Dami Roelse is an author, certified life coach, and an avid hiker. Born in Holland, she has traveled the world and as a young woman, began her spiritual quest by traveling to India in search of answers. By her late 50s, and while suffering through a personal loss, Dami revisited India where a trek through the Himalayas brought illumination and peace. Since then, she has become an avid hiker/backpacker and has hiked most of the Pacific Crest Trail, including the John Muir Trail, and across the entire states of Washington and Oregon. She has also hiked parts of the Himalayas, including a Mount Kailash Kora (or pilgrimage) in Tibet, considered Asia’s holiest mountain. Most of her treks took place while in her 60s and 70s. Dami uses her passion for long distance hiking and backpacking as a means to deepen her connection with nature and the universe. Dami is enthusiastic about leading and mentoring women over 50, in the third phase of life, on the physical and spiritual benefits of walking and backpacking, and she serves as a model for redefining the aging process for women. She has written a book Walking Gone Wild: How to Lose Your Age on the Trail directed to women over 50. Her latest book Fly Free, a memoir of love, loss and walking the path is a journey of spiritual and physical exploration as she deals with the loss of her life partner and goes on a trek in the Himalayas.
I spoke to her in 2020 at her home in Ashland, Oregon
Music by Manpreet Kaur, @manpreetkaurmusic
www.sacred-truths.com
Dami Roelse is an author, certified life coach, and an avid hiker. Born in Holland, she has traveled the world and as a young woman, began her spiritual quest by traveling to India in search of answers. By her late 50s, and while suffering through a personal loss, Dami revisited India where a trek through the Himalayas brought illumination and peace. Since then, she has become an avid hiker/backpacker and has hiked most of the Pacific Crest Trail, including the John Muir Trail, and across the entire states of Washington and Oregon. She has also hiked parts of the Himalayas, including a Mount Kailash Kora (or pilgrimage) in Tibet, considered Asia’s holiest mountain. Most of her treks took place while in her 60s and 70s. Dami uses her passion for long distance hiking and backpacking as a means to deepen her connection with nature and the universe. Dami is enthusiastic about leading and mentoring women over 50, in the third phase of life, on the physical and spiritual benefits of walking and backpacking, and she serves as a model for redefining the aging process for women. She has written a book Walking Gone Wild: How to Lose Your Age on the Trail directed to women over 50. Her latest book Fly Free, a memoir of love, loss and walking the path is a journey of spiritual and physical exploration as she deals with the loss of her life partner and goes on a trek in the Himalayas.
I spoke to her in 2020 at her home in Ashland, Oregon
Music by Manpreet Kaur, @manpreetkaurmusic
www.sacred-truths.com
Dami Roelse: I feel really blessed that I was raised with love from my parents, which I may not have always appreciated it but it was definitely there and I wasn’t afraid to love. And I let myself love people deeply, deep as I could, and with that comes loss. I’ve learned to live through that and embrace that and find out that there is wholeness even in loss. You know, we can be an example for the younger ones in terms of… life is about love and radiance; the aliveness that you create when you walk is what life is all about.
Emmy Graham: Dami Roelse is an author, certified life coach, and an avid hiker. Born in Holland, she has traveled the world and as a young woman, began her spiritual quest by traveling to India in search of answers. By her late 50s, and while suffering through a personal loss, Dami revisited India where a trek through the Himalayas brought illumination and peace. Since then, she has become an avid hiker/backpacker and has hiked most of the Pacific Crest Trail, including the John Muir Trail, and across the entire states of Washington and Oregon. She has also hiked parts of the Himalayas, including a Mount Kailash Kora (or pilgrimage) in Tibet, considered Asia’s holiest mountain. Most of her treks took place while in her 60s and 70s. Dami uses her passion for long distance hiking and backpacking as a means to deepen her connection with nature and the universe. Dami is enthusiastic about leading and mentoring women over 50, in the third phase of life, on the physical and spiritual benefits of walking and backpacking, and she serves as a model for redefining the aging process for women. She has written a book Walking Gone Wild: How to Lose Your Age on the Trail directed to women over 50. Her latest book, Fly Free, a Memoir of Love, Loss and Walking the Path is a journey of spiritual and physical exploration as she deals with the loss of her life partner and goes on a trek in the Himalayas.
I spoke to Dami in 2020 at her home in Ashland, Oregon.
Emmy: Hello, Dami, thank you so much for being with me today!
DR: I’m excited to do this with you.
Emmy: So, you have a new book out and it’s called Fly Free and it’s a memoir.
DR: Yes!
EG: About love and life and walking the path.
DR: Right! It’s about love and loss, actually, and walking the path.
Emmy: How did you begin to write your memoir? What led you to write your memoir?
DR: Well, there are two reasons. One, was because, I had lived through a very difficult period in my life and I needed to make sense of it. So, writing for me is a way to, it’s almost like, in therapy, you know when you talk it out. So, I started with a really, not even with that idea, but I wrote about mt trek in Ladakh a little bit and people were very enthused and I was in a writing group and they said “Do more!” and it just started growing from there. Because I didn’t do it with a plan, it took a long time to kind of get the whole thing organized. And then I realized that it wasn’t just about a trek in Ladakh, it was part of why I was there and what it was all about.
