Transition

What's with this obsession with hiking? Well, what's with anyone's obsession with anything? What gets us "hooked" and what keeps us coming back for more? Why did I arise at ungodly hours to load (alone) crates and dogs and equipment and often offspring into the van to drive (through blizzards or driving rain, darkness or road construction) to distant venues to run around a dog show ring, more often than not returning with nothing more than a satin ribbon for all that effort and expense? What drives others to hop on motorcycles and risk life and limb to travel cross-country for rallies? To sit in slips of plastic and play rodeo in raging rivers? Or for that matter, to sit atop actual bulls in actual rodeos?

What are we all after, with our obsessive quests? Are our modern lives so damn easy we have to artificially create the stresses that once were a daily occurrence for our ancestors? No doubt our bodies crave the endorphin rush, our brains lighting up with the "hit" of neuro-chemicals. I can readily attest to the addictive quality of my own pursuits, more noticeably so now with my hiking morphing into trail running...but I suspect there's more going on.

Some of it's escapism. Things are tough, life is messy, it's a relief to just delve into a hobby or activity than to address the worries or grapple with the uncertainties. Are we, perhaps, hoping to encounter something real, as if we can keep doing whatever we happen to have gotten hooked on and Presto!, by accident one day it'll hit us -- we've stumbled onto something deeper, encountered something of substantial Meaning, something akin to actual living?

Perhaps consciously we would never cop to that. Yet, underneath, is some aspect of ourselves pushing us into pursuits that could do precisely that? It occurs to me that it does not matter what one does, from digging ditches to painting murals to building particle accelerators... the opportunity for achieving your best and highest self exists in every moment, every activity, every breath we take. So, we push and persist while our subconscious screams at us to sit up and notice, whatever it is we're doing, just really be there, participate fully, not on auto pilot but actually in the now. To do it as if it's our only moment to do so, as indeed, each moment is.

Viewed this way, the point, the goal, is not the satin ribbons, the next speed record, conquering the class five river, or managing a 25 mile hike in a day's walking. It's every aspect of each of those things. Each step of the trail becomes a means of honoring the life that I'm granted. The cool mud soothes my feet, the jagged rocks energize my thighs, the tree canopy enfolds and protects. Each view is a wonderment, each breath a cornucopia of delight. I want for nothing.

Legacies

(PLEASE NOTE: The latest "new" post just precedes this one...I posted it the same day as this, but this is a post that I had discovered lying unfinished in the draft folder, so although it's old news, I'm publishing it belatedly. The NEW news is the next entry.)

Ella has not given me a lot of pups over the course of her reproductive career, but the ones she has given me have been consistent in their innate talent for tracking...they follow their noses from Day One and some have proven their particular talent for Search and Rescue. Ella's little girl who was featured in January's blog (see photo in last entry) is now a chunky little four-month-old named Elan who can hardly tear her nose from the ground. The snapshot above was taken when she was about ten weeks old...pretty typically showing her zipping around vacuuming scent.

Another of Ella's kids got himself in trouble recently, but ultimately (spoiler alert) independently resolved his dilemma on his own by using that family specialty - his nose. That, and an impressive measure of smarts!

Some of you who follow Facebook may have read of Zhen's travails. It started on a Friday night, when his new owners (who'd had him only a few weeks) went to visit friends in Clarks Summit. Zhen was new to it all, the "Big City" (he's a country bumpkin!), the friends, the new owners. When his new owners left to go pick something up, they thought he'd wait patiently for their return. Wrong-o! Zhen had PTSD flashbacks to his recent uprooting from Hollow Hills and decided he wasn't letting these new folks get away from him...he determined to go looking for them on his own. They returned a short while later to discover that Zhen had bolted past the host as he opened a door, and in that moment Zhen became a dog on the lam.

