Wanderlust

Biscuits back on the AT, miles 64.2-69.6

April 28, 2019

The drizzle grew to an official downpour. Drops of precipitation pelted our rain fly, then slowed, then surged again. The powerful wind was coming in like a tide. From my down and polyester cocoon I observed the rise and fall. The mountains were a giant stadium, the trees were doing the wave and I was wrapped in a whisper of fabric somewhere near the 50 yard line. Starting from miles away, the gusts would ripple and roar until they reached our campsite. The tents would shake and the hammocks would sway and a wild rumpus would begin, then end just as quickly.

The swells kept coming for hours. I’d doze off for a few minutes only to be jolted awake by an explosion of cool air lifting our tent cover and unearthing the stakes around us just a hair. You think about things in moments like that. Things like, “What’s my move here if the rain fly blows off?” And “Are my boots really under the cover? What else did I leave out there?” And “I’ve probably slept for 2 hours, right? At least 2 hours.”

I opened my eyes at one point and the sky was a pale pewter, just light enough to prompt conversation from the tents around us. I listened from the protection of my personal pouch as Just Matt and Bambi worked on getting out of the tent to go pee. I felt my husband shifting intentionally beside me. His tender back was killing him.

“It’s a beautiful morning!” someone cheerfully announced from across the trail. It was Rainbow, the female half of the chipper couple I’d met the night before.

“Shut up!” my brother answered from our cranky quadrant.

Thus the tone of our morning was set. For breakfast, Just Matt would be serving a cocktail of bah humbug and go F yourself, and he had plenty to go around.

I stayed in my sleeping bag as long as I could, until I heard someone announce it was close to 9 am. We had 12 miles on the agenda for the day and if the terrain was anything like yesterday we were going to need every bit of daylight. I pulled my legs up into my chest and pushed the slick fabric down over my toes. The morning nip jumped down my shirt. The air was heavy with moisture but bitter like the bite of a deep freezer.

We were partial statues in a fog, working methodically to break camp using frozen fingers and concrete toes. Everything was damp. Ever wonder what hell is really like? Hell is changing out of a sweat-crusted top into a slightly wet, semi-frozen sports bra when it’s 36 degrees outside. Hell is forcing your feet into frigid cinder block boots. Hell is biting into a protein brick and waiting for your saliva to thaw the almond butter casing.

We were all in a temporary hell, but I believed it would pass. We just had to get moving. Restless and thorny, I took off out of camp first. I had to. The longer I stood, the larger the gap got between my mental prompts for my extremities to move and the actual ability to move them. I was turning to stone. I picked up my poles and walked off into the fog. Bambi passed me within minutes, followed shortly after by Gravy.

See, the way the mountains break you, is they don’t believe in easing their visitors in to their most obnoxious attributes. They just put themselves out there, big and bold, and if you can’t handle it, it’s just too damn bad. The ridge we encountered that morning, just out of Addis Gap, was a beast. For nearly two miles, we climbed, muscles tender, fingers like ice cubes formed around the handles of our trekking poles. One-two, one-two, one-two …

The wind punished the sides of our faces like a dragon’s fiery tongue. I turned toward the mountain to protect my cheeks, paralyzed and strawberry red from the unforgiving slaps of air. I finally reached the top. I could see Bambi and Gravy ahead of me. We snaked down the mountain’s backside and arrived at Deep Gap Shelter.

“Do you guys want to go down and make some breakfast?” Bambi asked.

“Yeah, we can do that,” Gravy answered. “Let’s give it a minute and see if your dad comes along.”

After about 10 minutes, I saw a figure dressed in gray making his way down through the trees. It was Just Matt.

“Dad!” Bambi yelled. “You want some food?”

“That’s fine,” he said.

On the Appalachian Trail, thru hikers will often take a “zero day”. This means they get off of the trail and treat themselves to a hotel room or hostel, a shower and a warm meal prepared by somebody else’s hands. On our second morning in the mountains, my brother decided to take a zero day, for the rest of the trip.

He threw his hands up, bringing his poles out and making a giant “M”. “I’m done,” he declared.

“What?” Bambi yelled back.

“I’m done. I’m getting off this mountain.” No one said anything. “You guys can stay on and I’ll come back for you on Tuesday.”

“OK,” I managed.

“This is supposed to be fun, and I’m not having fun. And there’s no way in hell I’m going to stay out here when it’s 20 degrees and freeze my balls off.”

“Right,” I offered.

And then we stood there, forming a box and unpacking what this declaration meant for the rest of us. A few minutes later, The General came through the garden of bare branches.

“Hey man, I’m done,” Just Matt said.

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “I’m just not feelin’ it this year, either. And I don’t know what it is. I’m just not feeling it.”

Two down.

“Well, I could carry the tent and stuff,” Bambi started.

“If you want to stay out here, I’ll come back and pick you up,” Just Matt said, “But I know I will be freaking miserable if I have to hike 9 more miles and sleep outside when it’s below freezing. This morning sucked.”

“Yeah … let’s get out of here,” Bambi conceded.

Three down.

“So, that’s it?” I asked.

“I mean, like I said, I’m not tryin’ to ruin anybody’s trip. But I’m done.”

I looked at my husband, weighed down by gear he’d spent hours sorting through and assembling. He wore a look of simultaneous relief and disappointment. There just no way to get yourself through an ice cold night in the mountains when you know the rest of your group is sleeping in a temperature-controlled room with a memory foam mattress.

Five down.

The Captain soon followed and we went about the business of finding a signal and calling shuttles. On the trail, you have to get to a gap where there’s an access road in order to drive out of the mountains. We would still need to cover 3.5 miles to get to Dick’s Creek Gap and meet a shuttle by 3 pm.

As much as I loathe the thought of being a quitter, my brother was ultimately right. With the conditions we’d been given, it wasn’t fun. And it was only going to get worse as the temperatures dropped. There was a lightness to the ground we covered that morning, knowing it would be our last for that particular trip to Georgia. It was like the minute we reached a consensus, the gray turned to blue skies and the birds began to chirp. The promise of warmth and beds and dry clothes was all the gas was like jet fuel in our tanks.

We made it to Dick’s Creek Gap with nearly an hour to spare. Gravy pulled the JetBoil out and we mixed up mugs of instant coffee. The sun was shining as if to endorse our decision. We sat at a concrete picnic table on the mountainside and let the finality of it sink in. Less than 48 hours into our latest adventure, it was ending with a bittersweet prematurity.

Three hours later my brother, nephew, husband and I were checking into a hotel in Newport, Tennessee. We showered, changed and drove to a Mexican restaurant where we proceeded to fill every inch of the table with soda, queso and burritos of every sort.

“I just said what everyone was thinking, and no one wanted to say,” Matt said between dipping his chips. “I don’t feel bad about that.”

It was true. No one wanted to spend another night in the cold, wet, unforgiving conditions we’d been in. It was a spot we’d found ourselves in before, at Hickory Flat Cemetery, on Roan Mountain. We’d experienced the type of discomfort your body never forgets, hard as your mind might try to. And the truth is, with as little vacation as we all take in our full time working and parenting lives, it’s far too precious to spend praying for the sun to come and the time to pass.

We were home by dinner time Monday evening. It was a whirlwind four days, and while our time on her trails was brief, the AT left us bruised, battered and sore for a respectable amount of time. We have just nine miles left to cover to complete Georgia, though Just Matt says he won’t step foot on the trail before mid-May ever again. A week after our return, he finally went to the doctor. He has a torn meniscus in his right knee, which explains why it was the size of a basketball.

I’m not quite sure what this year means for our annual spring adventure, but I’m confident we’ll find our way back to the white blazes one way or another. Until next time … XO, Biscuits.

Wanderlust

Biscuits back on the AT, miles 52.9 – 64.2

April 21, 2019

At the base of the mountain, we came upon another truck, an appropriately sized model for traversing a mountain. The driver pulled to the side, a trio of show-worthy Foxhounds dancing behind the cab. My brother rolled down his window.

