The English Geek

Blog your Heart

Following Stephanie's lead,
I am blogging my heart tonight—writing what I am really pondering, without much of an attempt at filtering my thoughts.

Friday was an adventure. Kendell and I went on a 35-mile-long drive on a dirt road in the mountains, with views like this:

and it was such a perfect day. The weather, the drive, our conversation, the two tiny hikes we veered off on. Seeing the place where I grew up from an entirely different perspective, which made me feel like I'd found a lost piece of myself. When we got out of the mountains we stopped by my mom's so I could pick up the antique sewing machine that belonged to my great grandma Amy, whom I am named for but never met, and there is something, just something I can't name yet, about having it here in my house. (Even though I haven't found a permanent place for it yet.)

It was a perfect day.

But when I went to bed I found myself terrified. Terrified. Imagining over and over what bad things might happen in the morning. Jake & Nathan were both off on a scout camp out, which always makes me anxious anyway, so I was conjuring up horrible accidents for them both. Picturing Kaleb falling off his bike and Haley getting in a car accident and Kendell's heart valve crumbling away. And other, darker images. A montage of all my deepest fears kept me from sleeping. I was certain, certain that having such a perfect day was something I shouldn't have experienced because soon I'd have to pay for it with something as monstrously opposite as possible.

And I hate that I feel that way.

I think it shows some of my weaknesses. That deeply-rooted belief that the really good things are the providence of other people. A lack of faith. An inability to feel that I deserve perfect days. It reminds me, strangely enough, of my mom, who is almost 70 years old and still wants to lose a few pounds. When I hear her talking about dieting, it makes me sad. Isn't there ever a time when we are old enough to simply be happy with who we are? It makes me wonder. When we can relax and breathe and feel comfortable in our own skin? (Even if it is wrinkled.) The same goes for me: when will I be old enough to cast off the old belief that I am not good enough to deserve the bone-deep, blissed-out, surprisingly gentle happiness my day in the woods brought me? Or that I should hold on to what is hard, rub my tongue over it as if it were a sore tooth, savor its bitterness as a sort of protection against other, harder things?

When I woke up this morning, I took a deep breath. I remembered those two feelings: the certainty of doom, the brightness of joy. I held them both in my heart, and then I tried to let go of the fear that had troubled my sleep. I can't say I let it all go. I still worried my way through the day; I still exhaled hard when the boys got home from their camp out, dirty and smelly and full of stories; safe. But I tried to let the other wash in behind, the light in the trees, the sound of boots shushing through fallen leaves and tires over gravelly dirt, the new perspective. Tried hard to believe it would be OK.

And it was.

Squaw Peak Road Miles

When I first started actively training for this year's Ragnar, I began on the treadmill. I'd set it to the steepest angle and then run as fast as I could, which wasn't very fast. Combine my general overall deep hatred of running on the treadmill with my discouragement over not being able to run very fast (or very long) and it was sort of a recipe for disaster.

Then I talked to a friend at work who is also a runner, and he was like "why don't you just train on Squaw Peak Road?" (which I've blogged about before) and then he gave me an eye roll when I said I was afraid of bad guys in the mountains and then he said "you'll be fine, just do it," and so I did. My first Saturday run on SPR was painful and short: 18 minutes up, 13 minutes down and I hoped I'd done three miles.

It did get easier. But only sort of. The reason I'm running SPR every weekend is to prepare myself for another steep uphill run at Ragnar, and I want to be ready. I want to face those 7 uphill race miles with grace and strength and consistency (meaning: I want to run the whole way). And running 1700+ uphill feet in 7 miles is a lot of uphill. And running uphill for long distances? Well, this is a different running experience than I've ever had. It is hard. And slow (my regular pace is 9:30; my uphill pace is 12:00). I sweat harder than I ever do with any other kind of running.

But each weekend I've conquered another half mile of Squaw Peak Road. I've been encouraged by mountain bikers who are also going uphill but with much more speed than I can manage. I've startled birds from their nests and once heard a rattlesnake in the weeds. I came across an injured deer one day. I've nearly been hit several times and I've wondered at the two cars I've seen parked in the same spot every single time I've run.

