On Monday Feb.
8, 2016 we drove from Fresno, CA to Soledad Canyon Rd, a drive of about 200
miles. I planned to hike from Soledad Canyon Rd to Lake Hughes. LeeAnn was driving and I was again reading
from “A Life In Movement” the biography of Moshe Feldenkrais. As we got into
the desert and nearer our destination I looked out the window of the Toyota Sequoia
and saw some of the plants that live, survive and sometimes thrive in the desert.
The trees I noticed had a distinct personality. They were molded by the
environment. They stood, their branches like a man with many arms twisted in
all directions as if the desert with its harsh winds demanded or forced a twist
here in their development and yet another twist there. Yet they had adapted.
Even in broad daylight the twists in their form created dark shadows here and
there. They exuded toughness and also
resilience. The trees brought out inner feelings in me. Feelings of slight apprehension and also
adventure. Even a hike on the PCT can have its mishaps.
Yes, the PCT
can be like a super highway through the wilderness, yet nature dictates all and
you never know. I had not done anything like this since August and I had been working
and working on a book writing project and had a chest cold. My running and
training had been limited. Water is limited in the desert and 40-60 miles
always contains unknowns and this trip was to harbor at least one surprise.
Stealth my dog
and my friend was eager to get started and we had no trouble finding the
beginning of the trail and we were off on our way to Aqua Dulce at 12:11 pm. Climbing high and breathing harder, we saw
the busy highway ahead, there was an overpass but the highway had too much
traffic with four lanes total and was completely impassable. I wondered how we
would ever cross it. Going on farther we lost sight of the highway again having
only views of the rugged hills. We descended from the ridgeline we had been
following and came around a corner and all of a sudden we saw the answer to the
highway crossing, A PCT tunnel far under the surface of the roadway. Exiting
the tunnel, we resumed our hike, coming to an interesting rock formation. I took what I thought was the trail to the
right, but perhaps the trail had actually skirted the rocks to the left for I
found that just before coming to Aqua Dulce Canyon Rd. I was briefly moving
through private property, no one seemed to mind though and I quickly attainted
the paved road leading into Aqua Dulce. Not having a GPS unit on this
particular trip, I jogged over to a mail carrier with her vehicle momentarily
stopped and she pointed me into the right direction, the direction I thought
was correct. At this point I fastened the leash to the top of Stealth’s pack to
make sure he would stay out of the road on the way into town.
In a mile or
two we had passed through town and I stopped at a convenience store and they
allowed Stealth and I to go into the back of the store to fill our water
bottles and we were on our way out of town. It is Feb. and it was close to
sunset at around 5pm. I stopped at an office on the way out of town, the lights
were still on and a woman was sitting at a desk behind a counter. I opened the
door and asked for directions to the PCT I wanted to find out where I could
stop for the night. After a brief discussion the woman said she would call a Trail
Angel for me, but the response when she called was not till April. There was a tree outside the business and I
asked if I could sleep there. Her response was something like, “sure of course”.
Stealth and I laid things out, had a little bit to eat and went to sleep. I
tied him to the tree because we were only about 10 ft from the road. There was
a lot of light in town and the wind was blowing hard, but it was warm enough
and we got a night’s sleep.
Up at 5:30 eating and packing we hiked off at
6:30 in the morning. The morning was about finding the trail as we left town
which was not that hard with verbal directions and half mile maps (indispensable
for the PCT). After a couple of unclear spots on the trail we hiked through a
valley and then began to ascend along a ridgeline.
The PCT
generally follows ridgelines. The climbing was tough and the wind was blowing
extremely hard, causing me to stagger and lose balance, going was slow and we
stopped for a few minutes for a break in a little spot that was somewhat out of
the wind. The wind continued to blow very hard and it flapped the top of my
pack so vigorously that it sucked my Mylar ground cover out of the pack and
sent in sailing, plastering it against a vertical dead tree branch. I stepped
down the steep slope a bit to the tree and began to remove the thin Mylar
sheet, but as I began to untangle it from the tree the wind instantly tore
another piece of it off and sent it flying farther down the slope. I had
retrieved about 2/3 thirds of it in two pieces and I didn’t think it worth
risking getting hurt climbing further down the slope to get the other piece. I
had a trash sack that I could use to make up the difference in ground coverage.