So, the other reason is, and that’s what came out in the book, is that I want to give others an example but also the, the courage to be authentic and make choices in their life that work for them, that are not just dictated by our society and since this is, you know, the period that I talk about is about losing a loved one to a devastating disease. You know, our society sort of dictates that if you’re married to a person you take care of him, until death do you part. And I, I, I questioned that at the time and that’s why that took this trip to really think this through. It’s like, how do I take care of him? How do I do this? How does our marriage continue?
And I wanted that message to get out there for people.
Emmy: And where is Odak?
DR: Ladakh is.
Emmy: Ladakh.
DR: Yeah, Ladakh is, used to be a separate country but it’s a part of India. Way up North. It’s on the Border with China. Up in the Himalayas.
Emmy: And how old were you when you took this trek?
DR: I was 59. I think 59 or 58. And it wasn’t the first time that I went to the Himalayas.
Emmy: Yeah, this part of your book is such a beautiful journey that you took in Northern India. And in the book, you describe the journey, the actual journey, the actual hike, that you did.
DR: Yes, yes.
Emmy: The highs and the lows, the hardships, the struggles, and the joys and the beauty and what is so beautiful is that you use it as a metaphor for what you were going through, for what you had been through, your whole path, your whole path to your relationship to your soul, to your relationship to love, and to the struggle you were going through at the time with your husband.
DR: Yep.
Emmy: Can you describe as this walk became a spiritual endeavor, how nature served as your teacher?
DR: Yeah, it wasn’t planned as a spiritual journey. It was more like, “I need to get out of here, and I need some space.” And having grown up in a kind of busy family, you know, walks on the beach were always my go to, get my head straight if things weren’t going the way as a teenager and stuff. So walking, more or less, is a way to clear your mind , so this was a very big walk to clear my mind, so this what do I do with this part of my life?
Emmy: A five-day hike in, am I right?
DR: Five days in, a minimum of five days in and five days back out. So, it was a 10-day trek in a roadless area. I had never been there; I didn’t really know anything about it. I went really on recommendations of a friend who had been there before. I didn’t even have a map; I had a guide book. But I totally had to trust and I just trusted, maybe out of ignorance, that it would all be okay.
Emmy: So, tell me what happened for you as the hike unfolded.
DR: So, there is the interesting thing, I met this person who turned out to be Dutch, and I am Dutch by upbringing, so here’s someone from my home country who speaks English with this heavy Dutch accent as I’m about to board my bus with my guide to go at the start of my trek and he was going in the same direction and this was very odd because there were no foreigners, they were all just indigenous and local people. So, I reached out to him and he was at first, (sounds doubtful) “Hmmmm”, but then he turned out he wasn’t prepared and he had done part of that and he thought he could get food on the way and he didn’t have food and so he came to dependent on me. So, we started this relationship evolved and this man, he just sort of embodied so many characteristics of men in my life, or my culture, and also he was a spiritual seeker. He was a devotee of…. I forget his name now, anyway he had a guru in India where he was living in an ashram. And the guru had said, “You need to go up to the mountain,” and he didn’t even know why he was there. So, we had talks about “What is a guru?” and so the whole spiritual aspect came in as I started traveling with him which was basically based on his need for food and I was willing to share the food that we had. We had enough and we knew we could resupply half way, so we shared the food that we had.
I think it is because when you are in an environment like that, everything takes on a different glow. It is so out of the ordinary. And the landscape is so imposing. And you feel really small and you start to realize that, “You are not in control here!” (laughs) and as you probably know, that at some point, you know, we had some hairy encounters with weather.
Emmy: Yes, it’s a wonderful story.
DR: Things I wasn’t really prepared for; nobody had told me ahead of time that that could happen.
Emmy: And at the end of your journey, it seems you made peace with your husband who was struggling as you say, he was struggling with a life-threatening disease, and your marriage was struggling and you resolved in in your own heart and mind.
DR: I did. I did. I think I resolved a lot of things on this trip. I had had a meeting with a guru earlier in my life that and I was still trying to place, “What did that mean?” And I really got clear about it on that trek, on you know, what spiritual work is really all about. And I discovered that I later encountered that when you are in high altitude, there’s something that happen, and your mind slows down as if you were in meditation. And you just become this sort of emptiness and you start to really feel the expansiveness of everything. So, I came to a place of totally saying there’s not a whole lot more than this. This is it. I’m not going towards some fantastic peaceful state if I just work hard enough at it. No, it’s here, every day. I started to experience that wholeness of the universe and me in it. So having that, I could come back and say, whatever is needed here, I can do this in this marriage. And it turned out, that because of his mental state, and which I do explain in my book, he didn’t have room for relationship anymore, his relationship was with his, well, cognitively failing mind, and his failing body and that was his first relationship, so he didn’t want to be married any more. I wondered later: what if I had said, “Nope, we’re not getting a divorce,” and I would have just stuck it out with him.
But I also thought, and I think this is an important issue which I have in my other book, which I bring up for other women: No, I also need to think about myself. It’s like when you’re in an airplane and they say first put the mask on yourself so you can help others. I needed to make sure that economically and financially I can survive somehow. Because when you’re dealing with an open-ended disease where somebody needs a lot of care, it can drain all your finances. So, when he said he wanted a divorce, I was shocked but I also thought, “Well then at least I know where I stand and I can take care of myself in that way.”