His new owners contacted me after their own initial efforts proved fruitless, and with unfounded confidence I joined the search. With Ella, Zhen's mom, along, we trudged miles through the neighborhoods, in the rain, calling and trying to deliberately leave a scent trail in a circumference that would capture Zhen's nose and guide him back to the place he had last seen his people. Optimism waned as one day became two, then three. Residents of Clarks Summit proved their affection for dogs, as calls came in at all hours, mostly with versions of "he was just here" that were torturous to us searchers. The sitings did establish a pattern, though, and it was obvious Zehn had set himself up a bivouac that revealed great instincts and/or thinking on his part. Woods in the middle of town provided shelter, ponds provided water, and nearby Baptist Bible provided lots of students which meant potential food sources. But he'd been spooked by too many pursuits, too many scary close calls with automobiles and other dogs, and he wasn't taking any chances, not even when familiar voices and smells were close at hand. Nothing we did convinced him to reveal himself.

But, eventually, it was his choice that brought him home. That, and the innate tracking abilities his family tree has given him. He decided he had to go back to find his way forward, and simply presented himself to his new folks right at their doorstep!

Changing Seasons

This is a birth announcement! Really, it is. I'll get to it. But because I see everything as being connected to everything else, I can't think about anything in isolation. I find myself prompted to want to draw you, my patient reader, into the labyrinth of connectivity.

The most recent birth was textbook. And thinking of texbooks make me consider the reality that "by the book" means nothing, really, except that certain events have been observed to occur a certain way with a greater degree of frequency than in other ways. Births, for example, even "by the book," are laborious by definition, and that's when everything goes "right." As any of my blog readers know, I've become all-too-familiar with the other kind, the kind that requires medical or surgical intervention, and that even with intervention sometimes has tragic outcomes.

Those past experiences of non-textbook births, the near-deaths of mamas and the actual deaths of puppies, have insidiously expanded beyond memory and into an internalized narrative of negative expectation that essentially dictates my responses in the present time and prevents me from accurately perceiving what's happening in front of my eyes, since my mind's DVR player is set to auto-replays of "tapes" from the past. I begin sleeping fitfully a couple of weeks before an impending due date. I fret when the mamas appear to me to be even slightly off-feed or listless or uncomfortable. If labor doesn't commence on schedule, I'm a a nervous wreck, imagining the worst-possible scenarios, from dystocia to a ruptured uterus. When labor does commence, I'm a basket case until every last pup is greedily suckling and mama dog is relaxed and attentive.

So much for the wonder of birth, huh? As a small child, I trusted Nature. I'd watch mama cats, dogs, pigs, or whatever other creature didn't mind my presence as they brought forth life, and it never occurred to me to imagine that anything I could do would be of any greater benefit than the immanent presence of the forces of selection that had perfected this process. I was a witness to miracles, and believed in them fully and worshipfully.

So, what accounts for the transformation from celebrant to a gargantuan worrywart? I could argue that I have good reason to be anxious, that past experiences have given me legitimate reason for my reactions. But there's the thing, the "reactions" are in response to situations that occurred in the past, not the present, and what possible good comes from being disconnected from the present? Events take place only in the present, and we have enough to do to process and comprehend even a fraction of what is actually happening in any given moment, let alone if we're not really tuned in, if we're living in a tape-loop inside our heads. I wonder how many mistakes I've made, how many possibilities I've sundered, because my current actions were responsive to the internal dictates of my fears of history, not present realities.

Granted, a heightened and informed awareness of indications of trouble can, and in my experience as a breeder certainly has, trigger interventions that can be literally life-saving. But what happens to trust, and patience, and wonder, and joyous participation in an event that is larger than my own life, is indeed the fundamental instauration of life?

I'm working on that...on acknowledging that I have no real power, no real control, that all things that I experience are created in my own head. The experience is my own. There may, or may not, be a capital-R reality "out there," but the only reality I can experience is that which I allow to reverberate inside my skull. So, henceforth, my aim is to reclaim that trusting, curious, celebratory, and altogether more wise awareness I seemed to possess during my childhood.

