I’ll Push You by Patrick Gray and Justin Seesuck, is an inspirational story about how one friend pushed another in a wheelchair 600 miles over mountains.
Over the past month or so, as all of you no doubt recall, we looked at Leadership by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which chronicled the careers of four presidents; A Furious Sky, all about hurricanes; The Great Pandemic of 1918; and The Swamp Fox, about a key player in the American Revolution; and such. Most of the books have been about history.
This one is different. It’s nonfiction but it’s not history except to the extent that it’s about lifelong friendship between two men who did what many considered was impossible: Pushing a wheelchair over a 500-mile mountain/desert trail in 6 weeks.
Patrick Gray and Justin Seesuck were born two days apart in 1975 in the same hospital in Ontario, Oregon. They were very close growing up, closer than brothers in a lot of ways.
They went to school together until college when they went to separate Christian Nazarene schools. They kept in touch even as they moved away from their home town, got married, and had children. Professionally, Patrick started out as a teacher then trained to be a nurse. Justin went into graphic design
At 16, Justin was in an accident. A few years later in college he noticed that his foot was failing. He went to various doctors over the years, none of whom could figure out what was wrong. He was finally diagnosed with Multifocal Acquired Motor Axonopathy. MAMA is a neuromuscular disease similar to ALS, but it progresses more slowly, sort of like Stephen Hawking’s sickness that he lived with for many years. Doctors believed that the accident probably started the progression to the disease. Patrick continued to stay in touch and support Justin throughout the course of his sickness.
They always wanted to go on an adventure together, but Justin’s illness got in the way. He was at home in Idaho watching Rick Steves’ travel show one night (March 2012) and saw a piece on the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage trail that starts in France in the Pyrenees Mountains and ends up in a cathedral in Galicia in northwest Spain. He called up Pat, who lived in California, and talked about how great it would be to do it but of course being in a wheelchair made it not possible. Pat says, “I’ll push you,” and that’s what he did, across northern Spain’s Camino de Santiago trail.
The trail goes from St. Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Each year, 250,000 people walk it, all of them looking for something bigger than themselves – increased faith, getting over a bad situation, getting undepressed about the Red Sox, whatever.
In order to train and to be closed to his buddy, Patrick and his family move to Idaho from California. They trained in Idaho for two months on 18- to 25-degree mountain inclines. That is really steep but that’s not nearly enough time.
The trip was planned for June 2013. Pat’s boss gives him six weeks off and asks him to make a film of the journey. A college friend helped them find a film crew that would meet them at various points along the journey. Pat and Justin get a $8,000 mountain wheelchair donated. Justin starts a web site to raise money and they raise a lot.
Pat will be pushing 250 pounds up and down hills. Local fireman and friend Ted volunteers to go with them for part of the trip. They need him.
They fly to France. The wheelchair, which looks like a 3-wheel baby stroller on steroids, gets a lot of attention by security officials and flight attendants who can’t quite believe what the boys are planning to do. As Justin said, “You’d think they’d never heard of anyone hiking five hundred miles through mountains in a wheelchair.”
They had some problems getting from Paris to the Pyrenees Mountains where the trail starts. Apparently, France isn’t as accessible for people in wheelchairs as the USA is. Most of the inns they stay in aren’t accessible and don’t have elevators or doors wide enough for wheelchairs, or accessible showers. Things eventually work out, which is one the themes of the book.
Another theme is beer. The crew drinks beer pretty much every night wherever they are staying. After pushing and pulling 250 pounds of Justin and his wheelchair, slaking your thirst is important. “Beer is good,” says Bob in the Basement.
In early June, they left their hotel and began the trek. The locals think they’re nuts. As one resident yelled when hearing about their plans to wheelchair the 500 miles, “Impassable,” which you don’t need to know French to translate.
On the Trail
The first few miles are very uphill, with a lot of shale making it hard to push the wheelchair. An Episcopal priest drops by and blesses their trip. An Australian opera singer on her trek serenades them as they lumber through. They'll take any help they can get.
The first day is rough. Ted and Patrick end up carrying Justin through the roughest patches. During Day 1, an old shepherd wanders by and says that he’s never seen a wheelchair on the trail, but he also says that “the impossible is possible.” That becomes the mantra of Ted, Justin and Patrick.
After 10 hours of huffing and puffing, they get to the top of the first mountain. On Facebook (they had cell coverage!), Justin writes, “Today I climbed a mountain in a wheelchair. What did you do?” That says a lot.
Day 1 ends. They covered 13 miles in 10 hours - 1.3 miles an hour. 487 miles to go.
What can go wrong? On Day 2, the front wheel breaks off the wheelchair. Losing the wheel makes it tougher to move the wheelchair but they do. They need an aluminum welder to fix this, a specialty. They get to Pamplona and find a bakery/welding shop.
The course gets easier here, although they did have to dodge a big motorcycle race as they were pushing Justin.
In Los Arcos, a town along the way, Patrick and Ted join in the running of the bulls and don’t get gored, a great memory that could have ended badly.
Ted and Patrick are exhausted after a few days on the trail. They run into a young lady, Christie, who is making her way along the trail. She’s trying to move beyond what was probably an abusive relationship. She ends up joining the team, a good thing since the team is beat right about now. Others like Christie join the crew. One woman has MS, and she and her husband are doing part of the trail. Another woman from a South American country saw her father assassinated by political rivals and is looking for solace, something bigger than herself, which she finds.