Emmy: Tell us about the trip you took to India in your early 20s, what inspired that. You’ve been on a spiritual path your whole life really, it seems, this is the impression I get from reading the book. And even though you lived the life of what we call a householder, as a mother, as a wife, as a working woman, and in your memoir you’ve often question you should have joined a monastery and taken an more serious discipline What are your thoughts on what a spiritual path is.
DR: Yeah, Well, that has changed over my lifetime. When I first went to India, in my 20’s, I was 24. I didn’t tell anybody but you know, there was already that, I want some answers that my Christianity that I was raised in the Church wasn’t giving me, philosophy that wasn’t giving me. I was seeking and I wasn’t alone in those days, and there were lots and lots of young people.
Emmy: This was in …
DR: Late 60’s, early 70’s. And they all went to India. So, and I didn’t say, I’m going to India to find that, but I had a friend who had gone the year before who said, “So, let’s go travel!” and we travelled overland: Europe, Middle East, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and then we ended up in India. And we had enough money to be there for at least a year. So that really opens things up and it was at that time, it was a time of people looking for answers and gurus and sadhus everywhere and, you know, ashrams which was all new to me so, it took a long time for me to figure all that out. I’m a good student, I took it all on. Whatever they say, I’ll try it out and I was a hard worker even as a spiritual seeker, which I think is sort of detrimental, I think of that now. “If I do this hard enough, then I’ll get there!”
Then what they say you will achieve, I’ll get there. I tried a lot of those different things. But there was one thing that had happened in Afghanistan. I had come across this book that had just came out. Ram Dass’ book BE HERE NOW, and I read it and I thought ‘Wow, yeah, well that’s not for me’. He’s a famous man, he gets his Guru and all of a sudden, his whole life falls into place.
Well, the first person I met in Delhi was Ram Dass. (laughs) So that is a coincidence. But still we travelled for another 9 months before I finally was sort of dragged by another person Neem Karoli’s ashram. I really had had it with gurus at that point. And that’s where I had an experience that you know, is sort of inexplicable. What happened there? What happened was that I was put into a state of mind that let me experience the wholeness of everything. It was an absolute state of love and bliss. And I was hooked after that. I was like, “Whoa is this possible?” You know it’s sort of like, I can imagine, I’ve never done heroin, but when people do it, they probably have some kind of experience like that.
Emmy: It’s the same receptors.
DR: Yes, it does. And I still cannot explain how that could happen because it wasn’t happening to anybody else; it was just when Maharaj-ji touched me, when he put this flower on my head, that’s when it happened. So, you know, he had interesting powers that people talked about. He had that ability to kind of project something and let me experience that. And I see that as a gift. But it also made me, it’s like, now what do I with that? And I struggled with that for quite a while Should I live in this ashram? Well, that wasn’t happening. I didn’t have a Visa and he wasn’t going to extend the Visa and he said, “Just go home! Go do your work!” And I didn’t know what that was. And so that whole question that you said: house holder, a wife, all these terms had come up! Can you do it as a householder or not?
And I just decided that I wouldn’t have children because I really wanted to focus on meditation and yoga and all those wonderful things that can lead you to a more expanded state of mind. And then I got pregnant, so that set the tone for me! And then once I had one, then you’re a family anyway; later I had a couple more. So, I became a house holder. And I kept the practice, some of the practices that I had picked up. I kept those going.
I would say, I was sort of seeking from age 20 on, like, how does this all work? I wrote this book to sort of let people know what a journey that it has been, but also I’ve come to an insight and a peace with it. So, when you ask me what is the spiritual path for me: well, I would say, it’s just living a life to gain increased awareness and consciousness for living.
So, it isn’t like, did you have to get to a certain place, but did you do things or did you set your life up in a way that will increase your awareness. And by doing that you will develop an understanding and also a love for everything that is and you’ll start connecting these things.
And you will have compassion for other people and really that’s what it’s all about. And there are so many different ways to do that is what I have learned over my lifetime.
So, I discovered, that being in the mountains, really gave me that experience, somatically, in my body, of how everything is so interconnected. So, for me, walking and hiking became a form of meditation.
Emmy: How do you view loss now?
DR: Well, loss is just a part of living, you know? Like the seasons. We’re in the fall here, and the trees are losing their leaves, you know. We’re losing light; we’re losing a lot of things right now that then change how we look at things. And it is a good thing because it prepares for the next change. It keeps the changes going. So, I didn’t see loss as something terrible anymore. It was hard, it was really hard to lose the person that you feel so connected with. We reached a loving state that wasn’t constant, but we knew we could have that with one another.
I feel really blessed that I was raised with love from my parents, which I may not have always appreciated it but it was definitely there and so, I wasn’t afraid to love. And I let myself love people deeply, as deep as I could and with that comes loss. I’ve learned to live through that and embrace it and then find out that there is wholeness even in loss. It took me awhile to, to just not try and find another relationship, or find, you know, something to fill that hole and to say, “I’m going to just sit in the middle of this hole!” Because as I talk in this book this realization there’s a fear of being alone is what kept me from embracing all the things that are going on.
Emmy: Especially for women perhaps, maybe, because we’re told we should not to be alone.
DR: Yeah! Yeah!
Emmy: Let’s talk about your hiking, your walking because that takes great courage, I think. And it’s sort of the same thing as it takes courage to sit in that aloneness and be alone. You wrote a book before your memoir: Walking Gone Wild: How to Lose your Age on the Trail. It’s a wonderful book that you published in 2018. It’s really directed at women over 50.