Thankfully, Ember gave me an opportunity to witness miracles again, as three weeks ago she delivered six pups "by the book." All I had to do was catch and towel-dry. At three weeks, they've devoured their first meals and are just as perfect as Mother Nature intended. My task is to be attentive now, to respond to the needs of the present, to enjoy the process as it unfolds, not exist in a limbo within the bars of my own fear.

Self-Limitations

At left, Ella leading the way on a day when I was convinced we were going to be zapped by lightning any second. We didn't even get rained on.

I've been reading Pema Chodron's The Places that Scare You. The title is somewhat misleading, as it might conjure up images from childhood nightmares -- dark basements, ominous closets, that gateway to other worlds under your bed. But no, she's directing the reader to confront that most-scary of territories, our own minds.

The world we occupy lies between our ears, and the conditions we cultivate there will determine the degree to which we maximize, or disconnect from, this experience called life. If our thoughts follow trails through our minds that we've engineered so chaotically as to ensure that there's no easy way to get from here to there, if our thoughts veer off on tangents into uncharted mental wilderness, if we invent detours, circuitous and pointless wanderings, dead-ends or sheer drop-offs, how are we ever going to get on with the trip? Do we set out on a path that's geared to bring us to our destination, or do we see the obstacles and convince ourselves it's not worth the effort to overcome them?

The past couple of years in NEPA (NorthEastPA) we've seen more than our share of thunderstorms, a trend that seems to be intensifying of late. To work in the long hikes to which I've become addicted, I have to keep an eye on the weather and try to anticipate when I'm most likely to have a two to three hour window in which to venture forth with minimal likelihood of serving as a lightning rod. It'd be easy to look out the window, note the ominous presence of black thunderheads to the west, and decide that I just "wasn't meant" to walk today. Certainly it is foolhardy to step into a storm and expect not to get wet or windswept or worse. But to shy away from mere threat of a storm is to forgo the enlivening and invigorating effects of leaning into a stiff breeze (Scotland) or racing down from the Continental Divide to seek shelter below tree line (Colorado) or ducking into a sheep shed to shelter my skull from hail (Pyrenees).

And often the things we fear don't materialize at all -- one day recently I bolted out the door when the sun melted a lighter spot of gray into the gun-metal-colored sky, and was rewarded with the pleasure of walking in a perfect donut hole of sunlight for thirteen miles, encircled by a grand play of cumulonimbus clouds scudding along on gales that whipped my face with the fresh scent of rain visibly pounding the Susquehanna River valley four miles away to the south. Sure, this is a physical metaphor for an internal process, but it's all tied together; you can't succeed even in something so simple as persisting in a physical activity if you don't first develop mental clarity of purpose.

Fear exists only in our minds. It is useful, but only insofar as it serves to bring our attention to the present so that we can evaluate the situation and choose to act as we determine best suits our goals. Fear can be paralyzing if we abrogate our option of making that conscious choice.

Those of you who know me on Facebook knew of Zhen's (that's him in the photo) recent "walkabout". His experience differed dramatically from my and Ella's walkabout - Zehn's being unintended and not at all pleasant. But the two walkabouts shared at least one thing - the opportunity to learn.

Ella learned and grew during our journey because she's a dog, and dogs don't get lost in their own heads wondering whether they remembered to lock the house before they left...they pay attention to what's in front of their eyes (and nose, and paws) and they register and respond to real-time data, cause and effect, etc.

Nice system. Humans take note.

I learned because I deliberately took myself away from familiar settings and patterns in an effort to force myself to do what dogs do as a matter of course...to see, feel, hear, observe the wilderness into which I took myself, and to be present with what was happening in my head in response to events in real time.

