Field Notes
On running, a high creek and an mountain lion kill.
If you’ve been around here long enough you might recall over the winter a few posts specifically about my knee. The knee is one of the most taken for granted body parts we have… until it isn’t. The back is similar in this regard. I’ve been blessed with issues with both now, but on the good news front, I am running again, with a little consistency, and no issues so far. I’m still not up to my consistency or mileage I was going into the morning of August 29 of last year, but it’s getting there, and I suspect by this August I may be able to run the very bits I was running last year. And the whole point of bringing this up at the beginning of a field note is one word: Patience.
Well, that and some other words. Patience took front and center though.
A quick re-brief for those of you that are new here before we get to the state of the Field that is the ultimate purpose of this Field Note…
I love running. In the past I’ve been a long distance runner, but I gave it up with specific intention when my kids were very little because it ultimately took up more time than I wanted to give it, and it required more of my body than I felt was good for me. Running several hours multiple days a week took a toll on me. I’d get back from a 5 hour run and proceed to vomit for the next hour, and be drained for the next three. It was basically an all day affair before I had any energy left to put into what I needed to be putting energy into. Then there was the physics of my body. I could never get everything aligned right on the really long runs. They would go fine, until the next day when everything would tighten severely, and this climaxed with an event that dropped me to the floor at 4:30 in the morning at work while lifting a 15 pound bucket… which should not have dropped me to the floor. I was in theory in some of the best shape of my life, but my hamstrings and lower back were so wound up that the tension pulled my back of alignment and that slight twist in lifting the bucket simply put my body over the edge and I fell, in excruciating pain, and could not stand up.
We’d just recently started our company, and I was in a fiery mode of wanting to do it all. We had little kids. We were starting a business. I was working two full time jobs, one, our upstart, the other, to pay the bills. We had just finished building a house, a process we took heavy part in, and I was trying to train for the Rut. I was convinced I could do it all. I couldn’t. And laying there on that floor (also in August, now that I think about it) I realized, something had to give. And that something was me.
It was a ridiculous hour of the morning because that is when I had to start to make it all happen in a day and I had no option but to call my wife, ask her to drive across town either with both little kids, or, more reasonable, to just let them keep sleeping, and know we’d be right back, and help me figure out if I could walk. I couldn’t. My back was so jacked she could barely get me to the car and in terrible pain the whole way. We made it home, and I pumped myself with more Advil than anyone would recommend. Later in the day I got in to see a chiropractor who took a ton of tension off my back, but in his words, “whatever you are doing, you have to cut back.” And he was right.
The recovery took months. Running was off the table for at least 6 weeks which meant the Rut was off the table. I was so used to a runner’s high and the alone time it provided, it was at first an incredibly frustrating period. But very quickly my mind went into evaluation mode. Evaluation mode for me comes during difficult periods, and is generally focused on this on “How can I make this better?”
It’s a broad question, but I think one a lot of men can relate with. Hidden in the nature of men is a the desire to fix. We aren’t always the most cognizant of the problems at first, but once aware of them, many of us have no problem in doing a deep dive on the fix. This situation was no different for me, but it did take some coming to realize that the problem was not as linear as fixing a singular thing. And while I began to go see a physical therapist about my running, I realized that was just part of the problem and not actually the part that needed fixing the most. There was no way I could possibly do everything I wanted, and by realizing this, and accepting I could cut back even just a little here and there, that was the solution I needed.
So it began with running, but slowly extended into other veins that slowly but surely began bringing more sanity to my mind, and more stability to my family.
First I looked at my relationship with running. I broke down what it was I love about it, what I find valuable, and what I did not. There is nothing than brings as much clarity to mind for me as running in the woods. There is something so incredibly simple about the entire process. One, the gear is minimal. A comfortable pair of shoes and shorts. That’s it. In the cooler season there are a few basic layers, but the gist is broken down to the most basic fundamentals. Second, the breathing. It’s meditative one you are in it. It doesn’t matter if you are moving fast or slow, if you can nail your breathing, you can run. And in that pace, in that rhythm, there is something again so fundamental to our connection to our surroundings. The mind clears, drains itself of all the outside world, and there you are, paced in step, moving through the forest, looking around, in a basic state of clarity. For my mind, it’s how I define the zen or flow state.
But it had become a bit of an addiction and a distraction from all the other things I had going on, and while I thought I was juggling it all swimmingly, I realized the very time commitment to what I was trying to do among all the other things I was doing, was simply too much. Add to it the physical toll, and I knew the simple solution immediately. I just needed to cut back and not worry about any goals with regards to this thing that brings me such clarity and pleasure. Let it be just that and don’t worry about the push into making it something more. I also realized how important it was for me long term. This thing I love mentally so much, is also a thing I want to be able to do for a very long time, and at the rate I was going, that would not be the case. I was running through injuries, getting sick after long runs, and constantly being distracted by tweaks and changes. If I cut it back I could just enjoy the good, and still feel great afterwards, and be able to continue on for decades. That became the shift.
