Dyck Knows

I don’t typically get along well with weekend rest days. Knowing how seldom it happens, if I have the day to myself I need to be outside pounding on something; a trail run into the backcountry, a punishing mountain bike ride. If I’m sitting inside I had better be nursing an injury, or at least a beer. I’m wracked with guilt otherwise.

 

But yesterday’s run in the snow really put a punch in my energy reserves. There was neither excessive distance nor elevation, but just enough bottomless snow to make each step feel like two. It was an amazing run along the base of Cascade Mountain, but today it’s hit me. It’s 11:00 AM and I’ve walked the dogs, working on my second cup of coffee. I’m exhausted and sitting here in a hoodie and snowpants.

 

So I’m going to try something different. A few months ago I recognized – moreover, I accepted – the power of slowing down. I’ve been doing some short meditation sessions and mindful walks recently. I’ve been taking my time in the woods, focusing on the sounds around me. Today, after a little recovery run, I’m going to pack up the dogs and head up into the Spray Valley. It’s finally snowing and looking like winter so I’ll dress warm, let the dogs run and do their thing, and pay attention to what’s around me.

 

I think this will have value.

One day I won’t be here. I will have walked away into the woods. I will hope that those I leave behind, if there are any, won’t be sad, that they won’t wonder. I will have simply walked away into the woods. It will have been what needed to happen.

I will leave at dawn, in the late summer when the days are still long. The sun will be just rising at the eastern edge of the valley. I will walk toward the limestone walls that the sun shines upon and as it climbs I will feel slowly its warmth on my back. I will shiver when it comes, and will realize just how cold I have been. I will watch the gray limestone turn orange and rose, and then the color will drop and the limestone will be just what it is in the bright sunlight, framed there in the blue sky. And the trees too. The trees will turn green to my eyes and feed on the morning light. We will share our breathing.

It’s not often we’re afforded the time we need to invest in those things that are important to us.

 

We multi-task, right? In more succinct terms, our waking hours are full of distraction, wayward and undisciplined thinking. We’re conditioned to the idea that whatever is there at the forefront of our senses can’t possibly be as important as the next thing, whatever it is. We live lives based on anticipation.

 

When we find something that might carry significance to us, its life cycle is dotted and broken, fragmented over our fragmented days with all of those other things.

 

We could all write Hemingway with committed focus, if we had the time.