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Getting Rocked

I’m back out on the steely gray waves, looking to do some surfing in my whitewater kayak.

Dark clouds roll over Lake Superior, threatening more storm winds, or that the light drizzle falling now could become a downpour. The Weather Service has issued a small craft advisory.

I slop my way over four-foot rollers, staying well away from the rocky coast where the swells release their energy in detonations of foam and spray.

The buildings near my launch beach get smaller as I paddle away and become a part of the undulating waterscape.

My goal is a certain submerged ledge, about a third of a mile away. Even at a distance, I can see how the waves build on top of it, changing from round to angular, gaining height and breaking over themselves. The waves above the ledge behave similarly to the way that they would if they were coming into a beach, but because the ledge drops back into deeper water nearby, I will theoretically be able to cruise out of the break zone before the waves finish their kamikaze-run onto a nearby rock shelf.

I approach the feature with caution, observing from a distance where the waves start to break, looking from a couple of different angles. One of my favorite views of surf is from out on the water looking toward shore. The water climbs, loses its balance, falls over itself. Taut lines crease the water’s surface like cables trying to hold up the behemoth, but to no avail. It gives up its ghost in a beautiful spray of bubbles shooting upward through the water as the wave collapses.

It’s all to easy to be mesmerized and drift too close, inadvertently taking  a part in the drama, when the next act starts building up from behind.

My precautions include the whitewater helmet on my head. There is also a bilge pump and paddle float inside the boat, which would be my best hope of getting back in the kayak should I flop over far off land.

When I am finally confident in my survey, I get in front of the underwater ledge and look behind me for a good wave.

The key is to match the momentum of  the oncoming swell at the moment that it starts to lift the rear of the kayak. I paddle hard for one wave, but it’s moving faster than me, lifts my boat and trucks on past. That’s OK, because I got a momentum boost, which sets me up perfectly to catch the next wave.

The rear of the boat rises up; I ride down its slope like I’m a kid on a sled. The wave is curling over behind me, dropping the kayak nose toward the abyss. I lean back to counteract, paddle like hell to get out of there before everything breaks on top of me.

KAH-WHAM!

The wave explodes and the kayak flies forward on a carpet of churning foam. The rock outcrop looms in front of me, but I’m already oriented well to the right of it.

I lean on the right side and let the edges of the kayak help me carve away from danger. As soon as I’m spun around, I’m climbing on top of swells. I’m away from the ledge now and the waves aren’t breaking, thank God. It was a nice run. I wonder if I can do better.

I get back in front of the ledge, scan the waters for a new monster.

Big waves often come in successions. If there is one big wave, chances are another one is right behind it. I start paddling to catch the first wave in one of these chains, almost nab it, but not quite. I see the bubbly streamers go up beneath the kayak’s nose as the kayak tilt’s back in the wave’s trough. Better luck next time, old chum.

 I look behind me to see who’s next. It’s the first wave’s big brother, riding high and already pitching forward at a steep angle. It is not good that I have lost speed.

“Shit.”

I paddle forward hard as the rear of the boat tilts upward. There is immediate, awesome acceleration. If I can get in front of this, it could be my best ride yet. The boat is plunging down, 70 degrees, 80 degrees, 90 degrees — the Uh Oh Moment.

The world goes turquoise as the back of my kayak flips over like a falling domino. Water and bubbles are rushing past my ears. I’m still shooting forward, still surfing the wave, but upside down now.

I make a desperate attempt to set up an Eskimo roll, realize that a paddle blade is missing. I flip the paddle around and try again, but am too disoriented and uncoordinated to roll worth a damn. The spray skirt is already coming off the cockpit.

Finally, I give up and pop out from the boat. I curse the paddle, a take-apart, which I’d dropped  $130 on last month. While it has been convenient being able to separate the paddle in two pieces for transportation, the paddle has not been so hot at staying together — a rather important task.

Bobbing in the freezing water, I take stock of where I am in relation to the breakers. Fortunately, I am slightly outside the break-zone so I can bob up and down on the waves rather than getting thrashed inside them. I scan the water for the other half of my paddle, then I realize that the paddle didn’t come apart, it broke. The paddle end was snapped right off.

Once I get the kayak flipped over, it is completely filled with water, above the waterline only thanks to the air bladders within it. I reach to undo the bilge pump from its tether, decide it would be faster to kick the boat into shore and empty it there. My limbs are already getting cold. I kick hard with my legs to move myself and the hundreds of pounds of boat through the water, while I use my free hand to work the paddle. The confusion of waves makes it hard to gauge what, if any progress I’m making. I find myself dipping my head below the water for one wave that threatens to curl over, then I go back to thrashing and kicking.

At last, I feel the stony lake bottom beneath my feet so I can walk the boat the rest of the way toward shore, tilting water out of it as I go.

I had really gotten rocked, I think, laughing at how thoroughly the wave had overcome my feeble attempts to stay upright. Oopsy-daisy!, And there goes the tiny boat with me inside, ass over teakettle.

I empty the rest of the water out, scanning the water for the missing paddle blade. No sign. I walk out onto the overhang where the waves are breaking and look upon at the frothing carnage breaking against shore.

I smile, thinking of how I was completely owned, dominated, wrecked, rocked, by that wave. I don’t know why it should be so amusing, but it is. This could partly be a perversion of the fear response.

Then again, there is always something funny about the little guy making a stand and getting crushed. It reaffirms the cynic in us who never really believed the David and Goliath story, who got tired of everyone telling us to take risks — as if they weren’t speaking from inside protective bubbles of security and wealth.

Why were those “Messin’ With Sasquatch,” ads that came out a couple years back so satisfying? Because it’s fun to see some cocky little twerp try to strut and then get shut down, by Big Foot, no less.. One of my favorite scenes from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” shows a group of gangly schoolboys pitted in a rugby match against full-sized men. The bigger team crushes the little guys mercilessly and with obvious pleasure. Then one of the boys escapes the scrum and almost makes the end zone, only to be tripped by one of his sadistic teachers from the sideline. The student looks up from the mud with understanding on his face: Now I see how the world works.

We get such a vicarious thrill for watching larger forces take down resistance that our language is rich with words that communicate dominance. I’ve already used several of them. Now think of how many ways I can say my team won the game.

“We owned them!”

“Smashed them.”

“Stomped them down.”

“Kicked their asses.”

“Slammed them.”

“We made them our bitch.”

“Dominated them.”

… and etc.

Such words are infectious because they affirm a sense of invincibility. People use them in mundane situations, sometimes for the laugh, sometimes because histrionics can be a more or less reflexive way of speaking, especially when you want attention.

“I seriously owned those dishes in the sink.”

“This veggie casserole curb stomps all other casseroles.”

Casual violence adds panache to otherwise dull language. Overused, it risks boorishness or arrogance, the equivalent of having a conversation scripted for WWE.

That said, there is still something pretty funny about hearing it from the guy who got hit (I mean, provided it isn’t your best friend  who just landed in a wheelchair.)

Knowing the story’s inevitable outcome by the time you’ve told us about your ski getting caught on a lump of snow only builds the anticipation. We’ve been there ourselves and we’re getting owned right with you.

Can a graphic account of someone being taken down by existential despair, weight-gain, aging, and an all-conquering cynicism about life be funny? Just listen a comedian like Louis C.K.. I laugh so hard that sometimes I can’t breathe.

Can I laugh at myself after the Sasquatch of waves flips my boat over like some cheap toy? Yes. And I’d laugh if it happened to you.

I get back in the boat and shove it off, using a pry stroke so that I can paddle on one side but keep the boat on a straight course. Having only one end of the paddle makes me more vulnerable out there because I can only play defense on one side at a time. I still make it back to the launch beach, OK, where I surf a medium-sized wave back onto the gravel.

Having come out of the ringer more or less unscathed but  down a paddle, I can think about ways I can be better prepared next time. My next paddle will be more expensive and more durable. I’ll have a paddle float clipped to my life vest so that I can use it to quickly get myself back inside the boat and the bilge pump will be in a place where I can grab it instantly. I will add a tow line to my gear so I can swim to shore first without having to tow the kayak with me. I will practice my roll more, so that I can right myself even in trying circumstances and I’ll be extra vigilant in break zones.

When the next killer wave comes, things might go differently. I might ride it expertly, effortlessly, flying down the carnage like an epic, avenging angel. But even then, the universe will own the facts, the enduring truth that I can never change:

That wave made me its bitch.

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Five years of this

Photo from “Watch Your Step,” a 2010 Tom’s On The Move post about a trip to Yannapaccha in Peru’s Cordilleras Blancas.

Pop some bubbly, throw confetti; drink enough of the bubbly to get teary-eyed over the speeches; give some one else the car keys.

It’s the fifth anniversary of Tom’s On The Move.

When a wildly successful media outlet such as mine has been in the business long enough, celebration is in order. I started Tom’s on The Move as some guy who went on small-scale adventures — climbed mountains here and there, liked running, went kayaking and skiing and on overnight trips. The launch of the website not only kickstarted a lucrative career as a paid outdoor writer, it also financed several international expeditions with sponsors breaking down the doors to get on board. There have been those amazing new species of plants and animals I discovered, the late night television appearances. Then there is the influence that comes with my memberships on various government and corporate boards who lean on my expertise to make sound decisions on outdoor and environmental matters.

I’ve also been lying for several sentences now, a great way to spice up otherwise mundane travel accounts.

When I wonder what has kept me posting five years worth of irregular dispatches from this irregular life, I hope doesn’t account for all of it. No. Because, I can look at where I’ve been and what I’ve done, smile and then let the truth fall: I’m dissatisfied.

If I actually expected fame and fortune to emerge from authoring small adventure blog, then I richly deserve dissatisfaction. Rather, I am dissatisfied because I can put all these blogs together and see a series of disjointed movements that failed to carry me decisively in one direction.

There are individual efforts against mountain peaks or the last miles toward the finish line. After Point A, many trials and tribulations, moments of doubt, until —at last!— Point B.

