Self-Doubt and the challenge of adventure travel.

Self-Doubt and the challenge of adventure travel.

  

It’s 2:30 in the morning. I am awakened by a breath stifling pang of anxiety. “Are we going to do this?” This is the question that I often ask myself right before I embark on one of my long ambling bike rides.

Part of the problem is that I’m a terrible planner. I get an idea about a place I want to ride and go. I have significant ADHD. This is why I became a guide and adventure traveler in the first place. No desks and clocks to punch. I cannot sit still. This is not metaphor. I cannot hold my seat for more than about 30 minutes at a time. It caused problems in school and work. I’ve tried to plan rides and logistics, but it gets so garbled. I much prefer to amble anyway. Keeping to an itinerary can be stressful.
I wanted to write about getting past the hurdle of “self-doubt”. It is pervasive. Looking over the guidelines for Adventure She magazine is anxiety provoking.

My friends tell me I should write a book about my experiences when I start telling stories. I’ll try to complete an intriguing and coherent article first. 

I am also in recovery from drugs and alcohol. It’s been twenty-eight years since I’ve had alcohol or any other mind-altering substances. I follow a Twelve Step model. I’m not here to extol the virtues of one model over another. This is what has worked for me.

I mentioned writing this article for She to my AA sponsor. Her response was, “How interesting that you are calling it ‘Self-doubt’.” Emphasis on, “self”.

The model of recovery that I follow believes that "self" is part of our problem. When we get out of self (or ego), we have a much better time of it. A loving benevolent power of the universe is the one who has ultimate say in what we do. Some folks call it God. Makes it easy and there are fewer keystrokes needed to describe who and what I’m talking about. This God or "higher power" helps us in everything we do.

For us, God is omnipotent. This belief is not only about not taking a drink of alcohol or using drugs. It’s about how we live day to day. That this “God” has ultimate control. This can be a very hard "pill" to swallow for some folks. Pun intended.

This does NOT in any way mean that this so-called God pedals my bicycle for me. It/she/he/non-binary/ does not control the weather or even make decisions for me.

This also does not mean that I am absolved of any wrong doing on my part if things go south. Nor do I haphazardly step into something without first considering all the consequences.

Especially, in my professional life as a guide and mentor. It is also erroneous to believe that life is pre-determined. Where I end up is not set in stone or whatever it is they write on in God’s universe. Or is it? I don’t know. It's possible that I DO end up in a pre-determined reality. How I get there is my responsibility. It means that I do all that I can to make good decisions and let go of the outcome. God is also NOT a puppet master. I understand and believe this all to be true.

 

And still. There is an annoying voice in my head that I call, “K-F*CK radio. It plays all day long. It questions my decisions. It is suspicious of my validity as an adventure traveler, an athlete my competence as a guide.

 

When it comes to bicycle travel, I find the first pedal stroke can be the most difficult. One might think it would be the pedal stroke that pushes me over the seventy- or eighty-mile mark for that day. It isn’t. There can be a whole lot of inertia that gets in the way of that first turning of the pedal. This inertia resides in my head. It’s an unformed thought. It’s the radio DJ from the radio station attempting to thwart my success by stopping me before I even get started. There is also the physicality of the anxiety. It’s like butterflies on crack flying around in my gut. It can be paralyzing. Is that fear? 

 I’ve pushed past these moments of doubt. I turn my attention to whatever this God thing is and go. It helps to make a commitment. In retrospect, it looks like, “closing my eyes” and taking a leap of faith. I was a telemark skier for a long time. I got into telemark because that’s what I believed the cool kids were doing. My decision to learn was motivated by an outside source. We call that, “extrinsically” motivated. Didn't make it less valid for me as a past time but I wanted to be, “cool”. Turned out I was good at it. It changed my life. I learned that I had grace, was a real athlete. Western Culture tells us if we're not winning medals or breaking records, we are not real athletes. I wrote my master’s thesis on Telemark skiing. There is so much going on in the brain and body. So many new neuro-pathways being established. It would be impossible for it to NOT alter someone. Some folks might take it for granted. I sure don't. There is a sharp learning curve. I fell A LOT those first days. But I learned to commit to each turn. It's a very assertive skiing technique. To execute graceful and effective turns I HAD to commit to the fall line. I averaged about 80 ski days a year for about nine years. My friends and I used to joke about how to ski the steep scary stuff. “Close your eyes and point ‘em downhill.”

