Unbirthday Ode to Murph

Last week Muprh turned two and a half. That is really not that long, but maybe it's only the 0.5 that makes him seem so fresh.

Sometimes I wish we never got Murphy. We meet this stub-nosed puff at six weeks, and before we know it, he will (hopefully) be 16 and fading.

Time passes at different speeds, and more frequently I feel like it is passing faster. Day after day, I enter a time warp at school of microscope and computer screen vortices. All the sudden, I'm back home, fixated on Murph's sweet face. Night after night, I enter another time warp of sleep and dreams. All of the sudden, Murph has flopped his poinky elbows on me in time for our morning run.

So I don't really know where my life goes anymore, or how much longer my sweet Murph will be in it. Sometimes I think Murphy makes me realise how fast life goes by, but most of the time he makes me happy to stop and enjoy it.

To know this dog every day of his life is enough to stop time. There's always enough time for a kiss on the muzzle because he naps with his paws stacked, hind toes to nose.... Always enough time for a squeeze against the cabinets because that's where he likes to be when we cook.... Always time for a conversation, because he is the most human animal I know.... And definitely always time to follow the black spot on his Murphmallow butt down some trail, no matter how familiar.

I know there will come a time when Murph will blink out of our life, like how nearly every day of my life passes. Even then, there will still be time for running, and conversation, and cooking, and a kiss on your cheek. Life has never been so sweet, and definitely never as speedy, as with these two in my life.

Thanks Myke for the photo, and Chrissy for yet another fitting nickname for Murphy Humphry Fitzgerald the horsedog who's 10 hands high. You make life sweet too.

Things I know.

I know water is important.
It is the most valuable--simple--abused resource for humanity and ecosystems.
I know water fuels everything, biotic and abiotic alike.
It is the catalyst that fuels reactions in a dendritic down-sloped laboratory all around the world.
Water produces algae, insects, and fish for infinite biotic energy, and it wears down granite, limestone, and sandstone over bajillions of years.
Water is how the earth moves. Grows, decays, rubs away. A yearlong time lapse of one stream would breath in (raging and overflowing) and out (boney and dry). Then, if you lined up all the world's stream time lapses, they would make the most awesome wave. A spring storm crescendo here, summer doldrum diminuendo there.
I also know water is highly reflective. I don't mean of our ignorant neglect--we don't know what we've lost. But we can see the moon's sliver on the darkest night and the stars' glimmer with the moon at its height. By day, depending on the angle of the sun, streams reflect pure black or white. If you get lost, you can follow a streams' tendrils by day or night.
I never understood one thing about water. How to hold one water? If I could just hold one water, I could have an everlasting vital--simple--resource for breath and light. But I know water is a covalent continuum, and you can never hold the same water you held a minute ago.

One way I cope with stress is to play a game where I imagine myself perched on the slippery rocks in the river just down the road, or someplace further away.  There's fish, particles, and insects incognito all around me, and it just keeps going. Sometimes the game is going back to that branch between my zipping road bike and the tiny creek I always follow. Spiders, insects and caterpillars there all cruising along still. That's how I reassure myself that everything is fine. Island Lake, there still, just like it always will. I can stress hard that my peers are constantly out-succeeding me, but I can also take myself back to an alpine lake I ran to last weekend, or the weekend before. I've been so blessed to chase so much trail this summer that instead of falling off a cliff the moment before sleep, I find myself about to biff it right before my dancing feet can lull me to sleep.

I was born on summer's solstice. Once a friend told me summer made me golden. Regardless of whether I simply tan well, or because I was born into long light and growth, it's a compliment that has always stuck with me. I literally measure my life by summers. When I think of all the beautiful places I have had the honor to visit this summer, I am tempted to write out: this has life the been summer of my best, but I can't. I have to scramble it because I know it actually just keeps getting better.

I can never spell exercise.

I few days ago I came home from schwork feeling slightly less obsessive depressive about my thesis research. I just triumphed at the gym! For the first time in months, no meat heads or hip niggles prevented me from doing single leg box jumps or guided squats. Although I feel like the last year of grad school has been countless wrong decision after wrong decision, I can at least feel victorious over this. Just as my adrenaline was slightly dulled by the irrational thought that this was the only thing I had going for me, John told me to read this Time article. "Why Exercising is a Higher Priority than my Career," singing me praises!

I've written on this theme numerous times in my blog. I fully believe exercise is the solution to most physical and mental health issues. As the author states, "when I exercise, it makes me better in every role I have, whether its as a husband, father, friend or entrepreneur." However, I cringe at how staunch the author sounds. Your career--and especially your family--should definitely take higher priority over exercise occasionally. I hate to think what a drag this guy would be working as Lani's technician, the habitus of passerine birds dictating his work schedule. This article also failed to mention the myriad of other ways people can rejuvenate their life balance. While I would love for every human to enjoy exercise bar none, I recognize that every one has their own special way of getting their head on straight at end the day.

