By Darrow Kirkpatrick, author of two Sticks, One Path: A Journey Beyond Fear on the Colorado Trail,
“He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is mighty.” —Lao-tzu
To achieve a boyhood dream, I overcame crippling anxiety, chronic lower-body injuries, plus the forces of nature to hike the 500-mile Colorado Trail on crutches.
In writing my memoir about the experience, Two Sticks, One Path: A Journey Beyond Fear on the Colorado Trail, the biggest obstacles were internal. At first, I thought the book would be a straightforward travelogue. But then I realized that if I wanted to write something memorable, I had to draw on my personal life. That meant putting my failings and fears into print.
I might be a seasoned outdoorsman, but I have sizable chinks in my armor, some physical, some mental. It has taken me most of a lifetime to make peace with them.
I’ve long been challenged to reconcile my adventurous goals with the strains of mental and physical vulnerability that also seem part of my personality. I was a strong rock climber in my twenties and thirties with multi-day ascents of “big walls” in Yosemite Valley. But what kind of mountain man has weak legs and panic attacks?
Those questions seemed damning until I could see masculinity in a different light. Yes, a macho man, or woman, exhibits strength. But, on inspection, true strength turns out to be a much more subtle and supple quality than simply the ability to bench press your body weight.
Admitting Feelings
Ironically, I’ve been inspired to scale steep rock faces and high mountain peaks at the same time that I’ve wrestled with panic and doubt in the rest of my life. My most extreme forms of anxiety more often manifested at home in everyday life than in the high mountains.
Admitting that I was not in control was a first step to identifying my true self and connecting with the intuition that could heal me. Contrary to modern prejudice in some circles, honesty, integrity, and transparency are manifestations of strength. And they are a type of strength that is available to everyone in every body.
I found that just as the physical discomfort of training builds physical strength, mental discomfort builds mental strength. Connecting with our internal state, feelings, and emotions, makes it easier to see what’s going on for us when the next stressor or crisis comes. But we must pay attention. A meditation practice helps, though it’s not the only way.
You are the first and sometimes the only audience for your private stories. But their impact is rarely confined to you alone. When interacting and communicating with others, it helps if you can relate to their feelings, and that comes from self-knowledge.
Whether the relationship is leading a nation, running a business, or writing a book, knowing yourself is essential to connecting with others. To communicate the essence of my hiking story, I had to navigate my own feelings about the experience, then capture those feelings on the page for readers.
Dealing with Fear
Feeling fear is inevitable for most of us. But viewing it negatively is not. The alpha male attitude sees fear as an intruder, an enemy, something to be defeated or suppressed. And it’s true that fear must be managed at times to avoid overwhelm.
But fear can also be seen as a companion, an adviser, a voice of truth. Fear on my big wall rock climbs kept me double-checking my knots and handling critical gear with utmost care less I drop it thousands of feet down the sheer face below. Fear is what gets you back home safely at the end of an adventure.
But we can unwittingly reinforce or add to fear beyond all logic or reason. Too much fear can debilitate. How do we avoid that? Certain practices can help with dissipating fearful energy: aerobic exercise, meditation, yoga, martial arts. When I’m caught in emotion and every direction seems a fearful trap, a simple mantra helps me: “Notice what is OK.”
In the long run, in my experience, fear can only be overcome by incremental exposure. You step forward into the fear, at a pace you can handle, again and again, until it becomes less fearsome. Patience and accumulated experience eventually let you move past fearful paralysis.
Cultivating Endurance
Society elevates upper body strength above endurance, perhaps because raw strength was helpful to evolutionary mating contests. But we live in a different world.
Endurance is far more important than raw strength for dealing with everyday modern life. Few of us tote heavy loads to make a living. Virtually all of us must deal with inadequate sleep, extended work hours, and an arsenal of subtle attacks aimed at our physical and emotional well-being.
Endurance means having sufficient strength over long periods of time to reach your goals. It’s about reliable strength versus a one-off display of power. It’s about coping with a spectrum of uncomfortable or less-than-optimal feelings and continuing with your task or life anyway.
Building endurance requires enduring. There are no shortcuts. Patience or mental endurance is essential to the process. We can exhaust our emotional patience for tolerating discomfort long before our body loses its ability to perform. The essence of patience is contentment with the present moment, rather than pining for something different.
Managing resources is essential to enduring. Rather than throwing everything we have into a single push, endurance is about using what is necessary, and no more, for the moment we’re in. We may not all be ultra-athletes marshalling water, calories, and sleep to break the record in some multi-day race. But any day in the life of a modern parent, spouse, or businessperson can feel that way.
On the trail I learned to wholeheartedly accept my slow pace, hiking with crutches, often one mile-per-hour or less. Sure, I was jealous at times of the strong hikers passing at two or three times my speed. But I learned that forgoing speed for a consistent pace was my superpower. I could hike up thousands of feet at altitude with very few rests and keep at it all day long.
Beyond Ego
Managing my ego and developing a more nuanced idea of “strength” was a profound benefit of my hike on the Colorado Trail. The process led to living and then writing an adventure story about a kind of success that broke the alpha-male mold.
Conventional measures of strength can be valuable. Sometimes pure force is required to protect others and stand up for what is right. But true strength has many more facets.
To complete a major journey, whether through the Rocky Mountains or through modern life, traditional strength is insufficient.
Being in touch with feelings, establishing a new relationship to fear, and cultivating endurance over brute strength are essential elements of the trek.
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Darrow Kirkpatrick is an early-retired engineer with five decades of hiking, biking, and technical rock-climbing experience. He climbed three big walls in Yosemite Valley, California and founded the award-winning Can I Retire Yet? blog. His personal finance books include Retiring Sooner and Can I Retire Yet? In 2025 he published a memoir Two Sticks, One Path: A Journey Beyond Fear on the Colorado Trail about a six-year section hike on crutches.