“Hey man, do you know how we get to the fire tower on Albert Mountain?”

“Yeah, just take the detour through the parking lot up ahead. There’s a beautiful loop if you got time to hike. I think it’s about a mile or so.”

“Thank ya, sir.”

Tank’s engine growled, asserting its machismo, as we drove on to the scene of our wrong turn. There still wasn’t a phone signal among us. The correct road was perhaps five inches wider, and much less threatening. We were making up time, which was good, because, as we climbed higher and higher, the pressure in my bladder, fueled by two cups of lackluster continental breakfast coffee, was growing more and more intense.

Every time we came around a bend, my hopes for relief would be dashed. Until finally, we saw the trail and knew we had to be close. A few minutes later I was dashing from the truck into a patch of rhododendrons, smiling at the sweet satisfaction of release. We’d made it. In more ways than one.

There were two shuttles waiting for us, both SUVs. The General and Captain Cordage were loading their things into one of the vehicles with a gentleman in Carhartt overalls. The driver’s speech was a peppy southern twang that fit his face perfectly. Lieutenant Blazer and his friend Johnny, a first-time backpacker, were organizing gear in the Lieutenant’s mini van. Without a formal discussion of how we’d be dispersed, we started loading our packs and poles into the back of the other driver’s car.

There’s always an interesting energy in a shuttle, similar I suppose to an Uber ride across town, but more like backcountry Taxi Cab Confessions. It’s strange climbing into a vehicle with a total stranger and trusting them to move you down the side of a mountain. The reward for this faith is a beautiful bouquet of strangers’ biographies. I’ve yet to take a shuttle in to or out of the mountains without cracking open a treasure chest of nonfictional tales about others on the trail. This particular driver fell in love with a backpacker, took up hiking herself, covered trails all over the eastern part of the country, and landed in Georgia. I felt nothing but hot breath and silence from the three men behind me as I volleyed questions back and forth and encouraged her to unwrap more details of her past. It was a way to pass the time, and this woman, like most AT shuttle drivers, had seen some things.

After a little over an hour, we arrived at Unicoi Gap. The sun was shining and the parking lot was a flurry of resting thru hikers, day adventurers and section hikers settling up with their shuttles. We pulled gear from the backs of the SUVs and started finalizing the details of our wearables – tightening shoelaces, applying knee braces, adjusting pole heights. No matter how many times you’ve anticipated it, replicated it, lived through it, there is nothing that prepares you for that first day with a full pack on. It’s like offering a 5-year-old with a death grip a four-day-long piggy back ride.

The ascent north out of Unicoi Gap was a stupid steep climb by suburban dweller standards. I shrugged my shoulders a bit to settle and distribute the weight of my pack and met up with a familiar rhythm. Pole, pole, leg, leg, pole, pole, leg, leg … slow and steady up toward the mountaintops, where the views are spectacular and cell signals are weak or nonexistent. It was 10:30 in the morning and we had 11 miles to cover. I was ready.

It took less than an hour for reality to set in. “I did not take my preparation seriously enough,” Gravy huffed behind me. He’d done more than I had. Beginning around the first of the year he’d been putting weights in a pack and walking on the treadmill at an incline for an hour at night. But simulations in Indiana basements often pale in comparison to the drastic elevation changes of the southern states. There’s just no work around. These climbs in particular felt unforgiving and relentless.

I chatted with my inner philosopher as I heaved and forced by body over the dirt beneath me, arriving at the teachings on Mother Nature’s lesson plan. For this particular morning, we would be ruminating on challenges. Often, we find ourselves at the start of a tumultuous obstacle. And we resolve to take it one step at a time until we conquer it. This is the basic plot for nearly every compelling human account. Woman lives. Woman struggles. Woman overcomes. But, it can’t be easy or it wouldn’t be worth showing up.

It’s mirrored in the climb. Every time I come around a turn and see that there is still a significant way to go, I have to accept the challenge all over again – come to terms with the obstacle like I’m back at the beginning. The higher I get, the harder it becomes to accept the truth, and the harder it is to focus on how far I’ve come. Ten steps start to feel like 100. And who hasn’t been there in life? Who hasn’t believed they had something under control only to fall and have to get up again? The trail is everyone’s teacher. It doses out humility in varying prescriptions, but always with intention.

Around 1 p.m., Gravy and I stopped for lunch on a rocky overlook. An army of newly born bugs swarmed my sweaty head as I squeezed a few dollops of almond butter onto a tortilla and searched for my dried mango. I hadn’t seen Just Matt since we left Unicoi Gap that morning, but that wasn’t unusual. I assumed he’d come strolling up to the ledge, complain about how everyone’s always stopping to eat and press on just ahead of me. Bambi had already come and gone.

I looked out over the slate and dirt canvas of a thawing landscape. The powder blue sky went on forever, dotted with fluffy clouds outlined in the most brilliant white the angel’s could pull from their palettes. Thru hikers would shuffle up to the edge of the rock, pause, make some comment, like, “Pretty,” or a simple, satisfied exhalation, and then they’d walk on, with miles and miles yet to cover before the sun fell behind the peaks.

I ran the zipper around my pants at the knees and removed the bottom portion. Instant shorts to minimize my excessive sweat. Not my best look, but the breeze bouncing off of my alabaster shins was a welcome sensation.

“I’m going to go ahead and get started,” I told Gravy. He was making adjustments of his own, with one boot off and his shirt untucked. I hoisted my purple Deuter up off the ground. Still no sign of Just Matt or The General.

It goes without saying that a dramatic slope is tough to climb. But the coming down is often what gets ya. Some of the downhills are steeper than the uphills, with large rocky steps guiding your path. Your balance is off and it’s a constant battle to bridle your downward momentum. Add to that, you have at least 35 pounds on your back. So, every time you step down, that weight presses against your back and down into your knees. I had two good knees and I was feeling it. I could only imagine what was going on in my brother’s joints somewhere behind me.

I came to a winding portion of the trail covered in a canopy of rhododendron plants. The jungle green was a welcome reprieve from the brown dirt and naked trees dominating my surroundings. Lost in the lyrics of “Shallow”, I didn’t see it coming. My ankle jerked to the right, and eventually my body followed. My boulder of a pack slammed up over the back of my head and I crashed down on my bare right knee and palm. My pants, a pair I seldom wore, had been sliding down all morning. Now, as I managed to get both of my feet underneath me and dig my poles into the ground, they were mid-ass, revealing a few inches of underwear. Humility still counts, even when no one is around to witness it.

I brushed the trail dust off of my knee and hands and grabbed my shorts on either side to pull them up over my hips. Gravy came around the corner just as I was readjusting my pack. My ankle was tender for the next five minutes, but eventually returned to the normal, tolerable strains and pains.

Throughout the afternoon, each taxing climb seemed more aggressive than the last, steeper and steeper as they came. The mountain was flexing its muscle and I was feeling every vein and bulge. As a reward for going up, the hills were tailed by unforgiving descents. Up, down, up, down, and so the hours between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. went on. The heft of my pack pulled me backward on one giant step down. I came down on the ledge behind me, every ounce I ws carrying surged into my already skinned palms.

We knew we had to stop for water at Sassafras Gap Shelter, one mile before Addis Gap, where we planned to camp for the night. Gravy, Bambi and I got to the blue blaze around 5 p.m. The boys went down the path to fill our bladders and Nalgene bottles and I sat down under the sign to wait. A thru hiker was across the way, waiting to see what others she’d met on her adventure would be doing for the evening. If they intended to press on to the next shelter, I imagined she would do the same.

“Hi Dad,” I heard her say across the way. “Just letting you know I made it to my shelter for the night.”

