I was a college student in the late 1990s when actor Tom Arnold appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman touting weight-loss advice. He said one trick to dropping more than 20 pounds was holding in his stomach — all day, every day.
The technique helped build abdominal muscles, according to Arnold’s doctor. I wasn’t interested in losing weight, but I was eager to look like Bo Jackson, so I started holding in my stomach — all day, every day, for the next 25 years.
The habit didn’t win me a Nike deal, but it did change the way I breathed. Instead of letting my stomach expand when I took a breath — a violation of the Arnold principle — I held my stomach taut and inhaled with my chest. Each time I did, my torso and shoulders rose dramatically.
I kept this up over a quarter century of running and biking without negative consequence, until I attempted my first long hike, a 19-day trek on California’s John Muir Trail. Lying in the tent at the end of each day, I felt a soreness in my chest, as if I had been lifting weights. It took me a few evenings to realize its cause. With each inhale on the trail, my torso was lifting a 40-pound backpack. Over a 13-mile day, that might be as many as 15,000 reps — a workout for the ages.
The morning after this awakening, my wife, Karen, and I broke camp and headed up the sandy trail through stands of purple wildflowers and fire-blackened rampikes. As we walked, I held my hand against my stomach, reminding myself to let it expand. After a few minutes my arm would fall away, and I would begin breathing through my chest again.
Tom Arnold is a hard habit to break.
Glimmers of escape
Hiking the 211-mile John Muir Trail wasn’t my idea; I lacked the gumption to conceive of it. It was Karen, undone by a job that felt like a daily rendezvous with an F4 tornado, who began dreaming of transcendence. She found solace in YouTube videos by van-lifers — footloose 20-somethings who roamed the country in retrofitted vans with coffin-sized latrines. Karen longed to trade workday antagonists for deeper things: time, nature, discovery. I wanted the same but subscribed to the shibboleth that work comes first.
We turned to day hikes for escape. With much of the world in COVID repose during 2020 and 2021, we’d wake up at 3:30 on a Saturday morning, leave our Massachusetts home at 4:30, and reach a trailhead in New Hampshire’s White Mountains by half past seven. After trekking 10 or 13 miles and summitting a peak or two, we’d drive home that evening full of leftover pizza and root beer, buoyed by panoramic memories.
White Mountain climbs were relentless, earned step by grueling step over spiny rocks, roots, fallen trees and runoff streams. The effort paid off handsomely. At nearly 5,000 feet above sea level, we stood on slabs of granite gazing down into lush valleys and out over cloud-glazed peaks. I found something sublime in the landscape — the grand and infinitesimal mingling in one view, the friction and interdependence of living things growing in concert. I felt apart from everything that didn’t matter and a part of everything that did. Gratitude enveloped me like clouds on Mount Washington — suddenly and fully.
For a while I thought that feeling was unique, a personal connection to sacred space. But the more we hiked, the more I noticed it in other hikers. Some shook their heads in appreciation. Others said we were lucky to be climbing another tortuous stone staircase. And there was Karen, her face a vision of respite, taking in the world we had found. Up there, we were all tethered to the divine.
An idyll becomes a mission
As the pandemic wore on, Karen became mildly obsessed with the idea of a proper getaway — not just from lockdown but from a job as tiring as a White Mountain ascent without the payoff. She immersed herself in videos about people who had broken free — “thru-hikers” of the Appalachian Trail or other monthslong outings. When she told me about them, I heard a new longing in her voice. Something more profound than I had imagined was stirring.
One evening in early 2022, sounding casual yet determined, she announced, “I want to enter us in the lottery for a John Muir Trail permit.”
Anyone who hikes the JMT will tell you it is long, but the trail named for the famed naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club is not one of the country’s long hikes. That distinction is reserved for the Appalachian Trail (2,194 miles), the Continental Divide Trail (3,100 miles), and the full Pacific Crest Trail (2,650 miles), of which the John Muir Trail forms a part. The JMT is officially 211 miles, and closer to 225 with customary add-ons. For much of its path through California’s eastern Sierra Nevada, it is true backcountry — a day’s hike from anything resembling civilization. Its scenery is reputed to be among the most beautiful in the world. Karen’s voyeurism had run its course.