DR: Right.
Emmy: The first part is just how to start walking, just start walking around your neighborhood, just add activity and walking to your life, and the second part is really a wonderful guide on how to prepare yourself for longer hikes and backpacking trips which you have mastered! How did you come about to write the book but also how did you come to become such a good walker and hiker?
DR: Hmmm. Well, walking wasn’t new to me because I grew up in a country where people walked. But I also, living in the US, my life had become car-centric. And it wasn’t until I did that trek.
Emmy: When you were 58, or 59.
DR: Yes. And we had gone back-packing and I had done some of that but it was always very small bits in between a life of driving around in a car and not necessarily not being so focused on walking everywhere, or exercising for that matter, seeing it as exercise. So, I kept taking backpacking trips in the summer.
Emmy: It was after that trip.
DR: After that trip because I had discovered what the outdoors, the wild would give me. And so, I would go for, not as long periods, and then I decided when I turned 65, that I wanted to do a longer trip, and I was going to hike the length of Oregon.
EMMY: (laughs) That’s a good age to hike the length of Oregon!
DR: Well, you have to remember that after I came back from Ladakh, I had done a rowing clinic because I had an interest in being on the water. And I had started rowing. Between those last six years, I had become a fitness buff. That really put me in shape to be rowing four times a week out of the water, summer and winter, racing. I became really strong. So, it’s not like out of nowhere that I decided, “Oh, I’m going to go on a long hike.” I was fit enough to do it. Rowing could give me incredible mornings and sunrises and you know, birds flying over your boat. But it didn’t give me that totally at ease of walking because you’re working with equipment. So, when you’re walking, you’re much more, you can get into your head, or you know, and that’s what the hiking did for me. I realized that and so…
Emmy: It’s like a walking meditation.
DR: Yes, yes, and so I wanted to see what it would be like to do it for three weeks. But I couldn’t do the whole thing but I had already done stretches here in Southern Oregon as I was training for it, so I started at Mt. Hood and walked south to meet up with by Crater Lake or a little bit further I thought, and then I would have all that done. I would finish the other part…It wasn’t like I’m going from one end to the other. Basically I did the length.
Emmy: Almost.
DR: Yes. And I was working still so I needed to do it within the time that I could take off.
Emmy: Oh, my gosh.
DR: That’s how that started and as I say in my book, first I thought, go with a friend, and so I asked different people and we tried out some hiking together, and I realized, none of them: it wasn’t my pace or I couldn’t stand being around them all the time, so I end up saying, “I’m going! I’m going alone!” And one friend was going to come and she joined me for five days in the middle of that.
So that first night, I had never gone solo. Because even in Ladakh, I went alone, but I had a guide, I had a donkey man, there were other people around. I wasn’t camping alone, I wasn’t carrying all my own stuff, this was different. And that first night, “OH, I can do this, I did ok, I slept, I survived, nothing weird happened.” So, I discovered that I loved it; it was a whole different experience than being with people. That got me hooked.
Emmy: You went from there! Right?
DR: The next year, we did that other stretch, I do with a friend from Hood to the border. So what shall I do next, I wanted another one of those So I found someone who wanted to do the John Muir trail with me. So l prepared for that one. Didn’t do the whole thing because she bailed, and I had to bail with her. But, that was okay, you know, and then I just kept adding, more pieces. And now I’m 450 miles short of having done the whole Pacific Coast Trail.
Emmy: Wow.
DR: And I think…. what I did this summer….I think…My plan is to try and finish it next year before I turn 75.
Emmy: (to the audience): I hope everyone heard that!
DR: (laughs) Yeah, now I made a commitment because I said it on a podcast.
Emmy: No, it’s impressive! What’s your longest hike in one time, I mean?
DR: Washington State: 450 miles. I did the first 150 miles one year, and then did the rest 350 it was over 300… 350 miles is the longest I’ve done in one walk. One hike.
Emmy: My goodness. How long does that take?
DR: That was a month.
Emmy: That was a month of hiking.
DR: Last year I was on the trail for 5 weeks.
Emmy: Tell me, why did you write this book for women over 50?
DR: People heard about me backpacking and they wanted to know, so I did a class here at the library, for women, older women and backpacking and what gear you need and because by then I had it figured out how to do it and as I’m making notes, way back I was a teacher so I get a little curriculum together for everybody, and I thought after doing that one winter that I thought, “Huh!” And people said, “Can you do it again?” and I thought “For 7-10 people? That’s a lot of work!”
I better do something that can be duplicated. And so that’s when the thought of writing a handbook, and the handbook eventually turned into this book because when I first wrote it, it was really much more, a handbook much more practical and I had already put in the research of why it was so good for us to do and what is the reason that you feel better and I really wanted to come up with the facts.
Emmy: Yeah, and walking has so many health benefits. And especially as we age. Most of us, hopefully can still walk to some degree. We can get stronger if we keep practicing.
DR: It’s so accessible, and I think I wrote the book at the right time, because in the last two years, the whole walking idea has just blossomed in this country. Women are walking. Even with COVID this year I started a Facebook group for walking women after the book was published and just to kind of encourage them. The group is just growing by leaps and bounds since we have been on lockdown. People are not going to the gym so they walk and they want to have support from other women as they walk. So all the things that I wrote…when they have questions: Read Chapter 3, Read Chapter 5, it’s all in there! And really, what I realize is, that my book, it’s the only one out there. I haven’t found another one that takes an older women, and this can be for younger women too, because they can find it valuable from this, from A-Z. Just getting yourself to walk two miles every day and the benefits of it to all the way to how about 400 or 500 miles.