They discussed some family business and I sat a stone’s throw away pretending not to listen in, swatting tiny bugs from my salty, sweaty face. I wondered how old she was and how worried her parents were. I envisioned what they told their friends at dinner parties. “Oh, you know Sunny, she’s just so wild at heart. But we’re certain she’ll take that internship after she gets this out of her system.”

I pulled out my own phone and turned the power on. As soon as the device found the weak signal a hundred text messages started popping up.

Bambi:
Where are you guys?

The General:
Just Matt and I are taking a nap.

Bambi:
Enjoy it

Just Matt:
If you guys get to Sassafras and decide to stop there, that’s fine.

Bambi:
OK

The guys came panting up the path a few minutes later.

“That drop down there is no joke,” Bambi said. Admittedly, I seldomly go on water gathering duty on the AT. I’m not here to make excuses. I don’t really know how to work the pump, though I doubt it’s super complicated. But being the person who typically stands on the trail where the water fetchers reemerge, I can tell you that most water sources involve a dramatic drop off of some sort. The guys almost always come back red faced and breathless.

“Have you been looking at your texts?” I asked.

“Yeah. Dad wants to just stay here I think.”

“I think it might get crowded,” Gravy said.

“Plus then we’d have to do 13 miles tomorrow,” Bambi agreed. He pulled out his phone and started typing.

Bambi:
We decided we want to keep going and finish the day.

Biscuits:
Stick to the original plan, folks! We’ll see you at camp.

I don’t know that I ever saw an answer to these texts. Given the events that followed, I would guess that was because Just Matt and The General were grappling with the consequences of our decision.

Lieutenant Blazer and Johnny came along just as we were done putting our packs back together with full water. The Lieutenant had seen the others a few hours or so before and felt confident they’d be along fairly soon. Bambi and I decided to take off toward our final stop for the day.

My joints were starting to rust and lock up, and I knew we had to be close to the end of our 11 miles. I’ve covered a lot of ground – jogging, walking, hiking – and it’s amazing how different 5,280 feet can feel, depending on your state of mind and body. On that day, beautiful in the low 70s with an invigorating breeze, I felt every strike of my boot against the earth in the last mile. I’m certain it was my mind that willed me on.

When we got into Addis Gap, there were two areas to set up tents. A higher section with several spots circling around a fire, and then a small, uneven section on the other side of the trail. Guess where Bambi wanted to be. We started making our slanted lot a residence. Our cozy two person North Face® tent took all of 15 minutes to put together, so Gravy helped Bambi with their sizable three-person shelter. They wrestled with poles and snaps and tarps while I started inflating various mats and pillows in our tent.

Captain Cordage had an impressive hammock set up going near the fire on the other side. Lieutenant Blazer and Johnny came along a short time later and selected a nice area just in front of the Captain for their tent. The campsite was a buzz of chatter and construction. Everywhere you looked someone was boiling something or unpacking their mobile home. A young, chipper couple worked hard to strike up a conversation, but I was too drained to give them the verbal courtship they were after.

About 45 minutes into our work, a sizeable figure came down the trail. It was Just Matt. He walked over to the tarp extending outside of his almost entirely built tent, dug his poles into a pile of dirt and collapsed. His knees were like cantaloupes, round and bulging with various inflammatory fluids. Liquid from his leaky water bladder hose made a dark circle around the left side of his chest and beads of sweat consolidated and dropped onto his shoulders. He was one long exhalation of profanities. He unstrapped his braces and hurled them through the thin material he’d crawl into in mere minutes.

“Where’s the General?” I asked after he’d calmed down for a few minutes.

“Aw, man, I wouldn’t be surprised if he just decides to stay back at Sassafras. I haven’t seen him in three hours.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, I honestly don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

It was starting to get darker faster. I had chills from my dried sweat and the mounting wind. Everyone was worried, but nobody knew quite when and it how it was appropriate to act on the concern.

I decided to start on dinner, a pouch of burrito fixins to be boiled and loaded onto a tortilla. Gravy was having a killer corn soup that I was admittedly jealous of. I sat on a log and balanced my jetboil cups. The sun was dropping. The wind pursed its lips and blew just enough to topple my dishes. An older gentleman was to my right, explaining his trail name, Pot Hole. “Because I can really slow you down,” he said with a chuckle.

Across from him, a woman from Switzerland was indulging with a fake laugh. Again, I couldn’t deliver. I asked if she was planning to do the whole trail.

“That’s the hope,” she said. “I have until September and then one way or another I have to go back home.”

“You’ll make it,” I offered. She was banking on her partner and host family being able to visit her in June, but other than that, she was on her own. She seemed like the type who didn’t mind that much. We exchanged pouches of instant cappuccino. I gave her my favorite – Trader Joe’s instant coffee with cream and sugar – and she gave me her preferred pouch, Nescafe. I can admit I thought it would be some sort of fancy Dutch coffee, so there was some disappointment on my end. She didn’t like things that were too sweet, so I imagine there was some on her end as well the next morning.

Lieutenant Blazer came over to inquire about The General’s status. I didn’t have an update. At least not one that would make him feel any better. There was often distance between us on the trail, but even still, you never felt alone. It never seemed dangerous. But as the trees grew murky against the Georgia nightfall, we all felt the gravity of one of our guys being out on his own.

“I’ll give it a few more minutes and then head up the trail and look for him,” he said. As if on cue, our bearded buddy came strolling into camp, instantly chatting with the other hikers. He would just be starting to set up his camp for the night while the rest of us were getting ready to call it. I chewed a melatonin and started down a side trail to go to the bathroom behind the widest tree and brush my teeth.

By 9 o’clock I was shimming down into my sleeping bag, enjoying the addition of a soft liner Gravy got me for my birthday. The sack, made from a t-shirt-like material, offers up to 10 degrees more warmth. Just outside I heard my brother.

“Did you already eat?” he asked Bambi.

“Yeah, I had some mac and cheese.”

“Did you make me some?”

“Ah, no.”

“Where is the bag?”

“I hung it in a bear bag down over there.”

“Cool. So I just won’t eat anything then.”

And then silence, as I drifted off into my melatonin-endorsed sleep that I hoped, but knew wouldn’t last. Because out here it never does.

Sometime in the indistinguishable hours of night on the mountain, we awoke to an electric flash of lightning and then, a minute later, a gut thumping boom of thunder. It was raining and a storm that no one knew was coming was roaring into Addis Gap.

Wanderlust

Biscuits back on the trail – The road to Albert Mountain

April 10, 2019

I snapped a selfie in the restroom of our hotel room. I was wearing my trail uniform: blue jacket, trucker’s cap, hiking pants, buff, no makeup. “Until Wednesday …” I typed into my Instagram story. I put the phone down and looked in the mirror. One last moment to feel warm, dry and capable. I knew by the end of the day I’d be tucked into a slippery sleeping bag with all the opposites. The breakdown would be underway within hours.

I turned toward the bathroom door. “It’s a great day to be great” it read. Thank you, hotel bathroom door. I sure do appreciate that. I hoisted my pack, which was well over 35 pounds with a full water bladder, up onto my shoulder. The weight bent my torso forward awkwardly. I picked up my duffel bag, filled with civilian niceties, with my free hand as a counterweight.

We’d seen The General and Captain Cordage at breakfast that morning, but now they were 10 minutes ahead of us, driving toward the sun to meet the shuttle driver in the parking lot at Albert Mountain. I tossed my pack up to Bambi, who was crouched in the back of Just Matt’s Dodge Ram, Tank. He winced and heaved it toward the back of the cab.

We sat quietly, still groggy from our too-brief time in an actual bed. We’d gotten a late start the day before, Friday morning. Gravy had stood on our porch geared up for nearly 45 minutes waiting, as Just Matt and Bambi searched for a missing driver’s license at their house across the neighborhood.

As we drove down a two way road somewhere in Ohio, my brother rubbed a swollen tube … or ligament… or tendon of some sort, wrapping around the side of his right knee.

“Jeez Matt, why didn’t you go see someone about that?”