The compatibility between work and training is the most utilitarian answer to achieving the utmost in both. Not that I am claiming to be the most excellent budding scientist in my department. I am just saying that however balance is achieved, it should usually be given top priority. This article is extreme, but I think most people need to realize how seriously beneficial regular exercise is. Likewise, some athletes can be extreme, and we should recognize the severity of taking this article too seriously.

A big s/o to my friend Lani who turns what could potentially be an all-consuming stress project into a fun adventure complete with belly laughs.. This is us in our P.P.E.

When I was in the field, I worked an average of 11 hours per day for 12 days straight. I was able to eek out 40 miles of running, which is what I normally see in 5-6 days. C'est la vie, I could not put exercising first for these 12 days, but I would certainly not neglect it. So here are my tips for training when life ebbs on your flow and work becomes the top priority.  These particularly apply to life in the Piceance (almost rhymes with nuance, although I prefer to think it sounds like fiancée).

10 Don't eat, you die. Same for not drinking water. This is amazingly common sense, but it is wondrous how such a simple concept is overlooked when you are trying to stay energized through a long day.

9 Embrace life. Its jelly knees, its flues, its stuck toe joints, its travel, its work, its play.

8 Field work usually means a rare type of shoe for your foot. This summer for me it means hiking boots and pinchy steel toe boot covers. Hot spots + bug bites = cankles galore. In the past, it meant swamp foot waders. Beware, this is an easy and inconspicuous way to get injured (see number 4).

7 For trail time, find a cattle drive trail and pray you are not trespassing.

6 Cross train when you can. It's hard to access a weight room, or even throw down a yoga mat for some core work when you are living in a trailer with three other people (don't be that girl). Take opportunities to engage yourself. For example, when our septic system was clogged, and we needed to use an old Christmas tree to poke the poop out of the way, we also needed someone to javelin the poop stick far far away. This was my opportunity to use some life skills FEC taught me.

5  I find it snooty how athletes call "work outs" a specific session, yet everyday joe's know a work out is a work out. This goes to show everything is context dependent.

4 Continuing on that topic, you deserve a rest day after twelve days in the Piceance. Even if you already took five of those twelve days off (see number 8).

3 Continuing on that topic, get your "work outs" in before you are pooped. I got in a fartlek, a 20 minute tempo, and sprints post-run the three occasions I felt up for it.

2 You are you so don't listen to me.

1 Be the best you can in every moment.

Thanks to my friend  Zander for so timely sharing this article.

A week where Johnny was made.

Low tide, Manomet Bay, Plymouth, MA

We missed what I presumed would be the best fireworks shows in the country. Instead, we were on a delayed redeye flight the night of July 3rd. We would not lay our heads horizontal until the birds sang for the sunrise near Brian's house on Locust Street. We spent the morning with Brian, Milla, and smart little Leila, then the evening with Mary Ellen, Erin, and Martin.

While the Manomet beach front expended most of their fireworks the night before, we got to see what I found much more spectacular. As John helped explain, we sat at the thumb joint of a fist with an index finger curved out in the air. Cape Code bay is an approximate circle 40-50 feet in diameter. From where we sat on the darkening beach, fireworks shows pulsed along the entire horizon. Their base explosions resounded across the Atlantic ocean. Steady beams of bonfires illuminated the peripheral horizon extending from our feet. The moon eventually rose through the center of it all, casting its blood orange beam across the water to our summer fire. The moon rose and grew larger while the famous fireworks of Massachusetts pulsed steady and small at the edge of our world.

We talked about the Fitzgerald, O'Donnell, Fitzpatrick, and Flaherty families. I listened to them banter in a familiar Fitzgerald fashion I could never keep up with. I learned more about the Manomet Conservation Center, originally gifted in pieces from around the world. It was co-founded by a wife who lay headstones for her dogs.  As we spoke, the moonbeam inching towards our feet with the tide, it was all washing away. Slowly, but with the same permanence as the bonfires that would disappear by tomorrow morning A grand show before us, and an infrequent, audible peanut gallery of dry bluff eroding behind us.

Dogwood dream Manomet house.

After a couple nights in Massachusetts, we headed to Vermont for four nights. This is the beautiful cabin hand-crafted by John's uncle Mark, a carpenter. He's built this cabin on his weekends, and although it is far from the "finished" carpentry of his craft, it is a work of art. 

Dream stream downslope from Uncle Mark's cabin.

The princess and the fiber glass bed. If princesses snack on fresh caught brookies, write by candlelight, hike/run all day, and bird bath in sinks and cold rivers, then I was the prettiest princess of them all. Waking up at 5 am each morning, beside this picture window, to the sounds of birds (HAH HAAAAH HAAAAH you ripped your shoe), percolating coffee, and popping wood stove fire was heaven. 

