Some People Hike the Appalachian Trail. I Practice Yoga Along It.

This article originally appeared on Yoga Journal

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 join our circle of Downward Dogs.

"If you feel any pressure in your wrists, pause and take a break," Sis continued. "Now, imagine energy beaming up from the ground all the way through 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 would later be snapped back 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 found ourselves wandering in the cool shade of rhododendrons and tall gray-green pines along the Appalachian Trail. We summited Springer Mountain in 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 ground 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 removed 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 hiking 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 into a morning and evening yoga practice while hiking 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 more than steep rocky climbs, we needed stamina and resolve. We needed to learn the discomfort and acceptance of dirt, sweat, and walking. We found that we needed our yoga practice, too. Whereas other hikers hobbled in the mornings, my sister and I were strong-bodied and ready 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 lead, and I guided us gently through a progression which took us from the sky to the ground before returning to Mountain Pose. As above, so below. Breathing and moving in 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.

Thank you, Trail.

Return to Mountain Pose

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

"You should go build them a fire," my sister nudged me. I hadn't wanted to encroach on whatever vibe had been established before our late arrival, but my sister persisted. "They're probably lonely. They look so young, they're far away from home. Maybe wondering what the heck they're doing out here."

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

Graceful Emma and my sister also grabbed another volunteer, a young woman from New York, quiet and serious with her long, blond hair pulled back from her face and pursed lips. They went off to gather bundles of wood. I could hear them chattering on a far-off hillside as I began building the architecture necessary to feed fires.

"Were you guys doing yoga earlier?" a young man asked as he sat down nearby. "I kind of wanted to join you, but I didn't want to intrude."

"We'll do yoga in the morning if you want to join us," I told them. "We would love the company."

The warmth of the fire slowly melted away the strangeness of sitting in the quiet woods. Shy introductions became stories about the day's hike, plants people had seen, and shared hopes of spying black bears during the trek.

For my sister and myself, yoga and hiking 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 ground below. It's not unlike the trope of the lost hiker wandering in circles, returning to the same place over and over again. Humans cannot seem to move in straight lines, no matter how hard we try.

"Blue blaze" is the colloquial term used by hikers to describe wandering from the designated trail. Detours to water sources and shelters are often 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.

Maybe we trekkers secretly resent the stark circumstances that confront us when we find ourselves lost, having strayed so far from our self-determined trails. Sometimes we need to double back and relearn a part of the trail we thoughtlessly or purposefully skipped over, or one whose lessons we left behind when we deemed them no longer necessary.

Called original sin by some and animal nature by others, this meandering to and fro, betwixt varying stages of life, means every traveler arrives when they will. And they may arrive many times. We circle back to remember 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 new hiker friends, draped over in Downward Dog, softly murmuring words into the mist. Like us, they had stepped into this vortex in the woods, briefly ceasing to be nurses, teachers, accountants, and former identities that were replaced with trail names. "Graceful Emma." "New York." "Botanist."

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

Before yoga, I'd spent most of my days in frenzied movement, trying to keep my thoughts at bay. Settling my soul in any way--stillness, quiet, breath--was dangerous to my restless thoughts that wanted to cycle and spin through worries of all kinds.

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

The woods had held that 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 in the woods.

Hiking was fine, moving was fine. 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 other. In between words that hung in the air. In between the steps was where I was falling. The space between breaths was where I was losing air. I wanted to throw away the space.

Feelings are our paint--our blue blaze. And there in my belly were so many feelings and worries. I wanted to throw them away when 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. No longer running and moving away from my own mind, I was 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 would all go back and resume the ordinary 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 is something in yoga of potential energy being stored. Like a spring, I might burst into another pose, I might take flight pushing off the ground through the tips of my toes and the front of my calves, my shoulder blades like wings.

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

When we weren't singing or chattering, I reminded myself to move with intention, engage every inch of my body, every ligament, every tendon, every sinew, as my joints alone couldn't carry the weight. We used our yoga practice to engage as much of our bodies as would cooperate with us. Sometimes forgetting to pull as well as push, to yin while yanging.

That evening, we were between Springer and Sassafras Mountains, eating near the next 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 more than 600 feet in a single mile.

"Uphill always 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 go back over Springer, there was no use discussing it. There were mountains all around us. There were no decisions to be made, and we needed to sleep.

Sleep can 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 at all I could do about it anyhow. I could lie awake listening or I could rest. But 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 new trail name.

In the dark early morning, mice skittered over the top of our tent. Walkie lay frozen, watching them run back and forth. When we rose, Walkie and I led yoga again, attracting a larger crowd than had joined us at Stover Creek.

"As slowly as feels good to you, let your right foot become heavy and grounded while your left foot becomes light. Let your weight ground down through the four corners of your right foot. When 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 Within, So Without

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

On our ascent of Sassafras Mountain that day, I found myself trying to "embrace the suck," this useful hiking 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 had to be balanced by difficulties. In my sister's accounting, they were made more rewarding by their existence.

For myself, I was content, in that moment, not to do another hard thing in my whole life. Still, I longed to face all the obstacles the woods could throw at us, at least in the 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 top half of my body swan-diving, my fingertips reaching forward to 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 were not occupied by hauling me further and further up that mountain.

On our last day in the woods, we descended the steep hillside into Hogpen Gap, where my sister's car was waiting. Like a campfire story, our journey was ending where it had started. Sacred circles.

The woods had reacquainted me with Crow, Pigeon, and Lizard poses in which I attempted to embody the nature surrounding me. As within, so without.

But was there space to carry our circular practice out of these woods? Could I assume Tree Pose surrounded by leaf blowers? Which yoga pose adequately reflects fluorescent lights? It remains to be seen whether I can assume Cubicle Pose with the same peace I found in Tabletop on the trail. I hoped I could seek--and find--Child's Pose inside myself in the way I had on Sassafras Mountain.

We returned to the parking lot, to Highway 17, and, just a few hours later, to real life.

We will come back each year to pick up where we left off and push a little further. Return to Mountain Pose.

Thank you, Trail.

About Our Contributor

Daneen Schatzle was raised on the Beatles and baseball by New Yorkers in 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 as the "Yoga Sisters." Their love of movement and challenge led them to hiking the Appalachian Trail and finds them returning each year to hike another section. Keep walking. That's it.

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