I love hiking so much, it became a pseudo-religion for me in Costa Rica.
When I lived in Tennessee, I organized “girls’ hikes” among my closest friends. This only happened once a month or less, and only a few people showed up regularly. I would pick a state park and we'd meet up and walk 2-4 miles along the trails. The longest hike I did in Tennessee was probably 6 miles or so.
That changed in Costa Rica.
As with everything I do, I didn’t go into it halfway. When I learned about the Romería (blogged in detail on this post), a friend and I didn’t hesitate to experience this cultural phenomenon for ourselves.
My first hike in Costa Rica ended up being about 33 kilometers (about 20.5 miles) in a single day. The next day we walked several more kilometers. When I finally returned home late the next day, the rain pattered on my rusted tin roof as I grinned uncontrollably. My spirit was rejuvenated, and it wasn’t about the religious trek we had taken, or what I found in the basilica.
I felt alive.
It was the green trees, the fading of traffic noise. The rolling vistas. The nickering horses. The serene coffee plantations. It was putting one foot in front of the other. Breathing unpolluted air. Being outside. It was the long bridges, where we stopped to listen for trains before scurrying across, à la Stand By Me.
And it was the nature of the walk. This was no mere jaunt of a couple easy miles along a mulched trail in a park. It was a real hike.
It was the ache in my legs, the twinge in my ankles, the sweat-soaked clothes, the weird tan lines on my shoulders, the dirt under my fingernails, the grumbling of well-earned hunger.
I was addicted.
My friend, who had used Wikiloc to find hikes and bike trails others had logged, suggested we do it again. And so began our new tradition. We’d pick a town within a couple hours’ bus ride of San José, pick another town between 10-25 kilometers away, bus to one, walk to the other, and bus back. My friend gets all the credit for finding the routes. We started tame and our walks got more and more adventurous with time.
Almost every Sunday, we went on hikes through the Costa Rican countryside. At the end of the day each Sunday, we would stagger into some small country town, sticky, muddy, sweaty, and sunburned, just as devout folk emerged from their church’s evening mass as their children careened off onto the football pitches, laughing raucously. The contrast between us and the churchgoers was so absurd, our hikes earned a fond nickname: going to church.
Orosí
Cachí
Orosí
Orosí
Cartago
San Juan del Norte
Ujarrás
Ujarrás
Zarcero
Laguna
Rosario
And what a church it was.
Turrialba
Braulio Carillo
Turrialba
Turrialba
Acosta
Acosta
Acosta
Acosta
Atenas
Atenas
Atenas
Braulio Carillo
Braulio Carillo
San Gabriel
Paraíso
Rio Celeste
Tapantí
Tapantí
Tapantí
Tapantí
Zarcero
Zarcero
Turrialba
La Fortuna
Turrialba
During this time, I got fit. At first, even eight kilometers was a huge deal. I was still working off all the weight from my depression in my previous life, and I huffed and puffed. Ten kilometers was a feat. Every hill just about killed me.
Over time, the hikes became easier. My knees and ankles strengthened. My calves and hamstrings bulked up, and my waistline slimmed. Church was the biggest reason I eventually was able to lose about 16 kilograms (35 pounds). The most remarkable part was when I returned to the same walks after a couple months and discovered how easy they had become, how I needed to find ways to tack on a few kilometers to the end to keep them as challenging.
Costa Rica opened up to me like a flower as I grew fitter. This month I’m celebrating a solid year of maintaining my goal weight (más o menos) after slowly sloughing off all that sadness.
My journey to happiness and my journey to fitness went hand-in-hand. And it was all because of church.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll profile some of my favorite walks in and around the Central Valley of Costa Rica, and snippets of our friendship, misadventures, and discoveries along the way.
“You’re either on board, or you’re not,” my boss often says.
Why don’t people who are unhappy just… leave? Some people stay where they are, in limbo, in purgatory—unfulfilled and unproductive. I’m referring to those people who hate something about their lives, be it their job, their relationship, their home, their whatever... but they don’t do anything about it. You know, those people who don’t even try to fix the thing they don’t like. They exist to complain.
Unlike these sloths, who hang around looking cute all day and being all ZEN.
Here's a gratuitous sloth photo. You're welcome.
It’s amazing how applicable that maxim is to life. You’re either on board or you’re not. Don’t ever tell him I said this, but my boss can be a pretty smart dude sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong. I firmly believe in speaking up and effecting change. Not allowing yourself to be mistreated—by your job, your spouse, your family, your friends, or your society. But I also believe in walking away.
