Quitting
Quitting is frowned upon, in general. It has associations with giving up, with underestimating oneself, with wasting time and resources. As may be expected, it’s not a native English word, borrowed from Latin quietus, sharing that origin with words like quiet and coy. And in the original, as its French and Spanish cousins quitter and quitar respectively hint, it had more to do with leaving, in the literal rather than metaphorical sense. “I quit Wisconsin” is archaic if acceptable. “I quit my earthly belongings” is a bit more of a stretch. But if quitting came to mean giving up by metaphorical extension “leaving a course of action/occupation”, why is the latter sense so prejudiced? Why is resigning a post or relinquishing the hypothetical mastery of a skill so shaded with failure’s hues? Why can’t we view it as disencumbering ourselves or exploring different vistas?
Rocky Mountain National Park
I don’t know why people go backpacking with me. It combines some of my favorite activities — hiking, camping, remote and isolated locales — but something about being deprived of civilization, exhausted from schlepping gear, overheating from the brutal sun, shivering in the night’s cold wind, wet from the rain and itchy from the bugs, something turns me into an unpleasant intolerable curmudgeon. Nevertheless, after a night choking on RV generator exhaust and listening to the howling wind at Glacier Basin campground, we packed our bags and hiked from Bear Lake to Mill Creek Basin, where we could sit under the trees and watch a mountain-framed meadow, giving me ample opportunity to grumble. I was awake all night again thanks to gusts that whipped off the peaks. Awake for the moon rise. Awake for the sun rise. Angrier with each rising celestial body.
We stayed one night there then repacked and hiked up over the ridge looking out over Cub Lake and westward to Old Forest Inn. We took a dip in “The Pool”, a strangely-named section of the strangely-named Big Thompson River, fast and jagged, not as suited to swimming as its name suggests, but I managed to piss off a few day hikers trying to get selfies without my river bathing in the background. The gales at 8500 feet accompanied me for yet another sleepless night. The next morning, after a sunrise hike up to Fern Falls, we decided to leave the park a day early. I felt so ashamed of myself, incapable of enjoying the beautiful circumstances due to a petty insomnia.
If I had to review the park, I’d say it was rockier than expected. Having lived in Western Washington I was familiar with the Cascades and Olympics, wet climes, trails of needle and mud, but the Rockies were dry, more Utah than Cascadia, making every trail a scramble and parching the flesh. But there was beauty in its dessication: how huge stones awaited around each corner and Lodgepole Pine (or what I mistook for such) stood in defiance of the uncaring elements. Plump rose hips and bunches of choke cherry lined the trails, feed for the bears from whom we had to hide our toothpaste. My struggles to enjoy the Rockies while I was actually there left me wondering what was wrong with me.
The I25 Corridor
On the way out of RMNP, as on the way in, we spent a couple of hours wandering around Estes Park, a typically charming resort town just outside the park. While we dined at a Mexican restaurant, tourists clogged our view to snap photos of some Elk just enjoying the foliage. They crawled down into the stream to get close up selfies with the wild wapiti. Fortunately they seemed very mild-mannered massive mammals: I mused over my chili verde that I could be about to witness a goring should that bull decide one of his cows was threatened.
We spent our first night out of the Rockies in Fort Collins, a cute college town, but unfortunately our exhaustion prevented us from sampling any of the widely-regarded cuisine. The next day we went to the Denver Art Museum, which had a fantastic exhibit on Western art, featuring pieces by Aho, Hays, Namingha and Cabeza de Baca inspired by New Mexico and the Rocky Mountains I’d been incapable of appreciating before. It made me miss painting. I spent some time drawing in the Rockies but lacked the patience to capture the landscape. Lacked the vision to evoke it.
That evening we checked into a hostel in Colorado Springs where we’d stay two nights. Being the social butterfly I am I set up with a couple of beers in the common area and heard stories. Stories from motivated travelers trying to achieve fantastic goals, and from the dejected and lonely, many of them tracing all their problems to some time in the past where they gave up. What I couldn’t understand about their self torture was that they had often quit something they had no interest in, no passion for, or something they couldn’t continue because it was harming them.
Hiking through the Garden of the Gods I reflected on this. The sun beat down while we meandered between upheaved stream beds. It was here, some fifty paces from the visitor’s center, that we encountered our first Rattlesnake. Some foreigners asked us while we stood there “are we stopped because it is interesting or because it is dangerous” and we quickly assured them that it was very dangerous. Sometimes I worry about leaving the country again: the last time I did it long term I was pretty mild. I stayed in a hammock reading all day and danced at the clubs all night. On this next trip I’ll very likely trek out into the wilderness and may get myself in trouble as these tourists might have had we not been there to inform them. I wondered if the people at the hostel would have been so open had I not been there asking prying questions. Had I reopened their wounds, or helped them to heal, if only by getting them to acknowledge their aches? Was I playing the helpful tourist or the exploitative one? Did I have any intention of being the former to begin with, or has the choice only just become apparent?
New opportunities to quit
It’s nice to learn things about oneself, even the painful things. It gives us an opportunity to quit them. To leave them in the past where they belong as we chase the future we desire. Quitting helps us become who we want to be. Quitting gives us a chance to recover from endeavors we were perhaps unprepared for. On my way into New Mexico, toward an orchard where we expect to make apple cider and wine, I look forward to quitting! Not because I don’t want to do these things: I’m in fact quite excited to get to fermenting again. But our stay is limited. And that brings me joy. Because there’s more to explore, and the only way to experience what new wonders the world may share with me, is to quit.