Zehn had to learn by necessity and in a big hurry. His life literally depended upon it. He'd taken off in a panic from his new owners' friends' house, in a town he didn't know (having been raised as a country bumpkin), and proceeded to get himself thoroughly lost. Even a small town harbors multitudes of dangers for a dog on the loose, and a panicked dog who has no savvy about cars is particularly vulnerable. Zhen had only recently left my place to live with his new people, he didn't know the owners of the home where they'd been visiting, didn't know where his new owners had gone, didn't understand they were coming right back...he just wanted to be reunited with them. When he bolted through an open door his original intention was quickly subsumed by the immediacy of the situation, as he found himself beset by terror. Well-meaning friends and neighbors joined in hot pursuit, which only served to drive him further afield, and cemented his conviction that his best option was to put as much distance as possible between himself and this strange and frightening place.

We're all lost, at times and places, all the more so when fear gains the upper hand. Sometimes, like Zehn, we've dashed without thought headlong into or away from something. Sometimes we've just put one foot in front of the other and kept our head in the clouds, or a fog, or focused on the ground...anything but attentive to our needs, our goals, our surroundings, our fellow travelers. When we're lost we may crave help, yet react to offers of help as if those outstretched hands might slap or bruise us, as Zehn seemed to think when so many in the community tried to assist in bringing him home.

But Zehn didn't stay lost. In spite of spending anxious hours slogging through swamps and combing neighborhoods and alleyways and woodlands, several sleepless nights, repeated calls to police and shelters, it wasn't human efforts that brought Zehn home. It was his realization of his own capabilities. He was hungry and forlorn, he probably felt abandoned and unloved, but he never lost his desire to be reunited with the people he loved. His fear was finally conquered by his love, commitment, and devotion. Maybe he made a decision to do things differently, since running and hiding hadn't gotten him where he wanted to be. Or if dogs don't "decide" in the way we humans do, at least he chose to stop running and hiding. And when he stopped, his mind quieted. In that quietude he found alternatives. In spite of his fear, he discovered that he had the ability to take himself back...his legs were strong, his nose was keen, his mind sharp. He had only to calm himself, follow love, and take himself home.

It's a little ironic that I named this dog Zhen. I thought he'd spend his life with me and calling his name would remind me of how I should live my life. Each moment, each breath, should be a quieting of the mind and a return to love. Zhen lives with other friends now, but Zen is still the process by which I can find my own way. Being lost can occur in a moment of inattention, and being found can take as long as a lifetime or as little as the epiphany of realizing we're already where we need to be, if only we wake up.

NICU

My topics have bee-bopped back and forth in time, but such is the nature of my mind...I'll dive back into the linear version of Ella's and my "walkabout" journey soon enough (especially now that winter prompts me to escape in imagination to warmer days). My previous blog recounted my manner of celebrating that journey by capping it off with my first marathon. Ella needed her own recognition of accomplishment. Since they wouldn't allow me to take her on the marathon, she took a decidedly different approach when on December 6th, 2011, she welcomed a new litter of pups. OK, so it wasn't something she chose as celebration, but she was so radiantly healthy and fit after our two months of free-range rambling that when she came into heat shortly after our return (around the time of my marathon) I thought, what better way to memorialize this accomplishment than a legacy for Ella? And yeah, she did thoroughly enjoy the process...she and Ieuan were allowed the fun and games of natural conception in the back yard...none of that hold 'em still and slam/bam/thank you ma'am that constitutes the norm for arranged breedings.

Flash forward to early December and Ella was glowing. She had a magnificent belly, lustrous coat, and energy to spare. That, as it turns out, is where the trouble started. Her energy is innate (she demanded six mile daily walks from the time she was six months old) but enhanced by her new level of fitness. Sadly, being back here with all the other dogs means my walking time is split among many...she being pregnant, I'd begun letting her take her exercise in the large paddocks, while my walk time was given to Caron, Zeva and Ember, among others.

But that freedom in the paddock spelled trouble for a soon-to-be-mama with a big belly. When Ella refused food about five days prior to her due date, I knew what an ominous sign that was from a dog who will eat anything, anytime, anywhere. With ironic premonition, my own stomach did flips. Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, she worsened, not just refusing food but beginning to show signs of labor, far too early. Per my ex, there was nothing to do but monitor her for the time being...he wouldn't do an elective Cesarian since the likelihood of survival wanes with each day prior to their full gestation.