“Oh, it’s awful,” he said. “I literally heard something pop in there. Feel it.”

“No thanks.”

“Just feel it. It’s crazy.”

Against all of my better judgement, I reached over and pressed my pointer finger into his angry joint. I recoiled and scrunched my face. He smiled. Pleased. I don’t know what it is about men, or maybe it’s just my brother, but if it felt like a mature snake had crawled into my knee cap and I couldn’t bend it more than a centimeter, I’m pretty sure I would seek some sort of medical care. This injury, mind you, was a complement to the recently diagnosed torn ACL in his left knee. So, that’s what he was bringing into the mountains.

After a trifecta of spring break traffic jams, Just Matt making a last-minute turn that sent Bambi flying into the front seat and a late-night visit to a local big box store for gloves and Metamucil, we made it into Franklin, Georgia around 11:30 p.m. Friday night.

Just six hours later, we were on our way to the Appalachian Trail, the vibration of Tank’s tires both soothing and jostling our foursome awake. Gravy sat behind me, searching madly for a signal to help navigate. We had just under an hour to make it to the rendezvous point. Just Matt couldn’t get one either. I turned on my phone just .2 of a mile before our turn.

Just beyond a parking lot, we turned right and started up an unpaved narrow road.

“Is this right?” Just Matt asked.

“I think so,” Gravy offered.

Tank’s engine rumbled and surged as Just Matt tapped the gas, urging his broad truck around hairpin turns. From the passenger seat, I heard a branch slap the door beside me and a rock tumbled down the steep mountainside, just inches from the tires. I stared out over the treeline, a clementine sky breaking through the navy.“What a beautiful thing to see before I die,” I thought.

Around and up we went, for 10 minutes, then 20. The color drained from my hands, clenched firmly around the ledge between the door interior and the window. Just Matt was laughing. Then he wasn’t, as the path seemed to shrink the higher we climbed. Loose gravel sent Tank’s backend to the left, as my brother pulled the steering wheel to the right.

“Is this right?” Bambi asked his dad nervously from the back seat.

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” he managed.

I hadn’t taken an actual breath for at least a half an hour. I was sure my heart was beating quickly and outside of my chest. We came around another turn and right into a dead end. I exhaled quickly.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” I screamed. My brother chuckled in the way the bad guy does in a movie after a woman – soon to be his victim – foolishly slaps him across the face.

“I’d say we’re going to miss the shuttle,” he conceded, throwing the truck into reverse, then drive, then reverse, then drive. Tank was like a hippo on the top layer of a five-tiered wedding cake, rotating inch by inch. Eventually we started to make our way back down the side of the mountain. Now I was on the side that hugged the structure’s skin. I could reach out and grab a handful of dirt from Albert’s coat. It was a different seat, but the scene was still terrifying.

We had just 20 minutes to get the shuttle and no one had a signal. As Bambi would say just 24 hours later, “This trip was doomed from the start.”

To be continued …

Uncategorized

The shock of a stranger’s kindness

March 11, 2019

I think I mentioned toward the beginning of the year that I’m working on a book. Now, I use this term loosely, as, on the good days, I’m cranking out about three paragraphs that are as solid as a three-day-old’s poop. Several weeks back, I was invited to join a private Facebook group for book writers. I hesitated initially (see: previous sentence), but alas my curiosity got the best of me, and I joined.

After silently stalking the group for some time, I tossed a question about connecting with a publisher vs. self publishing out to the others. A kind gentleman by the name of, let’s go with Jerry, took pity on my novice inquisition and started sending me information.

Jerry is working on his fourth book, and has gone through the paces enough that he has a fair amount of wisdom to impart on a beginner like me. Through messenger, he’s wired tidbits about cover design and editors and retaining your rights. Important things that feel a million miles away when I stare at my underdeveloped chapters. And yet I’m flattered that he feels I deserve his time and tutelage.

This morning, steaming cup of coffee in hand, I jostled my computer awake and found a message from Jerry. It read:

“Hi, Courtney. I know you don’t know me that well, but as human beings, we need to share compassion and encouragement daily to people.

Each year instead of giving up something for Lent, I like to give back. I wanted to leave you my Lenten Lift Up message this year.

You are special. I rejoice in your victories and feel compassion through all your tribulations. The strength you have can move mountains, the likes of which many cannot duplicate. You are embarking on an incredible journey with your first book. You will most likely experience the ebbs and flows, wondering if all you are doing is worth it. Trust me, it is. Your dreams are important, so don’t ever give up.

I hope you continue to be joyful and appreciative of all your blessings. You truly inspire me.

So here’s my message this year.

Treat yourself like someone you loved.

You need to know that you are the one you’ve been looking for.

It’s time to look through all your fear and look in the mirror and see clearly the person looking back at you is the only one who can make you happy.

You are already enough.

You deserve it because you are worth it.

And when you start to see that, you will start to be that.

Your world will get brighter and your load will get lighter.

There’s no point in letting yourself keep forgetting, because no matter what you say or do you are perfect.

So today I hope to leave you with a direction correction away from the flaws you see in your reflection.

They aren’t flaws to me; they are simply protection against all the doubts of your perfection.

So start today take a good long look in the mirror and say I am who I’ve been looking for.

I believe in you, Courtney.

Smile infectiously
Laugh genuinely
Love unconditionally
Live courageously”

It’s so beautiful. Soul shaking even. And … just, nice! Still, my initial reaction, much like the one some of you might be having, was skepticism. We’ve been conditioned through the social media revolver of horror stories and cautionary tales to doubt any display of kindness that could pan out to be a sicko in sheep’s clothing. For me, the paranoia that first caught fire with “To Catch a Predator” has only been magnified by #metoo and the onslaught of reports about people scraping profiles and violating every shred of security young women (and humans) once enjoyed.

But then I read it again. And again. And I decided to turn myself over to the possibility of pure, unadulterated kindness. Sure, maybe that seems naive. But I think I’d rather believe I’m breathing the air of a planet where some degree of that spirit still exists. Where uplifting sentiments are still exchanged, for no other reason than to benefit the human spirit.

And to be honest, I needed to hear something like this. I’ve been working through a stubborn foot injury and nursing a mild case of apathy and inadequacy about my performance pretty much across the board lately. And while my burdens feel small, they still leave marks on my shoulders almost every day. So part of me doesn’t really care about the motivation behind this benevolent word bomb. I’m choosing to pull the pin and let the goodwill raise me right on up. I actually think it’s pretty cool that he decided to send it.

Maybe you need to hear something like this right now. Read the words again, as if I just sent them to you in a private envelope, marked for your eyes only. Let this stranger’s thoughts be the superhero potion in your medicine cabinet. Why not? He said it all so well. Like he’s a writer or something.

Wellness

Training checkin – 10 weeks out

February 12, 2019

Less than three months from today, I will [hopefully] be able to say I’ve tackled my first 20-mile trail race. Seven weeks into my training schedule, I thought it would be a good time to kick the tires, check the gauges – share an unfortunate update – and start offering some behind-the-scenes intel for those wishing to place their bets on the main event.

Body scan

Honestly, I feel pretty good. Well, we’ll call it 75 percent good. I’m a few weeks post January Whole30 detox and the ole bod is fairly happy for the time being. Although you and I both know it’s the honeymoon phase. The trick is to keep my sugar dragon in the dungeon so that ugly inflammation doesn’t rear its ugly head. This has always proven to be a fool’s errand for me. I blacked out during the Super Bowl halftime show after eating a healthy assortment of Girl Scout cookies and when I came to Adam Levine’s nips were jumping out at me. Other people saw that, right?

For me, food is something that demands a lot of intention setting. Each day, I have to wake up, reset and resolve to be an active decision-maker. I have to choose to put some collagen in my coffee and let a little fast do some magic until at least midmorning. I have to choose a kale salad for lunch instead of a fried chicken wrap from the cafeteria. I have to choose not to eat chocolate at my desk. I have to choose to have one, not three, muffins at dinner. I have to choose to let fruit be enough of a dessert and stay out of the cookies. For some people, the impulse to make the unhealthy choice is a whisper. For other people, like myself, it is a constant roar, screaming and hollering and jumping up and down inside my head.

