July Trail Report

With some musings on recovery

Ten weeks post-accident, little has changed since I last wrote. New birds have found the feeder, and the squirrels learned how to reach it. It’s been quiet, and if not peaceful, at least fairly comfortable. In the coming weeks, I might have my surgery scheduled to remove the external fixator in my pelvis. If I’m lucky, I’ll be permitted to walk before then. 

I’m anticipating a return to mobility, to my apartment, to “normal.” But I don’t know what that means. In a pandemic world, it’s a phrase that’s all too familiar, yet one I hardly know how to define. I don’t know where the trail leads from here. The wheelchair feels like a natural extension of me now, the way my bike did. Sometimes I swing around a corner perfectly, and I feel like I’m skimming across water. My routines are comfortable, nostalgic even, perhaps because I know I’ll leave them behind soon. (I love Haley Nahman’s writing on this, albeit about vacations.)

Inherent in the question of recovery, of normal, is what I will return to. What are the milestones, how will they feel? I can write sentences such as I want to dance again, but I’ve been bopping to Chappel Roan just fine from the wheelchair. Progress will be tedious anyhow. I just want to go home. I’m aching to be in the trees, by a lake, to feel the wind in my hair. I want sand in my toes. I want to people-watch without feeling like a source of intrigue. I want to feel like part of the fabric of the world more than I want to sleep in my own bed. 

I have this sense that I’m supposed to emerge from injury stronger, wiser, or at least, with a great story. We have a cultural obsession with comeback stories. Not that watching small clips of the Olympics doesn’t make me cry, but as Soraya Chemaly writes in The Resilience Myth, most people are resilient. I don’t have a sense that I’ve arrived anywhere. Instead, I’m slowly gaining the energy to explore–nothing more profound than wanting to be outside.  And I think that’s a good thing. 

I don’t expect any post-trauma transformations. As a thru-hiker, I’m all too familiar with an obsession with transformation, triumph, and monuments at the end of the trail. Many hikers treat long trails as pilgrimages, and while I can’t claim to have been any different, I believe that the trail's impacts will ripple out through my life in subtle, often unrecognizable waves. That summer, my body transformed and deteriorated, but I remained much the same. All I craved on the trail–and what I obsessed over–was a return to home, to the life I had (with some additional writing time.) 

At best, I hope to be a little more patient on the other side of this injury. A little more trusting that time will work with me if I let it.

I expect that as I stumble back towards the activities and neighborhood I’ve missed, the return will be more challenging than stepping away. But I’ll make no declarations about what I’ll find. I’ll just keep an ear to the ground, and report back. 

Trail Sightings

The unexpected melody of robins in the evening. The faint pastel glow of thunderclouds in the east after the sun has set. A woman proudly carrying rebar through the art fair crowd, some delicate garden bauble tucked away for safekeeping. The ease with which I can browse peacefully in a wheelchair, compared to feet that only knew how to rush. The blissful ignorance of being unable to lean towards the bathroom mirror. It’s a bit like backpacking, how many extra steps I have to take to get anything done in a wheelchair. A sunbather, tucked between the hills of an empty office park. 

Best of my summer reading

Starling House by Alix E Harrow 

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

The Resilience Myth by Soraya Chemaly

The entire Throne of Glass Series, which I should finish before I’m walking.

Listening 

Normal Gossip, always. 

Scamanda (I’m in the middle of this, and obsessed.) 

August Intentions

Make no declarations about when I’ll be ready for anything.

Find trails I can manage, even if I’m tired.

Swim as soon as it’s allowed. 

Quit online shopping

Plan a wedding!

Thank you to everyone who has reached out and to everyone who has brought food and company. It means the world. There’s nothing quite like seeing a community spring into action and care. I love you all.

Happy trails, 

Mumble