You can call it a mid-life crisis.

How I took a year off work to walk through lightning.

Why I Quit My Job and What I Did Then

In early 2024, I left my job. I was 42. I had a hunch I was missing something in my Zoom-filled, corporate life. I’d never taken more than 2 weeks off, in 19 years. I could afford it. It was time. I quickly filled my time with leading hiking trips for a nonprofit I volunteer with. That’s where this story begins.

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The air in the alpine meadow had a weird, green cast. The wind was picking up. We had to find cover. 

Four people hiked ahead of me that afternoon. We were tired after 14.5 miles with full packs. A couple miles back, we found the one creek that was running, but the small site by its banks was occupied by other campers. We should have crowded in next to them, because now we were on a long stretch with no water, exposed on high ground, and a storm was coming in.

On Section 5 of the Colorado Trail

Section 5 of the Colorado Trail was a stunning stretch; I kept pausing to snap photos with my phone. The Tarryalls made eerie black profiles to the South, blurred by rain. I called for Gary to turn and see the view. The wind blew my long red ponytail across my face. He turned and looked at me, looked at the layered blue peaks, and nodded his head as if to say, “Yeah, that’s cool,” then he turned and kept going. 

I laughed at that, because I saw it in his face– “Yeah, that’s cool, but this is also scary.” I was possessed, momentarily, by the sublime joy of being out there, in the weather as it created itself. Yeah, it is cool. 

I wasn’t scared of weather anymore. I wasn’t scared of anything. I knew that my comfort level, earned through so much time in the wilderness, was actually what increased my risk, but I also wasn’t scared of that.

I told my therapist: “I’m comfortable being close to risk, because out there I can see it. I know what it is. I can respond to it. Then, I can move past it.”

At home, with my mortgage and my health insurance, which made no sense, and the dating apps, and the cringe of Linkedin, I never knew what I was scared of. Climate disasters unfurled on my phone. Was it that? Was it American politics in Biden’s last year—would it be his last? In the year before I quit my job, I felt paralyzed by it.

“Generalized anxiety” may be what it is, but that only serves to define its shapelessness. Its lack of focus. Which you can’t counter-attack. There’s no gear for that. 

I was two months into my sabbatical, and I was hiking a lot. I felt strong, earthy, my skin freckling and tanning like my leather boots, creased and dirty and ready to go. I was leading a lot of trips, and the question was always asked, eventually: “Lisa, what do you do for work?” 

I’d say: “I’m on sabbatical right now.” 

Then, “What will you do when you go back to work?” 

I’d say “I don’t know yet.”

I wasn’t worried about it. If I took a year off and spent the whole time worried, what was the point of that?

A brain-ringing peal of thunder broke over our heads. It came with a big flash. My moment of euphoria was over. I yelled across the hillside, “Get into the trees!” and the group in front of Gary scurried forward.

Once we arrived, I assessed: we were in a lower fold of ground between two exposed hillsides that sloped away from us. The pines were fairly close, so we huddled under them, pulling on our rain jackets, and then the rain came. First it was rain, and then it was hail–big, hard pieces of hail. It pelted our heads and arms. People cried out across the thicket. “Hold on!” I hollered, just to project some hopefulness.  

“That’s big hail,” I observed a piece below me on the ground. I had never seen hail that big in the mountains. Then the rain came hard, a true downpour, and the thunder and lighting shook the rocky hillsides. We stood in miserable disarray, heads bowed, getting soaked.

“What should we do, Lisa?” Sharon asked, her face shadowed under the hood of her pink rain jacket.

“Use your ball cap to shield your face from hail,” I showed her with a tuck of my brim. “Try to stay dry, and don’t stand too close together.” I tucked my pack into the nook between roots at the bottom of a tree, tightening the rain cover over it. “Under trees of uniform height is the best place for us right now.”

Lightning makes people nervous. Managing people in that kind of weather requires as much comforting as it does real lightning knowledge.

The truth is, there’s no great spot or safe position in a thunderstorm, if you’re outside. But, panic doesn’t improve anything. Keep the group confident; reduce risk by taking cover under uniform trees; and wait for it to pass. Lightning has a randomness; that’s what no one wants to admit. There’s no place in the outdoors you’ll ever be safe from it.