Typically, I can find balance. If my stomach is rumbling, my mind can consult MyFitnessPal and come up with a reasonable resolution. If my mind fixates on a mirage of brownies or burgers, I can check in with my stomach and assess the degree of true hunger, often, but not always, talking myself down off the sticky, sugary ledge. But it’s the days I log more than a handful of miles that really throw me. On those occasions, my mind and body are both in cahoots, telling me that I burned an abundance of extra calories so I can have allllll of the things. I can fill up a thousand-calorie deficit in one sitting. Just hand me a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, some ice cream and a bag of chips and then get the hell out of the way.

The elements + the miles

The biggest struggle has been the weather. The good Lord gave me one Saturday in early January that was like 50 degrees and sunny. The entire city was crammed onto one four-foot-wide path, riding and running and strolling with smiling pups. But other than that, it’s been all snow storms and wicked wind chills over here, which has left me predominantly confined to the hamster wheel in the basement.

I am not a treadmill gal. It all feels a little too human lab experiment to me. But to conquer six miles at week four, I had to put on my big girl pants and the Taylor Swift concert on Netflix (I made a promise to a friend that I would give her an honest shot at winning me over) and just crank it out. A week later, I called upon Justin Timberlake live in Vegas to get me through seven. He got it done, and so did the Tennessee Kids, and so did I.

Side note, can we real talk for a second … Am I the only person who finds it unbearably tempting to take multiple mini breaks on the treadmill? It’s just way too easy to put your feet on the side rails for a few pants and let some .10s tick by while you grab a drink. I rarely hear that evil little voice when I jog outside. I guess because I know that if I’m not moving, the distance between me and my house isn’t either. But on the treadmill, that rubber mat’s churnin’ and burnin’ with or without my tired legs on top of it.

Besides, nothing magical happens on a treadmill. Nothing. For example, this past weekend I had to tick off 9 miles, and I just knew there was no way I could do it inside. They were predicting mid-20s and no wind, so I decided to get up at 7:30, layer up and get out there to snake along my suburban training course. Around mile 4, my right hip started to hurt. This is common for me. But then, as the sun began to crest over the rows of houses, I could see the lightest dusting of snow flurries falling from the sky. The flakes sparkled out in front of me, and I pictured a group of angels dumping salt shakers filled with glitter over my head. It was magical. Euphoric. Because when you get outside and put yourself under the heavens like that, a little bit of wonder is bound to fall upon you at some point. That’s not happening on a treadmill in your basement.

Anywho, we’re gettin’ it done over here. About halfway through and staring down the barrel of some big daddy training runs, it’s all been pretty uneventful all things considered. Well, that was, until a few weeks ago…

How things are going as I train for my first 20-mile trail race.

Social status

You might remember, I signed up for this race with my big brother, Matt. Well, around week 5 of training, his knee started to bother him. I meet him sometimes on Monday mornings to lift weights, and when he walked in that particular week, I knew something was off. My man-child of a sibling joined an adult basketball league, which plays on Sundays. After he knocked out his long run the day before, he’d gone to play with the other men-children and his knee started locking up on him. I looked down. His knee was swollen from cap to near mid-calf. He sat down at one machine (mind you, it was leg day in our weight rotation) and extended his legs out in front of him, pressing the pounds he’d loaded on. That was about all his joint was willing to give his pride that day. A handful of reps and a stern, painful warning shot.

The verdict is in. Homeboy has a torn ACL and unfortunate meniscus situation. He’s assessing the options and still plans to show up in April, but we’ll see what the weeks ahead have in store.

The morning after he told me the diagnosis, arching down from the heavens in vibrant, cascading strokes, I saw a double rainbow. If I were looking for a meaning in the natural phenomenon, I might attribute it to the two gals in my life who, in the wake of the news, decided to strap on their sports bras and join me in the woods at the end of April for this ambitious adventure. That’s if I were into symbolism and fairy tales. And I’m far too old, and it’s far too sappy, to equate these courageous choices with such unrealistic ideas. But the rainbows were there. In February. I saw them. I’m just saying.

Thoughts

The tragedy of passing time

January 23, 2019

This weekend I woke up to one of those texts. You know the type, where one minute you’re slow dancing with sleep and the next – ding! – you’re sitting straight up, ice water coursing through your spine. An old friend of mine from high school passed away. He had been sick, which is not to say it wasn’t a surprise; that it doesn’t feel entirely impossible.

We’re in our 30s, so few of us are thinking of our mortality as the predator next door. There’s always another day, another opportunity to do better, another chance encounter where you’ll say all of the things you meant to say at the last chance encounter.  

The years took Ben and I in very different directions. It’s been easily more than a decade since we sat next to each other, likely in someone’s smoky garage, and caught up. But in the years we shared our lives, we were quite close. We fell onto each other’s maps during that period when your friends are everything. That season when the sun rises and sets with your social status and weekend agenda and you cling desperately to the people who will let you.

After I got the news, in an effort to remember and celebrate his life, I went down into my basement and pulled down a stack of photo albums. I brushed an inch of dust off the top cover and opened the one that looked the oldest. I sat on the cool, carpeted floor, my chin resting on my knee, and flipped through page after page of printed photos from one of the sweetest chapters of my life. And he was there. He was everywhere. In pictures, and in the memories my mind raced to reassemble, and then back into the place in my heart where he’d once resided. Turns out, it was just sitting there, waiting for him.

Nestled in those clear compartments, proof of proms and parties and nights spent sitting around bonfires and lakefronts paraded in front of me like a slideshow, ever so slightly out of focus. Some of the faces have changed, but are still very much in my life. Some are harder to recall. And now one is forever confined, by unthinkable shackles, to my memory.

When we experience the unique hurt of losing a loved one, no matter how close or how far apart we are from them when they go, I think a lot of that mourning can be attributed to something none of us left behind can escape – the passing of time.

I’ve cried so much these past few days. Because he was so young, because I think of his family and what they must be going through, because the non-negotiable permanence of his absence is too gut wrenching to comprehend. Our paths won’t cross some day in a pub or at a wedding – all those usual scenes of lovely coincidental encounters. We won’t catch up. It’s just this now. These photos.

But also, and perhaps mostly, I’ve cried because our happiest times together were both 15 years ago, and yesterday. When I look back through those albums, I see the faces of babies staring back at me. We were so full of false confidence and fool’s courage. We could make a memory out of a few cars full of kids and a seemingly pointless Saturday night. We were on fire for life, and none of us were awake enough to recognize it.

And now … well, it all tastes bittersweet, because a loss more tragic than we could have predicted has made our innocent past feel profoundly important and ironic. The years we spent together, like the finest sand, can never pass through our fingers again.

It may seem strange, but in many ways I’m thankful that my richest memories with Ben are forever frozen in that period of our lives. Sure, we saw each other here and there in more recent years, but when I think of my friend, those aren’t the times that will make me smile. That warmth will be eternally cradled in the space he’s always occupied. In the stories and sweet recollections of a simpler time when a group of kids danced in the flames of unbridled innocence. I’m so glad he was there. I’m so glad we shared that dance.

Kids

Different like everybody else

January 16, 2019

This morning, JoJo, my oldest daughter, walked out of the house wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, a navy and cornflower blue striped men’s tie, knotted loosely around her 9-year-old neck and a confident grin. Around 10 a.m. I got a message from my husband, who’d clearly been sitting on his concerns for the past three hours.

“I hope kids don’t pick on JoJo today. You know … because of her tie.”

