and mindfulness are tools that Harari encourages readers to embrace while thinking about these problems and ways to advance our society and adapt to the constant changes.

            These are seven of the books that I have found most helpful and inspiring in my meditation practice. What would you add to the list?

Quotes in my Journal

            I love quotes. I have always loved quotes because they’re such a simple reminder of such important truths. My home page on my internet browser is Brainy Quote’s Quote of the Day. I record quotes as I read, and I screenshot quotes that I come across on my phone.

            So as I thought about what to include in my journal, quotes seemed like a natural choice. I wanted to include important quotes within the journal, following the relevant day’s entry. I might record something someone said to me that made me laugh, or I might record a meaningful quote I came across in my reading. These allow me to remember specific moments of my day, and they also let me remember what I might have been thinking about that day. Whenever I add a quote, I start a new line, indent it, and start it with a tilde (~) so that if I’m flipping through my journal it’s obvious where quotes are. This is really helpful because I usually end entries with quotes, but sometimes I’ll put it in the middle if it’s something I’m thinking about, so it’s nice to easily be able to find them.

A quote within one day's entry

            Since I love quotes so much (and I really believe one could live their life by following good quotes), I wanted to include quotes in a way that I would see them regularly and make me think. In my room, I have quotes that I’ve taped to the wall next to my desk, quotes taped to the back of my door, and quotes taped under my light switch. I keep quotes everywhere so that I see them when I’m doing something else, and they make me pause and think for a minute. I also have a wall that I’ve covered with large handwritten quotes for some of my favorite quotes.

One quote display on my bedroom wall

            In order to include quotes more prominently in my journals, I decided to write important quotes on the inside front and back covers. I usually handwrite them (although sometimes I type it if it’s longer like a poem) and glue them into the covers. Sometimes I do this when I start the journal, if there’s a quote that I want to inspire the way I write in that journal. Sometimes I do it as I’m writing the journal, if I’m recording a quote in one day’s entry that I want to think about more often. And sometimes, I get to the end of the journal and realize I never did it, so I go back through the journal and pull out some quotes that stand out to me. This way, when I finish the journal, I have a small collection of quotes to remind me what types of ideas I was inspired by while I was writing.

Some quotes on the covers of my journals

            For me, quotes are an important part of my journal because they’re an important way I reflect on my life and my priorities. Do you record quotes in your journal? Or, do you have something similar that you could include in your journal? I have friends who add a sketch everyday, glue in a picture they took that day, or glue in natural items (leaves, flowers) that they found that day. Journaling can be a great place to not only collect your thoughts and ideas, but to remind yourself of the things that inspired those ideas.

Since I can’t resist, here are a few of the quotes collected from my journals and my wall:

~ “A bird sitting on a branch is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but in its own wings.” (Unknown)

~ “You don’t have to believe in it. Just suspend your disbelief for a little while and give it a chance.” (A friend, describing the benefits of mediation).

~ “Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean it can’t also be good.”

~ “Life doesn't get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient." (Steve Maraboli)

Gratitude in My Journal

            For me, one of the most important part of my journals is expressing gratitude. There have been so many studies about the importance of gratitude journals (Read more from Amy Morin on Psychology Today), and I have found it is really helpful to think about things you’re grateful for everyday.

            Over the years, I have tried several different formats for my gratitude sections of my journal. At first, I had a separate journal where I recorded 3 things I was grateful for everyday. Then, I decided I wanted it in my journal, so I listed 5 things I was grateful for everyday in the back. For those lists, I tried to focus on moments or people that made me happy, rather than things. I remembered moments each day when I laughed or smiled, and wrote about those because we tend to remember and focus so much more on negative memories (Read more from Kendra Cherry on Very Well Mind).

            Now, I use a table format for my gratitude lists. I write it at the end (or in the middle) of each day’s entry. I based the structure off this chart (Read more from Madhuleena Roy Chowdhury on Positive Psychology), so I have four different categories: Compliments, Challenges & Lessons, People, and Assetts.

Compliments What compliments would I give myself today?	Challenges and Lessons What are some challenges I faced today and what did I learn from them?
People Who am I grateful for today?	Assets What am I grateful for today?

Here’s a little bit about what I write for each:

1. Compliments: the goal of compliments is to write compliments you would give yourself about that day. For me, this was really difficult at first, but has become a fun way to reflect on my day. I’ve found that it encourages me to challenge myself and to remind me of what type of person I want to work towards becoming.

Some Comments I’ve Written:

-“I’m proud of you for going on a run after work even though you felt really tired. And I’m proud of you for being nice to yourself while you did it, and not being too hard on yourself for how challenging it felt.”

-“Good job advocating for yourself at work today.”

2. Challenges & Lessons: the goal of this section is to think about things each day that challenged you and what you learned from them. The lessons section has been the hardest part of this, but it makes me feel more in control of my life and acknowledges how I’ve grown. I’ve noticed that many of the challenges stay the same from day to day, but I try to make the lessons different each day-what did having this challenge teach me today?

Some Challenges & Lessons I’ve Written:

- Uncertainty about the future: I’m learning to be more okay with knowing that I am not sure what I’m doing next, and instead to focus on the present moment.

-Feeling sick: I’m learning how to be gentle with myself by noticing what my body needs when I feel sick and respond accordingly.

3. People-what people were you grateful for today? I have a rule that it can only be people who I actively interacted with or thought about specifically that day. This prevents me from just listing all my friends and family every day, and challenges me to think about who positively influenced my day.

Some People I’ve Written About:

-Post office workers

-My new doctor who listens to me

4. Assets- what are some assets in your life right now? I think of this most similar to traditional gratitude lists, what things are you thankful for? Again, I try to focus on things that I specifically noticed that day. Maybe it’s a new book I enjoyed reading, a new meditation exercise I enjoyed, or something my phone allowed me to do.

Some Assets I’ve Written:

-A job that I love

-The book Quiet for changing how I think about myself and other people.

Those are the four areas of gratitude that I try to reflect on everyday. Do you record gratitude in your journal? How do you do it? If you don’t currently, I encourage you to try out different types of gratitude lists and see which one feels the best for you.