The wind in beating on me outwardly also beat
on me inwardly and made me glad for any brief shelter from its incessant
blowing as we hiked. I shared my water with Stealth and we were about out of it
when we came to Bear Springs, a water source close to the side of the trail
that was actually not marked. Stealth is the one who found it. There was to be
no more water for the next fifteen miles. I filled by water bottles from the
spring which was a white plastic pipe stuck into the hillside with just a
dribble of water coming out. It took a while to get a little less than a gallon
from the trickle. I put in some water purification tablets just to make sure
and we were on our way. One gallon of water between the two of us would have to
last for the next fifteen miles, half of which would have to be done the next
day.
More climbing and then we came to a campsite,
a level spot to sleep just off the trail whose entrance happened to be framed
by a natural arch of tree branches. We spent about 12 hours on the ground,
Stealth was noticeably tired and shaking a bit even though it was not cold. The
first night in Aqua Dulce my body ached when I laid down. I had had some knee
problems on descending that first day. But I had been aware of some things that
I could do differently, I had improved my gait and tonight my body felt better
than the first night even after another day and a longer day on the trail. Might
heart rate remained a bit elevated for hours though.
When we walk
through life normally we walk on smooth level surfaces. Most of us work inside
and floors are designed to be level. Streets and walkways are not always level,
sometimes they have some slope, but they are usually designed to be hard and
smooth. We live for the most part in an artificial world. Nature is not like
this, nature gives us a constantly varied surface, soft, hard, steep, cambered,
uneven, with obstacles, and inclines. Our most natural movements, running and
walking involve skill in use of and movement of the pelvis. Smooth level
surfaces dull us to some of the useful movements we could make and teach us to
walk the same way step after step in a way that is suitable only to the
artificial world we in which we mainly live.
There are
three planes commonly used to describe human anatomy and human movement, the sagittal
plane which bisects us front to back ( movement of swinging the arm straight
forward and back occurs in this plane), the frontal plane which bisects us left
to right through our vertical center line ( movement in this plane occurs when
the arms are raised to the side as an example) and the transverse plane (
movement in this plane occurs when an individual who is standing rotates their
hips or shoulders forward or backward on a plane that is horizontal ). The
transverse plane is the only plane in which movement occurs in a horizontal
plane.
Rotation of
the pelvis is normal in walking or running and if coordinated well to the
present activity helps lengthen the stride, and decrease stress on the knees by
keeping the knees pointing in the direction of travel and helping the point of
ground contact of the foot to stay under the hips. Some movement of the pelvis
in the sagittal plane occurs when the stride is lengthened.
The need for
movement of the pelvis in the frontal plane can be greatly reduced in an
artificially smooth environment. However, the ability to move the pelvis in
this plane is very valuable. How do you move the pelvis in this plane and how
does it help?
Lesson:
Sit in a
chair with no arms. Do not lean on the back of the chair. Let your arms be at
your sides and not on your lap. Take time to sense and feel how you are
sitting. Can you feel some tone in the muscles of your back? Draw some
attention to the muscles of your lower back. Do they seem to be working hard to
hold you up? Now draw some attention to the muscles of your front side, the
abdominals. What are they doing? Does it seem that the back muscles are working
harder than the flexors of the trunk, the muscles on your front side? Do both
sides feel balanced, working equally hard, creating a balanced easy posture?
Draw
attention to your sitting bones. Are you sitting a little behind the sitting
bones or a little in front? Now intentionally rock, to sitting behind the
sitting bones, and then in front of the sitting bones. Notice how your pelvis
moves. This is movement in the sagittal plane. Now sit exactly on the sitting
bones. This is a neutral pelvis position, neither anteriorly nor posteriorly
tilted. Next rotate your pelvis by bringing one side of the pelvis forward and
the other backward, allow the knee on the side of the pelvis that is moving
forward to move forward also. Notice that the low back is involved in doing
this. This is movement in the transverse or horizontal plane and also the sagittal
plane.
Now come
back to the place where both knees are equal, with neither knee out in front of
the other, the pelvis is not rotated, neither the left side nor the right side
of the pelvis is rotated forward or backward and you are sitting exactly on the
sitting bones with an easy balanced posture.
With both
feet on the floor could you lift the right hip slightly from the chair by
shortening the right side of the torso and ribs and lengthening the other side?