I've marveled at the beauty I get to live near.

But what I wasn't ever sure of was how far I was really going, since SPR doesn't have mile markers. It's just a small, switchback-full mountain road that leads to two places: a campground and an even-narrower dirt road or an overview at the top of the ridge. The overview has been my goal these past five or six weeks of uphill training; next week I should make it.

But last weekend I couldn't stand not knowing exactly how far I've run, so I took my camera along and drove the road first, stopping at each half mile point. I discovered that I haven't gone as far as I thought but that my turn-around points were pretty close to the mile points.

I thought I'd share the photos here, even though they aren't very good pictures. (It was alternately hard-sunshine or gloomy-cloudy that morning, and with all those blind curves I didn't want to stop very long on the road.) Just in case anyone else is also running Squaw Peak Road and wants to know how far they've gone. I started at mile 1.5 because a 3-mile out-and-back run seems like a good start. The trail starts at 4950 feet of elevation.

MILE 1.5. (Elevation 5700 ft.) This is two long switchbacks past the turn off for the shooting range.

MILE 2.  (Elevation 5950.) This is the curve just past the "burn no pallets" sign.

MILE 2.5. (Elevation 6000 ft.) You've been pushing up through some steep road and you come around the curve to this remarkable view of Timp's southern flank. Try not to swoon!

MILE 3. (Elevation 6100 ft.) Just to your right there is a gravel turn-out spot for cars to turn around in. Don't be fooled, it is the second turn-out, not the first!

MILE 3.5. (Elevation 6450.) This marker comes at the second of two small switchbacks. You'll run past a sheepskin seat cover mouldering on the side of the road and those two suspicious cars (a grey truck and a red jeep). When you get to the tall pine tree on the right, you can turn around if 3.5 miles is your goal.

MILE 4. (Elevation 6500 ft.) As soon as you curve up and around enough to see that white sign, you've reached mile 4. That fork in the road up ahead is almost your destination; turn left to go to the campground and dirt road, or right to go to the overlook.

MILE 4.4.(Elevation 6750.) The top of the road! There is a parking lot here for the trailheads. This is looking south west.

looking almost directly south, with a few explanations.

Look behind you to see this view.

And don't be surprised when you run back down if you find yourself smiling. It's an awesome run!

WCS Mini Gallery

(Thank you for your kind comments about yesterday's post. I'm still processing. I imagine I will continue processing for awhile.)

This month's WCS gallery is up and it's full of mini albums. For my contribution, I finally got around to making an album with my hiking boot photos.

Ever since the fall of 2008, I've kept the tradition of the Hiking Boot Photo.

On the top of every peak, I make all the people who are with us pause for a photo of all our hiking boots.

Sometimes I forget and then I have to improvise. Like, this counts as a hiking-boot photo, right?

As does this one, which only accidentally got my boot in it:

I am happy to say that I now have all of my hiking-boot photos from the past 3 1/2 years in this little 5x7 album. It's nearly full, though, so I need to get another one for our next years of hiking adventures. I kept the mini totally simple: the 5x7 photo on the left with the location of the hike added before I had the pictures printed, and a journaling card on the right with the details:

If you're of the scrappy persuasion, you should go and see the other minis HERE!

on Snow

Unrelentingly dry and sunny winter days send me for a tailspin. To my mind they are the canary in the coal mine, the obvious death that should be a sign to us that disaster is imminent. The combination of feeling like I'm the only person in the world who thinks that and the dread of coming disaster make me anxious. I yearn and hope and pray for the snow to finally come, Snow, delicate snow,/that falls with such lightness/on the head,/on the feelings,/come and cover over the sadness/that lies always in my reason (Unamuno). For the clouds to roll in and blank out the too-large-for-January sky and for the world to act like it is supposed to.