I knew. I knew exactly where his heart was. I saw it on his face when I watched him tie the slick fabric at her request in our closet the night before. He brought it around behind her, under the baby hairs on the back of her neck, then came to his knees to fiddle with the knot’s intricacies, looking adoringly into her sparkling eyes every now and then. She was so excited, high on the proposition of making a personal fashion statement. Sporting something that was her dad’s no less!

But sadly, as parents, we know that allowing our little people do anything that could even be considered mildly different is like tying a bleeding cat to a concrete block in the middle of a meadow. It’s bully bait. It’s a healthy thing to do for them, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still bully bait. And some kids just have better armor than others.

Every morning, when I watch my oldest girls trot up the sidewalk and take that first, unnecessarily massive step up onto the bus,  a handful of thoughts pass through my mind, like a ritual I’ve practiced a thousand times before. The first is, Dear Lord, please keep my babies safe and bring them back to me just as I left them. The second is, please protect their little hearts, followed close behind by please let them be kind to others’ hearts.

It’s no secret we’ve wrestled with confidence and emotional issues for a few years now with our JoJo, mostly a result of her finger sucking addiction. When she feels hurt, which happens quickly and often without warning, her response is to yell and say hurtful things. It ebbs and flows, but typically it feels like we’re storing an active volcano in the bedroom at the end of the hall. She’s also gotten disturbingly skilled at rolling her eyes, so that’s officially in the repertoire. It’s hard as the parent to see her reactions for what they are – a rusty shield she keeps at her side always – rather than just spite, but it’s gotten easier over the years.

But that’s at home. School is an entirely different island.

At school, her reflexes will get her labeled a “mean girl” and barred from social circles. At school, the triggers are peers and poor performances on tests and 8 million other tiny touchpoints. At school, the largest, and historically the most prominent pain point, is being different; acting different, saying something different, looking different. In any way. And thus we come back to the neck tie.

“Are there other girls in your class who are wearing ties, babe?” I asked this morning, as she ate her breakfast.

“Nah,” she shrugged.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, it looks really cool.”

“I know!” she lit up.

It’s just a tie, I told myself. Maybe the other kids will love it, and she’ll get compliments all day long and come home on Cloud Nine. Maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe if I build her up enough …  But, just like her father’s, my heart quickened as she pulled her coat on. Send in the concrete block.

I listened to a podcast recently where a physician said that we are all exactly who we are supposed to be, and we are so unconditionally accepted by God and the universe that it’s unimaginable. Our flaws are intentional. They are the nuances that make us uniquely beautiful. The only problem? None of us realize it. No one feels that way. Instead, we spend our energy agonizing over whether or not one little neck tie has the power to emotionally level our fragile daughters.

This physician’s point was that, if we could all get to a point of internalizing that acceptance, all of the fear and anger and the destructive, selfish actions that come from that family of feelings would dissolve. The anxiety of finding our place would dissipate entirely, leaving room for the good stuff, like joy and love.

So the question then becomes, how do I make my JoJo, and her sisters as well, feel unconditionally accepted in a world where we’re all working with overactive label makers? For that matter, how do I get myself to open a gift that powerful? How do we drop that first pebble in the pond to start the ripple of peace and approval, both with ourselves and others, so we’re all on the same page, in the same mindset? So that we’re all living on the same island.

Different like everybody else

I don’t have an answer for that; Only a feeling that the implications of imparting those beliefs onto the next generation could turn some serious things right around for the somewhat sad state of this planet. For now, I’m going to keep telling my daughter that her accessories are fierce, but her confidence is fiercer. I’m going to keep saying my prayers as she skips up the sidewalk and steps up onto the bus. I’m going to tell her that we’re all different. That we’re all beautifully, expertly tailored to be different. Then I’m going to bend down and pick up another pebble.

Thoughts

Runnin’ hard into 2019

January 2, 2019

I realize that it has been, literally, months since I’ve written in this space and for that, I apologize to any and all (two of you) who might have missed it. I mean truly, I almost forgot how to publish to the site. My paying gigs have been pretty hectic, a fun new project popped up, and my creative tank has been somewhat depleted by 9 p.m. But just like the 10 pounds I lost before Christmas, I’m back, baby! Just in time to put my resolutions out there. You know I get giddy over goals.

This year, I didn’t want to paint in broad strokes. Sure, I’d like to give up sugar, meditate regularly and journal more, but I find those bold declarations only seem to leave room for ambiguity and abandonment. I have three clear cut objectives I’d like to check off in 2019. So let’s make them official, shall we?

Complete a 20-mile trail race

Crazy, right? It’s the scariest, so I’m putting it at the top of this list. This one has actually been a long time coming for me. I’ve admired a handful of friends and acquaintances from afar as they trudged through mud and darkness and completed these crazy 50- and 100-mile ultras. Since the farthest I’ve ever walked or run is 13.1 miles, 50 seemed a bit extreme, and 100 wasn’t even a consideration for this mama.

But then, in November, I asked my brother, Matt, to do a little trail race with me for my birthday. It was short – just 4 miles – but I L-O-V-Ed it. I came off that windy path high as hell and hungry for more. Due to a series of unfortunate events, Matt didn’t actually finish. (It’s a story that can only be told over drinks and with his formal consent. It’s that good.)  I think he felt like he had some unfinished business.

When Christmas rolled around, I decided to give him the gift of sweet redemption and the biggest mile tally either of us will (hopefully) ever complete – a 20-mile trail race at the end of April. I printed off our registration confirmations and shoved them in a bag with a pair of compression socks. After he opened it, we exchanged looks of simultaneous terror and exhilaration. Our 18-week training plan is already underway, and I’m feeling … we’ll call it tentatively optimistic.   

Finish a first draft of my book

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this romantic fantasy about running off to a rustic cabin in a field of wildflowers, my laptop resting on a handmade wooden desk, and letting a poetic narrative flow through my fingertips. See: Colin Firth’s setup in Love Actually.

But as the years have come and gone, I’ve had to come to the realization that there is no she shed in my immediate future. My extracurricular writing situation involves me hunched over a bright light in a dark room with a 4-year-old leaning on my left arm and the slow onset of melatonin dulling my words as the minutes tick by. If I can’t manifest a book in those circumstances, I’ll just never do it.

Then, a few months back, I had an idea for a plot. A fictional plot inspired by a hodgepodge of real life events, which surprised me because my wheelhouse has been exclusively nonfiction. I decided to start working on it, a few pages here and a few pages there. I took advantage of uneventful Friday nights and slow Sundays. I have seven chapters, and I’d love to bring the whole thing home in 2019. Then, I don’t know … tuck it away somewhere until I figure out what comes next with those things.

Hit my goal weight

I know this seems broad and unfocused, but I’ve had this one stupid number in my head for ten years now. Maybe even longer, if I’m honest with myself. I got close before the holidays, when I was religiously counting my macros, but from the time the turkey showed up, it all went to hell in a hamburger bun.

Hank and I will begin our annual Whole30 extravaganza tomorrow and I’ll be reuniting with my friends, myfitnesspal and intermittent fasting, to kick things off. I know I can get there if I can just remember why I want it.

Rapid fire resolutions on my radar for the new year:

Cultivate more thoughtful spaces. This includes finally setting up a writing nook in my living room and new flooring on the first floor. We’ve lived in our home for more than seven years and it still looks like we’re debating on whether or not we’re going to stay. I largely attribute this to the fact we don’t have cable, so I only watch HGTV in urgent care waiting rooms. This resolution also entails less purchasing of all the things.

Cutting out the negativity. Some situations just really suck my soul dry. Like hooking up my heart to a turbo powered joy vacuum. Whenever possible, I find it best to sidestep these scenarios and someones and go find the sunshine. Less suck. More sun.

I’d like to expand my culinary efforts a tad, maybe try my hand at bread baking (tell me you follow Jenna Fischer’s Instagram stories) and pastries from scratch. I’m the mom who buys the brownies instead of baking them, and I’m OK with that, but The Great British Baking Show has me crushin’ hard on the thought of digging into some dough.

