I find myself self-reflecting more often of late, perhaps due to the looming date that marks the moment I “get” to add another digit to my already colossal age. And while it is perhaps a quite ordinary human characteristic, I tend not to dwell on any success (or luck) I may have had as a father – raising two decidedly spectacular children, nor as a grandfather (because all I do is love them). I do dwell on my decades of work building submarines where I suppose I may have enjoyed at least a modicum of success, but my focus is rarely on any small successes, but on my “best attempts” that did not succeed. Not necessarily failures (although sometimes), but those that just feel short.
Invariably such reflections lead to a broader ponderance of life-choices overall, those moments that may have carried little to significance at the moment of decision, so much so that they were likely not even considered as decisions such as the red pill or the blue one, but more like a fries or onion rings moment. And of course, choosing onion rings almost certainly carries no repercussions, at the moment or ever, other decisions or choices to which we attach the same frivolous thought while making them end up being major forks in the road of our life – and sometimes that change of direction is not your life’s path.
Some examples: I often ran as a child and teenager, always in the woods, sometimes not even on trails but just ducking and dodging branches and briars until tripped up by a root or a vine. I ran in high school, even captain of the cross-country team. I stopped running in my early 20’s after my first knee damage and surgery. But over time the stone-cold realization that once you are in your 30’s, without exercise and or diet, you will begin to gain weight and lose fitness; and I did. So, I began to run again, this time not for fun and not for sport, but for wellness.
At one point I convinced my wife to join me. She has always been fit but never would be described as an athlete, but she agreed to give it a shot. She vomited. And she glared at me as if I was Satan himself. But a couple of days later she agreed to try it again. And while she didn’t love it, she didn’t vomit. And thus began what would become a decades-long passion of running for her. We ran together often as time would permit, but she ran almost daily. We went to Jamaica and she would get up early and go for a run. That simple decision to ask her to join me as I worked to lose five-pounds changed the path of her life.
But wait – that’s not all! On a whim, I once convinced my niece and nephew to come with me for a run when they were probably around 10 or 12 years old. They both wanted to kill me. Yet my nephew eventually began to distance run, and even race, in his 20’s. He is now in his 50’s and still runs – and still wins. It gets better – he got his son into running and he now races competitively; quite competitively as he recently placed 13th in the State championship as a freshman. His younger son has also now started running. Three lives changed because I took him for a run on a whim over 40 years ago!
I stopped running in my late 40’s (I think) but began hiking. Frankly hiking is just running in the woods, only substantially slower! So at some point, without thinking about it, I switched from running to hiking! I suspect the call of the woods may hold the higher card in this one though as I really have no interest in running if not in the woods; running on roads holds zero appeal for me. As I’ve mentioned probably too often, I do now walk a lot on the roads and while I enjoy it, it is for my physical recovery, rehab, health, and fitness – not my soul.
I have thousands of memories of moments while running, going all the way back to my teens; some good and some bad. But memories none the less. So it came as no surprise ot me that I would be powerless to resist the desire to try it again. And if you read my posts at all, you likely recall that I’ve run for a minute here and there while hiking over the last year or so, and that I went for an intentional and purposeful run last week. While I did not run well and while I did not run the entire 4 miles, I ran more than I walked. And it was wonderful to do so!
After all this running off at the mouth (pun intended) the one thing that escapes me is why I ran in the first place. Why, as a child, did I have the desire to go into the woods and run? And to that I have no answer. It was a choice that has unquestionably altered my life yet I have no idea from where the impetus to do so came. My father was extremely athletic – baseball, softball (his entire life), bowling, golf, and I’m not sure what else but he had a gaggle of sports trophies in his home office. But he was not a runner – nor was he interested in the woods. So the desire to run, especially to run in the woods, did not come from him. Nor from any friends as I always went into the woods alone and ran alone.
I have some harebrained idea that it could be an urge somehow born from the loss of my mother when I was four. I’ve written on the subject often and yet so much of it is speculative and born of hearsay that factual. (It is difficult, at times, to be a complete human when so much of your origin, your heritage, is a mystery.) While I have next to no memory of any of my time with her, I do have a precious scant few mental images of which I am certain. I have absolutely zero images or memories of her death or of my life in the days…weeks…months…and years after her death. I have been told by others who were there that I was inconsolable (of course) and one story that my grandparents – her parents – brought me to the cemetery to show me her grave and I freaked out and ran around the cemetery crying for my lost mommy. I idly wonder at times if somehow that experience led to my desire to run in the woods. Guess I’ll never know.
I think back to a 20-something year old me at work when I good friend brought an arrowhead into work to show us all. I was immediately hooked and desperately wanted to find one of my own. And thus for the next few years my life almost completely revolved around archaeology. A chance observation of an inert hunk of human-altered stone placed my life onto a radically different path. And honestly it was a double-edged route change; I immersed myself in the science and study of our prehistoric cultures here to the extent that it became an addiction that almost completely absorbed me.