When did this anxiety start for me? I'm not certain. With the dawn of adult consciousness, perhaps, or the ecology class I took as a college freshman. And all the snow that never falls is now/back home and mixed up with other piercing/memories of childhood days (McClatchy). The winter I was in fifth grade we had one of the largest snowfalls ever. In the summer all that snow melt caused the lake to rise and flood the freeway; now there are dykes in place that hold it back. I remember driving to gymnastics and watching the slurry walls of sludge and concrete being nudged into place. Even more clearly I remember the snow day, and my mom was at the doctor with Suzette so I had to walk home by myself—I don't remember at all where Becky was—which wasn't a long walk, but cold in my thin corduroy coat with a hole in its satin pocket. Remember the quiet of the large snowflakes and how you could nearly hear them piling up.

I don't love snow sports. I tried skiing a couple of times but never had any proper lessons so it was a disaster. (There is an echo of the conglomerate of people I tried to ski with behind that sentence, entire autobiographies I could start from my small snow skiing forays.) I don't like driving in it, either; I am tense and terrified. I don't especially love sledding. I don't know how to snowshoe or cross country ski, the two snow sports which do seem appealing; the not-knowing-how has kept me from doing either one.

What I love is the falling, the piling up, the deepening layers. The transformation of sharp, dry edges to rounded lumps. The contrast between the literal coldness and the metaphoric blanket the snow covers the ground with. That was the deepest/I ever went into the snow. Now I think of it/when I stare at paper or into silences/between human beings. (shihab nye) I love listening, still, to the stillness. Love the way it conveys peace without ever saying it; peace while holding the potential, in fact, for destruction and ruin. I love the coldness of the transformed world, which tries to say nothing but what it is; The trunks of tall birches/Revealing the rib cage of a whale/Stranded by a still stream;/And saw, through the motionless baleen of their branches,/As if through time,/Light that shone/On a landscape of ivory,/A harbor of bone (Smith), love the light---the tiny bits of moonlight that seep through the dense clouds like snowflakes themselves---that makes night's bitter darkness less menacing.

At last, this weekend, the dry, sharp brownness of my world lost itself in whiteness. Not enough; barely a skiff. But enough to make me take a breath. To make my parched soul drink deep. To let me listen to the relieved whispers of my trees. mustn’t what lies /behind the world be at least /as beautiful as the human voice? (doty) The voice of the snow is also what lies behind the world and when the snow falls I hear a whisper of eternity.

January Blue

There's a part in Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle where she talks about people seeming to bring about a change in the weather simply by willing it. As if via our collective unconsciousness we are able to swing weeks upon weeks of dry, warm weather. Even when it's not the best thing for the world.

I've been thinking about that idea for the past month or so, as the calendar has rolled into winter---but the weather has decidedly not. Take today. Right now, it's 45 degrees outside. Sunny. And the slight breeze has a hopeful feel to it, like spring is coming soon.

Spring.

On January 4th.

And it's not like it's just a little break in the winter weather. Winter has never arrived. Even the mountains are barely white. Actually, they're mostly brown. If I look up the ten day forecast, it looks like this:

And seriously: don't let Saturday the 7th fool you. The chance for snow on that day? Thirty percent. Why even bother with the stormy icon when there's a 70% chance of no water falling from the sky?

But what's making me cranky are all the people wandering around enjoying the weather. If one more person says something like "isn't this weather gorgeous?" I might just lose my mind. Because, yeah, OK, it is gorgeous. If this were March I'd be singing a happy song. But it's January! Weather like this in January isn't gorgeous. It's unnatural. It's wrong and messed up and deeply disturbing.

In Utah, we always have a handful of days like this scattered throughout our winters. But six weeks of spring-like weather is not a good thing. The trees will start budding if it doesn't change soon. And then, one of two things will happen. It will continue on, and spring will be hot, and summer will be hotter, and people will want to do things like, you know, water their grass and their trees and their vegetable gardens. Problematic without any snow in the winter. Or, it won't continue on. It will just start late. And spring snows---the ones that persist into May---are just as unnatural as a snow-less January. The trees will get damaged, the fruit blossoms will be destroyed.

But the optimists---and even the normally-grouchies---just keep wandering around, praising the weather. Can't anyone see that this is wrong? is not how it's supposed to be? and it is proof for all the global-warming-is-a-myth doubters? Evidence that our world is seriously screwed up and that we're all going to hell in a hand basket. And sure, I suppose, in theory, the weather-lovers have a point: it's not like my lack-of-snow-induced anxiety is going to make it snow. I just don't know how they manage to enjoy it. 