I’ll Push You routinely gets a tad treacly, but, given the nature of those people walking the trail, treacly makes sense.
After a week, Ted is about to leave to go home. He’s injured so it’s good that he is leaving the trail. After he takes off, another couple comes out of nowhere and helps out. This happens throughout the trip. There’s no way Patrick can push Justin along the trail, but he doesn't have to since people seem to just show up as needed.
One could say that people showing up as needed is miraculous but the trail has about 250,000 people traveling on it over a few months in the spring and summer. It's crowded. When good people - by definition, anyone on the pilgrimage - see others in need, they help out. - Humanity 101. Patrick notes, “No one is left out, and everyone here is part of something bigger than themselves.”
As he is having dinner with this crew of newly acquired pushers and pullers, Patrick remarks, that the easy banter reminds him of what a church is supposed to be but often isn’t, “a community where all are welcome, all are loved, and the unexpected challenges of life are faced with others on our side.” Church has been “reduced to a club with exceptionally high acceptance standards, where anyone who is a member has been forced to lie on their application just to get in.”
More of Patrick’s theology: “The Camino is filled with people who are dealing with something - searching for a safe place to face their demons. How different would the world be if every church offered that safe place?”
The next few weeks are challenging. The troupe had to navigate through mud and big rocks. At one point, they were detoured to a major highway and had to dodge crazy speeding drivers as they crawled along. Another time they face a particularly steep incline and they thought about taking a taxi to the top. Of course, two guys from Idaho, near where Patrick and Justin live, showed up and helped out. During another steep patch, a guy in a high-end BMW pulls over and helps Christie and Patrick get to the top of a “small” mountain. Good things just happen.
About three-quarters of the way through the trip, they have to get up a really big mountain, O Cebreiro, that has lots of rocks along the path. Only Patrick and Christie are left now. Naturally, 12 people they had met along the way show up and join in to get them up and over the mountain. (Facebook is a good thing here as it helps the group organize.) At the top, they are greeted by two police officers who escort them with cruiser lights flashing into town. It’s a parade.
Patrick and Justin lose it here. They are overwhelmed by the fact that so many people they barely knew were there for them when they really needed help. Climbing this mountain ends up being a joyous occasion for each person who helped out.
One concept that comes through in the book is “sabbath” in the sense of taking time out from your normal life to think about things. This trip is a super-sabbath for a lot of people. Patrick is apparently a workaholic who ignores his family, and the trip gives him a new perspective on how to spend his life.
At the end of each day, they go to an inn, relax, and have dinner with fellow travelers. These are nice community events. The same is true of the pushes and pullers they meet along the way – they’re an instant community.
Three miles out, they see the triple spires of the cathedral in Santiago, their destination. The test of the trip is easy. When they get to the finish, many of the people they met along the way are there to welcome them. Their wives are also there. It’s a four-hanky Hallmark movie.
God
Patrick and Justin were both really ticked off at God a lot because of Justin’s illness, but they eventually got over it. As Patrick said, “So focused on his (Justin’s) apparent need for physical healing, for the miracle, I had failed to recognize what Justin really needed: He needed me to step into the real battle. He needed hands and feet – my hands and feet. The miracle had already happened.”
At home in Idaho, Patrick helped Justin brush his teeth, go to the bathroom, get dressed, shower, go places, do things, and enjoy life. As Patrick observed, “My obsession with divine intervention had distracted me from the truth that God had already intervened.”
Bob’s Take
This was a nice change of pace from what I’ve been reading and from what’s going on in the world these days. There is so much uncertainty and fear and mistrust and polarization that it’s a joy to read a book about two guys and a bunch of strangers pushing a wheelchair across northern Spain.
The book is not about redemption. It is about hope, renaissance, renewal, and self-realization.
Patrick was never one to seek help on anything, but pushing and pulling a wheelchair for 6 weeks in the middle of nowhere made him aware that you sometimes need help to navigate this world. Patrick learned to not only ask for help but how to receive help, a new concept to him. His ego and pride had gotten in the way before.
Justin had become remarkably at ease with his health situation, although at several times when the disease was overtaking him, he thought seriously of ending his life. He’s come to realize that, while he is wheelchair-bound, he still can enjoy life and his family. Justin learned how to invite people he had just met to help him out with what he couldn’t do, another new skill. He, like Patrick, comes to appreciate his wife and kids a lot more by being away from them for 6 weeks.
Each of the authors deals with mortality. Both of their mothers almost died when they were young but survived, and Justin is facing an unsettling future. Pat and Justin want to do something important while they’re still here, and this journey qualifies. That’s part of the spirituality of the book.
Tidbits:
– “Others” are the stars here. There are a lot of essential walk-on roles for people who just show up at the right time.
— Trust and vulnerability are big issues with the authors. On the trail. they each grow immensely in these two areas.
— During the trek, Patrick and Justin came to realize that they have been pushing and pulling each other all of their lives.
— These two are sort of lapsed Nazarenes. They “do church” more than really get much out of church. On the trail, they each reach new heights of shared spiritual experience.
— Bob in the Basement will pontificate here. Religion used to be the third rail of conversation; now it’s politics. When thinking of churchy things, you have sectarianism, which says “Play by our rules.” There are religions, which say “Play by the rules and be nice.” And finally, there is spiritualism that wants people to “Be nice and help each other out.” The 500-mile trail is all about spiritualism