I’ve lurched out for many of these Point B’s, which are there, because, well, if there is no Point B, then it’s pointless. I’ve tried to discipline my entries into this format so that readers know what they are getting into, what’s at stake.

What I haven’t defined is the larger Point B. Where is Tom (and Tom’s On The Move) ultimately moving? Where should it go?

Over the mountain, through the canyon

Finding physical challenges have been one journey. I like pushing my body, especially when it comes to endurance. That motivation might be as simple as, ‘I can do this, but other people can’t.’

I also like the feeling of doing something hard, feeling mind and muscle working together. Challenges like mountains, or else long days on the trail or the water reveal what is possible, force us to become aware of limits.

While I have enjoyed getting better at things like running, and even getting into cross-country skiing this year, I know that I am still nowhere near the limits of what I can do, especially if I devoted more time, effort and knowledge to pushing myself.

My tent at a mountain lake in the Wyoming Big Horns.

To know what’s there

Adventures are a great way to build awareness of nature. Again, I have much to learn. I read science news about ecology, thumb through nature guides, read works about how humans have been destroying a fabric of life they hardly understand. Yet, I am a long way from being able to look at a pond scene or forest canopy, and understand even a fraction of what is going on. Such ignorance makes me wonder how we can justify traveling beyond our backyards if we can’t even name all the flowers growing there.

A couple years back, I noticed that most of my favorite writers were very strong when it came to descriptions of the natural world, whether I read Cormac McCarthy, Edward Abbey, Tolkien, Dostoyevsky or Robert Frost.

My appreciation of this is no doubt linked to biologist E.O. Wilson’s concept of biophillia, an innate love of nature that comes hardwired into our brains. Even the writers that we don’t commonly think of as nature writers often draw profundity in natural beauty.

I took a canoe out in the Boundary Waters the other day and let myself drift out in the middle of a big lake with no man-made objects in sight. No distractions but my own thoughts. It was amazing how that act changed my self-conception, calmed me, quieted the inner turmoil of disjointed thought. How much more valuable that time would have been, if I could have lost myself for a week instead of half a day.

It is hard to overlook how contemporary society is dissociated from nature, unable to understand how it works or how to survive in it, and the environmentally destructive choices that this society makes.

Mud nests in a Badlands canyon,

Becoming a better writer

Contemplation isn’t the end goal, however. It is only a tool that helps build understanding. Writing thoughts down is the best way that I’ve found to build clearer thinking.

An English professor of mine once said that learning writing is actually learning how to think. I often don’t realize contradictions in my thoughts, until I write them. Often, solving the contradiction is a process of going through the grammar and editing sentences.

The act of writing about an experience builds upon it. Without writing, I could be a passive consumer of events. When I know that I plan to write about something, I think differently about it. I try to be a more studious observer and I try to be more aware of my thoughts. I also imagine, you, dear reader, nodding along when you agree with what I’m thinking, or calling bullshit, when I write something that’s bullshit.

Some would argue that this is too self aware and risks creating artifice. I suspect that most of us already live through experiences self-consciously, whether we acknowledge it or not. We think about how we will caption the photos in Facebook albums (and who will like and comment on the post), think about how we will spin a heroic story to our friends when we get back from an adventure. We instinctively imitate the convenient archetypes that movies and books provide.

You’ll never see an entry on this site that goes like: “When I saw the bird take wing from the branch, it was the only thing I was aware of, the only thing that mattered.”

Bullshit.

I was actually thinking about how I could write that sentence in a way that would impress the readership, but subtle enough to avoid getting called out for pretense. I’ll stop being self-conscious when I’m unconscious, a state that is not conducive to productive writing.

My outdoor writing is a way to claim  a stake in personal experience.

I could have all kinds of interesting thoughts sitting in a canoe in the middle of the lake, and I can be endlessly entertained by reading what great writer’s have to say about lakes and that’s nice. But, the real growth comes out of working with these inputs, repurposing them into an understanding I can call my own. If I am humble, I will  acknowledge how much I owe the understanding to outside experience, the wisdom of forebears.

If I can put together an understanding that is persuasive enough enough, perhaps others will want to absorb it into their own.

We social mammals strive to be accepted, loved, understood. I want my writing to be a springboard for my values, to have a value that people can take away with them.

Thus, it is always a pleasure, when I hear that people have been reading my stuff, that they might have actually, enjoyed it. That keeps me from just saying, ‘To hell with it,’ and keeping a journal.

Ice formations I photographed in the Onion River Canyon this winter

Self-Discovery

There is still the risk that everything that comes out of my introspection and observation will be trite, cliched and obvious.

Yet, if I arrive at conclusions as the result of careful thinking, hours of writing, then at least I will feel the satisfaction of knowing that I own those values. I didn’t just pick them up at checkout and take them home with me. I got my fingers in the dirt, examining, questioning, cultivating.

If I can write about what I do, perhaps it will help me to better understand what makes me tick, better understand what the world around me is, how I am supposed to behave in it.

Alarm bells should go off whenever, I find myself writing about getaways. There is always something to get away from. More interesting to me, is finding a way to get a footing in the “real world” full of all its messy relationships, money transactions, positions of power, injustices and constant compromise.

The temptation to imagine that wilderness is some fantasia apart from our supermarket aisles and gas stations is dangerous because these are on the same planet, suffused with the same atmosphere, built on the same dirt. The car we drive despoils someone else’s eden with oil derricks. The more repulsive our mini-malls and office cubicles become to us, the more we feel the need to embrace the quiet lake.

But even on the quiet lake, the cacophony of our civilized white noise buzzes on through my head, even if nature helps to quiet it. The seemingly separate worlds permeate each other.

Both spheres have new challenges for me to face.

In the stories we read, it is challenge that reveals a character’s true nature. What decisions does the character make? What does the character learn about his/her nature?

If my true character has not become clear to me, it is because I have left too many challenges unanswered, or I haven’t picked the right one yet.

Again, looking over my own words helps guide my insight (and my internal editor warns me that the change in tone is too abrupt, too deus ex machina.) Now it seems that I can only ignore their message through willful blindness  The quiet lakes and still un-despoiled mountains which have given me so much, deserve more from me. They deserve someone who doesn’t just write about them, but fights for them.

After all this thinking, there comes the the tough part, I must find a way to do what I believe in.

Thanks for reading.

Alcove on Lake Superior at dusk
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50 miles under the sun

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Photo via Shane Olson, posted on Facebook. This was not my finest hour in terms of  running form.

It was just past 6 a.m. and I had gone through about a mile of the Minnesota Voyageur 50 Mile Trail Ultramarathon.

There were other runners ahead of me, chatting cheerfully as we maneuvered down and out of gullies, over crisscrossed roots and rounded stones that lurked for unsuspecting ankles.

They talked about the familiar faces they had seen at the starting line and the faces they didn’t see. They talked about who was running the Hardrock 100 out in Colorado this year, the merits and demerits of various other ultras that they had run.

I had nothing to add. They were the vets. I was the noob, who had never raced longer than 26.2 miles. Their bodies looked harder and more finely tuned than mine, while their banter expressed the confidence and familiarity with trail racing that I didn’t have.

All of these could have been signals that I should start backing down my pace, but slowing felt wrong.

I ran downhills especially hard, using a race strategy I had picked up from an ultra marathoning guide by Hal Koerner. Leaning forward spurred my momentum and forced my legs to turn over fast in order to catch up.

“Whoa, there’s a guy who likes his downhills,”

“I’ll take any free momentum I can get,” I said.

The ring leader of the pack I’d caught up with reminded me of a pit bull. He had a barrel chest, flesh marked with aggressive tats, black spiral gauges jammed through his ears.

“This is the easy part of the race,” Pit Bull said. “It’s a lot harder on the trip back.” Watch out noob. You’re going to get destroyed.

We had 25 miles of course to run between the high school in Carlton, Minnesota and the Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth, a race which included a few dirt road and asphalt segments. At the zoo, we would turn around and ran back the way we came.

I stayed on the runners’ heels as they swapped their war stories.

We crossed the St. Louis River on a historic swinging bridge in the center of Jay Cooke State Park. Clouds of mist drifted off the water and glowed golden in the early morning sun. As the sun rose, the day would get hotter — the National Weather Service predicted highs in the lower 80s. Runners were going to get heat exhaustion, stumble and slur their words as they lost control of their own bodies. I knew it because I’d seen it when I volunteered at an aid station last year.

Pit Bull had just remembered the story of a hotshot marathoner, he had run a 2:30 or something, who had come out to run his first Voyageur and was completely demoralized when he saw the enormous hills, the vast expanse of sun-blasted waste where the course went along the power lines.

“He couldn’t believe it,” Pit Bull said, though he admitted that the young blood had still run a decent race.

I had a suspicion this story was aimed at me.

“I’ve already scouted the race course,” I said. This was was true, in that I had done my best to follow printed maps and directions. It was also true that I had gotten lost more than once, and missed out on the all-important Power Lines section of the run, the section which is supposed to be as much of a proving ground as Heartbreak Hill for the Boston Marathon.

I knew the runners in the pack probably thought I was doing a jackrabbit start and that the  course would show me the error of my ways soon enough. They might have been right, but pride made me want to prove them wrong, maybe by beating a couple of them.

At the second aid station, I started my eating and drinking regimen with cups of water and Powerade along with some potato chips to keep my salt levels from tanking. Soon, I appreciated how running an ultra could be an eating contest as well as a foot race.

The pack dissolved as the trails flattened out. Pit Bull went ahead. I stayed with some slower runners, but started picking them off before we got to the ravine at Gill Creek. I wanted the downhill to myself. There was a drop through narrow single track. I leaned forward where I could and took rapid, mincing steps around the obstacles. I caught up with Pit Bull near the bottom and slowed.

We used trees to swing ourselves around switchbacks. I threw my body weight in the direction my feet had to go. We splashed across the stream at the bottom and started power hiking up the steep climb on the other side. Running up the slope would have been no faster, and would have taken far more energy.