This is movement of the pelvis in the frontal plane.
Lie on your
back on the floor rest for a few moments, then shorten the right side of the
torso/ribs and lengthen the other side, drawing the right leg up in
relationship to the left. The right leg shortens the left leg lengthens. Try
this on the other side. Try alternating gently back and forth. Rest
Roll to your
left side. Shorten your right rib/torso and draw your leg up, then alternately
lengthen your right side and push your leg downward. Do all of this gently,
sensing how you do it. Avoid doing the movements forcefully as more force will
decrease your ability to sense what you are doing and how you are doing it.
This is again movement of the pelvis in the frontal plane. This time you do not
have the restriction of the chair. You can feel how you lower your leg by
lengthening your side. Can you feel how this would be useful for going
downstairs, for climbing steep irregular surfaces? For descending steep trails?
Can you see how awareness of this movement can be dulled or lost by/on level
surfaces?
Stand and
place one hand on a chair or counter for balance, let’s use the left hand to
start with. Now lift the right leg and notice what happens in the left hip. Pay
attention to the activation in the left hip. Notice that the left hip engages
to hold the right hip level or possibly higher than the left hip. This is what
happens in good running, the hips stay level or the free hip actually rises
slightly in response to the activation in the standing hip. So, even in running
on a level surface there may be some movement of the pelvis in the frontal
plane. Note that the opposite of this is for the free side of the pelvis to not
remain level, to drop. This is the result of poor use of ground forces on the standing
leg. But the point is for you to sense the possibility of movement of the
pelvis in the frontal plane.
An important
question is how much should I move the pelvis in the frontal plane? The answer
is that is depends on the terrain you are on, your structure, your ability to
sense timing and differences. There is no one answer; it depends on your own
experimentation and your own needs at the time. It is important to realize that
all these movements of the pelvis exist and they can all be used to improve
your running/walking and other activities.
How is it
that I could feel better the second night, even with much longer hours of
trekking, and trails that just got worse? How is it that at the end of the hike
I could still have walked farther except for sore feet? I am thankful for
awareness and thankful for the pelvis, the coordinator of locomotion.
As I laid
there on the ground the second night I got to think of some of the patients I
had worked with and briefly pray for them. I reflected on how my own attitudes
toward myself were sometimes based on unrealistic expectations and that how my
attitudes toward myself might dull my sense of deeper empathy toward others. Stealth
was right beside me obviously tired and I petted him. I looked forward to
seeing my wife again, knew she would be waiting and worrying if I didn’t come
back when she expected. I appreciated her and looked forward to our
conversation tomorrow. The stars came out, framed through leafless tree
branches. I slept on and off thinking I wasn’t sleeping so much, but I was
surprised to find out how quickly twelve hours passed. I was Feb. and the
nights were long.
On the final
day of our hike we moved very quickly and covered 7miles to the next water in
about 2 ½ hours, thinking we would have to deviate from the PCT by about 3/10
mile to a spring to get water, I was surprised and thankful to see that Trail Angels
had left gallons of water at the trail where it crossed the road (San
Francisquito Rd ). We stopped and Stealth and I drank as much pure water as we
wanted, no need to filter or purify. What a treat! We ate too, and I took what
I thought would be enough water to cover the remaining 7 miles or so.
We did a
little climbing past the road and then began to move very quickly again.
Stealth was keeping uPCT hike from Soledad canyon rd to
Lake Hughes Rd.
On Monday Feb.
8, 2016 we drove from Fresno, CA to Soledad Canyon Rd, a drive of about 200
miles. I planned to hike from Soledad Canyon Rd to Lake Hughes. LeeAnn was driving and I was again reading
from “A Life In Movement” the biography of Moshe Feldenkrais. As we got into
the desert and nearer our destination I looked out the window of the Toyota Sequoia
and saw some of the plants that live, survive and sometimes thrive in the desert.
The trees I noticed had a distinct personality. They were molded by the
environment. They stood, their branches like a man with many arms twisted in
all directions as if the desert with its harsh winds demanded or forced a twist
here in their development and yet another twist there. Yet they had adapted.
Even in broad daylight the twists in their form created dark shadows here and
there. They exuded toughness and also
resilience. The trees brought out inner feelings in me. Feelings of slight apprehension and also
adventure. Even a hike on the PCT can have its mishaps.