Emmy: You’ve got it all in there if anyone wants to take it on. And I think it’s helpful for younger people who have never done a long hike like that. I particularly love of what you say about the art of living after 50.
DR: Yeah, and I must say, my publisher, and writing teacher (she had been a writing teacher before) she kind of really pushed me to put those elements in it as well.
Emmy: What are those elements?
DR: The elements of that 3rd phase of life that we enter when we are past menopause. Who are we as women in our society? And I think it is my generation is figuring that out. We are not just shriveling up and sitting in the house We are a generation from Baby Boomers who-
Emmy: who went to India.
DR: Who went to India. All kinds of breakthroughs. Who got into the workplace, who…
Emmy: Social Justice. Civil Rights.
DR: All those things We’re not just going out without a bang. We’re going out with a bang. We’re going to do this in a way that makes sense.
Emmy: And it redefines what it means to be an elderly woman.
DR: Yes, yes, so we’re redefining aging. And the stories, I put stories in the book and a younger woman, says, “God!” -we had just hiked four days in the hills- “You guys look so happy and oh God, and I feel like I’m losing it all!” You know, “We should be over the hill. But we’re in our mid 60’s, but we just came over that hill and we know we can hike 50 miles and be fine! “
Emmy: And she was like 40 and…
DR: Yeah!
Emmy: That was a great story.
DR: And it truly happened like that. I encounter women all the time: “You’ve got something that I want.”
And it is a confidence that you get from, not only from accomplishing long distance but just the fact that you know you can get up and you can walk every day. Be it three miles, be it five miles. I talk to women around here; there’s an older woman who’s in her 90’s she walks three miles every day. And it sets the tone for her life.
I am.
Every step you take you say, “I am.” That is spiritual.
You’re putting yourself on the earth here. You’re taking care of your body, so that then, and that’s what’s the most important -you start to really, because you slow down anyway, you start to enjoy and know nature. You make contact with people on your way; you’re friendly, you talk. You put this whole thing together. You’re someone who’s, you’re shining, who’s radiant, you’re not a grumpy old lady.
My children have said that, other people have said that, “I want to be like you!” You know, we can be an example for the younger ones in terms of… Life is about love and radiance, and the aliveness that you create when you walk is what life is all about.
Emmy: Tell us the story, on one of your hikes, you met a Japanese woman who really inspired you!
DR (laughs): Oh, yes, on the JMT, on the John Muir Trail. There was this woman, all dressed in blue, isn’t that wonderful, and she was hanging against a rock and I said, “Are you Okay?” And she said, “Yeah, I’m taking a break!” And you have to realize, we were at what, 12,000 feet. It’s high! And hiking at elevation, really effects especially as you get older, it effects your breathing, how much oxygen you’re taking in. Every step is like, whoa, it’s a lot of work.
She said, “I’m hiking the whole thing, I left home; I’m from Palo Alto and I’m hiking it and I didn’t tell anybody and don’t tell anybody.” and I said, “Why?” “I’m 70 years old. They would not have let me go; don’t tell anybody that I’m that old.”
Later in Washington, I met this woman who was 86, and she was finishing, she was doing her last stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail. And she started when she was 68.
So those women! That’s why, I’m not even…you know, there are woman who are way, way more out there that do it. But when you see that it’s possible, it puts something in your mind.
Emmy: You don’t think it could be possible, somehow. Okay, I’m 25, maybe, but 65, 75? It’s harder…
DR: I think I have, in the last 10 years of hiking like this, and I have gone many other places in the world, too. I hike with sports. But, last year, hiking at 16,000 feet up to about 18,000.. around Mt. Kailash,you know, I didn’t have to carry a pack. I know how to do this now; I know to how to walk at altitude, I know how to breathe. I teach the younger ones how to breathe at altitude.
Emmy: And you really trained for that trip.
DR: Well, maybe not so much for high altitude, because you can’t really train for high altitude you just have to be lucky and hope your body is healthy enough that you can do it.. You can train for strength; you can train for how to pace yourself. But…
Emmy: And this was last year?
DR: It was last year.
Emmy: And you were about 73, 74?
DR: I was 72 when I did that. And you come back and you feel so grateful, not because it’s so, you’ve gone to extremes, yes, it was extreme, and it was a very spiritual place. I’ve sat in a cave where Milarepa meditated in 1100, you know, and all these people were doing their prostrations around and they do it; it takes them over a week or so, two weeks, full body prostrations around this mountain, so the air, and to combine that with, you’ve talked earlier about seeing it’s as a spiritual journey, but that, that is a spiritual trek for many, many people in the world. So, you pick up on that.
Emmy: Yeah, you do. There’s a sacredness in the landscape.
DR: Yeah. There is. Yeah. So, that sits inside me. And it’s not like, “Oh, well, maybe now I’m done.” No, I’m not done. I will walk as long as I can because there’s more, always more to experience. It’s like your practice. I will walk until I can’t walk anymore.
Emmy: Would you read an excerpt from each of your books?
DR: Yeah. I think I’m going, since I just talked about two women over 50, I’ll start with my first book: Walking Gone Wild.