And over the years, this basic shift opened my eyes to a new pace and nature of living. I’m still someone that can lean into taking on a lot at any given time, because I love projects, I love working on new things, and I love learning about new arenas, but I have my eye on a few prizes and those things get priority. They include my family, the ability to stay fit for the long run, and the creative push into writing and photography. Work fits into this as well, because it’s the most basic fundamental that feeds the rest, but mentally it’s a separate category. It’s simply necessary. For the rest, keep it to the basics. Play with side projects along the way.
So in that vein, over the last decade I’ve had a very good relationship with running. I don’t run every day. I mix in other things. A couple days a week is all I shoot for. Typically a 50 minute run will satisfy me, while an hour and a half to two hours feels like I’ve done something. I mix it up.
Somewhere right around turning 50 I came to realize recovery was becoming more important. So I’ve approached it two ways. First in the micro sense I give myself ample time to recover from big runs, and follow them up with mellower days immediately after. But also in the more macro sense, I see the year in a broader picture. My favorite time of year for running is late summer and early fall, so I build towards that season. Winter running with it’s ice, hard pack, and inaccessible trails is really hard on the body, so I cut way back in the winter, then slowly begin rebuilding in the spring and into summer. During the summer heat there is a natural lull, slight cut back, and by fall when the temps are a little cooler and the trails are their most incredible, I push. This has worked for me for well over a decade. If I start to feel pain, I back off a little until it’s resolved. My goal is long term and I have nothing to prove. Sometimes I run slow as hell. Sometimes I push the gas. I stop for photos. I stop to enjoy a good meadow. I take in the quiet. I take in the trails.
And this all was going great last summer and on August 28 I had an incredible run up a gulch, up a ridgeline, around a large mountain meadow and back down to the creek. It was just around 2 hours, which is my upper limit, and I felt great. No pulls, no sore achilles, no sore muscles, just motion through the woods. My kids are older and doing their own things, so I don’t worry about the time I’m in the woods in the way I did when they were little. Often I’ll cross paths with them out here.
The next day was a simple recovery day. A chill bike ride, just to get the acid out of my legs, get a little motion into my lungs. I was listening to a podcast on a simple little trail that cuts through a forest section that connects a road. And very suddenly I was laying on the ground, and my breath in a little bit of a panic over the fact that my knee hurt so severely. Fuck. It was all I could say. Fuck. That did damage.
And it had. I got up, got my breath under control. Found my airpod that had ejected several feet ahead of me. Luckily I’d not hit my head. My elbow now hurt like hell too, and I had a decent bit of blood on both it and my knee. I limped around for a minute catching my breath and assessing if I needed to call and have Simon come grab me, but ultimately decided to get back on the bike and see if moving my knee would help get the juice out, so to speak, and maybe it was alright.
But it wasn’t. And while it took me longer to admit than I’d like to acknowledge, it was going to be a months long healing thing. And that, this winter, was incredibly frustrating. But I also recognized this place, mentally, and felt a familiarity in it, that allowed me to move forward with a little curiosity about what I’d figure out along the way. And that curiosity not only kept me going, but kept me sane. And I’ll go one step further… it expanded my capacity to lean in and push, even if softer.
The most immediate and poignant frustration was in September. I watched a simply beautiful fall beginning to unfold, and I could not go run any of the trails I’d been preparing my body to run. Add to it, I could barely walk. For several weeks walking down the block to the field just one, two, three, four doors down, was painful. I’d take Acre and throw the frisbee, but that was about as much walking as I had in me.
But weirdly, I could ride a bike with less pain, so I did that, albeit very slowly, not very far, and with trepidation. But it was something. And I leaned into the creek. I could bike down to the creek and get a small dopamine and endorphin rush from getting very cold in the creek, so I went with regularity. After several weeks of seeing no progress, and finally admitting I’m a stubborn bastard sometimes, I went and got my knee checked. I was being forced to as it simply didn’t feel like it was improving. I’ve never had a sustained injury of this kind before, so I assumed at first that a few weeks off regular programming would get things back to normal, but it wasn’t happening.
What followed was good news crossed with frustrating news. Nothing severed. Lots damaged. All the way around the knee. And the other knee too. Fun. The good news, it would heal. The bad news, probably not until late spring or summer.
So let’s fkg go, as the kids say...
And by go, I mean slow.
It was a slow winter, especially in that walking (running was out of the picture) brought on the worst pain in the knee. And while it was a mellow winter, so I could bike to the creek every day, there wasn’t a whole lot beyond that. I discovered the elliptical machine at a local gym didn’t cause pain, so I leaned heavy into it. And slowly I started pushing weights on my legs, squats, other exercises, backing off whenever it felt sharp, which it did several times. By mid winter I was walking the trail down by the creek, especially at night, I’d walk slow, very, very, like old man slow, but it was walking and in that pace I found myself able to go into wonderful mental places that were anything but internal. I found in a slow pace, something akin to a mental state of running, but which I’d never experienced in slow motion. I could walk with my mind in the trees, in the branches, in creek, in the stars, all the while my body finding some satisfaction even without the endorphins brought on by running. I found a mental flow state and zen in quiet, slow motion.