At the top of the ravine, there were more smooth, flat trails. I hit up another aid station for Powerade, potato chips and watermelon slices. I passed Pit Bull and others in his gang. It wasn’t that I expected to stay ahead of them, but I also felt that if I didn’t run hard in the places where I felt strong, I would be cheating myself out of the race I was supposed to run.

The sun was still low for the first passage through the power lines. But it was already warm and the humidity was considerable.

I allowed myself to slap up against dew-covered brush to cool down.

The hills were steep, slippery clay. Painstaking to go up, dangerous to go down. I tried to keep the momentum on, ended up falling on my ass and rolling over. The fall had kept me sliding forward, so from a competitive point of view, it hadn’t been so bad. I got up and went back to working on the controlled falling, throwing my weight into turns the way that I had cross country skiing this winter. Just as I felt pride at how well, I was doing, another racer blasted by me, somehow staying upright when by all rights he should have eaten dirt. There was a stylized Canadian maple leaf on the back of his race shirt. The name for this runner was Canada Dancer, I thought; he can tango with gravity in places where everyone else would have fallen off their feet.

We went back and forth over the next few miles. Just when I thought I had lost him for good, he would reappear behind.

Pit Bull caught up to both of us, and we made up a running troika. Their energy helped keep me feeling competitive.

At about 16 miles, we came to a steep slope of red pine and spruce where the race officials had put a rope up so we could pull our way up the grade.

I stuck with the two of them through a long downhill section, but when the course started going up, they pulled ahead. I lost sight of them at the next aid station. Not wanting to be left behind, I grabbed slices of watermelon off the table to eat, stuffing them down while running at the same time. It was one of those problems of multitasking kind of things because I went off the race course. I wasted at least a quarter mile figuring out that I’d screwed up, retracing my steps and getting back to where the orange ribbons led to the Skyline Parkway on the way to Duluth.

This aggravation got me running hard. I was sure I’d lost Pit Bull and Canada Dancer for good. Should have paid more attention, dammit.

The anger at my mistake faded into fatigue and with 23 miles down, I became aware that my legs were really tired and aching. If they hurt this much now, I had no idea how the hell I’d finish the race.

The race came the Spirit Mountain Ski Resort where there was an overlook above the city of Duluth. Beyond the grain silos and container ships stood the aerial lift bridge, the gateway to Lake Superior. Last year, I had fixated on that same bridge coming down the last miles of Grandma’s Marathon, knowing that I would be finished when I got there. This year, I could see the bridge and know that as soon as I got down to Duluth, I would have made it halfway through the race.

My legs pounded down the trail through the ski resort. The faster runners began coming from the opposite direction. I began giving out the courtesy nods, the “Looking good”s and “Nice job man.”

Finally, I saw the white tent set up outside the Lake Superior Zoo. It was the turnaround.

I raised my fist. I’d run the 25 miles in about three hours and 55 minutes, which meant that I was running slower than four-hour marathon pace. For a fifty-mile all-terrain race, I was not complaining. I allowed myself the luxury of coming to a complete stop, even as one other runner passed me. They were giving out ice now, so I put some under my hat. I gobbled down more melon, pickles and slices of canned potato.

I started up the hill, feeling much better than I had minutes ago. Now I watched the stream of runners who were behind me.

“Nice job man!”

“You’re killing it out there!”

I shot the good will back at them, though I tried not to spend too much energy being a cheering section. Sometimes I just gave a thumbs up. I said, “Thanks, you too,” a lot, until I decided that it made me sound too much like a phone autobot, and settled for “Rock on,” which helped pump me up too.

The heat grew oppressive. Whenever possible, I ran on the shady side of the trail. I knew I had to keep eating salty things or else I would cramp up. I couldn’t slack on the water either.

Amazingly, my stomach didn’t revolt against salted watermelon or Powerade followed by pickle juice. Another miracle was that I didn’t feel any sudden need to take a dump, an issue which has often plagued me on marathons and on training runs.

I did take a couple of tumbles, which resulted in awkward falls. I worried that my brain was getting energy starved and made note to get more Powerade at subsequent aid stations.

The run took me back over the railroad tracks and on the trails. No one was in sight of me, front or behind. This was tough, because other runners were an important source of motivation. I ran like I was doing a job, but not with the vigor that comes with competition.

At 34 miles in, the trails were well graded, but I overlooked the tree root waiting to snag the tip of my shoe. It dropped me like a sack of bricks. One good thing about running alone was that nobody heard the ugly torrent of profanity I let loose. The dragging fall had put a serious rug burn on my shoulder. There was a bleeding, inch-long gash on my hand, with a gross flap of skin swinging off of it. I pulled the skin off and kept running.

I worried that it would be rude to the runners behind me if I get blood on the ropes for the upcoming ravine.

I went down the hill backwards, being careful with the hand, and trying not to go so fast I’d lose control and burn my hands on the rope.

I sloshed back across Mission Creek, dunking my hat in the water as I went. The volunteers got me pumped up again. They filled my canteen with ice water, too much for me to drink at once, but excellent for spilling on myself as the heat went up. I felt strong coming up the hill to the bike trail. Then I popped out of the woods.

Black tarmac. No shade. The next aid station was just ahead and I spilled the rest of the ice water down my neck as I got close.

At the aid station, a familiar sight. Pit Bull was there. Had he been coming up from behind me, or had I just caught up to him. I hadn’t remembered seeing him coming up the slopes at Spirit Mountain. Now I had no idea. Pit Bull finished getting watered and took off.

“You’ve gotta be careful,” one volunteer told me. “The hottest section of the course is coming up.”

“The power lines,” I said.

“Yep. You should stick with Jon,” he said. “This  is his 10th time on the course. He knows it like the back of his hand.”

If I caught up with Pit Bull, I decided to try and run with him a bit, at least for a couple miles.

The trail wound around some curves, and I bombed down several hills. Finally, I saw Pit Bull coming up the next rise. I power hiked after him. Then followed at his heels for the next descent.

“Hey, they say I should be following you because you know this course,” I said.

“Well, I’m going to wade in this stream for a little while,” he said. “You’re doing a great job. Looking good, man,” he said.

“I’ll probably see you later down the course,” I said. But I didn’t.

I already marveled at how much I’d wanted to show him up earlier in the race. Now, instead of schadenfreude, I felt bummed that he wouldn’t be running with me. He was a serious runner with a lot of ultras under his belt. But this wasn’t his race.

The heat had dried up almost all the mud beneath the power lines by the time I came through the second time. This made me less likely to fall going down the hills, but that heat packed a wallop also. I could feel heat bouncing back from the clay beneath my feet as cicadas buzzed in the hedges. I splashed more ice-water on my neck as I lurched up one hill with my hands on my knees. At the summit, I could see a familiar white shirt with the red maple leaf. It was Canada Dancer.

I didn’t know if I could catch him, but I would to try.

I economized on time by addressing my need to pee while walking uphill. This I managed without splashing myself, though splashing wouldn’t have stopped me.

I was becoming quite the disgusting creature out there, belching, farting, cramming more and more food down my gullet so that I could creak and groan under the miles I had left.

Canada Dancer was just as ruthless on the downhills as he had been earlier in the race. I no longer trusted my shredded muscles to hold me up if I let loose. Thus, my quarry pulled away on each downhill. But I hiked aggressively up each up-slope and I closed in on him bit by bit.

When the trail left the power lines, we didn’t have the slopes any more and Canada Dancer didn’t have his secret power. We overlapped briefly at an aid station, but I let him go so I could grab more fuel. Half a mile later I caught him on the trail.

It was going to be smooth trail for a couple miles, so I knew I had the chance to put distance between us before we came up to the ravine and he tore up the downhill. I felt another wave of strength and used it to cruise the trails with a road-runner’s stride.

The next aid station met me with a surge of “Looking good”s and “You’re right up there!” The last one made my ears perk up. Did I have a shot at the top 10?

I still worried about Canada Dancer making a comeback, so when I got to the ravine, I risked putting some forward lean into the downhill. On the upward slope, I ran as much as I could and power-hiked with my hands on my knees. I thought I heard something moving very quickly down the trail behind me. Maybe just squirrels in the woods, I thought.

At the top of the ravine, it was flat trails again so I knew I could open up my stride again and try to put more distance between myself and my pursuer. My energy was flagging however, and I couldn’t put out the same intensity as I had earlier. Less than 10 miles to the finish, I knew I ran the risk of thinking the race was over when it wasn’t over, celebrating prematurely and losing my edge.

I pretended that I was running a 60-miler with plenty of trail left to cover.

The course popped back onto the bike path and there were no more helpful shadows from the trees. I was not feeling good.

I focused on keeping my awkward, tired stride rolling on the grassy margin of the trail. A sudden needle of pain stabbed into the side of my right knee. I lurched, kept running. It had been a sharp but brief message, a kind of ghost pain, the kind that sometimes goes away if I keep moving — unless it doesn’t. The pain signal had me wary, but it didn’t re-emerge for another quarter mile. Now I felt something was consistently off. Something was messing up my stride. Pretty much all the stories I’ve read of successful ultra runners have a messy injury somewhere amidst their races, and this was nothing compared to some of their wounds. I definitely wouldn’t stop running.

My mind was starting to drift as the trail went back into the woods. A shoe-catching root almost brought me down.

I creaked past the Forbay Aid Station — the place where I had volunteered last year.

I was grateful to everyone working the tables, people who greeted me with a “What can we get you?”

“I need more calories,” I announced. “Starting to feel a bit loopy out there.”

“When was the last time you peed?” a woman asked. “Uhhh…it was back near the ravine.”

“What color?”

“White.”

“Then you’re doing a lot better than a lot of people who come through here. Plus, you’re speaking in complete sentences and you’re not staggering around, slurring your words.”

So don’t be a freakin’ crybaby.

I had less than six miles to go now. My form sucked, but I didn’t feel motivated to push myself. It looked like I had ditched Canada Dancer and I was going to finish this thing alone.

The last aid station was by the St. Louis River where whitewater kayakers played in the rapids near the swinging bridge where a crowd of spectators had gathered to watch them. The volunteers cheered heartily as I came up to fill my canteen one last time. The effort of starting to run again was painful, especially in my knee. I lurched like a wounded animal.

