The Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Today was a day for the quiet and the banal.  Walking up and down a series of 53 steps in the rain - steps  I found while walking the trail yesterday.  I climbed up and down the steps to nowhere :-) for an hour, and my legs were shaking for hours afterwards.  On the way up to the trail I jogged a little (steps measured only in 100's of feet and minutes at a time, rather than miles and hours at a time), and everything is a constant evaluation of what is happening with my knee. 

It's no longer an injured knee, but now rather a recovering knee, and that's a very good thing.  When I had surgery in early December they repaired the torn meniscus, but there isn't anything they can do with the arthritis that is already setting up in that knee.  The chronic overuse injury in karate that I had by the time I was 18, and then an entire lifetime of physical abuse in one athletic endeavour after another has set the stage for the mess that now appears to be my knee.

I am not sure anymore what I am and am not going to be able to do athletically in the future.  I cleaned out 3 years worth of emails from my inbox this afternoon and much of it was a record of my life as an adventure racer over that time - excited talk of team-mates, and races, and weather and gear.  And anticipation for the adventures and challenges to come.  I am not certain if adventure racing is still in my future.  But I do hope that anticipation for adventures and challenges will always be a part of my life.

I have a lot of work to do in this coming year to find out what I can still do and what I can't.  It felt wonderful and free to be able to run today - slow laboring plodding steps for just a few minutes at a time, but "running" none-the-less.  And a knee that can support climbs both up and down steps.  And then a period of rowing machine and lap swimming in Juneau.  A very good day - not long or exhausting athletically, but demanding and successful.