Words of Encouragement

My friend Susan takes me walking on the Blue Ridge Parkway whenever I visit her in North Carolina – which isn’t often! She lives so close to the Parkway land you could throw a stone from her cozy dog-infested cottage onto one of the trails. Not that you’d want to be throwing stones, of course - you might hit a deer.

The Parkway itself is a 469-mile road that wanders along the ridge of the Appalachians through several states. Surrounding it is a total of about 80,000 acres of storied land, full of historic sites and wild trails. I know that I’ve explored only a little of it!

The little I have explored is near Susan’s house. Now, I’m a little older and a little heavier than my sprightly friend, who habitually hikes with a backpack full of rocks in order to maintain her condition. So when Susan suggested we hike up the 5,964-foot Grandfather Mountain near her house I said “Well, I might not make it to the top, but if you can put up with my slow pace, I’ll try.”

Young black bear in the Blue Ridge mountains. Drawing by Jessica Valin

 

Readers, I made it to the top. Susan turned out to have an interesting psychology of motivation. It’s one I’ve encountered before in India.

In 2000, when I went to volunteer at a community near the city of Pune, I was entrusted with a mission from a friend in Burlington, Vermont. She wanted me to track down an old friend of her father’s whom she’d lost touch with.  

So one day during my stay in India, the community’s driver, Shankar, took me in the old jeep to track down this lady in Pune, a large city. The address we had was, apparently, vague, because locating it proved to be a challenge. Shankar kept stopping to ask the way and every time he asked, the reply, with much smiling, positivity and nodding of heads was that our destination was “just around the corner”.

After going around about 20 different corners, it began to dawn on me that these well-meaning people may, or may not, have had some faint idea of which way we needed to go, but they were much more interested in telling us what they thought we wanted to hear – that we were close! They wanted to encourage us.

And so Susan, who refused to sit down at all during the hike - every time I sat down for a rest she stayed on her feet, rocky backpack and all – kept telling me we were nearly there.  Her encouraging “it’s just around the corner” reassurances must have started around the 3,000 foot mark. By the time we reached the top I’d rumbled her, but the strategy had worked, and we summited to enjoy a beautiful view and feelings of accomplishment!

Oh, and back in India, the dear Hindu gods, after laughing at our performance for two hours, finally took pity on Shankar and me. We finally found a street with a name that looked like the one we wanted. I hopped out of the old jeep to accost a playing child: “Do you know a person of this name?” I asked. The answer was not mere encouragement, it was amazingly factual:  “Oh yes, that’s my auntie, she lives here!”