“Man, I feel like a million bucks right now,” I announced to the crowd.

Then I got back on the swinging bridge: “Excuse me! Coming through! I’m running a 50-mile race here.”

Gnarly rocks and twisted roots waited on the other side of the river. I had already decided to take it slow and save my strength for the final stretch of flat waiting for me on the other side. But someone was closing in.

I took a glance over my shoulder and saw Canada Dancer about a hundred yards back. He was not taking it slow over the rocks and roots.

I forced myself to grub over the terrain as fast as I could, felt speed returning, some fragment of fight left in my legs. Maybe I could hold him yet.

The footsteps were right behind me now. I followed etiquette and gave him the trail.

“Long time no see!” he said in a voice that was completely evil.

His legs and arms were a blur as he ran. No, he didn’t run, he flowed. Rocks, roots and trees slowed him not a bit. It was like watching a magic trick.

“Way to make a fucking comeback,” I called after him.

I came around the next turn and there was a hundred feet of empty trail in front of me.

“Sonofabitch,” I said, feeling grudging admiration.

I had mostly given up catching Canada Dancer that one last time, but I kept my pace up. You never know when somebody could turn an ankle and the door of opportunity would open.

The route went up one last hill and then I was on the hot asphalt bike trail. I opened up my stride yet again. In the distance, I saw the red maple leaf rounding the last stretch before the finish line. Too far to catch, but I was going to finish this like a racer. Scattered applause from spectators crossed my awareness. A cop was holding up traffic so I could run across the road. I couldn’t hear what he said, but it sounded encouraging. I swung my arms so my legs would move, forcing myself closer to the line until I  crossed it. Eight hours, 19 minutes and 30 seconds, 10th place.*

Someone gave me a mug. I limped away from the line like a wounded animal, but there was a big, stupid grin on my face. I found a shady place and got off my feet. Finally, I rested.

*Top finisher was Jake Hegge of Onalaska Wisconsin in 6:49:33. Scott Jurek, Famed ultra runner and Minnesota native son, still has the course record of 6:41:16.

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Bikeyaking

Bikeyaking

I just wanted to take my kayak down the river and leave the car at home.

I do many things the hard way because I am stubborn. I was also convinced that with the right kind of trailer, I could use my bike to haul my whitewater kayak 8.5 miles to a put in on the Poplar River, do some whitewater, and bike back home. Why? Why not?

It was a different kind of challenge, one that I liked because it left my polluting car out of the equation while I was having fun.

A nice idea, but one that required technical knowhow that is beyond my ken.

Enter my friend, Jon the Bike Guy. A retired ranger from Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources, he sports a waist-length, braided pony tail and owlish glasses through which he diagnoses and prescribes remedies for faulty derailleurs, misaligned spokes and squeaky brakes. Woe unto anyone who borrows a tool from his organized bins and shelves and fails to return it to the proper place.

An expert level forager, he acquires and keep things until the universe reveals their utility.

There was a purpose for the old Burley bike trailer he’d hung onto. Meant for carrying kids, it could have a second life carrying my kayak around.

When I half-joked that I wanted to pull a kayak behind my bike, Jon’s eyes popped. He immediately thought of repurposing the trailer and began talking rapid fire about how it would come together. I could almost see the blueprints floating over his head.

Our first model looked promising until I started pedaling. The shock absorbing spring in the carrier caused it to buck wildly as I accelerated and decelerated. I grimaced every time I hit the brakes. After about a mile of lurching, terrifying riding, I turned around in defeat. Then, coming down a hill, the kayak took an enormous lurch and snapped the wooden handle that attached it to the bike. The boat rolled merrily down into a ditch where it landed in a mud puddle. It preferred water over pavement apparently.

I was far from given up and, unsurprisingly, neither was Jon. The bikeyak would ride. We went back to the design and scrapped the troublesome spring. Instead, John drilled a hole in the metal arm where I could insert the trailer pin. This model fared far better, with the only issue being a tendency for the sides of the hull to rub against the wheels now and again.

Fine-tuning and adjustment could wait however. Whitewater called. After a couple of trips to play around in the Temperance River (about four miles of travel from home to the launch area,) I set my sites on the Poplar River, which runs through a series of frothing rapids and drops that go through a ski resort and a golf course, before the canyon narrows into a log-choked death chute on the way to Lake Superior.

I planned to get out before this part.

One recent summer morning, I started biking with the kayak on the trailer toward Poplar. Puffy cumulous drifted through the crisp blue sky. The previous night’s rains steamed off the leaves and the sodden ground. The sultry air was rich with the smells of earth and life.

Pedaling my bike plus kayak through the humidity was slow, but the easy pace also meant I could look for wildflowers in the woods or listen to birdcalls. A few pedestrians shot furtive glances, then decided that it was best not to talk to the crazy guy.

“That’s an innovative transportation idea,” one walker told me.

He was the one with vision, obviously. When everyone else told those bike mechanics Orville and Wilbur their idea wouldn’t fly, he would have given them the thumbs up.

Everyone else was oblivious to genius.

I arrived at the Poplar River within 45 minutes. I ate some bread and stashed a dry bag full of clothes in some nearby brush outside a graveyard. I’d be back as soon as I dropped the kayak off at the put in.

This was the tough part. I had to climb at least 500 feet along the ski hill road and it’s steep.

The bike crawled along the highway shoulder. Cars and trucks sped past, some with mountain bikes on their racks.

Would I have been able to explain myself to them and, if so, would I believe myself? They’d probably file me under ‘loco’ long before I finished. Yet, everything I was doing had logic to it. It was the marriage of conflicting impulses that spawned the apparent absurdity.

On the one hand, I wanted to minimize unnecessary driving. Whitewater kayaking is a luxury, not a necessity.

However, if I skipped a kayak trip because of driving guilt, this would signal that my anti-driving philosophy placed a heavy tax on fun. If avoiding driving meant hanging around the house and not going out for some excitement, how could I sell it to people? Ergo, the trick was to find a way to take the kayak trip but not drive. Ergo, there I was crawling up the hill with a kayak in back of my bike, which, come to think of it, was not particularly fun.

After I reached the crest of the hill, I parked near a trailhead to the Superior Hiking Trail, close to the cascades I call You Will Die Falls.

I left the kayak in the  woods and biked back down the hill to the cemetery. Some may have considered it a bad omen that my kayak run was ending at the graveyard.

After I got the bike in place, I started back upriver on foot. I picked an arduous route along the river so I could scout the rapids and look for newly fallen trees. Any river canyon on the North Shore is exceptionally slow (or outright impossible)to explore on foot, because of the steep slopes. These tend to be populated by loose rock, slippery moss and dead trees that fall over as soon as you grab for one.

I scraped through briar patches, over spruce trees with impaling branches and under logs. Rarely did I put my foot down with any certainty that it wouldn’t slide or that the ground beneath it wouldn’t give way.

At two rapids, I placed stones so that I would see them on the way down. One of these markers reminded me to prepare for a series of drops, another to stay on the left side of the river and avoid a branch-choked channel.

I came out of the woods onto a golf course, where I walked down to a bridge above a Class V rapid known as Bilek’s Surprise on the American Whitewater website. The rapid is named after a paddler who had come around a corner not expecting to drop down a 100-foot-long chute of whitewater surging over jagged rocks. Surprise!

I didn’t plan to follow Bilek’s example, though I did spend some time looking at the namesake rapid, thinking about how to run it.

At this point, I skipped scouting any further upriver as I had already run by there the other day. Instead, I bushwhacked back to the road that I had biked up earlier and jogged uphill in my sandals.

My kayak waited at the top. I grabbed the end loop and began taking it down the treacherous slope to the river.

You Will Die Falls was in excellent form. The lines of ragged water plunged off the rocks in snowy gouts sending up the clamor of an express train. It was hard to look away from, brutal and beautiful at once, hypnotic.

I took a moment to confirm that the falls were a likely death sentence for a paddler. Some of the rapids at the base of the falls were more ambiguous. If I launched in one pool, I faced a decent chance of getting pinned up on a rock and sent for a battering ride down successive drops. Nah. I was there by myself, and freaked out by the risk.

Below, another pool, looked about as forbidding, but did feature a tiny eddy where I could launch my kayak. From there I would have to ferry against a full-throttle current in order to reach slower water on the other side, where I might be able to weave a path through some boulders and get set up for the six-foot drop that followed. If I was still upright at this point, I could look forward to several more drops and turns that would test my skills.

This launch plan had a high built-in fuck-up potential, especially because I didn’t know if I could resist the current long enough to get across and go through the rocks. I thought about it until I was sick of thinking and got in the boat.

My new neoprene sprayskirt is great for deflecting waves, but it is a pain in the ass to pull it over the kayak cockpit. I balanced on a narrow ramp of rock trying to get the damn thing to go all the way around without it slipping. Or the boat slipping. I almost fed myself to the river a couple of times, which would have been disastrous as soon as the first wave crashed into the boat opening. At this point I wasn’t even sure if I could get out of the boat without tipping in the river.  I felt tightness in my chest, blood rushing through my ears.

The final edge of the sprayskirt curled reluctantly over the cockpit edge. I looked up at You Will Die Falls and the angry serpent of water tearing downhill from its base. My hands pushed the kayak forward.

Go! Go!

The paddle clawed at the shallow water, digging for any momentum it could find. The current slugged the boat nose to throw it downstream. I tilted, got past it, swung around and paddled madly for the space between two boulders. The nose danced over a wave, came to the edge of the first drop and plummeted into frothing water. I had just enough time to brace and avoid flipping, but no time to congratulate myself before I was going over the next drop. I passed within half a foot of an outstretched branch

The water mellowed, but only a little. I picked my way through wave trains and rocks as I sighted the first bridge. It was a low one. I popped my head down as I went under.

