I went running today but I probably shouldn't have.
My ankle's still not doing so great.
But I needed to move.
Like, NEEDED it.
So I'm shuffling my way along the tree corridor by the lake. It's late afternoon and my shirt's been soaked through since I stepped outside. Figures. It's cottonwood snowflake season, too, and I'm trying not to inhale any of the falling flakes but I sort of feel like they're velcroing themselves to me like chicken feathers. Whatever. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so fucking humid.
It's times like these that I really miss living out west... you know, where it's a "dry heat." I'm a mix of Scottish, Irish, German, and French-Canadian and I gotta tell ya, heat and I simply do not mix. Never have. I used to get heat stroke fairly often at summer camp growing up. I actually even passed out in the pool once.
UGH.
I'm looking at the lake, and the sun-rays rippling on the waves, and complaining feels dumb. I know I'm lucky to live here and have access like this. It's hard though; I think back to waking up in a tent in front of the Tetons and I actually feel an ache in my bones. I miss it. I miss needing a puffy jacket first thing in the morning in July. I miss running the dirt road out by Spring Gulch with its snowflakey cottonwoods and sagebrush. The heat there's just... different. I miss getting into some big shit and looking out on the valley from a perch in the mountainside.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just go back... I wonder if I'm trying to build a life in one place, but the universe is trying to get me to build it somewhere else.
When you meet resistance, do you grit? Or do you quit? Why?
onward.
For more on this daily column and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory here. And if you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along.