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Our palms pressed into pine needles, cold and damp from snow that had melted two days ago.

“Ground down through your fingers,” my sister, Walkie-Talkie, told us as more bedraggled hikers emerged from warm sleeping bags and meandered up the hillside to hitch our circle of Downward Dogs.

“Should you feel any pressure in your wrists, pause and take a break,” Sis continued. “Now, imagine energy beaming up from the bottom all over your shoulders. Elbows by your ears, shoulder blades down your back.”

Pleased with our growing assembly, I assumed Coffee Pose, squatting and sipping stale brown water from an expandable rubber cup that will later be snapped back right into a flat circle, like a folded paper fan, before being stuffed in my backpack.

Only yesterday, my sister and I had risen with the sun, slung our backpacks on, cinched our waist belts, and located ourselves wandering within the cool shade of rhododendrons and tall gray-green pines along the Appalachian Trail. We summited Springer Mountain within the early afternoon and continued some three miles to Stover Creek Shelter.

That evening, the campsite was abuzz with activity as hikers hammered tent stakes into the bottom using rocks and shook out sleeping bags before laying them across the pine plank floorboards of the shelter. My sister and I settled on a site that was somewhat faraway from the hustle and bustle, admiring our newly acquired prime real estate. The scratch of dirt had woody plants against which we could lean our mountaineering poles and a fallen tree trunk where we could sit, talk, cook, write, and tell ghost stories.

Some months before, Sis and I had settled right into a morning and evening yoga practice while mountaineering a winding trail that weaved its way along the border of North and South Carolina. It was much flatter than the Appalachian Trail, but we’d needed a training ground.

Even greater than steep rocky climbs, we would have liked stamina and resolve. We would have liked to learn the discomfort and acceptance of dirt, sweat, and walking. We found that we would have liked our yoga practice, too. Whereas other hikers hobbled within the mornings, my sister and I were strong-bodied and able to fairly bounce down the trail.

That night as dusk settled across Stover Creek Shelter campground, Walkie and I stretched our arms toward the sky in Urdhva Hastasana (Mountain Pose with uplifted arms.) It was my turn to steer, and I guided us gently through a progression which took us from the sky to the bottom before returning to Mountain Pose. As above, so below. Respiratory and moving within the cold mountain air seemed an act of reverence, a prayer. It seemed fitting after the rubber soles of our sneakers had pounded and pushed off the red clay of Georgia all day.

Thanks, Trail.

Return to Mountain Pose

As night fell at Stover Creek, campers huddled of their tents. A pensiveness pervaded, just like the mist that crept across the bottom.

“You need to go construct them a fireplace,” my sister nudged me. I hadn’t desired to encroach on whatever vibe had been established before our late arrival, but my sister endured. “They’re probably lonely. They give the impression of being so young, they’re far-off from home. Possibly wondering what the heck they’re doing out here.”

At her prodding, I started gathering sticks of all sizes as unobtrusively as possible and piling them near the fireplace pit. A graceful girl glanced up at me with large dark eyes, asking whether she could help. Emma had come alone all the best way from Boston and had recently accomplished her undergraduate studies. I couldn’t imagine the grit it had taken for her to fly across the country and find herself within the backwoods of Georgia, starting out alone on the Appalachian Trail.

Graceful Emma and my sister also grabbed one other volunteer, a young woman from Recent York, quiet and serious together with her long, blond hair pulled back from her face and pursed lips. They went off to assemble bundles of wood. I could hear them chattering on a far-off hillside as I started constructing the architecture mandatory to feed fires.

“Were you guys doing yoga earlier?” a young man asked as he sat down nearby. “I form of wanted to hitch you, but I didn’t wish to intrude.”

“We’ll do yoga within the morning if you need to join us,” I told them. “We’d love the corporate.”

The heat of the fireplace slowly melted away the strangeness of sitting within the quiet woods. Shy introductions became stories in regards to the day’s hike, plants people had seen, and shared hopes of spying black bears in the course of the trek.