By mid spring, just about 6 weeks ago I think, I started doing slow runs. Very short at first. A mile. Then two. I’m up to about 5 now, and honestly 5 is all I need. I want a few more, and I want a little more endurance as I’ve not built it up where I like yet, but its getting there and so far I have no pain in my knee. When I start to feel it at all I back off and walk a bit. And those stretches are a good reminder that it’s all I need.
This wasn’t even nearly as severe an injury as I know others have. While I could not walk or run, I was able to pedal a bike, and even snowboard, though very carefully, in small doses, and with utter attention to my motion being acutely aware of my toe edge and to not go over anything that would make me airborn. I found a slow motion zen on my snowboard this winter too, and luckily we had a lot of soft snow, making it accessible. So I know it could have been far worse, but in the end, I think it’s these periods of frustration and pain, discomfort and new territory that bring us back to a place of remembering our small place in the world. And if we can find the connection beyond our mental blocks, we connect to something larger, external, and important. That’s what I take from it anyways.
So that was a long side note getting me to this week’s Field Note. Are you still with me? Because there are a couple exciting news reports:
(Also, for those of you that are new here, you will find, I’m a serial documentarian. It’s simply in my nature. It what lead me to study geography. It’s why I have so many pictures of coffee. I’ve got drawers full of DV tapes from the early aughts, shot from around the mountain west and in Morocco. And then since having kids I have hundreds of thousands of photos. I have multiple shelves of journals from the last 30 years. If you are here at this Substack, be prepared for some basic, but exciting documentation of the every day nature.)
This week the two baby eagles have crawled up and been sitting on top the nest with their parents. And they are big. Already bigger than most birds. But black with their sharp yellow beak. Yesterday one was sitting up high, while the other sat curled below one of the adults, but with it’s head sticking out facing me. The adult sat atop it like it might have the egg just a few months back, but now a large pup of a bird beneath it.
But then, just below their nest, between the tree they are perched in and the trail I go watch them from, a mountain lion killed a deer two days ago, gutted it, and it’s been the center attraction to all the birds, dogs, coyotes, maybe even a bear or two. That deer was devoured faster than any I’ve seen. Now just three days later it’s completely dismantled and none of the bones sit even where they did last night night. I found a leg near the trail head this morning, no doubt carried by someone’s dog. Acre was interested but I know better than to let him tempt fate with his already temperamental belly.
But the creek. The creek is ripping right now. Higher than I’ve seen this year, and even in the last year or two. Over night thunder and lightening storms (a hell of a show for which I could not find my tripod to get a better picture, but managed a few in the doorframe of my truck) dropped a ton of rain apparently to our north and the creek shot up even higher than it was yesterday over night. “It’s a real gully washer” Acre says to me this morning as I carry him across the channel to my flooded out swim hole. And he’s right. It’s a real gully washer.
We’ve had perfectly pleasant temperatures up until now, leaning on the cool side, which I’d always prefer, but today looks like we’ll hit 90. It doesn’t take long for people to find trepidation over the future, and even at 7 am on my way to the creek I overheard two people discussing how certainly today’s forecast would make for a terrible fire threat.
Here is the thing. We might have a bad fire year. We might not. It is certainly a thing that happens when you live in wood lined mountains. But it doesn’t happen every year. It didn’t happen last year. It’s just part of life in the mountain west, and it’s nothing new, and it’s nothing novel. The idea that complaining and fretting over it is as wasted a thought as complaining about the President of Kazakstan. It just is what it is. I’m not sure why we humans feel the need to exert energy into complaints over unseen, unknown, and unpredictable future events that may or may not even come about. The fact is, where I am today, it’s sunny, hot, and beautiful. The creek is high enough that I paid extra attention to where Acre was on the edge of it while I swam. I also kept an eye out upstream for rapidly moving logs. But nothing happened. We had a great time. I got very cold. He ended up jumping in the channel on the way out because I suspect he was excited about a cool down even though I offered to carry him. The eagles were perched high and stretching their wings. Some dog had a great deer leg treat. And now the magpies in my backyard are pissed because Acre keeps chasing them out of the garden every time they come down. It’s a hell of a day to be alive on earth. Hope your’s is wonderful.
In the media:
In case you missed this earlier piece, it’s about the nonsensical Apocalypse the media has been unrelenting on pushing on us and our kids, and how to navigate the nonsense with some sanity.
Also, I came across this podcast on “ancient Greece” and enjoyed it far, far more than I’d ever expect to enjoy something related to “ancient Greece.” Especially of note is the last 5 minutes or so when he gives one of the best descriptions on the importance of reading and being offline than I’ve heard anyone describe recently.
Lastly, I came across this site this week, and it’s terribly fun to dive into if you enjoy finding research work, on any given subject. When the internet was still a baby and I was finishing my thesis work in Geography in 2005, I dreamed up a site like this but realized quickly, that among all the things I was tackling (see writing above) I didn’t have time to do this. Luckily, like pretty much every idea every one of us has, someone else has it too. Some we have time to tackle, others we don’t but the good ideas get sorted eventually. This one has been building a thesis repository since 2014 and the more I dig into it the more I like it.
