You learn a lot of valuable lessons from walking, but one of the biggest is this: the first problem is never the one that really messes you up. A blister on your heel, an aching knee, a bit of tendonitis where your leg meets your foot… none of those are fun. However, it’s rare that any one of those, in isolation, will actually end your walk.
Instead, what happens with that blister is that you land more forcefully on the ball of that foot, straining the arch and your shin, and even more intensely on the other foot, potentially leading to a matching blister on the other heel. Similar chain reactions play out with the knee and tendonitis.
It’s not the first problem–it’s the compensation, over-correction, or attempts at avoidance of that first problem that cause new problems to breed like rabbits.
So what’s the alternative? Take the problem head-on. Returning to the heel blister, the only viable option–beyond amputation, which might be a hair dramatic–is to forcibly keep your stride intact. This runs counter to the ever-powerful drive to avoid pain; it takes intense mental focus. Keep walking, landing as firmly as ever on that heel. Within a mile, it’ll go numb, and the walking will come more easily. At least, until you take a break.
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I was taking a break in Locust Grove, a small community at a crossroads just north of Peebles. This was the only town of any size on the day’s walk, splitting the 29 miles nearly evenly in half. Fortunately, Tomahawk Pizza was there, a hole-in-the-wall spot churning out the slices. A mother-daughter duo, likely in their early-60s and 30s respectively, navigated the cramped quarters and drew me into conversation as I sat in the lone chair, squeezed inside the front entrance between a cooler and stacks of giant cans of beans.
“Does anyone ever pull over and offer you a ride,” the daughter asked. I get asked a lot of questions, but I’ve never had anyone lead with this one. “Usually once or twice a day,” I answered. She nodded her head once and announced that “good people still exist, then.”
She thinks a lot about this issue. “I pick up everyone,” she explained. “Because if I’m ever stuck on the side of a road with a broken down car, I want someone to pick me up.”
It was at this point that her mom interjected, noting, “You should ask her what happened with that one guy.”
I had clearly stumbled into a conversation that had already occurred several times before. The daughter rolled her eyes and then picked up the narrative: “I once saw a strange looking guy near my house and thought it was a perfect situation for me to offer him a ride. Because one way or another, he was going to get away from my house. So I pulled up to him and asked if he wanted a ride. ‘Are you a cop he asked me?’ No, of course not, I said. Later he told me he was nervous because he had ice in his pocket.” She made a face. “Is that drugs, I asked?”, in a voice laden with shock. “Anyway, I had him get right out of my car soon after.”
Karma apparently does not extend to family members. The daughter pointed towards her mom and said, “Of course, she was stuck the other day, with my daughter, and nobody stopped!” An older woman and a child, stranded on the roadside, were left completely unaided, and the daughter’s indignation knew no bounds.
And around that point, Fritz arrived, two calzones emerged steaming from the oven, and we were off to the fire station to eat in the shade.
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That morning, however, hadn’t brought any offers of rides. This was due, in large part, to a very early departure combined with particularly secluded minor roads. With 29 miles ahead of us, we wanted to make quick progress early, so we rose at 5:30am and sprinted through breakfast.
Again, we were limited to what we had packed in, so breakfast was composed of instant oatmeal, cheap coffee, and cold leftover spaghetti. Trying to hurry, I took a bite of scalding hot oatmeal, immediately tried to wash it down with burning coffee, and then took the edge off with a mouthful of cold noodles. That became the rotation, and before long the flavors blended together, with apple giving way to garlic yielding to coffee and cinnamon and paprika. It was strangely satisfying.
And then we set out under the cover of darkness, shrouded for the first full hour of walking along dirt tracks back into the hills. Another hilltop plateau, beset with freshly plowed fields, awaited us there, along with an adorable dog that desperately wanted to follow us to the ends of the earth. No strategy could hold it back, so we finally found an Amish gentleman to do the job.
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Three days of intense walking had solved the problems in my left foot. Completely and absolutely. I abandoned the heel pads to the garbage in Elm Grove and ventured forth a new man.
Unfortunately, those three days of heel pads had consequences of their own. Despite getting a larger pair of shoes to deal with the added imposition, my right pinky had been smashed with alarming consistency into the right side of the shoe, while the ball of that foot had also been incurring added pressure. This all left the pinky, in particular, in deplorable condition–like the bruised and mangled grape that one sometimes finds dangling at the end of the bunch.
So, while the left foot is resolved, it’s now the right’s opportunity to scream bloody murder every time I start walking anew. It’s a welcome pain, though, because it’s the pain-that-is-just-pain, as opposed to what I started with, which was pain-that-was-injury-that-could-graduate-to-worse-injury.
The key, though, is to break the cycle with this one. Or to just stop taking breaks all together.