The writer’s barely contained enthusiasm in regards to the potential for spotting bears. (Photo: Daneen Schatzle)

For my sister and myself, yoga and mountaineering form a sacred circle. Like breath and movement. Or those whirling dervishes with one hand raised toward the heavens and one palm open to the bottom below. It’s not unlike the trope of the lost hiker wandering in circles, returning to the identical place over and once again. Humans cannot seem to maneuver in straight lines, irrespective of how hard we try.

“Blue blaze” is the colloquial term utilized by hikers to explain wandering from the designated trail. Detours to water sources and shelters are sometimes marked by a tree bearing a sky-blue swatch of paint, a blue blaze. Sometimes, though, the term carries a derogatory connotation, hinting that a hiker isn’t following the trail laid out before them.

Possibly we trekkers secretly resent the stark circumstances that confront us once we find ourselves lost, having strayed to this point from our self-determined trails. Sometimes we want to double back and relearn an element of the trail we thoughtlessly or purposefully omitted, or one whose lessons we left behind once we deemed them not mandatory.

Called original sin by some and animal nature by others, this meandering from side to side, betwixt various stages of life, means every traveler arrives when they are going to. They usually may arrive repeatedly. We circle back to recollect what we’d forgotten, to relearn the symmetry of balance, flexibility, and strength. It used to frustrate me to no end.

Return to Mountain Pose.

The Space Between

That morning at Stover Creek Shelter found my sister surrounded by our latest hiker friends, draped over in Downward Dog, softly murmuring words into the mist. Like us, that they had stepped into this vortex within the woods,  briefly ceasing to be nurses, teachers, accountants, and former identities that were replaced with trail names. “Graceful Emma.” “Recent York.” “Botanist.”

The forest was completely unpredictable, like life, but more so. When you ventured into vast gray-green Appalachia, there was no telling what would occur to you next. Nevertheless it would occur to you, and there could be no stopping it.

Before yoga, I’d spent most of my days in frenzied movement, attempting to keep my thoughts at bay. Settling my soul in any way—stillness, quiet, breath—was dangerous to my restless thoughts that desired to cycle and spin through worries of every kind.

I struggled through those starting moments of breath before movement. My shallow respiration was afraid to make the journey all of the strategy to my stomach and fill that space. Feel that space. I suffered through those first few moments, waiting for movement, longing to succeed in past my fears without acknowledging them. It was a perpetual Cat Pose of my soul, arching my belly far-off from the swirling feelings below.

The woods had held that very same intense anxiety for me. So still. So quiet. And so expansive, with trees towering and space moving outwardly away from me. Small me, small mammal, standing still within the woods.

Mountain climbing was high-quality, moving was high-quality. It was the in-between moments that were hard. The negative space in between steps as I put one sneaker down in front of the opposite. In between words that hung within the air. In between the steps was where I used to be falling. The space between breaths was where I used to be losing air. I desired to throw away the space.

Feelings are our paint—our blue blaze. And there in my belly were so many feelings and worries. I desired to throw them away after I found them messy and execute a precise blueprint with rulers and straight lines. Then, call it a day.

Stilling my spirit to stretch and breathe drew my attention to my speedy cycling thoughts. Somewhere in my practice, yoga began helping me be okay with that space. Now not running and moving away from my very own mind, I used to be learning to breathe through those feelings.

So there we were, my sister and me, leaning into pine needles and stretching calves amid fallen trees with these strangers who were friends. We were hikers for this time in our lives together. Then, we might all return and resume the atypical tasks required by what we call real life.

At dusk and dawn, my sister and I assumed Tadasana, reflecting the mountains to all sides of us. There’s something in yoga of potential energy being stored. Like a spring, I would burst into one other pose, I would take flight pushing off the bottom through the guidelines of my toes and the front of my calves, my shoulder blades like wings.

The writer (right) together with her sister, Walkie-Talkie. (Photo: Daneen Schatzle)

With repetition, we learned not to go away yoga behind us in campsites. Quite than dumping the force of our steps into hips, knees, and ankles as we hiked, we moved as if in Mountain Pose. We moved our own mountains.

After we weren’t singing or chattering, I reminded myself to maneuver with intention, engage every inch of my body, every ligament, every tendon, every sinew, as my joints alone couldn’t carry the load. We used our yoga practice to have interaction as much of our bodies as would cooperate with us. Sometimes forgetting to drag in addition to push, to yin while yanging.