A couple of gallons of water sloshed around the boat hull. What the hell? The new sprayskirt was supposed to fix that. I had a bilge pump with me, but there were no eddies in sight for me to pump myself. Finally, I found a place where I could park behind some scrub birches and pump water. I noticed that two screws that I had planned  (and forgotten) to tighten on top of the boat hull had completely rattled out. They left two holes about half the size of a ladybug right next to the cockpit for water to rush into.

I finished pumping and struggled my sprayskirt back on with much profanity.

The river widened out as I went, diminishing the current’s reckless force, but also exposing more rocks. I would try to swing around one rock, only to get hung up on another one that was partly submerged.

One of these unruly citizens caught my boat and turned it sideways so that the current began piling up on top.

‘Here comes the flip,’ I thought unhappily, preparing myself to be ready to grab the escape strap in front of the sprayskirt. ‘A real pro would be able to save himself with a hip snap.’

Then, I tried snapping my hips. The boat started turning back. I made a desperate slap at the water with my open palm and then I was back upright.

I paddled back into the current and found a place to empty the boat at the edge of the golf course near Bilek’s Surprise. I scouted the rapid, decided I really wasn’t going to run it, then started walking back to my boat. I hear a small crash and breaking branches. I whirled around in time to see a golf ball bounce onto the ground behind me.  A gaggle of silver haired business types looked down on me from the grassy knoll where their carts were parked.

Dangerous place. I was glad to be wearing a helmet.

Back in my boat I bombed a series of drops to beneath the last cart bridge before Bilek’s  where I swung into an eddy.

I portaged down the hill and into the woods and launched anew. The canyon re-narrowed so that the river was once again tight and powerful. I spotted a rock that I had left on a boulder earlier and swung my boat into another eddy to re-scout the rapid. After my run beneath You Will Die Falls, this section of river looked far less intimidating than it had earlier. I found myself making some quick moves, but also getting my boat more or less where I wanted it to go. Several of the drops sent water up to chest height, which was fun, though my boat started filling with more water.

Once again roaring water filled my ears. The river was about to plunge through its last canyon before Lake Superior. I was not.

I spun into an eddy near a cart bridge and flipped my sprayskirt up.

I pumped out my boat, got out, flipped it over and emptied the rest of the water.

The time I had spent on the river had been maybe 10 percent of the trip; the rest was biking and scouting, messing with cam  straps to get the boat on the trailer. Yet my work and Jon The Bike Guy’s expertise had meant that the trip had a certain style. I might well have executed the first bike/kayak run on the lower Poplar. Whether it was worth the trouble, well that’s another question. The thing had worked.

I hoisted the boat on my shoulder and walked it back to where the bike waited to take us home.

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From my Doorstep to Onion River Whitewater

My path was a narrow, windy one, closed in by thick stands of spruce and balsam fir.

On my right, 35 pounds of whitewater kayak hung off my shoulder blade, padded by a life jacket but an uncomfortable and awkward burden nonetheless.

To my right, the canyon dropped away, hiding the Onion River, which roared in the depths unseen. It was what I had come for. At least that’s what I told myself.

It would be good to know what I wanted, because, man, I had been carrying the kayak for a while now. Before that, I’d paddled it about five miles down Lake Superior, making slow progress in the short-hulled craft.  It had been built for maneuvering in tight places, holding an edge going into rapids. Long  distances over open water? Not so much.

The  idea for this adventure had been kicking around in my head long before I set out of course. The summer before, I’d glanced at the 12-foot drop into the plunge pool, and thought it looked scary, but doable. Since that time. I’d climbed up the Onion River Falls, gone skinny dipping there, ice climbed the falls in winter (http://tomsonthemove.com/two-ice-axes-one-bike-no-car-good-times/), and even cross-country skied down the canyon, taking skis off for the sketchier drops.

But I hadn’t kayaked anything yet. Thus, I had obvious motivation to take on the next adventure. Better yet, I wanted to make it a doorstep adventure, meaning that I would eschew motorized transport between home and the adventure destination.

Why throw in the extra miles of kayaking, very slow kayak miles at that, when I could  just drive to the parking lot at the base of the river and haul my kayak up?

It would have been too simple that way. I also don’t accept driving and flying as a matter of course when it comes to an adventurous lifestyle. Burning fossil fuel can be a necessary evil sometimes, or maybe just an evil which I can rationalize away in the face of an epic opportunity for adventure. However, when there comes an opportunity to go on an adventure without putting more pollution into our atmosphere, or enriching abusive oil corporations, I’m all for it.

We can lower our demands if we are not in such a hurry to get places. The road can be as exciting as the destination if we keep our eyes open for wonder just as there are all kinds of things that we miss driving by at high speed.

The sea caves on Lake Superior for instance.

After I biked down to the launch beach, I only needed to paddle a couple miles to come across some of these phenomenal openings in the basalt cliffs along the shore. These are probably only a quarter mile from Highway 61 as the crow flies, but they were a world away from all that when I bobbed the nose of the kayak beneath the overhanging ledges, listened to the slap of water echoing off the walls.

Some of the things I enjoy about these caves include that I can paddle backwards into one of them and let the walls create a frame for the Superior landscape. Miles of forests and cliffs stretch out along the shore until they recede at the horizon. The horizon often changes with distant fog banks and false islands. Much closer, I can admire the shimmery amygdaloids within the stones. These jewel-like nuggets are scattered throughout the igneous stone along Superior, a legacy of the ancient lava flow.

The caves hold wonders to match some of the most storied wonders of the North Shore, though I doubt even one-percent of the people who go on their long journeys to and from these places have any idea of how close they are to such an amazing destination.

It’s harder to write a rave review about the squadrons of pissed-off gulls living near the caves.

They dropped out of the air when I got near and went directly at my head. I flailed my paddle at them to fend them off. The gulls have chicks now, that look like dirty wads of cheeping drier lint. The parents are protective ones, and my kayak passing by provoked a keen sense of of stranger danger.

I had also been a target of aerial bombardment a week earlier when one attacker dropped a nasty payload that splattered against my sprayskirt. I should write a product endorsement: “It kept seagull crap off my legs!”

The worst part was I would have to go through the gauntlet again on the return trip. At that time, the wind picked up further out in the lake, presenting me with a dilemma, not unlike that of Scylla and Charybdis out of Homer’s Odyssey. I could avoid the wind and waves by staying closer to the rock walls but it would mean that I would once again become a ripe target for the squawking, aggressive birds.

I ran my boat aground near the mouth of the Onion River — about a mile from the caves. I took the time to eat some lunch and left some of the gear I wouldn’t need behind to pick up later.

I traded my floppy sea kayaking hat for an orange whitewater helmet, hauled the boat up to Highway 61 and looked both ways before I crossed. There was a lot of traffic, trailers and what have you bombing down the road in search of whatever kicks they had waiting for them.  My destination was only about a mile walk, though it would be start as  a steep climb.

The trail went passed the lower falls. People have run these fearsome drops in kayaks, one of which a writer on American Whitewater has identified as “Tears for Fears,” but that is above my skill caliber and risk tolerance right now.

Whether the upper canyon was within these categories remained to be seen.

I put my kayak down several times during the walk, trying to peer down into the canyon and get a sense of what I was up against. Mostly I looked for fallen trees. The narrowness of the canyon and the thick vegetation made it difficult to see anything, and sometimes scouting meant walking out on crumbly slopes above the abyss, reaching for support on dead trees with shallow roots.

The part of the canyon that really worried me were the narrows, where the canyon simultaneously squeezed and dropped, where the water roared through like exhaust through a rocket nozzle, dropping anywhere from 10 to 15 feet on a more that 45 degree angle. The water would slam into a wall. It seemed likely that I would too if I tried to go down the same way.

These sections came after the aforementioned 12-foot waterfall. That distance was intimidating to me, but I also remembered an experience from my time in Galway, Ireland six years ago when the kayak club guys pushed me over a bridge that was at least that high. Aside from a loose spray skirt and a boat full of water, the landing had gone just fine.

This particular drop was in an isolated pool, so if I ended up flipping out of my boat, I would be able to get to shore well before any downstream rapids.

The put in was worrisome, because I had to safely lower myself and my boat down a steep crumbling bank. I lowered myself on wet rock and loose dirt, then reached up as high as I could to grab the front of the boat. I could barely grasp it without toppling over backward into the river. I inched it forward gradually, taking care not to give it too much momentum and take both of us for a wild ride.

When I finally got the boat lowered, I placed it in a small eddy out of the main current. This was where I got in. I started in on attaching my spray skirt to the cockpit, though this was slow work considering that every  couple of seconds I had to bat the water with my paddle in order to stay out of the  current.

I had already rehearsed the moves, now it was time to see the execution. I paddled out against the flow, letting it whip my boat around as I braced with the paddle. There  was the problem of the tree across the river, but I ducked under pretty much where I had planned to.

Whoops! Hitting that submerged rock hadn’t been part of the plan. I recovered and sank a couple solid strokes into the river before it dropped from under me.

The instant of pleasant weightlessness gave way to the gentle deceleration of the boat sinking into aerated water. The foam came up chest high and then I was out.  A war whoop escaped my lips.

The next sections of river were far less dramatic. The low water meant that I was scraping rocks. At times, I used my hands as much as I used the paddle in order to crawl my way along the river bottom,  refusing to admit that it just might have been easier to get out of the boat in places.

The rapids in the narrows could have been hellishly, difficult in high water, but in these conditions, they were more like sledding down steep, wet rocks. The water would  pile up on one side of my boat and create a cushion between the wall and me, helping me steer away  from the wall before I hit it. Still, I ended up pushing off one wall with my hand.

The excitement of the day was definitely the fast kayaking moves needed to get through the drops.

I loved that feeling when the current brought me toward the wall and I felt my body move with its own will to make the right moves (oh so much can depend on those right moves) and I thought, “I’ve got this.”

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To Runners Who Don’t Nod

This is an open letter to you runners that I see out there on the same roads and trails that I run on, runners who wear the same running shoes, and some of the same clothes, who I will nod to in recognition of our kinship but who seem to deliberately ignore my friendly gesture, whose faces are stone and your hearts cold to a fellow runner.