The little hand-held Doppler he'd given me for Christmas two or three years ago has been a literal lifesaver many times over. Using it, I could detect two heartbeats, but only from one horn of her uterus (dogs don't have one ovoid vessel like humans do, theirs is elongate and bifurcated). Nothing but the gurgles and gushes of Ella's own body sounds on the other side. Again, my stomach lurched.

Abbreviating the story somewhat, a Caesarian was what ultimately had to happen, two days early, and the discovery made during surgery was that during her hijinks in the exercise paddock, Ella's uterus had torsioned (twisted), which cut off the blood supply to the pups in that horn of her uterus. Their death had triggered a cascade of physiological processes so that there was ultimately no recourse but to bring the remaining two living pups into the world sooner than Mother Nature intended. (Spoiler alert: that's one of them looking at you from the crook of Kyle's girlfriend's arms.) Two utterly gorgeous girls, with deep black & red pigment and chunky little bodies. For the first three days I had to tube feed them, since Ella's milk hadn't yet come in and they weren't ready or strong enough to suckle on their own. But by the third day things picked up, and Ella took over completely. Now we could celebrate.

Ella herself barely showed signs of having had major surgery. More major than even the Caesarian, since the damage to her uterus from the loss of blood supply necessitated her being simultaneously spayed. My first-born was via Caesarian, and I can tell you that I was not doing stairs the day after, nor was I even particularly excited about sitting up in bed, and I dreaded coughs and sneezes like the devil. But I had the wonder of new life, my little Jessica.

Contrast that with Ella, who was wanting to bound up and down stairs as soon as the grogginess of anesthesia wore off. Once again she so ably demonstrated how to accept, how to be right exactly where she was without wasting a moment of her life. She didn't whine over her ordeal, that was in the past; she didn't bemoan the loss of future litters, for she had kids she loved to attend to in the here and now.

I try, Ella, I do; I want to live fully present, I want to feel joy for what is, not obsess over what was (or maybe never really was, only now imagined), or live in fear of what may be.

The high anxiety wasn't over, as it turns out. While Ella's kids grew, opened their eyes, began walking and eating, Luna's pregnancy became the in-your-face kind where you look at the dog and groan in sympathy. Her belly was so enormous she waddled. With an appetite sufficient for an entire pack, she was happy to hang out in the whelping room awaiting delivery day. Until she, too, stopped eating.

Deja vu, all over again. She hadn't been rampaging around in an exercise paddock, so I felt confident it wasn't another freak accident like Ella's. She was so huge it was easy to imagine there simply was no room for her stomach to expand, or that eating caused acid reflux or other disincentives for eating. Coaxed with chicken or steak or tripe, she ate a mouthful here and there, just enough to avoid utter starvation, while her insatiable unborn pups sucked the protein right out of her muscle tissue for their own growth needs.

Doppler readings showed normal heart rates, and nothing drastic seemed awry, but that did nothing to allay my growing anxiety. Once burned, twice shy, as they say, and over the course of thirty years of breeding I've been burned enough times to have an outright phobic response to anything other than perfect text-book births. And then...Caesarian number two for the month of December... resulting in eight lively little babies, two girls, six boys. Of course, having been semi-starved for a week or more, her body was too weak to produce enough milk, so I found myself tube-feeding the little pack every three hours 'round the clock. Now, a bit more than a week later, Luna's sufficiently recovered to (mostly) feed them herself, and in short order they'll be eating solid food and taking some of the burden off mama Luna. Neither pups nor mom will remember their rough start, they'll just be a happy family.

But wait, we're not done. Rio was due a week after Luna, was looking as radiant and active as Ella had been, and appeared to my eye to be carrying between four and six pups. She ate like a fiend until the day she went into labor, proceeded into labor with no fuss or hiccups, and summarily set out to bring pups into the world the way the book says they should. Or, so it first seemed. When three hours of hard labor had not brought forth the firstborn, I was on the phone with the emergency clinic at 4:00 AM. Bring her right down, they advised. Not so fast...I wanted suggestions, not surgical intervention. I'm a newbie to this side of the phone line...after thirty years of running a vet clinic, answering just this kind of question, conferring on cases with my husband, I can't seem to get it into my head I'm the one who stopped at a B.S. to support him while he got the D.V.M....no medical degree means no authority to dictate medical procedures. Hang up from Emergency clinician, call ex-husband.