I became aware of the efficacy of commitment in dealing with fear when I was learning to lead climb.

Being on the sharp end of the rope feels daunting and a little terrifying. It is also empowering. There is a split second of doubt when it feels like I am stepping out into space with nothing to grab. As human beings we are at our core, animals. Our brains are hard wired to keep us alive. And gravity keeps us rooted. Going against this is counter to our basic animal instinct. Stepping out into space is the moment when I must commit to the move or risk a fall. There is no holding back. 

The  psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 

  writes about the psychology of, Flow States. I have a rudimentary understanding of this concept. It is when everything else disappears in that one moment and one is focused on the task at hand. He refers to it as, “flow states”. The fear is still present. But the doubt vanishes. The skill necessary is NOT equal to one’s level of competence. In the parlance of Adventure Therapy, it’s called the Adventure Experience Paradigm. It has a lot to do with neurobiology. Of course, getting too far out in the paradigm can cause disaster. In the case of lead climbing, letting go of THE IDEA of failure is success. Then I am reaching into space for an impossible hold. I put my fingers and toes on a tiny crystal. I am rooted to the rock.  It is a profound feeling. It is difficult to describe to those who have not experienced it. In the next split second, I am clipping my rope into the bolt hanger at my waist. Is it a sense of safety, success, endorphins, all the above? But I am now six or eight or ten feet above my last bolt. I don’t climb much anymore. But the same holds true for my many different endeavors. 

I stepped into guiding as a career in my early thirties. After 14 years in dead end jobs, I found myself in the Outdoor Industry. 

This is where self-doubt began to REALLY show up. “Who was I to be out there leading ANYONE?” 

My first gig as a guide was for a small Mom and Pop operation in south-east Utah. The course area was large and remote. It was all contiguous. We followed the seasons. We hiked from high country in summer to lower elevations in winter. We did not transport in vehicles. In all my years as a guide, it is still my favorite. 

My shifts were 42 days long with weekly resupplies of food and essentials. We met with Field support staff and planned our next week’s itinerary right on the trail. We hiked from water source to water source. 

Our field manual of policies and procedures was only 20 or so pages. Protocols for whatever disaster might befall us. The industry has changed over the years. These manuals are now a hundred pages or more.

It is impossible to plan for every variable. Lots can go wrong. But for me it has not. A tribute to my skill, plain dumb luck or a little of both? 

Understanding the difference between hazards and risk is helpful.

Hazards are objective. Meaning we cannot control them at all.

Examples are lightening, rock fall, wildlife etc. RISK is how to manage the outcome of the exposure to that hazard. 

I encountered lightening once that terrified me. I was in Wyoming working as an Outward-Bound Instructor one summer. We were in the Bear Tooth Mountains High up on a ridge. A weather front moved in seemingly out of the blue and quite fast. It caught us off guard.

Summer storms usually build over the course of the day and are most often seen in the afternoon. If climbing a peak, we need to be heading OFF the peak by noon. Afternoon thunderstorms are common in the Rockies. On this day we missed the mark. The descent took longer than expected. Getting caught in a high-altitude storm can be terrifying and dangerous. It happens. We can mitigate the consequences with good decisions based on all available information. Experience and research are useful. Inanimate objects can have predictable behavior. Lightning is a good example.

Rock fall, avalanches, wildlife, water features all have their own patterns. We cannot predict ANYTHING one hundred percent. We can make good decisions based on all the possible information we can garner. I am always observing my surroundings and watching for change in conditions. This can keep us “safer”. 

I know this and yet, there is still a niggling voice in the back of my mind. As though there was this other person present inside my head saying, “You sure about this? You are the lead here if this goes south it’s on you.”

There are volumes on catastrophes and disasters in the outdoors. There is also a constant feedback loop. Every decision leads to the next and so on. 