What’s the deal with you guys?

When I say “hey,” or give some small but solemn nod that recognizes you for being out there, you just keep on trucking, like you never saw me or wish you hadn’t. It kind of hurts.

I’m the one who extended the simple gesture of courtesy and respect. And somehow, I’m the one who feels like the asshole after you run by with (can I risk stereotyping here?) your Under Armour tank top and earbuds. I am usually not in the mind to feel like an asshole, and transcend the negative feelings by hating you intensely. This is still not healthy, and running is about health. Thus, I will attempt to work my way out of this dark pit of anger by examining possible explanations for why you snubbed me.

1. You were way too in the zone

Of course! I see it now. You were just sooo in the zone baby, that you couldn’t spare the minutest energy for anything besides running your hardcore best.  Nope, not even a nod. Was someone coming the other way? Whoa, sorry Brah, I was getting my cardio on too hard to even notice.

Well, sorry Brah, I totally can’t accept this one. If you were so totally in that zone that you didn’t register another human being coming up the road —probably the first in miles where I live — you’d have tripped over yourself a long time ago, or even swerved into a semi truck. I’d give you a pass if we were on a track, but these are the roads and you wouldn’t last long without some capacity to notice what’s around you.

FYI, I can push myself hard too, and guess what? Even in the most brutal, blistering workout I’ve still been able to make some kind of nod of acknowledgement to a runner coming from the other direction.

The point about awareness being necessary for survival runs both ways. If you literally couldn’t see me coming because you were completely wrapped up in the Jason Mraz playlist blowing through your earbuds, there are going to be problems when that truck backs out of the driveway in front of you.

2. You’re too badass to nod.

Nod to another runner? Hah! No other runner is worthy of my nod. The roads are where men crush each other to win glory. To nod is weakness. Glorious competitive men show no weakness. NEVER! 

So this sport definitely gets its share of the Type A crowd. I’ve also seen many of the same very competitive people shake hands with their competitors at start lines of innumerable races, hang out with each other and even share a cool down jog afterwards. Respect need not be obliterated by competition. Such gestures like the ones I just mentioned and the nod add a layer of meaningfulness to the sport, and make it more appealing to me then if it were merely about sprinting to the front of the pack and to hell with the rest of ’em.

3. You’re too cool to nod.

I suspect that there’s another faction, though I lack direct evidence, that has an iconoclastic bent. These are the people who make a point of not saying “how are you?” because they know that statistically most of us don’t actually give a damn when we ask the question.

Is the nod a gesture with very little effort behind it? Guilty as charged.

It’s just a gesture,  just like saying, “Have a nice day” or “I’m sorry for your loss” are gestures. However, such gestures are also conspicuous by their absence. When you leave me hanging after I give the nod, I feel cold inside. It’s the same as if you told me, “Have a bad day. Dick.”

You can keep running feeling cool about yourself, but you could also listen to the Beatles who would tell you, “it’s a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.”

4. You think I’m trying to hit on you.

Hey, sorry to burst your bubble, but this nod’s not just for you; it’s for everyone out enjoying the fresh air like I am. It has nothing to do with how attractive anyone appears in form-fitting runner’s apparel. I’m not asking for a phone number or a too-long hug. Just a damn nod.

5. You’re just a terrible human being.

This is what I assume by default, when some one denies a nod, whether it’s true or not. Hopefully it’s not true. If it were, I would suggest that you look deep within your withered soul and try to find some good so you can cultivate it. Maybe some day you will realize that your fellow humans have as much claim on your attention as the heart rate metrics streaming from your performance watch.

6. You legitimately don’t know that nodding is the right thing to do.

Well, consider yourself enlightened. You’re welcome.

I think a lot of you nod-less plodders look kind of new to running, so maybe I should cut you some slack. I won’t tell you the absolute worst things that I’ve thought about you.

But I will say this: Running ain’t just a way to work on cardio before you hit the weight room, and it’s not just about beating everyone to the finish-line (though it’s nice to try.)

You can also add color and enjoyment to your experience by noticing your fellow travelers in fitness. I dunno, maybe you could even run with one of them sometime.

The nod is really just an opening to a much larger, communal aspect of running, the kind that you see at cross-country meets, over post-race drinks and through the years of fellowship between groups of friends that get together for weekly runs year after year.

When I nod to you, even that brief acknowledgement should tell you that we do share something as we run across this disconnected/ connected world.

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Hitting the Meat

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That’s me going over the last rapid in the Cascade River before it empties into Lake Superior. Photo courtesy of Chuck and Sheila Noel.

 

I’m still afraid of going under.

That’s what I realized as I sat at the edge of a gravel bar in my new whitewater kayak, studying the rapid in front of me.

It was pretty straightforward. Shove off, hit the waves beneath the bridge, aim right, paddle like a lunatic as the nose of the kayak drops out, hit the standing wave and hope that it doesn’t tilt the boat over, leaving me thrashing in the icy water of Lake Superior.

This was the end of the line for the Cascade River just west of Grand Marais Minnesota. Immediately downstream of me was the bridge where Highway 61 passes over. It created a beautiful archway, a frame for Superior’s cold horizon, just a hundred yards away. Upstream were the real falls: 20+ foot drops that real life lunatics actually run. So what I was doing was kids’ stuff basically.

There were no rocks to dodge at the last minute, no undercut canyon walls or gnarly branches to get hung up on. The boiling piles of water might have flipped a boat, but weren’t going to recirculate me and drag me under.

Still,  my mind was haunted by a primal sense of unease, as I waited on shore, an unwillingness to accept that I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen, and I would have to let myself find out.

It was just like how Tom Petty sings it, in his lame-ass song: waiting is the hardest part.

So I shoved off and embraced the irrevocability of the current.

“Remember, that you are actually doing this,” I told myself.

The boat passed beneath the shadow of the bridge, waves slapped over the cockpit. I steered right to avoid the strongest part of the hydraulic at the bottom of the rapid, what we called “the meat” during my summer of rafting two years ago.

Then the yak tilted downward, and I paddled for what I was worth.

Chunk!

The wave came up against my boat. The nose plowed through. But then the rapid pulled a dirty wrestling move, twisting the boat and jerking me sideways in the current. I slapped the water with a low brace and came back up.

Gentle waves from the lake lapped up against my bow as I bobbed along the current. The river created a brownish path through the Superior’s blue waters. This was the tannic acid dissolved from fallen   pine needles and leaves. This also created the tiny dancing bubbles, which make me thirsty for a pint of nitro stout.

I spun my boat around to look at the churning brown maw of the rapid.

“Chicken,” it said. “You didn’t hit the meat.”

“I’ll show you.” I told the river. “I’m going down again, but it’ll be when I’m good and ready.”

The second run, I also avoided the meat. I hung entirely to the right this time and hit the wave at the bottom straight on. This time the rapid didn’t even come close to flipping me.

There was no excuse to not hit the meat now. I was prepared to flip and had brought a paddle float along to rescue myself if necessary.

The kayak, went over the edge again. I aimed at a glistening wave in the middle of the river, bumped over it and went down, following the triangular tongue of dark racing water to the center of the meat. The white boiling water raged up and now it was ride or die baby.

Wham!

This time the water slammed up to my chest. As I pulled out of the wave, the kayak did a wheelie. For a second I was worried that it was going to dump me backward, but again, the river god had mercy.

A couple of RV’ers on the river bank had seen it all go down, asked me if I wanted to do another run and get my picture taken. Well, playing to my vanity seldom fails.

The run went much the same as the previous one, only I tilted a bit at the end and had to brace myself against a flip. Having photo evidence from the couple was another nice plus and I was glad they were gracious enough to stick around.  Of course, I seem to remember the rapid looking bigger and more terrifying than that. Funny thing, memory.

Having hit the meat, I knew that I could sleep easier that night. But, I still had another thing to take care of: I hadn’t flipped yet.

I needed some more practice with my Eskimo Roll. I grimaced and turned turtle in the 38 degree water. I leaned back, snapped my hips and thrust my paddle down. I was about 80 percent of the way there, when I felt that fiend gravity pulling my back. It was then that I felt my paddle blade connect with the stony lake bottom. The tiny shove was enough to send me the rest of the way upright.

I sat there with a colossal brain freeze thinking about how the roll didn’t count, how I cheated and needed to do another one with better form. Then I needed to paddle straight back to the meat and fight it and flip, fight it and flip and fight it until I became a real whitewater kayaker.

I considered this, and then thought, maybe next time.

I was done for the day.

*******

You want to see what some real courage in a kayak looks like?

I was moved to hear about the recent Paddle in Seattle against the Shell Oil rig which is in port now. The rig is Alaska-bound with the blessing of the Obama presidency, which just made the shameful decision to approve Shell’s oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea — part of the Arctic Ocean.

Many others have pointed out the irony that there is a rush to drill oil in the Arctic Ocean as the ice caps have receded due to the global warming, which is a direct consequence of — hold it — oil drilling. But you knew that already. And you probably already know that oil has a nasty habit of spilling, like that time in the Gulf of Mexico, also in California most recently. Oil has spilled a lot these last couple years in the midst of the oil boom, and I’m sure no one will be surprised if it spills a bunch more times, destroying a few rivers, ecosystems and peoples’ livelihoods along the way.

So I’m just here to say that I, like you, think that this arctic oil drilling decision sucks. The stupidity of the decision, like so much policy these days is rooted in incredible short-term selfishness that fills me with despair.

And now, to everyone who had the courage to get into the boats, I want to say “thank you,” because you help me turn back some of that despair and because I think it is a responsibility of folks who love the outdoors (including me) to stand up for these important places and ultimately the planet that we live and breathe.

You took up that responsibility by getting out on the water and surrounding the rig, letting the world know that it wasn’t welcome in your harbor. Some would argue that this was just a gesture. And yet, even if that rig ends up despoiling habitat and contributing to climate change, it would have been far worse for it to gone off unchallenged with approval by default from citizens like you and me.