Yes, the PCT
can be like a super highway through the wilderness, yet nature dictates all and
you never know. I had not done anything like this since August and I had been working
and working on a book writing project and had a chest cold. My running and
training had been limited. Water is limited in the desert and 40-60 miles
always contains unknowns and this trip was to harbor at least one surprise.
Stealth my dog
and my friend was eager to get started and we had no trouble finding the
beginning of the trail and we were off on our way to Aqua Dulce at 12:11 pm. Climbing high and breathing harder, we saw
the busy highway ahead, there was an overpass but the highway had too much
traffic with four lanes total and was completely impassable. I wondered how we
would ever cross it. Going on farther we lost sight of the highway again having
only views of the rugged hills. We descended from the ridgeline we had been
following and came around a corner and all of a sudden we saw the answer to the
highway crossing, A PCT tunnel far under the surface of the roadway. Exiting
the tunnel, we resumed our hike, coming to an interesting rock formation. I took what I thought was the trail to the
right, but perhaps the trail had actually skirted the rocks to the left for I
found that just before coming to Aqua Dulce Canyon Rd. I was briefly moving
through private property, no one seemed to mind though and I quickly attainted
the paved road leading into Aqua Dulce. Not having a GPS unit on this
particular trip, I jogged over to a mail carrier with her vehicle momentarily
stopped and she pointed me into the right direction, the direction I thought
was correct. At this point I fastened the leash to the top of Stealth’s pack to
make sure he would stay out of the road on the way into town.
In a mile or
two we had passed through town and I stopped at a convenience store and they
allowed Stealth and I to go into the back of the store to fill our water
bottles and we were on our way out of town. It is Feb. and it was close to
sunset at around 5pm. I stopped at an office on the way out of town, the lights
were still on and a woman was sitting at a desk behind a counter. I opened the
door and asked for directions to the PCT I wanted to find out where I could
stop for the night. After a brief discussion the woman said she would call a Trail
Angel for me, but the response when she called was not till April. There was a tree outside the business and I
asked if I could sleep there. Her response was something like, “sure of course”.
Stealth and I laid things out, had a little bit to eat and went to sleep. I
tied him to the tree because we were only about 10 ft from the road. There was
a lot of light in town and the wind was blowing hard, but it was warm enough
and we got a night’s sleep.
Up at 5:30 eating and packing we hiked off at
6:30 in the morning. The morning was about finding the trail as we left town
which was not that hard with verbal directions and half mile maps (indispensable
for the PCT). After a couple of unclear spots on the trail we hiked through a
valley and then began to ascend along a ridgeline.
The PCT
generally follows ridgelines. The climbing was tough and the wind was blowing
extremely hard, causing me to stagger and lose balance, going was slow and we
stopped for a few minutes for a break in a little spot that was somewhat out of
the wind. The wind continued to blow very hard and it flapped the top of my
pack so vigorously that it sucked my Mylar ground cover out of the pack and
sent in sailing, plastering it against a vertical dead tree branch. I stepped
down the steep slope a bit to the tree and began to remove the thin Mylar
sheet, but as I began to untangle it from the tree the wind instantly tore
another piece of it off and sent it flying farther down the slope. I had
retrieved about 2/3 thirds of it in two pieces and I didn’t think it worth
risking getting hurt climbing further down the slope to get the other piece. I
had a trash sack that I could use to make up the difference in ground coverage.
The wind in beating on me outwardly also beat
on me inwardly and made me glad for any brief shelter from its incessant
blowing as we hiked. I shared my water with Stealth and we were about out of it
when we came to Bear Springs, a water source close to the side of the trail
that was actually not marked. Stealth is the one who found it. There was to be
no more water for the next fifteen miles. I filled by water bottles from the
spring which was a white plastic pipe stuck into the hillside with just a
dribble of water coming out. It took a while to get a little less than a gallon
from the trickle. I put in some water purification tablets just to make sure
and we were on our way. One gallon of water between the two of us would have to
last for the next fifteen miles, half of which would have to be done the next
day.
