I just got home from a visit with my good friend Mary. I don’t even remember her snapping this pic, but it resonates. Big time. Is my howl about our seemingly unescapable trap of war, abuse, violence, climate change, and a robot sentience that will change humanity forever? Oh yes, it could be. It could also be an agonizing scream about confronting what my body may or may not be able to do in the future, the ever-present pain, the memory of how I filled my days just a short while ago, and the uncertainty of it all. Or maybe it was just a howl to howl.

We walked that beach for miles and miles. I walked more last week than I have in any of the months since returning from the Camino in September. Mary is a triple crown hiker too. We were supposed to hike the Hayduke Trail together this year, in the before times that is. 

Letting go of the before times is proving to be a level of difficulty that I haven’t been able to manage yet. I still keep getting trapped up in what I used to be able to do. In fact, just two years ago in the 8 months before I got injured/sick, I paddle boarded the John Day River, backpacked a 100-mile section of the Idaho Centennial Trail, backpacked around Big Bend National Park for a few days, hiked a loop through the Gila Wilderness along the CDT, created and hiked a short 3-day loop around Smith Rock State Park, skied up to Broken Top to camp/ski over Memorial Day Weekend, packrafted the Umpqua River, hiked the Lost Coast Trail on the NorCal coast, backpacked 60 miles of the PCT again, and day-hiked into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. That year represented my typical outdoor adventure pace. I went hard, but also a bit slower as the years had extracted some toll on my body.

In my struggle to get over the fact that I will never adventure like that again, I’ve been revisiting some of my past exploits. This video that I filmed with Oregon Field Guide in 2017 really sums it up. Establishing the Oregon Desert Trail was the pinnacle of my adventuring, and being able to translate those adventures into something tangible was everything. To create the current version of the route, I packrafted, skied, hiked, navigated, sweated, bled, howled and more…I laughed and glowed, at moments I burst with joy, and at others, cried with fatigue. This movie shows you the reality of the kind of experiences I think we need more of, that I wanted more of.

It was all so good, and I’m glad I could go that hard for so many years before I was struck down.

And that takes me to something my visit with Mary left me with: a reminder of how resilient I am, have been, and continue to be. Two things can be true at the same time: I am damaged, and I am resilient. I choose resilience.