No go. He's got his new life, his new routine, his new priorities. He's been generous with his professional help, but any diminution of access to the acumen I helped him acquire is a painful reminder of the many losses of our union. As the jabs of yet another volley of sharp reality darts hit home, I'm literally on my knees, head bent to the floor to see what I'm doing, one latex-gloved hand compressing Rio's belly to aid contractions, the other desperately trying to hook what little of the pup I could contact as it breached, for the umpteenth time, the lip of the pelvic rim. With no hands free, the now-dead cell phone was still held scrunched to my shoulder by my badly-torqued neck.

No aid to be had, it was up to Rio and me. I got down to the business of getting that pup born. Rio was a wonder in patience and experience-based cooperative effort. She bore down, I pulled and wiggled and pushed and strained, trying to follow the medical maxim of "first, do no harm" but knowing full well once I'd gotten the pup's head past the pelvis that I had to get it out fast one way or another or it would suffocate. It seemed hopeless, and the poor thing's lips were blue as it gasped desperately for air that the compressions of birth wouldn't let it draw deeply into its lungs. Finally, against all odds and my own expectations, with expediency winning over caution, I applied more force than I thought wise and the shoulders and body emerged in one smooth rush. He gasped instantly, sending a warm flood of relief cascading the length of my body. Pragmatic Rio set about cleaning and acquainting herself with her newborn. His brother arrived three hours later in much the same fashion, previous success having lent Rio and I the dogged determination and cooperative teamwork to get through the tough stuff and celebrate the new arrival.

There is no formula. Worthwhile efforts can be as simple as (literally) pie, as challenging as scaling a mountain, or as potentially life-threatening as bringing new life into the world. The effort we put in does not guarantee a positive outcome, nor does an unwanted outcome have to be experienced as "bad." The more I watch these dogs, the less I like labels at all. What is, is. It's only good or bad if you assign a valence to it. Otherwise, it's just life, and embracing it is a joyful process.

The Upshot...

What, you might well ask, is a photo of filthy feet doing on a blog about life with dogs? If you've been reading about the mileage logged with Ella on our walkabout, you'll know those feet have covered a lot of miles. A lot of miles. What I may not have mentioned, and if I did it bears repeating, is that all those miles were done in Teva sandals. Every last mile of preparation for the journey, the journey itself, and afterwards until the frosts hit (and with a pair of socks, I extended it a few weeks beyond). They carried me over jagged crags and gentle meadows, waded refreshing brooks and slogged through quicksand-like quagmires. My mother always said, only half-jokingly, that she and Dad had been so poor they couldn't buy baby shoes for me, and by the time they could afford my first pair of shoes I could outrun them...so long after most girls were in nylons and high heels, I was still running around barefoot. The Teva's are a concession to heel spurs and the vagaries of age...otherwise I might've been tempted to try the whole thing entirely shoeless.

The idea for freeing my feet from the bondage of shoes didn't stem from a sudden yearning for the good ol' days of childhood. I'd long-since acquiesced to the apparent necessity of specialized footwear for various functions; cross-trainers for off-road runs, sandals for summertime, thinsulate/gore-tex boots for winter, pumps, heels, riding boots, dance shoes, shoes for slacks, skirts....suffice it to say the over-stuffed nature of my closet is evidence that I like shoes. But Born to Run had planted concepts that were germinating, and I'd been wearing Teva's one hot summer day when I headed to the Delaware Water Gap to meet Jess, my daughter, for a hike. I'd thrown my boots in the car intending to put them on at the trailhead. Unfortunately, I forgot to also toss in socks. There's simply no way to wear boots without socks, so my choice was to bag the hike after driving an hour or to suck it up and try it in Teva's. I'm never one to turn away from a trailhead.

