by susan | Mar 16, 2021 | Uncategorized
I love riding my bicycle. If you know me at all, you know this.
Riding up a canyon, especially early in the morning, transports me to another world, one that fills me with delight, wonder, awe.
Living in northern Utah, however, means snow and cold and rain during the winter months; these put a damper on cycling. Thus I turn to other activities. I ride a trainer, indoors, and then I hike or skate ski, depending on conditions. Life in cycling season is great, and life in ski season is pretty darn great too.
The shoulder seasons get me.
Travel industries call the time between high and low seasons “shoulder seasons,” and I’ve adopted this phrase for my transitions between consistently being able to ride outdoors, and not.
Right now I’m in a shoulder.
Skate skiing has been mostly fabulous this year, and I’m finding myself a bit sad to think of it ending. The warm weather we’ve been having, though, is melting track quickly, and each time I skate I mentally prepare myself for it being the last. And, it’s not quite warm enough to be excited about being on my bicycle. Spring weather here is fairly unpredictable, thus I’m in a state of transition that feels amorphous.
Which matches my emotional state.
We are beginning a transition from full-blown pandemic to… well, less-full-blown pandemic. As vaccination numbers rise, hope for a different future does as well. This will lead to numerous changes; most are welcome, but some are also challenging.
Just as I’m a bit reluctant to give up skiing—although I so love cycling—I’m a bit reluctant to give up the structure I’ve developed over the past year.
I want to return to practicing psychotherapy in person, from my office…sortof.
I want to be free to socialize again…I think.
It will be so great to go places where others freely move about and don’t skirt their fellow humans…perhaps.
This amoeba-like state, shape-shifting, always throws me.
But this morning I realized that instead of letting myself get lost in the discomfort and unknown, my task is to embrace it. Without this phase, the next good thing isn’t able to present itself.
If I resist this, I’m stuck here.
So… this is just the next step toward the future, toward what I’m working to create. Instead of getting tangled in the discomfort, it’s time to celebrate reaching this point. We’ve come a long way, baby, and we can handle whatever the universe next throws our way.
by susan | Jan 31, 2021 | Uncategorized
A clench, a tightening in my gut, and the sudden nausea, the scream inside my head, “no, no, I can’t hear this, please stop.” Rocky hillsides line the freeway, and although they are as familiar as they are unthreatening, I feel suddenly unsafe, at risk. Of what, I don’t know, perhaps a form of implosion, a caving in of my own structure. I can’t hear this anymore.
It contradicts—it attacks—almost every value I hold, it claws at my character, it eats away that which has held me upright my entire life. These conversations have taken too great a toll on me during the past four years.
We are in the canyon, ten minutes from the Nordic ski track, and I can barely contain my upset. I eek out the words, “this is hard for me to hear, I don’t want to be talking about this right now.”
“Right?” he says, then continues, more words flow past as we near the exit: QAnon, gun in her purse, committee, lawmaker, Georgia.
I can’t make eye contact. I must look as ill as I feel. I sense him turning his head to check on me—I’ve gone quiet—as comprehension dawns.
“So, Greg and Jeannie had a good ski up Millcreek last night, he got home soaked, but he’d had a great time—it snowed on them, they made it maybe two-thirds of the way to the top.”
My silent gratitude fills the car. the nausea recedes; a weak smile appears. I climb back out of the dread, the despair. Dust off my character.
Snow fell last night, seven inches, perhaps, and the parking lot holds few cars. We climb over the snow berm and follow deep boot tracks down the slope to the start of the track. It takes me longer than usual to clip boots to bindings. I work to dig snow from around the metal bar, and Tim uses the tip of his pole to assist. The bar can’t clip in if it’s surrounded by any kind of debris. Once the bar snugs down into the notch, I push down the lever and I’m in. Second boot, in. Snow flocks the hillsides, and lies thick on every exposed branch of the pines that line and dot the track. A coyote yips on the far hillside, then bays and yips his tale again. Thick gray clouds sit on the mountains to the south, to the east. Wind chills the air.
The track has been groomed, but it is soft and the few who’ve skied before us have churned more than firmed the snow. We glide, then pick up speed on the downhill and the gift of being here settles over me, the demand for focus to keep myself upright, to be efficient, to notice my poling, my knees, my breath. There is no room here for that which pulls me apart. There is simply beauty, delight, companionship. The drive to be the best I can be in these moments, while accepting that however I am, today, is just fine. What holds me together are foundational aspects of who I am: kind, compassionate, conscious, aware, able to see the big picture, willing to educate myself, able to hold two possibly conflicting thoughts at the same time.
The binding system for Nordic skis is incredibly simple. The notch, the bar, the lever pressed down to hold the bar in place. The toe of the boot is held firm, while the heel is free to move up and down to propel the ski forward on flat and uphill terrain. The system is well-designed, replete with efficiency and integrity. It’s a necessary foundation for skate skiing; I respect it and have learned to clean the bar. I know that without this piece I cannot experience what I wish to; I also know I must take care of it. I expect it only to do its job, but to do that job well.
So that I am then freed to do mine.