More climbing and then we came to a campsite,
a level spot to sleep just off the trail whose entrance happened to be framed
by a natural arch of tree branches. We spent about 12 hours on the ground,
Stealth was noticeably tired and shaking a bit even though it was not cold. The
first night in Aqua Dulce my body ached when I laid down. I had had some knee
problems on descending that first day. But I had been aware of some things that
I could do differently, I had improved my gait and tonight my body felt better
than the first night even after another day and a longer day on the trail. Might
heart rate remained a bit elevated for hours though.
When we walk
through life normally we walk on smooth level surfaces. Most of us work inside
and floors are designed to be level. Streets and walkways are not always level,
sometimes they have some slope, but they are usually designed to be hard and
smooth. We live for the most part in an artificial world. Nature is not like
this, nature gives us a constantly varied surface, soft, hard, steep, cambered,
uneven, with obstacles, and inclines. Our most natural movements, running and
walking involve skill in use of and movement of the pelvis. Smooth level
surfaces dull us to some of the useful movements we could make and teach us to
walk the same way step after step in a way that is suitable only to the
artificial world we in which we mainly live.
There are
three planes commonly used to describe human anatomy and human movement, the sagittal
plane which bisects us front to back ( movement of swinging the arm straight
forward and back occurs in this plane), the frontal plane which bisects us left
to right through our vertical center line ( movement in this plane occurs when
the arms are raised to the side as an example) and the transverse plane (
movement in this plane occurs when an individual who is standing rotates their
hips or shoulders forward or backward on a plane that is horizontal ). The
transverse plane is the only plane in which movement occurs in a horizontal
plane.
Rotation of
the pelvis is normal in walking or running and if coordinated well to the
present activity helps lengthen the stride, and decrease stress on the knees by
keeping the knees pointing in the direction of travel and helping the point of
ground contact of the foot to stay under the hips. Some movement of the pelvis
in the sagittal plane occurs when the stride is lengthened.
The need for
movement of the pelvis in the frontal plane can be greatly reduced in an
artificially smooth environment. However, the ability to move the pelvis in
this plane is very valuable. How do you move the pelvis in this plane and how
does it help?
Lesson:
Sit in a
chair with no arms. Do not lean on the back of the chair. Let your arms be at
your sides and not on your lap. Take time to sense and feel how you are
sitting. Can you feel some tone in the muscles of your back? Draw some
attention to the muscles of your lower back. Do they seem to be working hard to
hold you up? Now draw some attention to the muscles of your front side, the
abdominals. What are they doing? Does it seem that the back muscles are working
harder than the flexors of the trunk, the muscles on your front side? Do both
sides feel balanced, working equally hard, creating a balanced easy posture?
Draw
attention to your sitting bones. Are you sitting a little behind the sitting
bones or a little in front? Now intentionally rock, to sitting behind the
sitting bones, and then in front of the sitting bones. Notice how your pelvis
moves. This is movement in the sagittal plane. Now sit exactly on the sitting
bones. This is a neutral pelvis position, neither anteriorly nor posteriorly
tilted. Next rotate your pelvis by bringing one side of the pelvis forward and
the other backward, allow the knee on the side of the pelvis that is moving
forward to move forward also. Notice that the low back is involved in doing
this. This is movement in the transverse or horizontal plane and also the sagittal
plane.
Now come
back to the place where both knees are equal, with neither knee out in front of
the other, the pelvis is not rotated, neither the left side nor the right side
of the pelvis is rotated forward or backward and you are sitting exactly on the
sitting bones with an easy balanced posture.
With both
feet on the floor could you lift the right hip slightly from the chair by
shortening the right side of the torso and ribs and lengthening the other side?
This is movement of the pelvis in the frontal plane.
Lie on your
back on the floor rest for a few moments, then shorten the right side of the
torso/ribs and lengthen the other side, drawing the right leg up in
relationship to the left. The right leg shortens the left leg lengthens. Try
this on the other side. Try alternating gently back and forth. Rest
Roll to your
left side. Shorten your right rib/torso and draw your leg up, then alternately
lengthen your right side and push your leg downward. Do all of this gently,
sensing how you do it. Avoid doing the movements forcefully as more force will
decrease your ability to sense what you are doing and how you are doing it.
This is again movement of the pelvis in the frontal plane. This time you do not
have the restriction of the chair. You can feel how you lower your leg by
lengthening your side. Can you feel how this would be useful for going
downstairs, for climbing steep irregular surfaces? For descending steep trails?