I understood the alchemy of hard-earned miles and mountain overlooks. But a Saturday jaunt to New Hampshire was manageable. Hiking the JMT required three weeks in the mountains, four away from work, and a hiatus from the everyday. If you had caught me in an honest moment, I’d have said it sounded idyllic. But I worried about disruption. Despite my yearning for nature and discovery, I believed that a person works to live and lives in the intervals between work.
Karen knew me well enough to anticipate this.
“More than 90 percent of people who apply don’t get the permit,” she said.
It was the perfect foil. I could say we had taken our shot, but when the attempt fizzled, I’d go on doing what was expected of me, rather than what I, too, dearly wanted to do.
Except we beat the odds. Karen called from work one day with the greeting, “We’d better start training.” A twinge of fear dissolved in a wave of excitement. I was ready to escape with my wife. We had scored the JMT’s version of a golden ticket. From the floor of Yosemite National Park, we would climb into the Sierra Nevada, traveling for nearly three weeks through that high wonderland of granite and grit. Two hundred and ten miles later, we would summit Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States.
That left us with a minor dilemma — one more elemental than blocking out a month from work: Neither of us had spent a night in a tent our entire adult lives.
Through the window of the gods
Seven days into our hike in August 2022, Karen and I trudged up a granite path toward Silver Pass, 10,900 feet in elevation. It was quiet except for the crunch of gravel underfoot, the chirps of chipmunks and squirrels, and our heavy breaths. We were still new to altitude and struggling somewhat with the relentless climb. But there was succor all around: khaki-colored mountains freckled with lodgepole pines, lakes the color of lapis lazuli, a cerulean sky quilted with clouds.
I sported a new beard that showed my age in salty swaths. My hair made me look like an understudy on The Muppet Show. When you take to the trail, it helps to leave vanity behind — along with razors, deodorant and other weighty accoutrements.
By then we had figured out how to camp. The hardest part, it turned out, wasn’t finding a campsite or setting up a tent; it was deciding we were going to sleep outside. Once that was established, we figured out the rest with alacrity.
After more than an hour of climbing, Karen and I reached the crest of Silver Pass. A man in dark hiking gear was descending a spur path that led to a perch 30 feet above us, and I asked if it was worth the extra climb. He assured me it was. There we found a welcoming rock, dropped our bags and took in the recuperative air, one bellyful at a time. I ordered a helping of turkey jerky and Karen ordered coffee. When neither arrived, we fetched them ourselves, keeping our snack-filled packs close to guard against marauding marmots. As we enjoyed the food and drinks, we puzzled over the views at our feet, wondering how something so beautiful could be real.
A mountain pass is like an amphitheater of the gods. There are 10 on the John Muir Trail — lofty conduits through mountain clusters to the wilderness on the other side. They are the rare places on the trail where you gaze down in awe rather than up. With so many mountains surrounding you, layered like an endless diorama, it’s tempting to believe you are seeing the entire world.
Karen and I sat shoulder to shoulder in that paradise. We had cheered each other through the climb and reached a place where we were at once mighty and small. Between us was a feeling of accomplishment and the surety of love. I’ll remember those moments as long as I can hold them.
Yet despite their beauty, passes are among the most dangerous places on the trail. Most are well north of 10,000 feet in elevation, above where trees grow and open to the elements. If you’re caught in a storm as it rolls over a pass, you risk hypothermia or a slip off the trail, with nothing but boulders and shale to break your fall.
Karen looked over Silver Pass in the direction we were headed and didn’t like what she saw. Clouds in the Sierra can be hard for newcomers to read — they move as slowly as teenagers on a Saturday morning. Karen didn’t bother to try; she just barked something about raincoats and took off down the far side of the pass.
Fifteen minutes later we saw the man in black, tucked off the trail, donning rain gear. Fifteen minutes after that the shower had passed, and we thanked the mountain spirits that we weren’t soaked through to our bones.