(title taken from an excellent article on cross country skiing in the Tahoe Trail Guide written by Jared “schoolboy” Manninen)
by susan | Jun 11, 2020 | Uncategorized
my left toes wedge into a minuscule fissure in the rock face, and those on my right seek purchase somewhere, anywhere. a smooth, blue rope attaches to my harness with a figure eight knot and stretches upward against the rock face. it is held, far above and out of view, snug and secure, by someone who believes in me.
my right fingers grip a small knob of rock, and my left are jammed into a crack in the quartzite. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t believe in myself. I press my hips toward the wall of rock I’m climbing, look down at my right foot, and consider my options, what tiny dip might support my weight, what other way I might possibly adjust my body so that I can move up the cliff. I have nothing; there is nothing I can do. I shouldn’t be here.
but I am here.
what is my next move? I voice these words; the rock absorbs them. for a moment I am still. I repeat the words, and I calm. adjust my right hand, look down, see a possible ripple to which the edge of my foot might cling, pray, test then press down on my right foot, and release my left hand to move it up the crack onto an impossibly tiny but solid ridge.
what is my next move?
surveil, contemplate, test, advance. I don’t let myself look down.
when I reach the peak, there is a pause before my partner and I reattach the blue rope to our harnesses to rappel down what we just climbed. a scraggly, stunted tree sprouts from a crack in the rock and its leaves are effusively green, pliable, soft between my fingers. below us, a sea of pine, oak, aspen. purple and gold crags across the canyon, afire in the evening sun, are, at the moment, my equal.
trust the equipment, trust my partner, trust the mountain. trust myself.
trust that a next move exists.
by susan | Mar 31, 2020 | Uncategorized
Geography is everything.
The year I graduated college, it was decreed that geography was no longer just one thing, but was now essentially everything.
No longer was geography simply the study of countries and where they were found on the globe. Geography became a five-themed study: that of location (both absolute and relative), place (physical and cultural), movement (of people, ideas, information, goods and services), region (formal, functional, and vernacular), and human-environment interaction (adaptation, modification, and dependence).
Language, home ownership, procurement of food and fuel, love, interdependence, employment, culture, exploration, interaction with others and with one’s environment… geography, all.
Colum McCann’s Apeirogon tells a story of love, connection, anger, ignorance, community, culture, peace, healing, falcons and frigatebirds and tunnels and motorbikes and Hitler and Einstein and everything that swirls around the heartbreaking, vicious, violent death of two young Middle Eastern girls, and his fragment number 173 states geography is everything. It determines who lives, who falls in love with whom, who dies.
At the present time, most every aspect of geography is confrontative. Because one lives on this side or that side of the continental divide, because one lives in a city or suburbia or a rural space, because one shops at this store or takes one’s car to that service station, because one shook hands with this person or hugged that one, one’s fate may be guided in a different direction than it previously was. The enormity of it, the improbability, the in-your-face reality that one has so little control over anything, ever. And then the dawning realization that what one does have control of is self, the inner experience, the mindset, the response to that with which one is surrounded.
To connect with oneself and understand that this is the only certainty; what a rich, vital certainty it is.
The inner geography. Which is, ultimately, everything.
We often gain access to this inner geography through place.
Ah, place. Landscape. Those mountains, wheatfields, expanses of snow, cloud clotted skies, mossy creeks, hanging valleys, granite peaks, dunes and shaded lanes and talus slopes and silently whispering deserts. These connect us with our core sense of self, they alone have the absolute ability to hone and heal our inner geography. We ground via actual ground.
A story exists of Buddhist monk Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who is said to have once sat with his master in a garden, admiring a great elm tree. Sunlight danced through the leaves, a squirrel paused to study the men, this magnificent tree spread its limbs far and tall. One monk turned to the other, “they call this tree,” and both burst into laughter.
What we call it matters not. Place is the ground which grounds us.
We, whose hearts are tugged by landscape, feel the power of place.
We, who are separated from those we love, know the power of place.
We, who await the unknown, center ourselves with the power of place.
Geography, is everything.
by susan | Oct 30, 2019 | Uncategorized
deep, dark morning, while most slumber, is a bewitching time of day up my canyon. deer lower their heads to graze, porcupines waddle along the edge of the road, coyotes trot through sage and grass, crickets sing, songbirds hail one another, owls look down and peruse their kingdoms.
during late spring and early fall the sun gradually lightens the landscape as I ride, and I seek silhouettes and vague forms that delineate as I near. as fall stretches forward and the days shorten, I attune to sound alone, as my vision is limited to the small cone thrown by my front bicycle light.
with any bit of light, I’ve learned to search for owls atop spindly, lifeless trees, and now know which trees are most often inhabited by these predators. at times an owl calls and I am kept, by the dark, from spotting it; instead I experience a spark of joy from the challenge of pinpointing, sightless, its perch. owls are there; they watch me pass.
one early october morning, I crested the summit, and coasted down toward the reservoir. as the road leveled and turned south, I resumed pedaling. well behind me, still at the summit, approaching headlights shot downhill.
a large shadow—dark against dark—appeared far to my left, a strange effect of the headlights, I thought. then the shadow moved closer, again in my peripheral vision, an illusion, perhaps. the shadow was then shockingly close, my nerves tingled, and suddenly an owl swept across me, left to right, its wings and torso millimeters from my head and arms. brown, darker brown, a pattern almost striped, I impossibly felt its feathers against my skin, its body against my own.
gone.
I pedaled.
the truck passed me, its headlights piercing the opacity.
I rode to the reservoir, jubilant, astonished. I turned and began my trek home.
jubilant.
astonished.
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