I'm starting to think that Barbara Kingsolver was right. I'm thinking that the power of all that bright-sunny-weather-induced happiness and goodwill is working to keep the snow away. To which I say: enough of the cheeriness! Enough with the gorgeous-weather appreciation! Maybe if we all start grumbling and complaining, the world will return to its rightful January state: snowy, windy, and bleak.

Just exactly how it's supposed to be.

Exquisite Autumn

On August 31, I went running at 8:30. It was already hot, the heat wafting up from the sidewalk in little waves, a palpable thing to shuffle through.

On September 1, I went running at 8:30. I stepped outside into cool air, the temperature of shade even in the sun; an unruffled wind lapped at my heels.

I can't think of another year when fall arrived so abruptly. Although even in the mountains the trees haven't started changing yet, the air has here in the valleys. It's cooled off just enough that I can enjoy the sunshine on my forehead again. The light is a different color, too, that golden hue of summer's end. Now we're a week into September; it's rained once and all the other days have been deliciously warm.

This afternoon I ate lunch outside on our back patio. I read my book while I ate, something I nearly always do when I'm eating alone. I looked at the mountains; I let the sun fall on my legs. The impeccable timing of literature happened when I read this sentence: "Who could sit here and look at this and not believe in the good intentions of the world?" (from the novel To Be Sung Underwater  by Tom McNeal)

Today, in the middle of an exquiste, perfect, early-autumn afternoon, I believe in nothing but the world's good intentions.

The View from Here

A couple of days ago, in an effort to prepare ourselves to hike Timp next month, Kendell and I went on a hike. We've not hiked enough this summer, mostly because of time issues. So we decided to just go and hike. Up for an hour, down for an hour. If we didn't make it to the top, that would be fine. The top wasn't the goal; just the exercise.

For our first get-in-shape hike, we went to the Slide Canyon trail. Here, this is better known as the Y mountain. Because this particular mountain has an enormous Y painted on it. (For BYU.) We've hiked the Y several times, of course, as good Utah County-ites. But we've never continued on. The trail past the Y will eventually take you to the top of Y mountain. We didn't, of course, make it to the top of the mountain in our hour up. But we did hike through a landscape we've never experienced before.

This is an experience I love: going somewhere new. It also frustrates me to think I've lived my entire life within driving distance of this trail and I've never experienced it; it reminds me of how much more fully I should be living my life.

Once you leave the Y behind, the trail slants up and across the entire face of the mountain, until it finally curves around the south haunch and takes you east, into the canyon. The west face of the Wasatch mountains are visible from the main freeway, but the deep canyons are hidden. This one is steep, narrow, craggy with granite and crowded with trees. We didn't see another soul on the trail, save the eight lizards we disturbed. We hardly even talked, just pushed up through the trees.

Now, of course, I'm determined to go again when we have more time, so we can see the entire trail and get to the top. But for now, I wanted to just share this gorgeous sunset we experienced, coming back down the trail:

 
 

Here Comes the Rain Again

I love rain. It's my favorite kind of weather. I love waking up to a midnight rainstorm and listening to it hit the roof in the dark. I love how home feels cozier when rain is falling. I love the smell that wafts from concrete as the rain wets and cools it. I love puddles and rainbows and the birds made happy by an abundance of fat, dripping worms.

Plus, I live in the desert. Rain here is a blessing. Rain is rare. When it falls I think of the trees in the mountains, drinking deeply. I feel my own dry, dusty spirit reviving. The anxiety that builds deep down in me lifts when it rains because I feel that all will be right in the world. Rain in the desert is ephemeral hope turned to indelible moisture, at least for a few hours.

But, I confess: I cry uncle to the rain.

This May, we've had about four days when it hasn't rained. The snow continues piling up in the mountains. The clouds gather daily and the rain falls, and part of me revels in it, but by now the rest of me is water logged. The very anxiety that's usually relieved by the rain now burgeons each time I hear the wet patter on the sidewalk.

