A Hike to Remember

For the last three years, my birthday has fallen during the Spring Tour of my choir: the University of Alberta Mixed Chorus. Now, I didn't work up the courage to join this organization until I was already halfway through my Anthro degree, and I didn't go on tour until my second year. Adding in the four year gap between my first and second year of university, I've ended up being one of the older members of this group. Many of them are now a decade younger than me.

This doesn't really bother me, and I don't feel out of place there. Lord knows I've got the sense of humor of a thirteen year old boy, and I don't think anyone could accuse me of being a buzzkill or anything like that.

I've never been huge on yearly evaluations; I don't make New Year's resolutions and I'm probably the type of person who would forget her own anniversary, so my birthday is just a day when I can milk being the center of attention for all it's worth. I've never really used it as a marker of 'how far I've come since last year' and I didn't spend the 3rd of May in deep reflection on the ups and downs of being 27, or the fears of being 28.

But this last year has been a transformative year for me, and on tour, the day before my birthday, something magically delicious happened that highlighted the actual distance between 27 year old Brenna, and 28 year old Brenna, and I'd like to tell that story, if you'll indulge me.

A year ago I was sitting on my balcony, smugly happy with the events that had led to my being there. But I realized that there were other things I wanted that I did not have, and I started thinking about what those things were and what I could do to achieve them. And what I realized I wanted, more than anything else, was to be healthier. "Well," I thought, "That's new." I have wanted many things in my life: I have wanted to be skinnier; I have wanted to be more outgoing; I have wanted to be in a loving relationship, but I've never given much thought to my health. Until that moment. 

I started with things that felt little and therefore achievable. I wanted to be able to look in my fridge and feel proud that none of the ingredients on any of the labels included words I did not recognize as food. I started buying more whole foods and baking my own bread.

I wanted to cut refined sugar down to almost nothing and replace it with fruit to assuage my sweet tooth. You have to understand, I got through university without ever drinking a cup of coffee, no energy drinks, no pop, no caffeinated beverages of any kind. My drug of choice to keep myself awake during all nighters was Fuzzy Peaches. So I started going to the Strathcona Farmer's Market every Saturday and bringing home mounds of..well, actual peaches...and slowly, my diet underwent a revolution for the better.

I chose to eat one cupcake a week at work instead of one a day. It is unbelievably difficult to cut refined sugar out when you work in a cupcake shop, decorating cakes, working with icing ALL. DAY. LONG. But I managed it. I developed a mantra in my head that I repeated every time a scrap of cake was in my hand and headed to my mouth, "Brenna, your body is not a garbage can." And eventually, I stopped craving sugar every moment of every day.

I started seriously using the treadmill my mother had given me when it stopped being of use to her. I stopped thinking of exercise as a punishment for the way I was eating and started instead to think of it as a way to achieve a very specific goal: to be able to go hiking with friends.

When I lived in New Zealand, I went on two three-day treks with a couple who were in far better shape than I was. I huffed and puffed and perspired my way up the Humpridge and Kepler ridges and suffered lung and muscle agony. Those six days are still the most painful and embarrassing that I have ever endured. Yet they remain some of the most beautiful memories of my entire life.
 

Hiking the Kepler Trek, 2nd day. This is my all-time favorite of all my photographs.

When I hear about friends of mine going on hikes, I feel a desperate jealousy, since I would love to go with them, but hate being the one constantly lagging behind, hurt radiating from every pore as I struggle to keep up and fail miserably. Those hikes happened in 2005, and I have not had the courage to do any hiking since.

Gradually, the changes I had made in my lifestyle began to be reflected in my clothes. I've lost 40 pounds, 4-5 dress sizes, Lord knows how many inches, and it all seems a bit surreal, since the weight loss and size decrease weren't really my ultimate goal.

But the point of the story is this: On May 2nd, the day before my 28th birthday, the UAMC was taken on a short hike along The Golden Mile Trail outside the Tinhorn Creek Vineyards in Oliver, BC. What we all thought would be a leisurely walk through a vineyard turned out to be a brisk hike on an all uphill trail leading to a bunch of old abandoned mines and spectacular views of the Okanagan Valley.  There were definitely a few unhappy people in the group, some of my friends among them, who wished they'd known what kind of "walk" this would really be.

I was thrilled. I felt energized. My whole body felt like it was saying, "Yes, Brenna. You can do this now. You can walk up a ridge without feeling like you might actually keel over at any minute. Your legs and your lungs can take you all the places you want to go. They can do that now." On the way back, at the end of the hike, I was at the head of the pack, jogging down the hill just because I could.

I cannot express the depths of my joy. I am not happier because I am skinnier, or more fit. I am happier because I finally understood that happiness doesn't come like a winning lottery ticket, only to a small and random few, and meted out by absolute dumb luck. It comes through every little teeny tiny choice that I make, day after day. And if I just keep making the choice to move towards the things that bring me joy and contentment and fulfillment and peace, I can literally come out on top.

This is not a story that has an end. I am not finished working on my happiness; I will have to keep making these choices for the rest of my life, through good times and bad.

It took me 28 years to understand who I am and how to make myself happy. I know there are people who come to this knowledge much younger, and I know there are people who will die of old age not knowing, but this is my story, not theirs, and this is the path that I happened to take, and damn, but I am happy with it.