Blog 58 Support (Gary)
What I loved about Mark Ruskell was that he was a straight shooter and if you needed a hand with something he was there. We had many honest conversations about our feelings, and we had a boatload of adolescent fun together. We went on a couple team trips to Mexico and a canoe trip in which he was the only one to come back and save my ass from spinning in a circle.
Remember that old science experiment where you put a pin on top of a cork in a bucket of water and watched it spin as a compass needle? That was me, and that was our first adventure since our Sterling Men’s Weekend. I had decided to be macho after the Sterling Men's weekend, and took one of the canoes by myself after a water fight. Well, I got in the middle of a lake, and the wind just kept spinning me in a circle like the pin-on-the-cork experiment. I spun from east to west and back again time after time. I was exhausting myself trying to move forward only to be blown in a circle. Mark came back for me, and we somehow got me to the dam where the trip ended. His weight and strength saved the day. I never forgot that.
To have a friend who will come back for you is a treasure and a measure of someone you want to walk with throughout life. Do you have friends who will do that for you? If not, seek them out. Those are the kind of friends I have chosen, and it most certainly made life’s struggles much easier.
The Hill became more than a hill, or exercise, or being in Nature—it became a relationship: a relationship with Mark(s), and a mirror to reflect back an image of myself and my relationship with me. Each chapter reflects part of my, and our, struggles for wholeness. Sometimes those are the most beautiful times.
It's amazing that we always fall into a pace that is mutual. Maybe it's just that, but I add the word respect. It is a pace of mutual respect. This walk is many things, but I think our pace represents a mutual respect for each other. We have melded. Why so? Is it the walk? I think it is because this walk is a catharsis for two, sometimes weary, older men. Notice I didn't say "old." Fuck that. I am tired of people referring to themselves as old. Especially when I know we are in better shape than most forty-year-olds.
We are trekking through our past and into the present through our babble. I really shouldn't call it babble because that might give you the wrong impression, but sometimes it is just that. That is what catharsis often is: just a lot of babble. The mind seems to need to occasionally relieve itself of too much gas (yeah, that is often part of the walk as well) or something. Yes, brain fart now has a new meaning. This is either because we have pressed the mind too hard, or because it's in an infinite loop. It's stuck without any way to free itself other than by babbling. Simply put, the mind needs to detox from all the input it gets from the world. Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, refers to this as "the pain body."
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