“Walking can serve as a vehicle not only for health and equanimity but as a way of feeling connected. As we age, the chances of becoming disconnected from our loved ones increase. The dire image of a lonely, old, and depressed woman. Even if we lose our partner to death or divorce or our children to the world. We can replace the connectedness to loved ones we developed earlier in life with the general sense of connectedness. This is a blessing awaiting us; we merely have to seek it.”
And then I added a journal entry of an experience I had out on the trail and this was in Oregon.
“Diamond Peak. Long ago, before the last Ice Age, she rose, pushed out by volcanic eruption. A painful birth. Craigs sticking up like unruly rocky hair in all directions. When young, she was hard to touch. Time wore away her spiky hair. A few small eruptions followed and she became a beauty, lying there, her snow -covered breasts exposed. I watch her from a half day’s walking distance. My feet dangling in a warm lake fed by a river coming down from her slopes. I’m in love with this day, this sight. Goodness gathers in this bright moment. I have followed the trail. Maybe foolishly so, and now I drink the beauty. I will work my muscles to keep up with her heights even though I fear her moods as she can turn her weather on a dime. She is here and I open to her presence. All I have to do is commit myself to the trail. Walk and be aware. In drunken hopefulness, I sleep and wake early to climb along her side. High up, under the snow, the clefts between her rocky surface form gullies filled with glacial milk. Below I drink from the ice-cold pools among the soft moss and fern hair. The wind stirred up by the warm morning sun, cools the sweat already dripping down my back. Higher still, the trees are shrinking, becoming more sparse. Flowery meadows make way for yellow pockets of ground up calcium basalt held in place by sprigs of grass. A dune landscape at 7,000 feet elevation.
I become a child again as I once was, 5 steps ahead of my family, climbing those dunes eager for the day of sun and sea waiting on the other side. What lies on the other sides of her slopes? The empty trail lies behind me as I climb higher and higher. I don’t look back. I don’t want to know the emptiness, not now. I am climbing the slopes of this peak. And I let myself be pulled over her shoulder to what lies beyond. Another mile, another day, another mountain. Another opportunity to live life.
As we age, we can become an inspiriting example of living life gracefully and fully by adopting simple, available practices that will enhance the quality of life. A woman who is radiant because she enjoys her life becomes a magnet for others, and she will find herself a community that adds to her sense of belonging and connectedness. The knife cuts two ways in this case. Remember the story of the woman by the creek in the beginning of this book? A younger, not so happy woman was drawn to the older, vibrant women to ask advice.
The title of “crone” can have a positive connotation, someone with radiance and wisdom; a crowned person.
Women who pay attention to the self are not being selfish, but self-enhancing. As they say during the safety talk on the airplane, put on your oxygen mask first. You cannot help someone else if you are not breathing.
Find out how you can enhance yourself through mindful walking and hiking. Find out how you can become a confident, enhanced person, an inspiration for others. The growth forces that earlier in our life helped us become attractive women, and nurturers of family and community, can now be expressed through us in artful living. The crowning, or ‘croning’ of our existence as women. Rather than withering away, we can take care of our bodies and let our spirits shine. When the daily nurturing of a family, a business, or profession falls away, many women find the time to create by channeling life energy and turning this energy into visible, audible, and experiential forms of sharing.
As women age, they create a life energy and create a legacy of beauty for those around them and those who come after. Walking for health and awareness, then becomes a walking into the light.
Emmy: You’re working on another novel. What is this novel going to be about?
DR: Well, I have a working title, it just came to me when I was walking the other day, so, that is always good. So, I’m going to call it: Women with Grit. It’s really my family saga. Three generations of women, with grit (laughs).
Emmy: Your grandmother, your mother and yourself.
DR: And myself. Yes. I’ve written the book already, I’m just reworking it right now. I wrote it a few years ago, because as you age, also, I talk about, how do you do this? I also feel that I believe in leaving a legacy. One of the reasons I wrote Fly Free because my children get to experience, how this all happened in this traumatic part of my life, so it was for them and also for other people who have to go through that. So, this family story for me, this is about the eldest daughters. I got the idea, somewhere in the early 90’s I was reading a book Hannah’s Daughters and it’s about this Norwegian family and I said, “Oh, that’s like my family!” So, it really captures what happened in 100 years, ya know, in our world. My grandmother who was born in a small village on an island and left the village to strike out because she wanted more in her life.
Emmy: In Holland.
DR: In Holland, and she was in traditional costume her whole life. This is a woman who grows up in church and traditional costume.
Emmy: When was she born?
DR: 1898. Yep, so, she lived through two world wars. My mother lived through the second world war. All of a sudden then the daughters were getting educated, which they weren’t until then. My mother was still taken out of school, she was the oldest of 11 children and had to come home and help out after 8th grade. And how this progressed over time and then I left the country!
My mother really gave me the freedom to go explore. My grandmother even said when I went to India said, “Go! There’s lots of other ways of looking at things!”
So, I feel that these woman, I want them to be known by my daughters, my oldest daughter. I have one granddaughter and she’s the oldest, too. So, she’s in that line. I told her, “Harper, this book is going to be for you!” Because otherwise she’ll never know what her roots are, what kind of life. We lived with dykes breaking, flooding, all those things happened in those years. We came out of the sea as a family as generations. I am full-blooded Dutch, I am full-blooded on that island as my kids say, “Wow, there’s a lot of them with your last name, are they all family?” “Yeah, a lot of them are!” (laughs)
Emmy: Knowing this family lineage especially for those of us who are American. And many of us don’t know the real stories, the whole stories of our ancestors.. This is very important work, Dami.