Can you see how awareness of this movement can be dulled or lost by/on level
surfaces?
Stand and
place one hand on a chair or counter for balance, let’s use the left hand to
start with. Now lift the right leg and notice what happens in the left hip. Pay
attention to the activation in the left hip. Notice that the left hip engages
to hold the right hip level or possibly higher than the left hip. This is what
happens in good running, the hips stay level or the free hip actually rises
slightly in response to the activation in the standing hip. So, even in running
on a level surface there may be some movement of the pelvis in the frontal
plane. Note that the opposite of this is for the free side of the pelvis to not
remain level, to drop. This is the result of poor use of ground forces on the standing
leg. But the point is for you to sense the possibility of movement of the
pelvis in the frontal plane.
An important
question is how much should I move the pelvis in the frontal plane? The answer
is that is depends on the terrain you are on, your structure, your ability to
sense timing and differences. There is no one answer; it depends on your own
experimentation and your own needs at the time. It is important to realize that
all these movements of the pelvis exist and they can all be used to improve
your running/walking and other activities.
How is it
that I could feel better the second night, even with much longer hours of
trekking, and trails that just got worse? How is it that at the end of the hike
I could still have walked farther except for sore feet? I am thankful for
awareness and thankful for the pelvis, the coordinator of locomotion.
As I laid
there on the ground the second night I got to think of some of the patients I
had worked with and briefly pray for them. I reflected on how my own attitudes
toward myself were sometimes based on unrealistic expectations and that how my
attitudes toward myself might dull my sense of deeper empathy toward others. Stealth
was right beside me obviously tired and I petted him. I looked forward to
seeing my wife again, knew she would be waiting and worrying if I didn’t come
back when she expected. I appreciated her and looked forward to our
conversation tomorrow. The stars came out, framed through leafless tree
branches. I slept on and off thinking I wasn’t sleeping so much, but I was
surprised to find out how quickly twelve hours passed. I was Feb. and the
nights were long.
On the final
day of our hike we moved very quickly and covered 7miles to the next water in
about 2 ½ hours, thinking we would have to deviate from the PCT by about 3/10
mile to a spring to get water, I was surprised and thankful to see that Trail Angels
had left gallons of water at the trail where it crossed the road (San
Francisquito Rd ). We stopped and Stealth and I drank as much pure water as we
wanted, no need to filter or purify. What a treat! We ate too, and I took what
I thought would be enough water to cover the remaining 7 miles or so.
We did a
little climbing past the road and then began to move very quickly again.
Stealth was keeping up and moving quickly in the cool of the morning but it
soon turned hot, we consumed all our water and then the unexpected
happened. I found myself on a part of
the PCT where the trail had been washed out, almost destroyed. I think there
was an alternate way to go, but I had followed the PCT signs and here I was.
The steep sandy hillside was risky, with vegetation gone due to a fire, there
was nothing holding it together. We were gradually descending toward the final
road destination, the road to the community of Lake Hughes. But the trail kept
getting worse. Every time we went around a bend an erosion channel had cut a
deep hole into the trail. There was no trail in these spots and some of them
demanded that we go down into the hole which was taller than I am at several
spots and then try to climb the sandy slope back out on the other side. Once
there was nothing to hang onto and I slipped a few feet down on a rocky slope,
but only received a few minor scratches. Stealth handled some of the spots more
easily than I did. But he was tired and couldn’t handle a couple of the deep
spots be himself. I had to go back and try to talk him into sliding toward me
just a bit a letting me catch him. He would have rather taken a nap but he
complied. He is one tough dog.
On we went and in one case my left foot
slipped off the crumbly slope and began to slide but my other foot stayed on
the trail. It could have been a very long slide down with nothing to stop the
slide. We finally reached the bottom and behold there was cell phone service
when we got to the road. I called LeeAnn and she answered. We were glad to see
her and Stealth couldn’t have gone much farther. For his sake I would have
tried to hitch a ride into town if LeeAnn had not answered the phone. Now a day
later Stealth is starting to catch up on sleep and revive. And I have another
adventure to reflect on. Nature and terrain control your speed on the trail. Nature
calls the shots.
After a day
of rest and cleaning and tending to blisters that developed only on the last
day, I find myself ….missing the trail