Seeing what he saw
Silver Pass wasn’t the first place on the trail where Karen glimpsed a gray cloud or heard thunder. Each time, she accelerated like a bottle rocket. Partly because of that, by Day 8 we were ahead of schedule. To celebrate, we took a “zero day” (0 miles on the trail) at Vermilion Valley Resort, an oasis across Lake Edison from the JMT, livened by fresh food, warm showers and level chairs for hikers sick of balancing on crooked granite boulders.
That evening we ate dinner with a new trail friend named Kira and her acquaintance, Tony. When we traded highlights of the first week, Silver Pass came up, and Tony said something that took us aback. “I saw you guys there,” he said. Tony was that man in black, the one who’d recommended the spur trail leading to paradise.
“I don’t want to sound like a creeper,” he added, “but I took some pictures of you.”
After scrolling for a minute, he turned his phone around. There we were — my green shirt next to Karen’s teal, two escapees flanked by granite and dwarfed by a blue heaven. Whatever Tony had sensed in that moment — a medley of color or form he wouldn’t see again; love in a sacred space — I was grateful he had captured it. I told him we would hang the photo on our wall someday.
We had gone to the mountains to be apart, and we had found fellowship.
Sharing gratitude
On Day 12 as we rounded a bend in the trail along Palisade Creek, I shouted, “Kevin and Kerry!” Our bus buddies looked hale and happy.
We had met in Mammoth Lakes, California, two days before we started our hike, when they boarded the wrong trolley bus and took an unplanned sightseeing loop of the lakes above town. Karen and I were New Englanders preparing our lungs for elevation, nursing the secret that our life’s biggest adventure was just two days away. Kevin and Kerry were brothers-in-law from the East Coast smuggling the same notion. The only difference was they would start at the JMT’s southern terminus and head north, while we would begin up north and head south. As the trolley rolled, we volleyed questions— How much does your pack weigh? Where will you resupply food? Have you done anything like this before? What are you wearing for shoes?
We were lost in camaraderie and oblivious to our volume until a couple from the back row walked forward for their stop and said, cheerily, “Have a great hike, you guys.”
As Karen and I got off the trolley soon afterward, we all promised to look for each other on the trail, but I think we knew the odds were long. You could miss cross-hikers any number of ways — they explore a side path for a better view, you duck off trail to use a “facili-tree” or take a nap beneath the sequoia canopy.
By Day 12, Karen and I were losing hope we would reunite with Kevin and Kerry — until that curve in the trail by Palisade Creek. For the next 10 minutes we shared stories of the previous two weeks. We marveled at what we had walked through, waded across and slept beneath. All of us had encountered settings more entrancing and resonant than we had dreamed.
While I climbed, my gratitude deepened. I thanked the trees for the shade they had given, the stars for their abundance. I thanked Karen for inspiring us to trade the false urgency of everyday life for the solace of the outdoors. I was grateful for the people who had made me, loved me and set me free to find new trails.
Driven to profanity
The JMT isn’t all five-star reviews, though. It can wreak havoc on healthy bodies. A tendon in my left ankle, beneath my shin, swelled up inexplicably on Day 10, sending a percussive pain through my leg for the next six days. And instead of sleeping soundly, comforted each night by lapping waters, I flopped like a fish, trying to thwart the pain coursing through my hips.
Most days, the trail squeezed us until we cursed. We would climb 3,000 feet, descend 2,500, and cover 12, 14, 16 miles. Near the end of each day, the campsite we hoped to reach would remain stubbornly over the next rise, like a cheeky country store advertising “free beer tomorrow.”
We feared the rain, ducked the sun and squirmed under the weight of our packs, wondering if we should have packed a lighter tent or left that extra shirt at home. Songs plagued my mind — five-second snippets on endless repeat. “Happy Birthday” dogged me early on, since Karen turned 44 on Day 2. At other times, John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders” tumbled through my brain like a sock in the dryer and Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” wouldn’t stop.