I wasn’t there with you, but I feel like you were there for me, and for that, I owe you one.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/paddle-in-seattle-protesters-gather-against-shell-oil-rig/

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The Trail is My Dance Partner

Where’s the motivation?

I woke up with the sound of howling wind bending the tree branches,  the patter of rainfall on the roof of my  Minnesota apartment. Temps were supposed to be in  the high thirties that day. I was also planning to hit the trails for a weekly long run, putting in the miles that I’d need to compete in a 50-mile trail run on July 25.

If I was going to race this thing, I was going to have to train ruthlessly, to laugh at rainy days, hail, heat and other obstacles that stood in my way. I ate my large oatmeal breakfast and procrastinated the next couple hours inside reading Robert Frost poems.

Finally, at 11:30 am, I knew I could wait no longer, lurched outside with my guts sloshing from the big meal and started jogging up the pavement towards the woods. Nothing cramped or puked, so that was a good start.

I wore my Boston Marathon tech shirt,  running shorts, a thin balaclava and my iridescent orange shell. I placed a small tube of Vaseline in the right pocket, along with some athletic tape (to prevent chafing and to splint any catastrophic ankle sprains respectively.) For the left pocket, I put a small baggie full of Trisquits. There was a compass strung around my neck too. It was probably unnecessary, but what the hell?

Soon I was cooking underneath all of my gear as I ran uphill.The rain had turned even the tiny streams into torrents, surging brown and furious as they flushed sediment down the slopes. One of these would almost be good for a kayak run, I thought, thinking of  my new eight-foot whitewater boat that I was itching to use.

I traded the pavement for a logging road leading up into the woods, felt the ground squelch beneath my feet. The shoes would get soaked real thorough-like on this trip.

I kept running uphill for about a half a mile until I reached the Superior Hiking Trail (Also called the SHT or SHiT.) I turned north,towards nearby Leveaux Mountain and Oberg Mountain. I planned  to run up the two of them and loop back home. This particular section of woods had a lot of maple trees growing and that meant that it was prime territory for wild leaks. I saw huge clumps of  them, glowing radioactive green amidst the dull colors of the leaf litter.

I also saw puddles. Sections of the trail were completely submerged. It was possible to scamper delicately from root to rock to board and cross these areas with dry feet. This took too much time and there were too many puddles so I adopted a “fuck it” attitude for them.

The water splashing up my legs was cold, but not frigid and a nice antidote to the sweaty heat I was building up inside my shell.

I scrambled beneath the cedars at the base of Leveaux Mountain where the roots made for fancy footwork, jumped a fallen tree and bombed down a steep hillside to the Onion River, which was wild with rapids. Newly submerged boulders seethed with foam.

I ran up the other side and through another mile of puddles until I got to the parking lot at the base of Oberg. There was the loop I was planning to run; there was the sign pointing to the Lutsen Mountains ski resort in 6.8 miles on the SHT. I had to climb over Moose Mountain on the way. How ambitious was I feeling?

I pulled the Triscuits out of  my left pocket and munched them while I pondered this. The run left a few permutations, including just going as far as Moose Mountain in less than three miles and turning back, or running down the ski slopes and down to the bike trail that could take me back to my apartment in eight miles.

I decided I’d figure these things out as I went.

Going past Oberg took me beneath two-hundred foot basalt cliffs on a windy downslope.

Trail running  sometimes feels less like running and more like skipping and dancing. It really does.

I find myself putting my feet down to a weird rhythm and flinging my body around in a way that  — well it isn’t dancing  — but it feels like I’ve tapped into the harmony of the trail. You can call that a bunch of sentimental bullshit, but I mean it. The trail is my dance partner.

I know I look far from graceful out there, I flail my arms and I fall down plenty, but I love trail running for its weird contortions. There’s the stutter step before hopping a log, there’s twisting a foot at a weird angle to land perfectly between two roots while angling my body to divert my momentum away from the tree trunk. How satisfying it is to use mind and body together in order to navigate a sudden dip in the trail. The same principles apply to mountain biking, sking — well pretty  much all the sports, but with running it’s just you and the shoes doing the work.

The trails are a nice change from road running where consistency of form is crucial to success. Out on the the trails, I feel at liberty to be delightfully irregular. I will jut an arm out to balance myself on a steep curve or drop into a crouch after a steep jump. I will swing my head out of the path of a tree branch before it slaps me in the face. I even switch to power hiking on the steepest hills, where I find that I can keep the same speed at a walk as I can hold running and with less effort.

Trails are obviously much slower for me than the roads, but I also feel like I can stick it out for longer on trails where there is plenty of variation in form an intensity.  Those windy trails only let me go so fast in places and sometimes I’m happy for the enforced break.

The summit of Moose Mountain was draped in freezing fog, buffeted by wind. I found shelter in a ski patrol cabin where I ate more of my Trisquits and left some crumbs for psychological sustenance down the trail.  When I stepped outside,I discovered an untied shoelace and barely had the strength in my freezing hands to re-knot it. The trail wound beneath basalt overhangs, then it crossed some of the black diamond ski runs. The machine-made snow hadn’t melted yet, was still packed firm against the slope. I was loathe to take that ride to the bare rock and brush waiting at the bottom. I broke a tree branch and used it as an ice axe (well, more of a dagger) and kick steps into the snow. I was able to cross two slopes like this no problem, but met my match on a patch of wet brush. The reeds all pointed downhill and down I went.

I descended the rest of the way down the mountain with greater caution.  In the disorienting fog without a map, I used my compass to point myself north in the direction of the ski lodge.

Up from the valley below came the roar of the Poplar River. And lo! What a beautiful stretch of whitewater. The rapids looked like a healthy Class III with no obvious hazards (at least until the deadly canyon narrows that waited further downstream.) I feasted my eyes and even took some  time out to do a bit of scouting.

Verily, there was a bounty of exciting opportunities for my new kayak and I, but that is a story for another day.

The trail switched back over various bridges, so I could drool into the whitewater, then I veered off to climb a miserable scrub hill  in the direction of the road I wanted. In a short while, this road goes back to the SHT right where it crosses the  river  again at the place I like to call You Will Die Falls. There are a series of cascades here, boiling with angry water. Maybe a real pro could take this on, but  on a high water day like this the name definitely fit.

I went back to grooving and jiving my way up Moose Mountain when the hunger hit. I drank my remaining Trisquit fragments and licked the precious salt off my fingers. I drank out of a creek halfway between Moose and Oberg, putting my head down in the silty flow. I wouldn’t have done this a year ago, but I’ve heard from many authorities that the risks of contaminated water in the wilderness have been greatly exaggerated.

Soon after, I found a half-trampled wild leak lying in the trail where a forager must have dropped it. I ate the bulb. ‘Wonder how long I could live on these things if I stayed out here,’ I found myself thinking.

The bonk was definitely coming on now. I knew the slightly out of body, fairly stupid feeling that comes at the end of a long workout where I haven’t refueled enough. Basically, the exercise had stolen the glucose that my brain would have been using otherwise, and now my brain was taking a vacation in La La Land.

“La la la,” I sang to myself.

I pictured someone paddling on the easy stretch of river leading up to You Will Die Falls.

“La la laaaAaaughh!”

The brain was draining, but I was familiar with the feeling, and this made it easier to deal with. I tried not to think hard about anything and pooled all my mental resources onto the Tripping and Falling Avoidance line item.

There were still miles of muck to spat through before I finished. It would  be at least a 20-mile day and would take up about four and a half hours. Though I was tired, I knew from experience that I had enough to make it through.

I crashed through puddle after puddle and the cold water splashed up to my knees. I was long past giving a damn.

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Walking on Ice

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Waves carved this small cave into the ice alongside Lake Superior.

 

It’s important to stand in the right place, get the angle right.

Come over here and look this way, out over the miles of ice that stretch clear to the horizon. If you’re patient, you might see one of the snow devils, 15-feet high whirlwinds, silent and barely discernable against the clouds. It’s the closest thing to life that you’ll see out there — at least through squinting, sun-tormented eyes.

In the foreground, see how the wind has smashed the ice into itself, forming curious piles that flash iridescent blue from within. It’s beautiful, but reminds us of the treacherous nature of our location. Even now, we hear the occasional grinding of ice against ice and the loud “chunk” sound beneath our feet. Perhaps we shouldn’t stand here.

This ice has only been around for a few days. Before that, it was open water. Before it was open water, it was a field of ice much like the one we are standing on. The winds came out from the north and blew that ice over the horizon in one night. The open water looked deep blue and innocent, as if it had always been that way.

Turning back toward the mainland, a very different world comes into view. Now we see the rental units at the resort, where guests can take the in the drama of the Lake Superior ice from a cozy armchair, maybe a Jacuzzi.

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LeAnn explores another ice cave

OK, so were not in Greenland. We won’t be sleeping in an igloo tonight. I’m thinking about renting a movie before we go back to my apartment with its hot running water and heated floor. I’m grateful for the conveniences at my back, but also glad that I can make them disappear if I look in the right direction.

The biggest ice walls are at least 12 feet high. They were born several weeks back when six-foot waves crashed up against a thin ice layer along the shore. The bay looked like a churning field of broken glass. When all those shattered pieces smashed up against the beach, the waves bulldozed them into massive piles. The freezing spray welded it all together and added more height to the already impressive heaps.

If we climb over those heaps to the other side, we can really make the shoreline disappear. Plus, there might be some cool caves and alcoves worth exploring. We should take these ice axes, firstly because ice axes are badass, but also because we can use them to tap the ice in front of us and see if anything is suspect. If one of us did fall through, an axe could be a useful self-rescue tool. Hopefully, this will not be necessary. I hope I’m not being an idiot.

I do want us to use the axes, but mainly to see if we can climb up a formation I call “The Blowhole.” When the waves were crashing in a couple weeks ago, spray had erupted through this opening in the ice like a miniature Old Faithful geyser. Now that the waves are gone, I’d like a shot at going up myself.

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The frozen Lake Superior as seen from another ice cave. A few days later, all of the flat ice would be open water again.

