I recently just returned from a 3-day trip to the Ozark Mountains. Me and BR backpacked through the Bell Mountain Wilderness area, and the Ozark Trail. We traveled 42 miles in 3 days, which is a pretty nice pace for us. We camped for two nights...both nights were windy, but it rained very hard on the second night. Overall, the trip was characterized by fatigue and the difference in time perception. We had expected to run into some other people while hiking the trail...but we were wrong. The only people we met were 2 people who looked like they were living off the land illegally (hunting, etc.). Aside from that, we saw no other human beings for the entire duration of our hike. And if my cellphone had not turned on by itself in my pocket, I would not have had any other communications other than with BR. As it is, I got a lovely text from JM about joining for a movie night with chocolate popcorns, and immediately felt hungry.
In the beginning of the hike, BR and I talked a lot on the trail. As time grew on, our pace grew faster, our physical separation began growing apart ; we began getting more and more out of breath, and we began talking less and less, until we probably spoke an average of 10 words to each other every half an hour. Under such conditions, I began humming music to myself to entertain myself on the trail. With this method, I discovered a surprising thing on the second day of my trekking: for me, classical music dulls pain.
At the end of our second day, we had to hurry back from Council Bluffs to Big River in order to reach a suitable campsite (that was not in a flash flooding zone). I was leading, so it was up to me to set a fast pace in order to make at least 2 miles in an hour. It seems like a distance that you can scoff at, but once you're out there trudging through the leaves and rocks, you'll realize how difficult it is. Especially with a 40-50 lb bag on your back. Anyways, my shoulders and feet were aching really badly at the time.
And then I put on Beethoven's Spring Sonata in my head.
It wasn't instantaneous, but within 5 minutes I had gotten really into the music, and the pain had all but disappeared. I could feel a blister on my feet, a persistent force on my shoulder, but none of it hurt anymore. Because of this, I was able to set a pace that took us 2 miles in 50 minutes, giving us enough time to refill our water at Big River and set up camp before it got too dark. This was really weird for me, so I decided to test it out more the next day.
So the next day along the trail, I hummed music in my head the whole way. Had some Nelly Furtado, Coldplay, Radiohead, Rihanna, even Katy Perry. For the first hour, that was all I really hummed. And my feet and shoulders were killing me by the time we took our first break, an hour into the hike. For the second hour, BR (who was leading) set a daunting pace through a part of the trail where it must have ascended 150-200 feet without stop. I put on Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto and blazed through that section, and by the time we reached Ottery Creek, everything had stopped hurting and I felt even better than before we had started walking.
I used Rachmaninoff's 2nd and Prokofiev's 1st Concertos to crank out a 3 mile/hr pace on the uphill section from Ottery Creek to Bell Mountain. Still didn't feel any pain. But my ultimate proof of the power of classical music came in the last mile of hiking. It was entirely in darkness, and since I have a fear of the dark and BR is apparently afraid of raptors coming out of the dark a la Jurassic Park 2, both of us were on edge. And since BR and I were talking to ward off our fears of the forest at night, my shoulders and feet were beginning to kill me again. At the point when I couldn't stand it anymore, I put on Rachmaninoff's 2nd concerto again.
The pain disappeared.
The case is closed. Classical music is apparently my panacea. I think it may have something to do with the fact that the brain cannot focus on so many things at a time. I'm not complaining...I'd rather enjoy a grand concert in my head than the pain from my body. Though I tend to get so engrossed in the music that I start waving my arms around as if I'm conducting the music ("like a maniac", according to BR)...but I'll accept the weird WTF thoughts going through BR's head rather than the pain as well.
-FCDH
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