Soak up these sweet years with my chicks and their dad.

Always keep a book in my purse.

Find more ways to lower my environmental impact.

Celebrate all the good.

Thoughts, Wanderlust

Jesus Dog and the importance of connection

September 26, 2018

I adjusted the hair around my face, tucking a few stray strands back behind my ear under my knit cap and scratching an itch by my warm forehead. My hand found Hank’s and, linked once again, we strolled together under the fractured branches that sketched the early spring canopy covering the southern Ohio forest.

“How long did the map say this trail was?” he asked.
“I can’t remember … maybe 3 miles.”
“Huh. Seems like this trail should have kicked us back around toward the road by now.”

The beauty of the day trumped any thoughts of potential trouble. We settled back into silence and synchronized our gates along a grassy lane, the past pressure of large tractor tires making our commute a little smoother. I heard the jingle of metal on metal and turned to see a medium-size dog trotting up behind us.

He was a mutt, perhaps the love child of an Australian Cattle Dog and a shepherd of some sort. His ears pointed toward the late afternoon sky and his collar, which was once bright blue, hung dulled and frayed around his thick neck. Without an invitation, the dog fell in line at our heels.

We passed a group of tourists taking a lunch break as their aged horses noshed on grass, green foam gathering in the corners of their mouths where the bit rings met the bridle straps. When our new four-legged friend didn’t join them at camp, as we’d assumed he would, we looked down at him and then up at each other. The canine galloped a quick lap around their herd, and they glared at us. We shrugged and kept moving.

“Look at that,” Hank said, after 30 minutes of walking our companion on an invisible leash. “He has one blue eye and one brown eye. That’s kind of different.”

And so he did. It was strange … ethereal. Thus, we named him “Jesus Dog”, and decided to accept him as part of our lost little tribe. He’d run off into the woods only to return minutes later, the sound of crunchy old leaves alerting us to his approach. He was entirely devoted to us and we were undeserving at best.

Seeing as how we’d clearly gotten off the marked trail, but we didn’t want to kill our getaway buzz, we chose to take Jesus Dog as a sign that we were going to be alright. He was a guardian angel with paws, sent to reassure a few misguided weekenders. We asked Jesus Dog if we were going the right way, and he seemed to urge us in the direction we were heading. We developed a rapport.

Eventually, we found a main road and walked along the shoulder until we intersected the parking lot where our vehicle was waiting. We each gave Jesus Dog a tentative air pat – because, you know, Cujo – and thanked him for protecting us before climbing up into the car. Jesus Dog sat down, an obedient and satisfied servent behind the truck. Hank had to get out and coax him to move on to the next lost couple, which eventually he did.
That night, we sat at the local brewpub and recounted the day’s events over a growler of mango beer. We confirmed that we had, in fact, walked approximately three miles off the marked trail with a mysterious, multi-eye-colored mutt. There was something about the whole thing that felt just sensational enough to be part of a fictional novel.

So, why does Jesus Dog matter now, you ask? He matters not only because we were gifted a celestial omen in an abandoned corner of the Hocking Hills tourist scene, but also because the tale of Jesus Dog is a spark. It fires up a connection to my husband archived in the neglected reels on the shelves of my mind. It’s a memory that belongs only to us, and that makes it special. It’s the handle to a faucet that fills my heart so that joy can float up to the surface.

It’s easy to call up joy with our children, right? They’re learning how to be humans, so everything is new and endearing and hilarious. My girls did something an hour ago that was cute enough to journal. But it takes intention to do the same with your spouse.

Tonight, when I sat down and started typing the tale of Jesus Dog, I immediately went back to that pub, my hands clumsy and cheeks sore from smiling. I pictured us sitting across from each other, oblivious to the other couples escaping the demands of their suburban realities, laughing and unearthing narrative gems from our past. See, the story is the time machine. Jesus Dog is the vehicle that transports me back to our date, just a state, but a world away from the grocery lists and oil changes of today. It’s the bridge I can walk across when the grind puts us on different shores.

What’s your Jesus Dog?

What’s that story that instantly transports you back to a time when you experienced unique joy with the person you chose to spend forever with?

Everybody has at least one. But then the question becomes: Are you revisiting it? Are you allowing the special moments to circle back around and tickle your soul and inspire you to go create more special moments?

Look, there comes a time for every couple when the only valid options are to a) sell the children, or b) throw your bags in the car and run away for a night, or a weekend or a week. Whatever you can swing. It’s in choosing option b that my suspicions that Hank and I are neighboring clouds are typically confirmed. In life, we share a sky, and occasionally collide, but mostly we’re just taking the shape of whatever role we need to play for whatever person in our day needs us to play it.

Making an effort to go away together quiets the winds. It’s a chance to look up at the face of the person you married, rather than selectively acknowledging them as you fry the potatoes and sort through the kids’ school folders. It’s like they’ve been talking through a fish bowl for 300 days and the minute you get away all the water gets dumped out. “Ahhhhh, I remember you.” your heart says.

When we go away for the weekend, we eat too much. We drink too much. We go for the longest, toughest hike in the state park. We get our coffee topped off, a couple times. We have conversations, rather than check-ins and appointment reminders. Ordinary luxuries feel indulgent and delicious, because they’re longer. Slower.

George Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it’s taken place.” Sometimes I assume Hank knows about my life. Like he absorbs it through osmosis because of our proximity to each other’s bodies and the people we love. But as more and more space expands and swells between our good conversations, the more evident it becomes that there are entire details of my day that never make it to my husband. Turns out, I have to actually tell him. I have to converse with him, regularly.

When was the last time you talked to your partner long enough to, not only revisit a memory, but also learn something new about them? I’ll be the first to admit that, too many times, while Hank is telling me about his day or asking about mine, I’m running a dress rehearsal of the next 30 minutes of my night in my head. I’m anticipating a fight between the girls or taking inventory of groceries. I am anywhere but there.

Going away and reconnecting is the face slap to send me back to the reasons I hitched my wagon to this star to begin with. I actually really like this guy. I think he’s smart, and funny, and I like disagreeing with him in the spirit of rediscovering and respecting our individuality. I owe it to this man to let the other stuff fall away for a few minutes.

There are very few people – one, if you’re lucky – who can look at a menu and guess what you’re going to have. If you’re fortunate enough to share that kind of intimacy, where someone cares enough to keep track of what you like and what you hate, that’s something worth celebrating. So book a sitter or a trip. Throw your bags in the car. Go walk with your Jesus Dog. Then, about a month from now, make a date to talk about it. The best stories are the ones you tell over and over again, and the ones you can tell together.

Thoughts

Solving the joy drought

September 21, 2018

Joy, beautiful joy. I’m talking pure, uninhibited, rainbows-shooting-out-of-your-body-holes joy. The subject has been on my mind lately and, I guess you could say, I’m on a special mission to start tracking it down. I want to observe joy in its natural habitat and then plot how I can begin trapping it. It’s survival, really. It’s to feed my soul.

When my kids are swept up in joy, I can taste it in the air they’re exhaling. I can feel the temperature go up as the joy radiates off of their smiling faces and vibrating bellies, shaking with those good, deep giggles. It is a tangible experience, my daughters swept up in joy.

With me, it’s more discreet. I have to pick up the boulders and kick the dirt around a little bit to uncover the joy. It’s there, no doubt. It just doesn’t shine off of me like a polished nickel in the sun, the way it does from my girls. Joy whispers at my heart, only shouting when the cost of missing it is too great.

And honestly, I think a lot of us are missing it. According to the Harris Poll, which included responses from 2,202 Americans ages 18 and older, only 33% of Americans surveyed said they were happy, the beautiful byproduct of joy. In 2016, just 31% of Americans reported the same. I mean, we’re improving, but a lousy 33%? Math isn’t necessarily my jam, but I’m pretty sure that means that if 10 of us were standing in a room together, only two of us and a pregnant lady would claim to be happy. We’re experiencing a torrential downpour of apathy and a desperate joy drought, and I can’t help but complain about the weather.

