The pursuit of everything

I’ve been putting together a mountain bike route for my birthday this week. Something to celebrate the incredible gift that is the ability to move under my own power, with a splash of the ridiculousness I enjoyed in my youth. But just a splash. Age has given me enough wisdom to at least try to keep my risk-to-reward ratio closer to 1:1. In other words, don’t break the bank and risk bankrupting the entire system chasing big rewards that probably won’t materialize. I have a decent idea where my post-injury fitness stands, so I feel confident that 65 miles with 10,000 feet of climbing along mountain roads and ski-area trails won’t break me apart. The hope is that it will break me open, just a little bit.

I hiked a little too far on Thursday — six hours — and was limping by the end. My fatigued quad muscles lapsed into a neural “shutdown” that feels as though the leg might give out. This never used to happen to me because my quads used to be endlessly strong. But they are not now. And it’s scary when I’m descending a steep trail, concentrating all of my energy on not overloading the compromised tissues in my knee, and my upper leg starts to shake with fatigue.

I tried lecturing my quads — silently in my head, but still using words as though I were speaking to them. I told them they had to keep firing. Do their job. Sure, it’s my fault for overworking you, but you can’t quit on me now. The muscles continued to balk, and I could feel a disconcerting force through my knee. I considered voluntarily locking out the joint and peg-legging it for the final stretch, forcing my hip to handle the load. Perhaps that terrifying thought jolted my muscles to action, because I started to feel quad “traction,” and my knee stopped aching.

It’s all just part of re-learning my body. I do feel frustrated when I have little setbacks like this, but I keep reminding myself how far I’ve come since my left knee gave out six months ago. Has it been six months since I tore my meniscus root? Six months since my last run. Six months of crawling on the floor, hunched on crutches, lifting myself onto a shower chair, straining to straighten and bend my leg, falling into bed in the depths of exhaustion, taking my first strange steps onto my left foot after 10 weeks unweighted, struggling through a 45-minute mile around Valmont Park, building strength on my indoor bike, taking my first spin outside, walking my first 20-minute mile at Davidson Mesa, walking six miles through my old neighborhood in Utah, taking my first hike with my sister at Alta Ski Resort a month later. Just a month after that is now. I know injuries are so common that they’re practically a universal experience, but the process has been revelatory for me. When you go through a transition like that in six months, a half-year becomes a substantial span of time.

I feel like, perhaps, in a way, I am healing into a different version of myself than the person I was in February. Or as the wise sage Bob Dylan sang, “I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.”

I feel this as I face down a birthday that will shove me into my late 40s. My fitness is far below where it was in February. My gut isn’t entirely happy about the different things I’m eating in France. I’ve been battling eczema that evokes a jump scare every time I look in the mirror. I’m definitely in my hot flash era. I look and feel and am the oldest I’ve been, but there’s a lightness in my soul. A playful, childlike spark that tells me beauty is everywhere and anything is possible if I keep my heart and eyes open.

Beat returned from his race, the Ticino Wildlands 250K, on Saturday afternoon. I tried to tally up how many of these multi-day races in the Alps he’s finished — about nine Tor des Geants, seven or eight PTLs, one Swiss Peaks. He’s not up to 20 yet, but close. What can be a one-in-a-lifetime adventure for many participants has become old hat for him. He marches up the col, up another col, stumbles through the night on blocky talus, batters his quads on another 8,000-foot descent, sleeps two or four hours, then does it all again. I confess that even I wonder what he still gets out of these races at this point. Is the risk-to-reward — or more appropriately the pain-cave-to-enjoyment — ratio still an even split? Even after all this time?

Still, the lightness across his face when he came home was unmistakable. We flipped through hundreds of photos of stunning vistas, sunsets and sunrises, rainbows, high alpine lakes, shiesty boulder fields, “ancient” cows, herds of ibex, cheese and pastries, and his friends along the trail. Notably missing were a starting line photo, a finish photo, or a single selfie. I thought, “That’s probably it. It becomes less about him, and more about the everything of it all.”

“The everything of it all” was the nonsensical phrase that popped into my head. I didn’t know what it meant, so I ruminated on what my subconscious was trying to articulate. I decided that it’s what I feel when I’m hiking in these mountains, pressed against the limits of my strength. I hunch into the trail, dig in my poles, and surge toward a spruce forest, a sweep of limestone cliffs, a limitless sky. My wandering thoughts gain traction in the present, and my attention expands until there’s no longer a defining line between me and the world. It’s no longer “I am” but “we are.” And in ceasing to feel like an “I,” my being is momentarily released from my aging body, my fragile ego, my annoying injuries and ailments, my petty grievances, my anxiety and insecurities. For a moment, I’m not grieving what I’ve lost, because it’s all here. The connection with everything sets me free.

I don’t know if Beat feels the same. But he has a decade on me and has managed to stay enviably youthful through many more miles of these punishing endeavors. He’s recovering well, and my limp was temporary. My leg again felt strong the following day when I did Bosu Ball squats at the gym. I respect my limitations, though. As much as I’d love to celebrate a tough but successful trip around the sun with a 47-mile hike, that’s not remotely within my physical capabilities. But bikes are forgiving, and I think I’ve put together a gorgeous route that can still take me to everything.

We’ll see how blissed out I feel after Wednesday (that’s the day the weather is supposed to cooperate. My Thursday birthday is forecast to be inundated with daylong thunderstorms and rain, which is perfect for me, but not for a 9-hour bike ride.) But I have no expectations for this day. If I head out and feel weak, or my leg seems off, or I’m not as into it as I hoped to be, I’ll turn around. Nobody cares. And for the first time in forever, I don’t care, either. That’s another benefit of being given a new lease on movement — a complete reset of long-entrenched expectations. I was at zero, so everything beyond that is a gift.

And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll connect with everything while sitting on the porch and watching the evening sky. This place does make it easy. Here are a few of these moments from the past two weeks:

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