I use an app called All Trails when I hike. It helps me find trails in the location that I want, and then I review them for length and difficulty. I read the comments, too, to see if I need my hiking sticks and to gain any bit of wisdom from previous hikers.
Another feature of this app that I like is its ability to track me on the trail map in real time, helping me stay on the right trail. I’ve been known to walk down a trail, watching the map on my phone, to see if I’m on the trail I want to be on. Too, I can download maps ahead of time in case I’m in an area with no cell coverage.
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Well, I found a promising trail off of the popular Devil’s Courthouse stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. I first hiked the steep, paved incline to the views at the courthouse, then I took off down the trail I was planning to hike. When I came to the loop portion, I veered right, as the hiking app showed. But the trail petered out. Or I couldn’t find it. Or I was just lost.
This was a deep, dark, evergreen forest—my favorite kind. Trails through this kind of forest are usually carpeted with pine needles, creating a soft, cushiony path. Off the trail, the forest floor itself was especially dense with needles and layers of fallen, decaying trees.
I was thrashing around, holding my phone like a compass, trying to match my location to the trail, and worried that I would step in a hole in this deep forest floor or trip on something I couldn’t see. I wasn’t worried about wild animals; I was making too much noise crunching around.
I finally gave up and made my way back to the start of the loop and decided to go in the opposite direction. This was an obvious, well-marked trail. I came to the point where the loop returned, but again, nothing but dense, spongy underbrush. Yes, I stomped around again, looking for this portion of the trail, but to no avail. I gave up again and turned around, retracing my steps on the serviceable trail.
I certainly had caregiving moments when I felt that I was trying to blindly forge my way through. I was going to do it by myself, so help me. I might have a little guidance from a book or an internet search, but by God, I knew my husband, I thought that I knew Alzheimer’s disease, and I was going to get it right!
What comes to mind is an incident when Harvey showed me a ball of poop in his hand, his eyebrows raised in question about what to do.
Well, I knew what to do! You don’t hold nasty poop in your hand!
I grabbed him by the wrist and made him drop it in the toilet. Then, still holding him by the wrist, I tried to force him to wash his hands. With his free hand, he then grasped my wrist that was holding his, essentially locking us together. Harvey was much stronger than me, and there was no way that I was going to win this battle. So I relented, and left the situation so that I could calm myself down enough to try another tactic.
Sometimes with caregiving, or with life, you will find yourself floundering in deep woods, trying to forge your own way through. It’s important to know when to say when, give up, and make your way back to a familiar path.