Today I broke the 15-mile mark and started wearing a backpack. Sixteen miles-- up to the 6-mile marker and back, which finally takes me across the stone bridge that is a distinctive feature of the stretch of the GW Parkway running south from Old Town Alexandria to the Mount Vernon estate.* Today's encumbrance: 17 pounds, not including the pack itself. My dad found two 5-pound sacks of flour and a 5-pound sack of sugar to stuff in the pack (I bought the pack from Target last night); I added a 32-ounce bottle of water, which I didn't drink (plenty of water fountains up and down the trail, most of which I visited on the return trip). The flour, sugar, and water turned out to be more than enough to begin with.
This was the first day I truly felt that I'd been working out. The weather's a bit warmer now, and the added encumbrance, which wasn't significant during the first half of the walk, made itself felt during the return trip. My feet were hurting by the time I got home (I didn't rest during the walk except to stop briefly for water at several water fountains); the extra weight got my heart rate up and I had to puff a bit up some of the hills-- nothing to compare with a Namsan hike in Seoul (itself not very difficult compared to, say, a day hike up Bukhan-san or Gwanak-san), but I could feel the incline this time around. This doesn't bode well: I need to be able to hike 30 miles with a 70-pound encumbrance, and while today's speed was still respectable (16 miles in 05:17:00, or 3.03mph), I worry about how slow I'm going to be-- and how much my feet are going to hurt-- by the time I hit 30 miles and 70 pounds on my training calendar. I already know, thanks to all this, that I'm highly unlikely to attempt a walk longer than 30 miles in a single day. Ten leagues is enough, ja?
Still, it was good to get the pack on and get my shoulder and armpit skin ready for the megachafing to come. I've been wanting to train with a pack on so I can anticipate possible problems en route; today's sortie gave me some small idea of what to expect, and my tender pit skin is on alert that it's only downhill from here. I foresee chapping, blistering, and peeling skin in my future. I'd offer you photos of the current redness, but I'm not eager to scare readers away, and I also worry that some uptight soul might look at a closeup of my armpits and think I was displaying porn.
A lot of young mothers were out today, jogging with their kids in those huge, exaggerated strollers (is "pram" too pretentious a term for these monsters?). I probably shouldn't say this, but I couldn't help noticing that those ladies were lookin' mighty fine.
Having had this walking routine for eight days now, I've begun to recognize certain regulars on the trail, and we've started to say hello more cordially than before. I haven't tried sitting down and resting during the daily walks because I'm afraid I'll cramp up and find it impossible to continue comfortably; this dooms me to slog onward without opening my pack for water (the 32-ounce bottle in my backpack remained unopened today). I expect this situation to correct itself as I get used to heavier loads and longer distances.
Right now, I'm tired as hell and desperately need a shower-- something I hope to do every day during the actual walk across America before I sit down and talk religion with the folks I meet. I'd hate to pow-wow while stanky.
And that's the progress report for today. If you're following the chart I laid out, you'll have noticed that I'm well ahead of schedule in terms of time/distance, and slightly ahead of schedule in terms of encumbrance. By this Saturday, I need to have the weight up to 30 pounds. Ouch.
Your spiritual exercise for today: what metaphor comes to mind when you think of religious pluralism? E.g., a mountain with many paths leading to a single summit? If so, what do the paths represent? How important is it that the paths be the same or different? What does the summit represent? Why not envision more than one summit? Do some of the paths on this mountain lead either nowhere, or back into the valley? Why? Is your personal metaphor even pluralistic? When you think about religious diversity, do you imagine a single true path and many erroneous ones? Do you imagine many paths, all of which eventually funnel into your path? Are you an atheist who sees all the paths as wrong (e.g., the mountain's summit is a volcanic crater into which the misguided fall)? Comments welcome.
*A double-decker bus crash there, many years back, prompted the installation of large yellow-and-black signs announcing the bridge arch's height at two points: the arch's center, and the arch's height over the right lane, both southbound and northbound.
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1 comment:
Your focus on the mountain metaphor makes it a bit difficult to think of anything else at this point, but one thing that did come to mind is the Korean conception of "mountain." As you know, Korean mountains are not limited to one peak, but may have many peaks (Westerners, on the other hand, at least in my experience, tend to associate the word "mountain" with a single peak). The problem with this, of course, is that one particular peak is always the highest, but this may in fact be the way a lot of people actually view religious pluralism: many different peaks in the same mountain range, but their peak is the highest.
Hmm. Now I don't even know if that makes sense.
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