***

That spring, I attended a Celebration of Life for a woman I worked with for years. Her name was Tina. She was beloved by the crews and magazine staff, and soon she became the only stylist we used. Even after I left the company, and it was chopped up in bankruptcy, the remaining teams at the newly divided companies kept working with Tina.

I knew, walking into the little church, that I’d see a lot of old colleagues there. As I stepped into the foyer, I could see it was packed inside. There was a woman at a station to the left serving margaritas, a request Tina had made for her memorial. She had advanced cancer when they found it. And now, there were margaritas in a church.

On the right was a table with vintage suitcases propped open, filled with old photos of Tina. Like they had emptied out every box she’d kept, from high school and college and later years. Goofy printouts of her in messy dorm rooms, on Halloween, at prom. Her impish face smiling in one glossy photo I picked up, her red hair fringed around her face in a 90’s style. I looked up to see the side of Nate’s head, his face looking down at a photo in his hand. Nate was there. And in front of him, in a plaid shirt, was Josh, one mutton chop of facial hair visible as he turned his head. The boys were there. Before I could say anything, grab their attention, a sound erupted in the sanctuary. Bagpipes.

“Oh my god,” I whispered. The sound tore through my abdomen. All the preciousness of life was in that weird, yodeling sound that dominated all time and space. 

***

The storm held on strong for 40 minutes. It felt like it was sitting on top of us. We were wet, exhausted, and now we were cold. We knew there were sites at Rock Creek, as well as water, which was in another mile. I had to get those people out of there.

“I’ll run ahead and scout,” I decided, turning to the group.

“It’s still thundering,” Sharon said, concern on her face.

“Yeah, I want to see what the trail looks like after this next hill. Maybe there’s more cover,” I replied, smiling at her and pulling on my pack. “I’ll be okay.”

***

One of the best days of my life was college commencement. It was 2004. The graduates processed through the length of campus (my school wasn’t big, but it was beautiful) on a miraculous Virginia spring day. We walked behind the pipe and drum band. My navy robe twirled around my bare ankles, bare calves–my red, patent-leather shoes as bright and gay as the day, as my very youth. The bagpipes and snares led us all the way to the commencement stage. The faculty lined the walkway as we walked; the sound of bagpipes vibrating in every bit of us, and then, there they were. My favorite professors, jubilant, clapping, wishing us on our way into our lives. When I met eyes with one, the poet Claudia Emerson, who died in 2014, I felt the rush of all of it—those four years; the rest of my life. I cried. Now, bagpipes always make me cry. 

I held Tina’s photo in my hand and I looked at her smile and I cried. The church was so crowded; more people thronged in behind me, gently jostling me where I stood. She was such a joyful eater of life.  

***

I darted along the trail, keeping to the edge of the trees until they petered out. The rain was back, but the sky looked lighter. It looked lighter, right? I walked onto a hilltop, the grove behind me; an uncertain landscape ahead of me over the far slope of the hill. The Tarryalls brooded to the south; the Kenoshas behind were a hump of green; and to the west–I spun around–beckoned the far snowy ranges of the Continental Divide. Thunder clapped. A flash came later. I ducked, then straightened up. It was getting farther away.

I took a breath and ran forward, to the other side of the hill, into the sky as I went, thrilled in every cell to be running, to be out there, in my beloved wilderness. I wanted to feel real fear. I wanted to see what was on the other side of it.

Think of me that way, when I go. Periwinkle rain shell. Red hair. Silver-green grass bent sideways as I run uphill.

***

We’ll never know what’s next. Some of it will be what we personally make of it. Some of the future is random, and some will come from power structures we invented. Climate change, gerrymandering. Anxiety will accurately predict none of it.

I only want clean fear, now. The bear in camp kind. I do not want it generalized, spread across my life. My only life. As things come, I will respond to them.

When I turned back to tell my team there were trees ahead if we ran for it, they were already behind me.

“You guys okay with this?” I yelled. I didn’t want to push them if they were scared.

Gary almost smiled as he passed me. We were pushing for Rock Creek.