For the sake of research, I folded up a piece of scrap paper and put it in my purse. I decided to make note of all of the moments I felt joy during the week. Real talk: I averaged about four instances of joy a day, but approximately 40% of those tallies could be attributed to food and 10% to professional wins. Is food a source of joy? Perhaps. But it feels more like something that should go under the pleasure category, which, in my mind, is tied up to the senses a bit tighter than joy.

I wanted to expand my sample size, so I called my brother, Matt, on my drive over to visit my mom, who was recovering from back surgery in the hospital. “How often do you experience joy in a day?” I asked him. “Can I give you a negative number?” he snapped back, before quickly amending his answer to “once”.

Minutes later, I settled into a plastic recliner next to Mom’s bed and asked her the same question. “I don’t think I do feel joy everyday,” she answered. “It really depends on how much I’m around my kids and my grandkids. I mean, I talk to people on the phone at work all day, and they’re so nice, but I don’t feel, like, a burst of joy.”

Later, when Matt came up to the hospital, the three of us picked the conversation back up. Having chewed on the question a bit, my brother decided that he has more joy in his life than he initially thought. His kids bring him joy. His clients bring him joy. And then, because what else does family do when one of them is healing, the three of us filled up the modest space with laughter and stories for a few hours. After my brother left, I put another tally on my scrap of paper, thus debunking the theory that joy, like fortune or luck, alludes those who speak its name out loud. Just talking about joy had been the spark to its flames.

By dawn the next day, I was getting downright greedy. I never played, but for once I could relate to all those crazies who went on that Pokemon binge a few years back. I’d gamified instances of joy, and now I wanted more and more and more of it. I wanted more smiles, more laugh tears, more tallies. Hi, my name is Courtney, and while I’d describe myself as generally happy, I am a self-proclaimed joy junkie. The scribbled moments on my list, the treasures under the boulders, the whispers inside me, there just aren’t enough of them.

There’s a solution to everything and inviting strategy into the pursuit certainly lends a certain sophistication to the quest. Remembering there’s a reason I read, I went back through some of my voice memos from my favorite authors and grabbed a trifecta of philosophies on joy. Here’s how the gurus say we can tap into a goldmine of joy.

We can choose it.

Writer Gabrielle Bernstein says that “happiness is a choice I make.” To me, joy, by nature, feels more organic. I think of it like a gift from the universe and all her conspiring forces. Moments of joy certainly spawn happiness, and so I might amend Gabby’s statement here to say that choosing to seek out and celebrate joy is a choice. Choosing to slow down enough to spot and let the joy sink in is a choice. Choosing to let joy be kindling for your happiness is a choice.

One of the items on my list was overhearing an exchange between JoJo (my oldest) and Sloppy Joan (my youngest) getting ready for school. SJ is going through a phase where she wants her sisters to help her get dressed, rather than her flustered, bossy mother. On this morning, she’d picked her oldest sibling to help her make sure the tags were in the back. From down the hall, I looked on as my JoJo, who often wrestles with patience herself, sweetly guide her sister’s tooties into her socks, one at a time. Then her undies, then her shorts, then her shirt, coaching her to pull arms through and rewarding her with kind words as the process progressed.

On any given weekday morning, I am doing five things at once, lecturing being the most consistent of those tasks. “Brush your teeth. Grab a sweatshirt. Turn the light off. Put the clothes in the hamper. Go get underwear. Find your shoes. Tie your shoes. Hurry up and eat.” But because my joy receptors were engaged, on that morning, I stopped. I chose to see joy. And the interesting thing is, if I were a betting woman, I’d put all my money down that there is a moment just like that moment hidden in the midst of most chaotic mornings.

Slowing down for joy is a choice. Happiness is a choice.

We can stop being so damn judgy.

A few months back I listened to “The Book of Joy” by Archbishop Desmund Tutu and the Dalai Lama. There was a whole lotta zen in that bad boy, but one of my favorite points they made was about the relationship between love and joy.

According to the enlightened pair, most humans are prone to practice biased love. We love our kids, our families, our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors. But beyond that, we struggle to empathize and open our hearts. We operate as if there’s a limited capacity for love. But when we stop thinking about ourselves and the people in our inner circle exclusively, we can find joy for humanity.

They went on to explain that self-involved thinking leads to anger and depression. It’s a script we’ve all read. “Why did I do that? Why didn’t they pick me? Why did I eat that? I’m such a failure.” How is joy supposed to penetrate all of that negative noise? But thinking of others, shifts us toward compassion, and it’s really hard to be an unhappy asshole when you’re acting from a place of compassion.

As a writer, I get to tell a lot of stories. Nothing brings me more joy than when the words take shape on the screen and I’m able to capture the bravery or strength or character of another human being. Exchanging stories under the umbrella of this great big world is a powerful connector. Feeling connected encourages the tendency toward compassion, and compassion breeds joy.

Stop being so stingy with your love.

We can be grateful for it.

This whole thing started for me because I just finished Brene Brown’s book, “Braving the Wilderness.” In it, she writes, “Joy is probably the most vulnerable emotion we experience. We’re afraid if we allow ourselves to feel it, we’ll get blindsided by disaster or disappointment. That’s why in moments of real joy, many of us dress rehearse tragedy. We see our child leave for prom and all we can think is, car crash. We get excited about an upcoming vacation and we start thinking hurricane. We try to beat our vulnerability to the punch by imagining the worst or by feeling nothing in hopes the other shoe will drop. I call it foreboding joy.”

This was the passage. It was the switch that turned me on and got me thinking about how many times joy has shown up at my front door and I either didn’t answer or I turned it away. Maybe I turned it away because it scared me, or because I was worried about what others would think if I invited it in, or because I was too freaking busy to hear the bell.

I think of joy as a God wink. A gift. But after talking to others and writing it down and searching within myself, it also feels like a rarity. Like, of all of the moments in a day, the ones that bring joy are too often the exception. But reading Brene’s work makes me wonder if we’re all just scared to open ourselves up and let more of it in.

People are constantly telling me, “Don’t blink, your kids will be gone before you know it,” and “Enjoy it. It all goes so fast.” And while I know these points to be true, they also fuel my own foreboding joy. As soon as I tune into a happy moment, I instantly try to wrap my arms around it and squeeze it into my soul and my forever memory. I suffocate it. Like a fart in a tornado, I want to hold onto it, but it’s impossible. The presence of joy makes me simultaneously mourn its expiration. And how could it not, when every person and every message around you warns of how fleeting it is?

So give me a solution, Brene.

Gratitude, she says. The fastest way to access joy and trap it for a bit is through an attitude of gratitude. Carving out time to count your blessings, the big ones and the small ones, can extend the high. It can be like living the moment all over again.

I’ve tried to make meditation part of my daily routine for years, with extremely mild success. But typically, when I workout in the mornings I have about 5 minutes where I can sit in silence. No one else is awake in the house and it’s only me, my thoughts and the settling walls. Earlier this week, during one of these brief sittings, I was given the gift of reflection. When I closed my eyes, I saw my family running through a beautiful forest. I could hear their laughter and I could see their toothless grins and I felt a peace I hadn’t felt in days. I got quiet enough that I could visit with gratitude, and in return, she brought her best friend joy. And I was so thankful because guests like that don’t show up every day.

The truth is, most of us aren’t short on blessings. We’re short on fingers and toes on which to count them. Right now, I’m sitting at my dining room table. An hour ago I kissed my oldest daughters and put them on the school bus. I kissed my husband. I kissed my baby, butter from her toast still salty on her tiny lips. The sunlight is warming my hands and steaming in between the swaying branches on the trees behind our fence. My coffee is just strong enough. I’m typing the final words of a post I’ve been coming back to for days.

I am happy.

In this moment, I have joy. And I hope you do, too.