Before we get to the climb, however, there’s plenty of other cool stuff to check out, including all these caves. Right next to the dock I’d kayaked under in the summer (it’s completely caked in ice now) there is a small cavern barely tall enough to crawl through and even then I don’t go far because I don’t want to bring all the icicles on top of my head. What is really striking is the sapphire glow from within the ice. It reminds me of photographs of containment pools for depleted nuclear rods.

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In the ice cathedral

You whoop at the wild isolation of our locale. I’m glad you’re so adventurous and that you take so much joy in this simple outing. You climb up into alcoves for me to take pictures, taste the murderous-looking icicles above our heads.

Climbing up the blowhole won’t be so difficult, I realize, when I see it from the bottom. It starts as a gentle slope, and the fact that I will be ascending in a cylinder offers numerous holds for both axe tips and the crampon points. Nonetheless, I strap my crampons on and take both ice axes. It only takes me a few seconds to wriggle up and flop out onto the bright ice.

I come back around so that you can try it yourself. You elect to skip the crampons, and clamber up, no problem. Fine. I’ll skip the axes and climb out of there with crampons alone. I manage, though it takes some awkward footwork.

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Climbing the blowhole

We spend another twenty minutes exploring the network of caves and alcoves. I try another climb above an overhang. It gets tough when I have no ice to sink my crampons into, and eventually I reach out and grab a knob of ice to pull myself up the last stretch. Eventually, we leave to drive to another point along the shore, which supposedly has some other impressive formations.

Indeed, when we arrive, there are several piles that look like shattered plate glass. Most are about six-inches thick and anywhere from a foot to seven feet long. It is possible to pick one up and look right through it like a window — or marvel at the tiny trails of bubbles in suspended animation.

You talk about building a fantastic see-through igloo. I’d be tempted to try if my feet weren’t so cold. There’s so much more to explore and do, but right now I’m getting cold as all hell.

We walk out to the far point, which is a defiant stone bulwark jutting out against the lake. The waves have absolutely pummeled this rock. It is about 25-teet tall and utterly draped with ice. 19th century traders traveling along the shore called this the “Sugarloaf” because the rock resembled one of the old sacks of sugar that they would have shipped up the coast. The white ice glaze certainly goes well with this name. Of course we have to climb it.

I’m too cold to put crampons on, so we go around to the easier sloping side. My jaw and other muscles are clenched tight against the cold. You seem to be doing just fine. It figures. You were raised near this latitude.

The wind howls from the other side of the stone. I make the first ascent, semi-clumsy with cold and eager to get back to the car before that tingling in my feet becomes frostbite. The wind smacks me head-on at the top, rips away at what little warmth I have left.

I beat a fast retreat, allowing myself to butt-slide on some of the gentler sections of ice. I hop from foot to foot as you make your own climb.

Perspective is everything again. From down here, the barren stone outcrop looks like it could be some oxygen-starved peak above the Tibetan highlands. It is easy to imagine the month-long trek, the thousands of feet of elevation gain, lost toes and fluid in the lungs — all for the chance to stand on some godforsaken rock. I say that as someone who loves to climb thousands of feet to stand on godforsaken rocks. It was one of the things that I worried about when I moved to Minnesota, with its shrimpy mountains. But latitude has a way of making up for altitude. Here, we can have our rock within a 25-foot climb. The miles of tortured ice are a bonus. Also, I have someone to enjoy it with.

You reach the summit; raise the axes in a war whoop. It might as well be the top of the world.

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LeAnn takes on the Sugarloaf
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Bottled Water Everywhere

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Plastic bottles wrapped in plastic. Absurdity.

Amidst the troubled backdrop of our planet’s state of violence, injustice and deepening environmental crises, it might seem trite to launch a diatribe against bottled water.

But what choice do I have? I’m the guy who stocks the fridge at work.

Perhaps one of these days I will have to stand before some tribunal as the prosecutor questions how I, how anyone with a conscience, could have allowed the crates full of bottles to roll off the truck and into the office. Further investigation will reveal how I regularly restocked the fridge downstairs so that resort guests could snag them (when clean, potable water was available from several nearby sinks) and eventually discard the plastic husks. Compounding this idiocy, many people will throw their bottles out half full.

“I was just doing my job,” I’ll protest, knowing in my heart that I was part of a senseless problem that didn’t need to exist.

 

OK, I really don’t want to explain why bottled water sucks because I feel like I’m not saying anything new. The verdict’s been settled year’s ago, and we’re all supposed to be drinking tap water from trendy (if pretentious) Nalgene bottles, aluminum flasks, that funky glassware I’m seeing in stores now, or some kind of goddamned reusable vessel. But all these people who keep swilling the bottles that I stock in the fridge, haven’t got the memo yet.

So here’s what they need to know:

 

Strike One!

Putting water in bottles is a stupid waste. The plastic comes from oil, so already the bottles support a polluting industry. Ironically, oil extraction comes at a heavy price in water, and the industry has a crappy track record when it comes to spills. Burst oil pipes have ruined people’s water along the Yellowstone River in Montana this month and back in 2011*. The next big oil bonanza, the Alberta tar sands, which so many of our beloved members of congress are so keen on shipping via the Keystone XL pipeline, has created its own health crisis. The indigenous people who rely on the Athabasca River** for its food and water, have suffered a huge risk of cancer cases, which studies have linked to leaks in the tar sands mining operations.

The Aqua Fina bastards actually have the gall to put “Eco-Fina” on the side of their bottles because they figured how to make the bottles with 30 percent less plastic. Sorry, but I’m not so impressed when 100 percent of those bottles shouldn’t exist.

Yes, plastic bottles are just one part of a vast web of petroleum-based products that our society has become dependent on. But while it may take some sacrifice to cut down on driving, turn back the thermostat or take the bus, it’s pretty easy to stop drinking out of bottles and start drinking out of the tap. Actually, it could save a bunch of money. Even if the drinking habit only costs a buck a day, that’s $365 down the toilet by the end of the year.

 

Strike Two!

Shipping bottled water is a stupid waste. Semis belching diesel fumes rumble along thousands of miles of highway so that a consumer in California can swig Poland Spring water from Maine (only some of it actually comes from the “Poland Spring, the rest we have no clue. ) *** Presumably the Californian has water available nearby, even if much of it goes toward keeping lawns green and the vineyards watered.

Normally it would be economic insanity to pay the gas to ship something as low-value as water across country. Unfortunately marketers are very good at assigning value where there isn’t much. “You’re not just drinking our water, you’re drinking our brand!” I can imagine some scummy ad-exec telling a boardroom. Hence the elongated, extra-wasteful bottles from Fiji (the name of the brand and, incredibly, where they ship water from.)

When I trundle one of the cases of water toward the fridge, I imagine the energy that it takes to haul this, multiplied over thousands of miles, the gallons of fuel burned into the the atmosphere, to provide a trivial convenience.

The companies have cashed in on this status value, paying themselves with something both unnecessary and harmful. If you’re like me, you might rankle at the idea of someone hoodwinking you into buying something you don’t need by convincing you it’s necessary. What’s next? Bottled air from British Columbia? Stay tuned.

 

Strike Three!

What the hell makes their water better? There have already been studies showing that bottling plants often have to abide by lower standards than city water systems. I’m not going to wade into each bottled water company’s processes, in part because I doubt many customers even consider what the processes mean either, but just assume that something in a comforting, plastic package is necessarily safer than whatever pours out of the sink.

For those who are convinced that the local water is really tainted, do they take the next logical step and stop using it to prepare meals, stop drinking soda at restaurants where it comes from syrup and tap water.

OK, so there’s no accounting for taste, and if you really don’t like the taste of your local water, you’ll probably just have to suck it up and keep drinking. Or get a filter if it comes to that. You probably don’t like the way some water tastes because you’re used to drinking the water you grew up with. Once you start drinking from the tap regularly, you’ll probably get a tolerance, in the same way that many people come around to the taste of coffee or cheap beer.

If your water explodes or is actually full of poisons, you might have to reach for a gallon jug sometime.

I doubt most Americans are in that situation — not yet. In fact, I’m sure many of the bottled water drinkers who visit the fridge I fill have heard something about how wasteful and destructive this habit is. They persist because ‘aw, what the hell?” Then they get into their Subaru’s tricked out with all the green and lefty political stickers, unaware that they debase what they claim to believe in, because they aren’t willing to make a sacrifice as tiny as drinking out of the sink.

We’ll have a chance of reversing the planet’s catastrophic course if we start making comprehensive changes to our personal habits, redefining our wants and needs so that we don’t take more than our share and we give back what we owe. There’s a lot of work to do, but maybe we can start by throwing down the fucking bottle.

 

* Un-fucking believable. When I was writing this blog post, I wanted to mention the 2011 spill. I did a web search for Yellowstone River oil spill and I found out that another disaster happened today. How long are we to keep destroying life and beauty for the conveniences that fossil fuel gives us in the short term.

 

** Check out this fine article in Outside Magazine: http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/The-High-Cost-of-Oil.html

Better yet, pick up a copy of This Changes Everything, the Naomi Klein book that came out in 2014, which talks about the cancer rates suffered in the community around the Tar Sands, and does an altogether excellent job explaining the various destructive pathways carved by the fossil fuel companies, and the toxic effect that unchecked capitalism has on our planet.

 

 

*** Mother Jones backs this up. MJ pressed Poland Spring’s PR guy to admit that only one third of the water in those bottles comes from “Poland Spring” in Maine. Personally I wouldn’t give a damn where the well was drilled. I’d rather have the water be a well nearby, or drink treated water from the abundant Lake Superior, which is right next to me. The article also underscores the lack of transparency that bottled water companies have when it comes to identifying where their water comes from. I suppose we should just take the companies at their word, because who’s heard of a company being dishonest to customers?

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/03/bottled-water-poland-spring-rubio

 

**** Here’s another source that has some damning numbers about bottled water:

Note that the author found a Columbia University study showing that water in a bottle costs 2,900 times more than what’s on tap.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100310/why-tap-water-is-better/