Test run

It's been two weeks since my trail running accident and I am beginning to believe that this will all be a bad dream someday. What lingers is an ache in my hip that I only feel when I am walking fast. I think that this will be gone soon. On my walk yesterday I harbored a small idea: I would try to run and see how it felt. Now, I want all the "don't overdo it" people to know I have been really, really good this time. It's very unlike me, but I have limited my activity to a point that I feel like I used to during a marathon taper. My body is energized and rested in a way it has not felt in years. So when I crested the hill I gingerly jogged along the flats.

The pain was only a minor ache so I slowly ran along the river for a total of 20 minutes and forced myself to stop. When I started walking again the initial pain was completely gone. So from this I conclude that movement is good, although I'm not about to go out and run five miles. I've been through this before. One mile, two, build up by adding a half mile each time. I know how to do this.

Lightning doesn't strike the same person twice unless they haven't learned anything. Although I don't think there is much I could have done to prevent the accident, I'm going to run smarter. On steep, rocky trails I'm going to power hike until I reach flatter, smoother portions. I'm going to do more hiking overall than running. If I don't feel like running, I'm not going to make myself. I'll do something else. I'm not training for anything but life, so I don't need to stick to any kind of a plan.

What this accident has done for me is give me a gift of time. Of course I would take it all back to be healthy and not have two weeks of pain, but you take what you are given. I have had time to write, cannibalizing old manuscripts and adding new sections to reach nearly 40,000 words into a new memoir. I have had time to read, lying in the grass of my lawn. I have had time to dream up a new Big Idea (more on that in another post). I have had time to just lean on my husband's shoulder.

What the body can heal from is amazing. I have gone from someone with almost no mobility without searing pain to be able to jog along a river in two weeks. It's hard not to believe that anything is possible.

Walking the recovery trail

As my body heals, I've been walking. Not the kind of walking I used to do, twelve miles at a time before lunch, as fast as I could, but a new kind of walking. As I walk I feel my muscles knitting together again, the overwhelming pain of the injury fading slowly.

I walk in a historic park, a place sacred to the Nez Perce. It is sacred to me too, a half mile from my cabin, and almost always empty of people. The trails are short; you have to double back to get any mileage out of it. But it's enough.

In the past this park was a place to run through in my quest to cover miles. Now I am forced to slow down and I can't say it is all bad. There are sweet nuances I never took the time to notice before. I never thought three miles could feel like such a victory.

The shade of the ponderosas.

This little pond freezes in winter. I wonder what it would be like for swimming?

Hello, deer friends.

I can't believe I live here sometimes. I stopped and stared just like a tourist.

I'm going to be all right.

In the Pain Cave

There is a time between sleep and waking, when the early morning sun streams in the skylights, when I don't remember. This would be a good day for a run, I think. Or I could backpack in the canyon this weekend. Then I move and I know: things are different now.

Today though I got the first glimmer of hope. It reminded me of when I used to explore caves, back in the Nevada days. John-Be-Free (used to be Woodyard, but he changed his name when he moved to the commune down the road) and I would rappel into the caves in the Grey Cliffs, our destination the fabled Moon Dome, a room of exquisite beauty. We never found the Moon Dome, but that wasn't really the point. We spent hours in the place past the twilight zone, a place where your eyes will never adjust because there is no light. We chimneyed above deep pits, one false step away from a certain death below. We crawled on our bellies, hoping for walking passage. Finally we would spot a distant glimmer, the sign that there was another opening we could walk out of and back into the world.

I feel that way today. The doctor called and said my Xray was normal. That means no compression fracture, no torn muscle. Most likely it is a severely bruised muscle, she thinks, although nobody could ever be sure. There could still be something serious lurking in my bones, but I choose to believe otherwise. The world is a little brighter today.

Pain has been my constant companion for a week now. I've had plantar fasciitis, knee issues, and other bruises and scrapes, but this level of pain is consuming. It is always there, a constant hum in the background, occasionally erupting into a breathtaking explosion. I can't pick up things from the floor. I can't lie down because getting up is the worst. Because of the drugs my appetite is completely gone--I haven't felt hungry for a week. But also because of the drugs, my body is fiercely holding on to water, and I wince as I step on the scale. I can only wear dresses because putting on pants is unthinkable. It involves too many actions that cause pain.

I never understood chronic pain until now. I never realized how crazy it can make a person. I feel irrational hatred of people I see running by. I sob. I know deep inside that others are facing much worse things than this. Some of my friends are battling cancer. Others have lost the battle. They would love to have this minor inconvenience. However, it is my own pain and my own battle and it's hard to see beyond that sometimes.