I live in the desert. I love the rain but my body is accustomed to endless sun. Dry and dusty is my spirit's natural state. Rain revives my secret places but too much, I have learned, drowns; I cannot keep my head above the rising water. By which I mean: it has been a long weekend in dark places. My eyes are tear burned even though nothing seems to matter enough to cry over. The only thing I want to do is sleep.

I need the skies to dry out and the sun to come back.

I Don't Like Bees

I mean, I like what bees do. I don't ever swat one unless it's in my house. I like that they pollinate our flowers and fruit trees and vegetable plants. I like honey. But me, face to face with a bee? They freak me out. It's the way they dart and buzz, and the way their creepy legs dangle down limply when they're flying around. How  you're supposed to be able to hold very still when one's buzzing around you, so it doesn't get you, but it's so very hard not to run away screaming and flailing your arms. The way they're supposed to be able to smell your fear and to want to sting you because of it. And of course, that ominous stinger itself.

Honestly: I'd rather have a spider on me than a bee, and I am none-too-fond of spiders either.

I think my anti-bee stance comes from the time I got stung as a kid. The hapless bee was simply hanging out in a patch of flowering clover in our grass, and I stepped on it, and it stung me, of course. It took another thirty years or so before I learned that bee venom in the foot isn't the most painful place to be jabbed. That'd probably be the eyeball, or maybe the tongue?

Still, I count it as a blessing that, despite the bees smelling my fear whenever they are near me, it took about three decades before I was stung again. The second time happened during a hike last fall. Kendell, Jake, our friend James, and I were coming back down the path after reaching Squaw Peak. (You can see a layout about that hike here; just scroll down a bit.) Kendell was farther ahead on the trail, and then Jake, James, and me in the back. Someone's pack must have bumped against a bee hive because almost simultaneously both Jake and James were bellowing and flailing their arms and swatting at themselves, and as I watched and tried to figure out what the heck was going on, another bee got me, right in the neck. (Cue shocked entire-body flailing and a thoroughly embarrassing wail, all of it completely uncontrollable. I'm glad there are no hidden video cameras in nature.) I think mountain bees are more viscious than suburban bees because I had an enormous welt for two weeks after.

Today, I got to mow the lawn. I say "got to" because these days, it's become a privilege. I love mowing the lawn, but I've also got two adolescent boys who need to learn to work. Today, I insisted it was my turn. It was a great day for mowing the lawn—beautiful and warm after a week of rain. I put my headphones on and sang along to my music and mowed away, happy as anything. Until, that is, a bee flew up the leg of my running capris and stung me. Cue shocked entire-body flailing and a thoroughly embarrassing wail, luckily drowned out by the hum of the mower. Because, yeah: I totally kept mowing while flailing. Only—not so straight. Well, straight into my gorgeous purple iris, which have just blossomed. Hadjust blossomed. Now three of them are decimated by the lawn mower and my spazzy lack of control.

I just don't get the bee. The suicidal bee. I might have brushed its flower while I passed it with the mower. Perhaps the mower sound sent it into a frenzy of anguish. Maybe it was just an easily-annoyed individual. Not that I can't relate to that. But what did it accomplish besides killing itself in stinging me? Other than a red welt and some iris that look like a machete went a little haywire around them? Wouldn't it have been better to endure the drone of the mower and the swaying of the flower, as opposed to the other outcome which is, you know, death?

Bees. Not only do I not like them, I don't understand them.

I Forgot

• the scent of outdoors when the soil is warm and you can nearly smell green things growing
• that perfect blue of the sky when it's warm and cloudless
• the happiness of green
• the lightness of wearing just one layer
• the pleasure of strolling down the street just to say hello to your neighbor
• the way the mountains nearly steam as the snow melts from them
• the sight of color and the lightness it brings to my heart
• the beauty of rosy cheeks
• the happy noise of kids playing outside: squeaking swings, rushing pedals, burbling laughter
• the way grass—still dry and crisp, but starting to soften and green—feels underneath naked toes

It won't last, of course. Tomorrow it will snow five inches, or hail, or fill that perfect blue sky with storm clouds. It won't stay 58 degrees forever.

But today the world has remembered: it is spring.