The songs were quack therapy for a trail that kept asking more of me. They didn’t quell the pain or lift my burden. When we stopped for a snack, I usually kept my backpack on, opting for steady distress over fleeting relief. I adored the daily unburdening when we finally reached camp — a twist of my torso, a dip of the shoulder and the thin screech of vinyl as I dropped my pack to the ground.
I was having the time of my life.
Sometime during the final third of the trek, my body caught up with that notion. The tendon gave up its protest and returned to normal. I cured my hip pain by abandoning the cushion of clothing I’d tucked between my knees each night — another decades-old habit, this one unprompted by Tom Arnold. My stride lengthened. Songs still tumbled through my mind, but they became my soundtrack instead of my torment.
In the weeks and months after we returned home, a funny thing happened. Like a love letter written in invisible ink, delight rose to the surface and everything else receded. I forgot how much my hips had hurt, how little sleep I’d gotten. I lost touch with the pain of descending a mountain trail on a flaring tendon. What remained was contentment — and a pervasive desire to do something epic again.
Inexhaustible gratitude
On our 17th day, Karen and I awoke to temperatures in the high 30s. We had walked more than 180 miles — the distance between Providence and New York City, I reminded myself. We folded the tent with stiffened fingers and hoisted our packs, scanning the encircling mountains for a round of the JMT guessing game, Which way will the trail go today?
I thought of the rarities the JMT had revealed. The coyote who sauntered by as Karen and I stood, arm in arm, in a high meadow near twilight. The clear night at Lake Marie, lounging on smooth rocks with Kira, Tony and another camper — the five people on Earth who watched the sun color those waters that night. The yelps of coyotes surging past our tent on a hill by Garnet Lake — a chorus that thrilled me even as it sent me groping for Karen’s trekking pole. The crunching sound of our steps on the trail — a primal bond between foot and earth.
Flush with memories, we began the climb to Forester Pass, the highest on the trail at 13,110 feet. From our campsite in a stand of scrub pines, we walked up to a grassy plateau riven by a brook. Then we began a stony climb. The trail passed a small lake, veered right and crested the long finger of a slope, turned left and headed up a steeper grade toward the mountaintops.
While I climbed, my gratitude deepened. I thanked the trees for the shade they had given, the stars for their abundance. I thanked Karen for inspiring us to trade the false urgency of everyday life for the solace of the outdoors. I was grateful for the people who had made me, loved me and set me free to find new trails. Despite the steady incline, a smile emerged, then a chuckle, then laughter and tears. In the mountains, no one is there to see you cry, and you wouldn’t care if they were.
We had walked miles for days, fueled by wonder. Our bodies had borne us along, through pain and elevation, as if to do our hearts a favor. In three days we would climb the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states and descend from the summit redefined. We would be John Muir Trail alumni, thru-hikers, graduates of the Sierra Nevada. Even as I daydreamed of multicourse breakfasts and warm showers, I yearned to stay on the trail forever.
After thousands of steps and dozens of glances at the lakes far below and the mountains far away, we reached Forester Pass. There we found a man sitting on the rocks alongside the trail, looking overwhelmed. We exchanged congratulations on the climb. He told us he had been there a short while, gazing at the ineffable scene, crying. His wife in North Carolina suffered from a slew of disabilities, and he was her constant companion. But she had encouraged him to hike the JMT, knowing how much it would mean to him.
“I’m just so grateful,” he said before breaking off.
Three strangers on a mountain pass. Fellowship in isolation.
It takes so much to reach a place like Forester Pass. Karen and I had planned 19 days of meals down to the last ounce. We trained with backpacks stacked with dumbbells, traveled across the country and cashed in every favor we’d ever done for our bodies. It was all just a pittance when compared with what we got.
No matter how singular we think our journey is, how unique our awe in an amphitheater of the gods, we are less apart than we imagine. We are all searching for a place to pray and days we will never forget. We are all learning how to breathe.
Chris Chiappinelli is a writer living in Wrentham, Massachusetts. He is working on a novel when he isn’t on the trails.