Friday, July 29, 2011

Delaware Dave and His Walking Stick

"If you see a man with a bandanna and curly dark hair...that's Delaware Dave," said All In, as we took cover with Quest Seeker in a lean-too from the driving drops. After the skies stopped crying and the puffy cotton-balls parted to reveal the blue, Quest Seeker was eager to press on. All In was a bit hesitant, "the father in me wants to stay here so that you won't be alone tonight, but the hiker in me says that you decided to do this alone...as I'm walking away just say, 'It's okay dad, I'll be fine.'" Alone and with some of the day left, I decided to press on.

Tall, blue vibrant eyes, and permanent smile, I rounded the corner to find Delaware Dave. "Do you mind if I take a picture of your feet?" He asked, "I don't have a foot fetish, I just want to document this." I positioned my feet on a rock and he talked about how awesome it was as he focused and snapped. 

"I like your walking stick," I said. He gave it a squeeze and said that there was a lot of positive energy in it. It was tied with about ten multi-colored hemp bracelets. "My friend makes them for me every time I go on a camping trip. They all represent a different positive energy, I wear the bracelet on the trip and after it's through I tie it to my stick." 

He had been on the trail, heading North, for five months and so I asked him if he had had any issues. "I have lot's of issues," he laughed as he pointed to his temple with his index finger. I laughed and specified physical issues. Apparently he's only had one blister the whole trip and it was from borrowing another man's shoes for a day after his soles had had enough with duct tape. After the bubble trouble, he called the outfitter right away and ordered a new pair of his trusty kicks. Other than that...nothing!

"Some people on the trail, wake up in the morning, look at their guide books and decide on a daily destination, but I just hike. When people ask where I am going to that day I say North. You see one time I planned on having my friends pick me up at a checkpoint and the thought of needing to get somewhere at a certain time changed my whole hike. I finally called them and told them I would let them know when and where to pick me up. So, I don't make plans anymore." 

Delaware Dave delivers a powerful message, that in order to walk through this life with happiness and health, it is necessary to go with the flow and to let intuition be your guide. 

He wished me a physically, mentally and spiritually healthy hike and then we parted ways but I like to think that some of that positive energy radiated to me. 


Wednesday, July 27, 2011

D.A.R.

I stayed at the Lakeshore House Lodging & Pub in Monson, ME where Ms. Rebekah, allows certain individuals to work for stay. It was while I was in the laundry matte washing bedding and towels that I saw this man in his sixties sitting at a table by the window. He looked like a cross between George W. Bush and Robin Williams and he had these bright blue enlightening eyes that drew you closer to him without you realizing. "Are you a thru-hiker?" he asked. "Doing a work for stay I presume?" "May I ask what your ethnicity is?" "Irish, Scottish, and a bit of micmac Indian," I replied. He was holding pamphlet about colloidal silver and its applications. This has been a practice for thousands of years dating back to the Greeks and Romans. In fact, the use of sliver colloids for treatments of  infections was used up until WWII before antibiotics became the standard (http://health.centreforce.com/health/silver.html). (you can check out this website to see all the applications of silver colloids).

So after this man showed me his pamphlet and I scrolled through some of the uses, he started saying that everything has a silver lining and that we are all connected. God is really Mother Nature and if we are good to Mother Nature, she will be good to us. He spoke of his friend, a pure bread Indian, of whom he attributed   much of his teaching to. He started talking about this idea of a spirit, that our physical bodies house an invisible power that can connect with people. It's the vibe you get from people, you can tell what state their spirit is in. This man kept saying that he could tell I was doing this walk to be closer to nature and that I need to remember to "walk the walk." At this point I was only a couple of feet away from this man and I was getting goosebumps but I knew it was because our spirits were connecting.

He told me that he could tell I had good parents because I was not averting my eyes as we spoke but I could not stop looking in his eyes, as if I were in a trance.

He suggested that I meditate. He also told me to take my time finding a mate because he could tell I was still trying to figure some things out about myself and the union of two people, when it is right is a bridge between the male and female hemispheres of the brain, a powerful connection that is worth waiting for. "Walk the walk" he continued to say. He claimed he was not crazy but that he has been accused of being so and it even cost him his marriage, but he has experienced many miracles.

He said that everywhere he goes he goes for a reason and that he came to Ms. Rebekah's to do laundry but he realized it was also to meet me.

"I hope I have helped you," he said. Then I shook his hand and thanked him, for what I was not sure at that point, but I knew that he had helped me in some way.

I think of this man everyday. I had a few epiphanies after I met this man and while I was home on break due to Achilles tendinitis, one being my love and need to pursue further education in the realm of alternative medicine, and two being the need to confront several people in my life for the health of my spirit.

After confronting was complete I went to the library to get a book on osteopathic medicine, an alternative medicine practiced among medical doctors. I found the book and continued to scan the shelves when my eyes caught, "The Anatomy of the Spirit; The Seven Stages of Power and Healing," by Caroline Myss, PH.D.

I opened to the foreword and the first line read:

"On rare occasions, you may meet a unique person who dramatically alters your perceptions of the world and of yourself."

Instantly I was flooded with that goosebumpy feeling and I thought of the man with the bright blue eyes back in the laundry matte in Monson. So I checked this one out as well.

The book is about medical intuition, the ability to determine a persons site of illness and the factors contributing to it by mere visualization. Dr. Myss, reminds us that it is not a gift but a skill that can be acquired with years of practice. She talks about the seven spiritual centers of the human body and how they radiate energy and that they thrive or become deprived, which can be detected by a change in frequency of this vibrational energy. Thoughts, ideas and perceptions start off as chemical messages and eventually get stored in the bodies tissues, therefor, our mind and body are intertwined and cannot be separated. Myss says that illness does not randomly strike people, instead it is due to any of the seven centers running low on energy due to negative thoughts.

Dr. Myss uses the words power, energy and spirit interchangeably as they all are synonymous with each other. Your second spiritual center your second chakras is about your relationships with people and it recommends that you do not hold grudges, and that you need to forgive others, in order to release the negative energy inside of you that may lead to illness.

I was amazed because I cleared my "rackets" with the individuals in my life that were draining my spirit and I did this after I met the man in Monson, before I knew how he had helped me and before I had any knowledge of this book on the shelf of my library back at home.

The silver lining is starting to show its glint, because I got tendinitis and stepped off the trail and decided to go to the chiropractor I discovered my love for alternative medicine and therefore visited the library and found this book and it is this book that made me realize what the Man from Monson helped me with- clearing my body of negative energy.

She Chose Down

 When I left my spirit back at the Pleasant Pond Lean-too in Caratunk, ME, 150miles from Katahdin, I was on a Greyhound bus thinking what do I do now? I yearned for the trail because I still had life's questions incessantly knocking at my door reminding me that, "you're not in high school anymore, you're a college grad, you can't get away with having an entire degree under your belt and pull off, 'I don't know what I want to do but I know that I could never see myself in a cubicle,'"

The truth is I had no direction in my life so I chose South. Maybe I did this subconsciously, but while my college peers were applying to grad schools, or going to job interviews, I was, during my fifth and final year of text books, saying, "ummm, I want to be on my own, know that I can take care of myself, experience the wild, and figure out what I want to do with my life."

I am not speaking for all thru-hikers, but the ones I met shared a similar story whether it be that they dallied with college but had no idea for a career path (myself included), or they just got laid off or quit their dead-end job, therefore put themselves on a path that had a clear and defined direction: AT heading South to Georgia or AT heading North to Maine.