I know I am lucky. I could have broken my back that day. This is a big wakeup call for me. I need to exercise smarter. Two falls while trail running in the last two months shows that. I need to stay on the easier trails, the smoother ones, the ones that don't go straight up. Because I believe I will run again.

I don't believe that everything happens for a reason. I think that is what people want to believe because it takes randomness out of the equation. It gives them an out--if something bad happens, they had no control over it and there is some big cosmic lesson to be learned. But the truth is, life is random and unfair and terrible sometimes. It's amazing and fabulous too.

Just a little heartache

I approached the exercise bike warily. A lot was riding on this. If I could pedal pain free, that meant hope. It meant an end to feeling stuck. An end to just watching my weight balloon upward, aided by lack of exercise and heavy duty medication.

How did this happen? How did I go from being a person who could run five miles or more without really thinking about it, to someone who screamed in pain just getting out of bed? It's simple, really. One slip on a wet rock and there you are. Your life, changed in an instant.

Since my trail running accident last week I have been attending a pity party, guest of one. I'm scared of a lot of things.

I'm scared it won't get better. That I'll be one of those people with back problems.
I'm scared that I won't be able to run or backpack again.
I'm scared that I'll get fat.
I'm scared that I'll lose fitness.

The pain medications barely take the edge off. This is pain like I have never experienced: electric shock pain. This means a nerve, but whether it is a muscle spasm or a bulging disk, I don't know. Either way the treatment is the same. One thing that is encouraging is that with back pain, you are meant to move. Sitting around only makes it worse. Yesterday I managed to walk about four miles. The pain lurked and occasionally flared up as if to say, Hello! I'm still here! but at the blistering speed of 2 mph, I kept on going.

Luckily nobody was in the gym to witness my uneasy climb onto the bike. I began to pedal slowly. The pain lingered and then retreated. I almost wept with relief. If I can ride the bike, as boring as it may be, that means that there is something aerobic I can do. That makes all the difference.

I know one thing. I will never take being healthy for granted again. I think back to all the times I moaned and groaned that I just didn't feel like it and I wish I could be back there, facing a gale force wind or rain.

It doesn't help to second guess, whine, or rage at the universe. This is what I've been handed. How I deal with it, whether it is by making everyone around me miserable, or with grace, is up to me.

A cabin in the mountains

Let me speak briefly (well, maybe not) of the dark side of working for the national park service, forest service, and other agencies. Let me speak of the hovels known as bunkhouses.

For years and years and years, because of my seasonal wilderness lifestyle, I occupied a series of bunkhouses in various states of disrepair. They sheltered mice and cockroaches and hippies who played drums far into the night. Known as "government housing," they were merely places to dump a backpack and sort gear for the next five day hitch or 21 day fire assignment. At one, the sole phones were located in the shell of an ancient outhouse and on the barn wall outside, and woe to those who exceeded the unwritten time limit. At another, in a historic fort, a recording of Taps would come on at ten pm, winding with a ghostly sound through the bare, moonlit parade ground. Another, known as "Fred's Beds" for the Park Superintendent, was really an old motel cobbled into rooms. In another the employees had to wash their dishes in the bathtub since there was no kitchen sink. Many were trailers, most famously a left-over FEMA monstrosity with only one small swamp cooler as we cooked in the Florida sun.

We didn't care though; we spent most of our time outdoors, even dragging our sleeping bags (we never slept in sheets) to the lawn to slumber in a messy pile. Some people even eschewed the bunkhouses altogether and put tents up all summer long. In some parks, people actually did live in tents, officially called "Tent Cabins" to make them sound better.

Back in the bunkhouse days, sharing a room, I used to dream of the log cabin I would someday own. It wouldn't have yellow water straight from the swamp. It wouldn't be opened up on weekends by the refuge manager so the public could use our bathroom (yes, that really happened). Making five dollars an hour, it hardly seemed possible.

When I knew I was going to stay in this town for a good long while, I rented a forgettable house for a year while I looked for a house that spoke to me.  I looked and looked, at beautiful spacious log houses with acreage way beyond my budget, at riverside hovels with fabulous settings, and unfinished cabins. I looked and looked. When I bought this cabin, even the real estate lady looked askance. After all the previous inhabitants lived in a world of perpetual twilight, unmarred by overhead lights or many windows. They did not believe in counter space, closets or kitchen cabinets. Next door was a (nice) lawn Nazi who crept onto the property to spray dandelions. The driveway turns to a muddy mess in spring, but since the owners didn't have a car, they didn't know or care.

