Nobody takes pictures of the Tuesday morning walk.
There’s no dramatic waterfall at the end. No rock scramble, no 900-foot elevation gain, no spontaneous four-hour detour to a hidden sandstone pool in southwest Virginia. It’s just me, the trail I know by heart, and whatever is going on in my head that day. Eight to ten miles a week on the same trail, alone with my thoughts. This is the unglamorous middle — and where hiking for mental health actually happens.
This is the unglamorous middle. And it’s where most of the real work happens.
The Numbers
Since March, I’ve been logging eight to ten miles a week at Lone Star Lakes State Park in Suffolk — spread across three or four days, rain permitting, work rotation permitting, life permitting. Some weeks it’s been closer to six. Some weeks it’s been closer to twelve. But most weeks I’ve shown up, laced up, and done the work.
That’s not a dramatic number. It’s not going to impress anyone who tracks their mileage in the hundreds. But for a woman who was a committed desk sitter eight months ago, it represents something I’m genuinely proud of: consistency. The kind that doesn’t require a scenic backdrop or an audience or a particularly good hair day.
The trail doesn’t care what you look like. That’s one of the things I love most about it.
What I Think About Out There
People always ask what you listen to when you hike. Podcasts? Music? Audiobooks?
Mostly I think.
There’s something about moving through trees at a pace slow enough to actually process things that turns the trail into the best therapy I’ve ever accidentally stumbled into. My brain, which spends most of its working hours buried in data and metrics and the particular low hum of workplace stress, gets quiet out there. Not silent — I’m not sure my brain does silent — but quieter. More honest.
I think about my daughter a lot. She turned 23 this week and I find myself doing what mothers do: worrying about the life she’s building, the choices ahead of her, hoping I’ve given her enough of the right things and not too much of the wrong ones. I think about my marriage — the good and the complicated, the way long relationships require tending the same way a trail requires maintenance. I think about God and the kind of person I’m trying to be, and whether my actions on the ordinary days actually match what I say I believe.
I think about the end times more than most people probably do. It’s part of my faith, part of how I understand the world — and the trail is actually one of the few places where thinking about big, heavy things doesn’t feel heavy. Out here, surrounded by something God made that requires no improvement, those thoughts feel less like dread and more like perspective.
And I think about August.
The JMT is Coming
August 1st I fly to Los Angeles. Two days later I’ll be on a trail in the Sierra Nevada that makes my little four-mile loops in Suffolk look like a warm-up lap — which is exactly what they are.
I’m excited. I’m also nervous in ways I wasn’t a few months ago when the trip was more abstract. The weight of the pack on my left shoulder concerns me — I have some issues there that flat ground doesn’t aggravate but thirty-five miles with forty pounds might. I’m working on it. I’m trying to be smart about it. Some mornings on the trail I consciously practice keeping my shoulders relaxed, trying to build the habit before I need it.
I think about the Sawtooth Wilderness in Idaho too — the bucket list trip that lives past the JMT in my imagination. I’ve been doing enough research to know that September is really the only window for that hike, which means it’s probably a next-year conversation. That’s okay. Good things are worth planning for.
Why This Post Exists
I wrote the exciting posts. The rock scramble. The hidden bathtub carved out of sandstone. The four-mile waterfall hike in house slippers.
But I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t write this one too — the one about the Tuesday mornings when nothing happened except that I showed up and put in the miles. The post about the weeks when life was heavy and the trail was the only hour in the day that felt fully mine.
If you’re building toward something — a big hike, a healthier body, a version of yourself you haven’t met yet — most of it is going to happen in the unglamorous middle. Not on the summit. Not at the waterfall. In the ordinary miles on the ordinary days when nobody’s watching and there’s no story to tell afterward except that you did it.
Those miles count. They count a lot.
I’ll see you on the trail.
— Barbara