I went artifact hunting every chance I got; almost every free moment was spent in the pursuit of artifacts. I would think nothing of spending 10 or 12 hours out mucking through dirt, mud, and stone in the blazing sun or in frigid rains. I once swam to a sandbar in a reservoir, in near darkness, in a steady rain-sleet, and in mid-30-degree temperatures. All so I could check the sandbar for artifacts. (If you are wondering I found a spectacular artifact that cold wet day.) But I was married with children – I did not have the time to spend roaming around looking for artifacts yet I did it. I think I may have actually gone hunting for a few hours on Easter Sunday once. And of course, you can’t write checks for which you don’t have the money – I bankrupted my family life. Happily, through honest conversations and self-examination the problem was recognized and resolved. I still hunted artifacts, but only as time truly allowed and far less often. That decision still resides within me today as I am always keeping my eyes peeled for artifacts while out hiking and every so often I will actually take a day to go to a favorite spot and hunt for artifacts.
I’ve always loved the written word going back as far as I have the capacity to recall. As a child I had a bookcase with sliding doors, it was blue and the sliding doors were white and the doors had no handles but instead each door had a hole in it to use to slide them. And I loved to just sit on the floor in front of it and pull out book after book in which to immerse myself. The Scholastic book fair was a HUGE deal to me and I could barely contain myself waiting for the newly ordered books to come in. I still recall the smell taking the books out of the box – Yellow Eyes, Up Periscope, and The Mad Scientists Club to name a few that remain imprinted in my memory. And in later years, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes completely fascinated me – I currently own two copies of it! And there were a series of paperbacks by Alfred Hitchcock I remember reading and then rereading.
In high school I took a course titled fiction writing and loved it so much I took it again the next year. The teacher was Dr. Harry Goldgar, one of the most enigmatic and captivating people I have ever known. He spoke with an accent unlike any I had ever experienced (and I think ever have since). He was an author and a true student of all the humanities (his two cats were named Agamemnon and Menelaus). Sadly I know far too little of his past such as what his doctorate was in but I do know it was from the University of Paris – the Sorbonne. But I do know that he struck the match that lit the inferno inside me to write. His cryptic comments scattered throughout our required weekly writings ranged from condemning (“again with the semicolon? No…no…no….”) to the ever so addictive praise (“genius use of foreshadowing here…”).
He didn’t make me want to write, he made me want to write better. I won’t delve into any rumors of his past in other private schools nor to his alleged sexual preferences; all I know is that he was nothing but a gentleman, a mentor, and a rare human being. His metal state declined drastically over the years and he became a mere caricature of the man he truly was. At my graduation he gave me a book by Hemingway and told me to read it every day to sharpen my writing. I tried but my style of writing is almost diametrically opposed from his and I could never, and will never, master his art of brevity with clarity. But my love of language and of writing has clung to me like a second skin all my life (and remains obviously). While a person here or there has praised my writing ability throughout my life, it is a love that will never manifest into anything other than a hobby; I will never write anything noteworthy despite my lifelong dream that I might. And that’s OK because I still love writing even if no one reads it.
Speaking of language, how can you not fall helplessly in love with our own English language? There are more words with which to paint than colors that exist on any painter’s palette (God aside). Words can be bold and can set the tone and depth of what you are writing or can be subtle and ethereal casting near invisible hues and accents to the text – and that’s incredible!! And guess what? There are over 70 synonyms for the word incredible, each fully capable of ever so delicately describing the same thing differently. There is an art in nuancing the right word to evoke exactly the desired emotion or reaction in your reader. It is rapidly becoming a lost art, or perhaps I am not reading the right materials to demonstrate that the art is indeed alive and thriving. None the less, I am making a concerted effort to broaden my own vocabulary if for no other reason than to indulge myself.
Age is a funny thing (circling back to where this all began) and while people call it the golden years, those tossing that description around are definitely not old. Were they aged they would know about all the losses (and they are numerous). Now don’t get me wrong – I am fully aware of how lucky I am to have lived this long, especially after my two-week cadio-venture last summer. So many people in my life were not given the blessing of living to my age or even into their 60’s. It is truly a gift. But…it does come with a cost. Vision, hearing, even smell and taste diminish and drift away. Strength, agility, endurance, coordination, and other physical skills wane and fade away. And appearance? Hah – don’t even get me started! Loss of hair (and color for what remains), wrinkles, all sorts of skin deterioration, and just that overall “old” appearance. You are so much less than you ever were in your entire life. I was told by people at times in my life that I walked with a swagger, and maybe I did. But not anymore. It is hard to feel like a man as all that you were disappears like the morning mist on a warm day – there and gone.
But you have to try. I love the woods and I love nature and I love hiking. But in truth I suspect the at least a part of it is the desire to do something that has a chance of imparting an appearance of still being masculine. I heat with oil but I supplement with wood and I cut, split, and stack my own wood. And it is absolutely great exercise and that is why I do it; but there is also something manly about using a chainsaw and swinging a big ole’ maul to smash apart some oak and that is likely another reason I do it. All attempts to hang on to what little masculinity remains in me!
And again, please don’t take this is whining or complaining – I am merely telling you how I feel and what it is like to be in the express train to a seventy-year-old man. I have always been extremely blessed with my genetic gifts. I’ve always been a pretty good athlete with a diverse set of skills and while they are leaving me, they are not all gone and I still do pretty good for my age. And while I pick up fat as we all do, I have been blessed with a genetic propensity towards being lean and slender and that (coupled with all the walking) has me at a really good weight and BMI. I DO count my blessings, but at the same time, I’d be a fool not to also recognize the losses. It is the nature of life. Stay well dear reader!! Next post I should be a year older!!