That evening, we were between Springer and Sassafras Mountains, eating near the subsequent shelter along the trail. A hiker named Yukon was telling the group how hard Sassafras Mountain was going to be tomorrow, featuring an elevation gain of greater than 600 feet in a single mile.

“Uphill at all times sucks,” I said as I stood up. “Suck is suck.”

It was less eloquent than my sister’s repeated mantra, “embrace the suck,” but quicker to the cut. We were between two mountains. It was either go over Sassafras or turn around and return over Springer, there was no use discussing it. There have been mountains throughout us. There have been no decisions to be made, and we would have liked to sleep.

Sleep may be elusive on the trail. I used to lie awake wondering whether every sound signaled danger, but prior camping had taught me that there was nothing in any respect I could do about it anyhow. I could lie awake listening or I could rest. However the stillness bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Savasana, and I pondered the irony of assuming Corpse Pose while waiting for a bear or stranger to emerge from the woods and kill us. Savasana needs a latest trail name.

At the hours of darkness early morning, mice skittered excessive of our tent. Walkie lay frozen, watching them run backwards and forwards. After we rose, Walkie and I led yoga again, attracting a bigger crowd than had joined us at Stover Creek.

“As slowly as feels good to you, let your right foot turn into heavy and grounded while your left foot becomes light. Let your weight ground down through the 4 corners of your right foot. While you’re ready, lift your left foot, pressing it into your inner right leg. Ankle, knee, inner thigh, wherever feels best.” I told our gathered group of hikers that morning.

Tree Pose.

As Inside, So Without

On previous hikes with my sister, I had wondered after I would start smelling my very own stink. I had found before, as now, that I only smelled increasingly more like a tree, just like the dirt, just like the forest. I believed perhaps that was just the smell of all living things and located it fitting that we smelled like our distant cousins.

On our ascent of Sassafras Mountain that day, I discovered myself attempting to “embrace the suck,” this convenient mountaineering trope which aptly expressed that sometimes the woods don’t match up with story-time visions of serene landscapes rolling by. All those vistas, river crossings, and wandering through flatter areas under tunnels of towering trees needed to be balanced by difficulties. In my sister’s accounting, they were made more rewarding by their existence.

For myself, I used to be content, in that moment, to not do one other hard thing in my whole life. Still, I longed to face all of the obstacles the woods could throw at us, at the very least in the best way I’d imagined them while reading transcendentalist literature in middle school.

As my body struggled, I practiced “Child’s Pose” in my mind, visualizing my bent knees resting underneath me as I lay curled on a yoga mat, the highest half of my body swan-diving, my fingertips reaching forward to the touch the expanse in front of me.

It worked. I achieved some moments of calm, tricking my legs into believing, for moments at a time, that they weren’t occupied by hauling me further and further up that mountain.

On our last day within the woods, we descended the steep hillside into Hogpen Gap, where my sister’s automotive was waiting. Like a campfire story, our journey was ending where it had began. Sacred circles.

The woods had reacquainted me with Crow, Pigeon, and Lizard poses wherein I attempted to embody the character surrounding me. As inside, so without.

But was there space to hold our circular practice out of those woods? Could I assume Tree Pose surrounded by leaf blowers? Which yoga pose adequately reflects fluorescent lights? It stays to be seen whether I can assume Cubicle Pose with the identical peace I discovered in Tabletop on the trail. I hoped I could seek—and find—Child’s Pose inside myself in the best way I had on Sassafras Mountain.

We returned to the parking zone, to Highway 17, and, just a couple of hours later, to real life.

We are going to come back every year to select up where we left off and push a little bit further. Return to Mountain Pose.

Thanks, Trail.

One step in front of the opposite. (Photos: Daneen Schatzle)

About Our Contributor

Daneen Schatzle was raised on the Beatles and baseball by Recent Yorkers within the South. Her sister, in blood and yoga, is Christine—trail name Walkie-Talkie. During their first 47-mile trek of Georgia, other hikers they met along the trail began referring to them because the “Yoga Sisters.” Their love of movement and challenge led them to mountaineering the Appalachian Trail and finds them returning every year to hike one other section. Keep walking. That’s it.