In debriefing every catastrophic event, usually involving the death of a participant there is a common denominator. A series of bad decisions. It is not usually one thing that goes wrong. 

Doubt. Is it fear, lack of confidence? It’s in the same category. A manifestation of fear? I’m not sure.

I am always questioning my decisions. This is where belief in God is helpful for me. Trusting that whatever the consequences of my decisions are, I won’t go through it alone. This is both liberating AND disconcerting at the same time. 

It's liberating because I know I cannot control everything. So, I don't have to try. A little bit of common sense and experience goes a long way. BUT setting off on some adventure without SOME training and preparation is a bad idea.

First principle of “Leave No Trace” is Plan ahead and prepare. 

How has self-doubt played into choices and decisions I’ve made in my own travels? How did I arrive at those decisions and how have they altered the course of my life? 

When has self-doubt saved me and when did it hinder me? 

For example. I was beginning to doubt the decision I made to cycle from Lima, Peru to Bogota, Columbia. Getting out of Lima on a bicycle was daunting. I found a route out of the city that looked like it took in small surface streets. I left at three o’clock in the morning to avoid Lima’s famous gridlock. I tried following a route on my phone to no avail. I kept the ocean to my left to navigate as long as I could. BUT it took me through the province of Callao. Next to Lima, Callao is Peru’s largest port of entry. It’s a sea-side city replete with a beautiful historic district. As the city has grown away from the sea, it has become a center of heavy industry. It is a major shipping port and the location of Lima’s International Airport. It’s very busy and parts are very poor. 

Forced away from the water by fences I had to cycle a few miles around the airport. There were entire neighborhoods of incomplete brick houses. I navigated convoluted streets, piles of rubble and empty lots strewn with trash. They say crime is rampant. By 6:00 AM the streets were filling up with people going to work and women pushing heavy carts with hot food and coffee. I stopped to eat at one such stand. People were very polite. If there were criminals with nefarious intent, I didn’t encounter any. Perhaps they thought me nuts to be doing what I was doing and left me to it. It took hours to get out of the city. There were suburbs and more suburbs and more suburbs. Finally, out of the city, I found a small fishing village and a place to stay that first night. The people were lovely. The coast of Peru is NOT very inviting. The water is very rough, the beaches rocky. Was I nuts? Am I a little naïve, too trusting? Am I lucky? DOES. IT. MATTER? Was God present “protecting” me? Or was I paying attention to my intuition?

Over the course of the next 10 days or so, I cycled as far as Huaraz in the Cordillera Blanca in Peru. Not very far as the crow flies but cycling from the coast up into the mountains took days… More days than I had counted on. In every village and town, I stopped in along the ocean, I heard similar things from locals. “What, you are a woman cycling alone?! Are you afraid!? How were you not robbed in the last town?!” “Cuidate!”, (Be careful) they said.

“There are murderers in the next town.” And on it went. 

I never encountered any murderers. But the anxiety began to weigh on me. I was too stubborn to turn back. 

Fear and doubt ruled by the time I arrived in Huaraz. I found an inexpensive and decent hostel to stay in while I considered my options. I found out that a Brazilian woman who was cycling solo had disappeared somewhere on the border. I was also following the news in Ecuador. The government was becoming more unstable, the economy in shambles. I stayed in Huaraz about two weeks. I was able to take a few side trips by bus to outlying areas to visit Inca ruins and villages. 

In the end I could not assuage my anxiety enough to cycle solo through Ecuador.

I ended up on a bus back to Lima and flew back to the US.

Did my doubts win out or my common sense? 

I continue traveling to many far-flung regions of the world on my bicycle. There is not much that can stop me. Covid put a damper on things and the dog I adopted in India keeps me closer to home these days. 

I don’t know if I will ever be free of “doubt” about my abilities. There is a delicate balance between “Doubt” and pushing the envelope. When Luke Skywalker was doubting his ability to raise the ship from the swamp, he kept “trying” to no avail. The Great Philosopher Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no ‘try’.” If I don’t at least move forward with the first pedal stroke, I’ll never know.