DR: Not just important for my family. Also, I see now in all these things: the Women’s movement, the Me Too movement, the whole thing with Black Lives Matter. My grandmother adopted a black man in WWII as a child, no he wasn’t a child, I was a child. I grew up in such a white world, but that act that she did that really had a big influence on how I looked at people of other race and color, the whole race issue and the whole issue that was hidden. I found in my research that we were seen as these great sea-farers, we were right there in the corner of Holland, right there into the Atlantic Ocean, and we brought lots of riches to this area and a lot that was done by slave trading. And so, that has to be talked about!
Emmy: Wow.
DR: Yeah! So, all those elements, how can we straighten these things out; I feel partially, we need to acknowledge it!
Emmy: Just naming it and acknowledging that.
DR: Yes, naming it, so that’s what this book is about also.
Emmy: Beautiful. Do you have any advice for women or young woman or those of us over 50?
DR: Sure, I have some. What I want to say is focus on relationships with genuine love. Relationships where you feel loved, and you can be your authentic self. That’s what I would say for young people. You know, so you can love yourself and love the other. And if you can’t have a love relationship with a person, find it somewhere else! Find it in nature or in creative expression because, ya know, the book Flow talks about that. The experiences that I have when I’m out hiking have a lot to do with….. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote the book Flow about this creative state in which things just sort of fall together. When we’re done with whatever it is we’re creating, we feel rejuvenated, there this whole sense of like, I’ve come together. That is also what we get when we’re in a really wonderful love relationship. It can be done in creative expression as well. Don’t just get stuck on that you have to have a partner.
Sometimes your partnership is with an animal, animals, sometimes it’s with your art, or sometimes it’s with an organization, that you give yourself, there are many ways of loving, but seek a love relationship that let’s you be your authentic self where you don’t put yourself into a corset or a harness and try to be something you’re not. So, that’s what I would say. And when your older, find that self.
And if you didn’t live it, uncover it now. This is your chance. In our lifetime, if we’re not sick or anything we have a chance to get quite old so there is a third of our life where we can really focus on uncovering our authentic self, as I’m doing, obviously. And putting it out there in the world and help other people.
Women, I’m finding, are so supportive of each other, and we can be. Rather than that back biting of: You know, you don’t look thin enough or your hair isn’t quite right. It’s awful what happens to teen-aged women.
Emmy: It is.
DR: So I think we can rise above that and it’s been really wonderful feeling in these Facebook groups or these groups where I hike with where women are supporting each other. Statistically, there were be more women alone than men in their older years. So prepare yourself: be the best you can be!
Emmy: Do you have something from FLY FREE?
DR: I do. I have that. I picked out a section where I’m climbing in Ladakh and it’s kind of the pinnacle of what that trek is about. We have just crossed over the highest pass at 15,200 feet, and we’re still quite a ways away from what is our destination: the village of Lingshed. We are on a downhill slope, but it’s not that downhill, but it’s still very high.
“Brown, smooth rounded mountain side. No rock is visible, just soil. Dotted with little tuffs of grass that cling to the surface and remind me of the mound grass planted in the dunes of my native country to keep them from shifting into the sea. Some invisible hand must keep these mountains from eroding into the ravines below and exposing its rocky undershirt. Will trees grow here 50 years from now?
The locals are saying the weather is changing, and there’s more rainfall in the summer. Could these giants soften and be covered with green in time? For now, it’s rock, slate, and soil under my feet. As I approach the bottom of this canyon, the challenge of crossing rushing water and rocks with my 58-year-old compromised balancing ability is ahead of me now. The river is tumbling down with hard slurping noises as if flows over the rocks dragging down anything loose. I shudder. I don’t want to slip and be in its grip.
On the other side of the river, Tondup and Tsering are finishing their crossing with the donkeys. Wouter is 50 yards ahead on the trail and not looking back.
Can’t he wait for me? He knows I’m nervous about crossing rushing water. I take my boots and socks off, tie the boots together and hang them around my neck. My feet steeled against icy cold, I wade across bracing myself with my poles. The stones cut into my soft feet. I slide a bit. Grip and lean heavily on my poles. I’m risking breaking my poles if I put too much weight on them. I can’t do without them on the trail.
I carefully place my now numb feet between the bigger rocks to avoid sliding and grip my way across while the water makes sucking and slurping sounds as it swirls around my knees. Tondup’s voice calls out, “Hand pole, Memsahib, I pull you.” I pull you!” His encouragement helps me take another step and I’m close enough to hand the other end of the pole for balance.
Tondup waits for me and with mountain man caution and pulls me up the side. He doesn’t know how frightened I am. As I put my shoes and socks on again, Tondup’s calm and patient expression gives me thought.
Born at sea level as I was, the mountains are not in my blood. I will never I will never be one of the mountain people. I will never measure up. Weighted with the feeling of inadequacy, I carry on up the trail.
Wouter is sitting on some stones along the narrow trail. He’s leaning against the incline of the mountainside. His dusty blue pack open. His stuff is strewn around on the rocks “I will stay here tonight,” he announces.