I don’t regret my marriage. The fact that I stayed in a dysfunctional relationship says some good things about my character. It says I’m willing to put in the hard work for things that matter. It says I’m loyal, dedicated.
I do regret staying so long after things turned bad. That says a few less-flattering things about myself. It says I don’t know when to throw in the hat and walk away. It says I don’t value myself enough.
Rather, I didn’t. Past tense.
At some point, you have to honor yourself and just move on.
Endings can be beautiful.
I did not learn this lesson, truly learn it, until I started traveling full-time. I never quite got the knack of walking away from unhealthy people or situations until I walked away from everything.
Yes, you should work at it, compromise, fight for what matters. But also be okay with the eventuality of going down new paths.
Leave that bad relationship in the rearview mirror.
Don't look back.
Leave those friends who aren’t really friends.
Close the door behind you.
Leave that job that makes you miserable.
Even if it seems like there is no path ahead of you.
Leave that place where you never felt at home.
New destinations await you.
When your entire life is about travel, you learn to say goodbye. Not only are you always moving on to the next new thing, your friends are, too. Many amazing people I love live all across the globe.
I’m in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, for a short stint. At this very moment, among all the people who are nearest and dearest to me, the closest one geographically is about 540 miles (870 kilometers) away. The farthest is 8,700 miles (14,000 kilometers) away. A good group of loved ones sits at 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) away.
There isn't even a way to use one of these to get to many of my dearest loved ones from here.
I’m in a city where, while I’m making some friends, I don’t know a single person well. And not a single person knows me well. I’m more than cool with that. And I’m prepping the people I do meet for the fact that I will—not might, but WILL—say goodbye. Soon.
The single biggest change that long-term travel has wrought in me is that I react to negativity with positivity.
Traveling, you have to.
Let’s say you’re walking in the countryside. New place. No car. No phone. Miles from shelter. A sudden squall rises.
You have two choices. Get mad, or dance in the rain. I’ve learned to dance in the rain. In fact, I sing rock ballads in the rain at the top of my lungs.
I honestly believe in the adage that tells us to bloom where we are planted.
I used to be dragged down by unpleasantness. My ex was a very unpleasant guy sometimes, and I would spiral into his unhappiness, and the vicious cycle would be almost impossible to break. At work, I would let the shroud of ugly meetings hang over my head when I went home. With friends, I would get sucked into convoluted feelings of wrongness over who was excluding whom. Even a crappy meal had the power to ruin my day.
Looking around my workplace, I noticed a few unhappy people. They try to appeal to my outsider perspective to get me “on their side.” But really, their grumpiness looks like petulance. It’s a big turn-off. “Why are you still here?” I think about asking. “You’re clearly not on board with this place, so why hang around?” When they frown, I perk up. When they act like the job is just too heavy to carry on, I get more energetic. I’ve already written about how I’ve become aggressively peaceful. This tendency has only increased after an additional twenty months of travel since I wrote that. Travel has electrified me with enthusiasm.
Like really. Jumping for joy.
I appreciate everything, even the little stuff, for the gift it is. I laugh in the face of things that make others want to punch someone.
When something doesn’t work, I get off board. I leave. I recently had a relationship with someone that could have gone somewhere special, but it didn’t. So rather than wait around another 10 years to make sure, I ended it, as kindly and respectfully as I knew how. In other words, I got off board. The job I was in wasn’t the best fit. I gave 4 months’ notice and moved on. I got off board. The city I lived in wasn’t suiting my needs. So I relocated. I got off board. The book I was writing wasn’t the one. So I started writing a different book. I got off board.
I don’t sit around and wait for the world to cater to me. I go out and find the world that I want to be in.
It's NEVER the end of the line, unless you accept that it is.
I don’t know where I’ll be forever. Goodness, I don’t know where I’ll be next month. I do know I’ll keep saying goodbye and saying hello until I’m on board with where I am. And I know that as long as I see everything as changeable and fixable, I’ll be able to be on board with pretty much anything.
It’s hard to empathize with people who are perfectly content with discontentment. Even though I WAS that person for so long.
I still make a lot of mistakes. Every new place I go, I’m a slightly different person and I make some old mistakes before I get my sea legs.
But I’m on board with my life. And everything in it. And when I’m not, I get off board.