Definitely it was a project, but I could look at the bones and see what this house could be. Midway into the renovations, I've fallen completely in love with the place. While being outdoors is important, the place you come back to is equally so. In previous incarnations, I hated where I lived so much that it was a chore to even be there. I had no attachment; any chance I got I was gone. Not so with this place. This is home.

It will never be this clean again.

What it looks like today.

My cute table!

"Kitchen" before

A real kitchen! We can cook without headlamps!

Gunning for you

Sacajawea, we have a date. This is our year. I've wanted to climb you for three years now, and every time something has gotten in the way. A late snow year, the mountains full to the brim through July. Contractors to chase through Hells Canyon.

I've seen you every time I hike up Hurricane Creek, but you like to play hard to get. To reach you I have to cross the creek, and you know what it's like, high water, boulders rolling around like bowling balls, a steady roar. So much snow compressed into one little place. I know how to cross rivers but this one requires patience. It's possible to cross in early morning but by mid afternoon I can be stranded on the other side as the snow up high melts. 

Once the river is crossed it is a steep hike up a trail that is not on any maps, one people have made by scrambling and crawling their way up into Thorpe Creek basin. I camped there once with three dogs, close enough to touch you, but it was late fall, an unsteady time of year where snow can blanket you overnight. Even then there is no official route, no trail, just a write-up in a guidebook that relies on things that never change. And we all know things can change. Just getting up close to you today, across the creek, required me to climb over two avalanches. Who knows what has happened on the other side of the river.

Enough with the excuses though. I climbed your sister, the Matterhorn, two years ago before the bridge failed, requiring a sketchy traverse across the Wallowa River, balancing like a stork on a fallen tree. I could have then gone cross country, touching the sky, to where you stand, but the wind was so strong that day that all it inspired was a hasty retreat. I looked across at you though, seeing a small herd of mountain goats dotting your red cinder flank. Maybe that's the way to go, up from Ice Lake and across. A long way, not any easier than the first choice.

But rest easy. I don't climb to conquer. I've been so close to the edge a few times that I have no problem turning back. I don't want to peak bag or write my name on a register. I don't climb for metaphor or glory. I just want to see the world from a different angle. 

Summer's coming and all of us are making our plans. The freakishly warm weather of last week inspired us to dream them up early when we know we have a good two months at least before the high country is open. Still, it will be here soon, that manic scramble to fit it all in before the snow shuts us out. But you're on the short list, Sacajawea. I'll be there soon.

Poison Ivy and me: a brief history of a long relationship

It's a toxic relationship, I know it. The problem is, in the long stretches while we are apart I forget. I forget the burn on my skin, so deep that it feels like it goes to the bone. I forget the restless sleep. I only remember the places I want to go, the deep canyon folds where there is hidden water and shade. In the forgetting time, it seems worth it.

 I've had poison ivy all over the country in one form or another. In Florida there were entire trees (poisonwood) dripping with oils. There were also dense mats of ivy that we had to push through in our quest to survey burn units. In California we were digging fireline in the Sierras by headlamp, throwing what looked like dead sticks off our line. Unfortunately, they weren't dead sticks. Some of the crew swallowed the smoke and had to be carted off to the hospital. When we were cutting dead trees, festooned with ivy, Juls and I coated our skin with slimy yellow liquid that was supposed to help. It never really did.

 I enjoyed seven years of ivy free existence in Alaska, long enough to think that maybe I was over it, that ivy and I could carry on an amicable truce. In all my climbs in and out of the canyon, it seems to stay below the 2500 foot mark, and so that seemed contained. There was plenty of country for us both. Or so it seemed. There's a fine window of time in the canyon when it is possible to walk, not swim through the ivy crowding the ancient trails. In the spring the ivy is at its juiciest and I believe most volatile. I seem to attract its touch without even trying. Perhaps even the air movement as I pass by causes it to activate.

 I've heard of all sorts of cures. Drink the milk of goats that have eaten poison ivy. Roll in it and you will become immune. Coat yourself with Technu. Just like getting over a broken heart, the only thing that really works with P.I. is time. Time with itching that makes you want to scream. Plastering your body with a baking soda paste. Vowing to never ever go into the canyon again, or to stay high above the river.

 But of course I can't stay away. Just like all the other times, the lure of the canyon will bring me back. The water trickles down the wrinkled folds and old growth ivy grows head high. I won't try to push through this. I know my limits, in relationships and with ivy. But I will tiptoe through the most dangerous places of all, the ones where just a few plants encourages me to keep going. I'll turn back when it gets really bad, I tell myself. Sometimes I do.