Nothing in me wants to join him in this nameless place, a stop between villages. The river roaring just below. A river where I surrendered my fear. All I want now is to see if I can master the last climb to Lingshed. “I want to see if I can make it to Lingshed.” I kick the rocks on the path with my boot and stir up the dust.
“I’ll stay if you want my company though.” I leave the decision up to Wouter. He picks up his sleeping pad, and moves it around, his water bottle rolls onto the path. His own glasses mirrors in the light as he briefly glances at me.
“There’s no need. I have my tent, water, and I’ve eaten enough for today.” His voice trails off as he looks out over the wide-open river canyon.
“That’s not what I’m asking you! I asked if you want my company!” My voice tone is rising as I continue. “Here we are, five days walking from the motorized world, and you’re drawing a circle around you in the sand of self-sufficiency.
I understand that you feel you’ll be okay, but that’s not what this journey is about. This is a journey of discovery. Discovery of new ways of interacting and being with others. At least it is for me. From our conversations I thought you were exploring these things as well.” I feel a tugging in my throat as the I name my ongoing need for connection.
Wouter blocks the low light with his hand as he looks uncertainly at me and answers, “I’m just traveling, discovering what my guru has in mind for me.”
“Don’t you get it!” Impatience with him puts an edge to my words. “Whatever you can make of it is what he wants you to discover. You’ve been sitting around his ashram for 13 years now waiting for a sign, a word from him. Isn’t it time you make your own life? This is it, Wouter! All the ingredients for living with others are right here. People who care, who will support you, and have a common goal. You can do with it what you want. It’s up to you!”
The relief of knowing that I’m at least making my own decisions washes over me. I can hear Mahara-ji’s Jao! loudly inside me. “Go, live your life! Don’t stay here and look for guidance from me. The guidance is inside you.”
Wouter’s ongoing attempts to be acceptable to his family in Holland has surprised me. Selling out his principles and working for the government put him in a different ethical category for me. Telling me he accepted he wouldn’t have a long-term relationship with a partner make me wonder where the fight was in him. His passive acceptance of circumstances leaves him a life too narrow for me. Suddenly, I feel free. I don’t have to stay with him to make a connection. I can follow my own needs as I figure out a new paradigm given to me by the big changes in my life.
I’ve been afraid of the new life that’s in front of me. A life without a partner, or at least, a partner who no longer behaves as a partner. A life with a family strewn in all directions. I need to climb out of my fear. The fear of my aloneness.
Wouter is silent. He looks down at the trail in front of him. He doesn’t seem to have any words. I look up the trail where I can see Tondup and Tsering waiting. They’re my support. My connection to where I want to go. I don’t need to hang on to a man who doesn’t want to travel with me.
“I’m going to catch up with Tondup. I’ll see you tomorrow in Lingshed. I know that our meeting tomorrow will be a cursory one. Our trip together ends here. I’m finally letting myself journey alone.
The sun is moving westward and it reflects the light in yellow from the brown mountainside. A small village along the trail will be the decision point to stay the night here or move on.
Tondup doesn’t ask about Wouter. When we arrive at the village, it’s still early enough that Tondup decides that we can do the 3 hours more to reach the final destination. I don’t stop him. I set my mind in gear for the next uphill stretch.
I don’t want to have to rest until I get to the top. Step. Breathe. Step. Free from trying to accommodate Wouter, an energy is loosening and it pushes me up and up.
When I get to what looks like the top, this spot is just another marker to yet another higher point. Another peak and climb awaits me. I keep going, letting the rhythm of body and breathe push me on. Eventually I have to rest. The endlessness of things is stripping the inner unrest out of my body, and I’m left with just a working of lungs and muscle. What a way to know myself here, at 14,000 feet altitude. Raw earth meeting raw human stripped of fancy thoughts, feelings and expectations. I am life embodied, no more, no less. I understand the saying about working oneself to the bone as each breath, each step is work. I’m propelled by my aliveness. Hard breathing and putting one foot in front of the other is replacing my hardship of loss.
I feel a sense of freedom I haven’t known until now. Freedom from emotion. Freedom from my expectations of what I can and cannot do.. Who will I know myself to be when I am finished? I know I’ll finish. The determination is in my dirty, scuffed up boots as they continue to carry me to the top of the mountain.
There, through another line of prayer flags, I see the smile of Tondup waiting for me to catch up. Lingshed lies below on the other side, green and inviting. I smile back, stand for a moment to take in the view of this valley where my mission will be complete.
No more climbing, just downhill now and my tired muscles pick up speed in the excitement expressed by Tondup who runs ahead. For him, this place is home and family. His laugh embraces my earlier feelings of not belonging and gives me the freedom to find a home in this village.
Arriving in Lingshed is a coming home to myself in this strange land. A day of such celebration in my adopted country in the new world in America has become a personal day to remember.
Emmy: Dami Roelse, thank you so very much.
DR: Thank you for letting me share all this.
Emmy: This is sacred truths with Emmy: Graham. Music by Manpreet Kaur @manpreetkaurmusic. My guest today was Dami Roelse. To learn more about Dami, see some of the places she visited, join her Facebook group or to order her books, please visit her website: www.transformation-travel.com
Her blog: WalkingWomen50plus.com. And her Facebook page: Walking Women 50 plus. Please visit our website at www.sacred-truths.com Thank you for listening.