Wow. It was an instantaneous conversion. Jess had been trying to convince me that she was more sure-footed when wearing her Teva's on hikes, and I'd scoffed and continued to lecture her with the "you need ankle support on rocky terrain" b.s. that I'd absorbed and believed without question. Time for a big serving of crow. The girl was right. Not only did the Teva's have better traction on rocks, but my balance and dexterity was markedly improved. Because I could feel the terrain under my feet, the nerve-endings in the soles of my feet transmitted information to my brain about the substrate, resulting in instinctive compensation in how I moved; net result absolute certainty of foot placement and zero twisted ankles. Not to mention that my usual plantar fasciitis didn't flare in the least (and ultimately, after consistently walking in my Teva's, resolved completely on its own). It was nothing short of astounding.

That was in 2010. This year I started the season in Teva's, so doing my walkabout in them was never really a question. Sure, I hauled my Lowa hikers along, but I wore them twice and regretted it both times...shouldn't have bought into the locals' advice as to the rocky conditions -- nothing I encountered was more of an ankle-buster than conditions found in our favorite loops at the Delaware Water Gap.

Gradually I learned to trust my body, trust my judgment, trust my Self. Ella and I were alone, with utter freedom, minimal agenda, and no one to answer to. With Ella as example, I got down to the business of being wherever I was. It's raining? You still hike, and before long the rain is you is the rain...what's the difference? Being there, in the rain, or the sun, or the wind, whatever There had to offer, was all that mattered, all-consuming. Being There in my "uniform" of shorts, tank, and Teva's gave my body more contact with the elements, more contact with what's Real. The wind infused my very cells with life force carried from Madagascar or Burundi or Tibet, and swept stagnation away with each exhalation. The rain matted my hair and streaked my glasses and coursed my cheeks, joining the tears, sharing my grief, cleansing my soul. The sun strengthened my bones, rejuvenated my spirits, cradled my heart. Everything I needed was in my backpack or in the Elements around me.

Not quite everything. Companionship is an essential element, and Ella provided that and more. She was muse, and teacher, and friend. She encouraged, she insisted, she prodded, she nagged. She kept me going, she entertained, she inspired. Over the miles, our bodies flourished - I watched Ella morph from a soft housedog to a trail-hardy veteran with chiseled thighs and rippling shoulders. Little did I know, so had I.

During our weeks in the wilderness, my nearly-forgotten entry to the Steamtown Marathon had been bumped from wait-list to acceptance...but being sequestered from all things digital, I didn't know that until my return to civilization. A bit late to begin running, I'd nonetheless logged more than ample mileage to have the legs for the distance. The most I'd done in a day was about 22 miles, which correlated well with the recommendations for peaking a month before the race. My natural walking pace is about 4.2 mph, almost enough to complete the course within their time limit, so I figured if I tossed in a bit of jogging I'd make the cut-off. National Weather Service predicted a picture-perfect day, I'd have been out walking anyway, so what the hell, why not put in 26.2 miles? The only downside - no dogs allowed. Is it possible to walk that far without my canine partner?

As it happens, yes. If you take a good look at the photo above, you'll see the Steamtown race timer strapped to the sandals. I didn't quite meet the 6-hour limit, I'd slowed down to keep company with the oldest entrant in the race when he was complaining of feeling a bit faint, but for those few miles he inspired me...his first race entry was at age 76, if I remember correctly, and he'd done 25 marathons since then.

The physical and the emotional/psychological are conjoined; one cannot be extricated from the other. As I hike, I ruminate. In so doing, I've learned that I can handle adversity in ways that allow the struggle to shape me and hone my internal "muscles" right along with my physical ones. If I don't accept the lessons, if I resist the changes, the brittleness of that resistance will predispose me to break. I can keep getting stronger, or I can sit down and get old. I think I'll do more marathons.