Toll road run up Burke Mountain on John's birthday! My kind of road running. 

07/08/15 Pemigawasset Loop. Mount Flume, Mount Liberty, Little Haystack, Mount Lincoln, Mount Lafayette, Mount Garfield, South Twin, Mount Guyot, Mount Bond. This is 29 miles with 12,000 ft of elevation gain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The first 1.5 miles and the last 4 miles are on a perfectly flat, perfectly straight old railroad grade. If your brain is like mine and has a hard time comprehending square or vertical feet, that means this hike/run was 12,000 ft gain in less than 25 miles. That means each mile either climbs or descents 1,000 ft. Pain!

Rocks were more common but these ladders up Mount Liberty at least gave a semblance of rhythm. 

Mount Lafayette. People always tell me they don't run because it hurts their knees. We weren't really running much, but my knees HURT on these rocky trails.

I was definitely not smiling by the end of this run. John tried to get me to stop and smell some pine needles and I think I just ran by with my claws out.

Bondcliffs. Strong John smiled the whole way through. In fact, he just kept getting goofier! The last group of people we stopped and chatted with were having a hard time understanding his slurred words, devoid of calories.

The Pemi loop seems to circle the headwaters of the East Branch Pemigewasset River. Pemigewasset means "where the entering current is." I went straight for this perfect plunge pool at the end of the trail and was finally able to put my claws away.

The next day we hiked up Mount Washington with Martin. We had plans to do the 18-22 mile Presidential Traverse, but decided on an out-and-back in order to have time for breakfast at Polly's Pancake Parlour. With 17 miles under our belt, we basically did it. Mount Pierce, Mount Eisenhower, Mount Monroe, Mount Washington. 

Mount Washington summit [line] selfie! This is the tallest peak in the northeast, and you can get here on foot, by trail, or by vehicle. Needless to say, it is kind of a zoo. The trail we took up, Crawford Path, is the oldest footpath in the country!

Double fun day with double Fitzcereals!

We left the cabin in Vermont at 5:30 am on Friday and made it to Grannie Annie and Gramp's hotel room Portsmouth, NH, by 8:50 am. We were there for Joey and Kara's wedding, the most extravagant affair I will probably ever attend. John had completely ripped his running shoes he planned on wearing golfing the day before. So by 9:15 we had taken our first shower all week, by 9:30 John bought a new pair of running shoes from the blasphemous Dick's Sporting Goods, and by 10:00 am John made tee time (not tea time like I at first assumed).

Photos are "worth a thousand words" but they do not describe how sweet Grannie Annie and Gramps are.

Last night of our trip, back in Brockton, MA. A couple of Johnny's at Johnny Macaroni.

Eric Carle's Fibre Optic Light

Before there was much of anything, there were plenty of fireflies.

"Are you a firefly?" Asked one, looking for a mate.
But it was only a campfire. Few and far between, but cherished for their warmth, cooking abilities, and light.

"Are you a firefly?" He asked again. Not all firefly genders light up so obviously.
But it was only a candle. More common now than the campfire, but cherished for their mobility and brilliant light so luminous that paranoia still mistook it for yesterday's fire.

"Are you a firefly?" He kept trying, lighting his most unique signal.
It was only a porch light, enjoyed for its immobility and everlasting signal of home. Definitely not a firefly.

"Are you a firefly?" He asked again, ready to give up.
But it was only a cell phone screen. Unbelievably cherished for all its cracks and nonsense. It was the first cold light he had even seen, so he'd been easily fooled.

Cold light is 100% efficient and emits no heat with its glow. But the firefly learned that no light was coldest light of all.
"Are you a Lampryinae?" Asked the microscope.

Good bye beautiful trails. This is a shot from Mount Pisgah near Lake Willoughby in Vermont. One night at home with my Murph dog and shnuggs then the rest of the month in the field for me.

Challenge you to balance, Part II.

I got my last blog post completely wrong. I'm just as competitive with training as I ever was. It was all wrong because I failed to realize my biggest competition is schwork (i.e., when school is work).

04/08/2015 Piceance valley field reconnaissance -- A year of jumping through hoops later, we got to put some boots on this beautiful shale canyon's ground. Natural resource extraction and serious concern for safety means no one wanders around off the dusty roads out there .... Until Lani and Hannah arrived. Example of one weird rule, "no picnicking" in these gamble oak patches, damn.

Multiple times lately, people ask if I have been "training much" with school being so busy. This question catches me off guard, but yes I have been training much. Grad school has not prevented me from putting in two hours of training on average every single day for the past two months. Nor has my training prevented me from getting a shit ton done every day. It takes a lot of discipline (and the occasional mental shut down) to GO from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm most days, but that is the only way to have time to train twice, eat at least thrice, and put in the time at school. Most importantly, somehow it keeps me sane.

Winter field work on the Poudre River with Johnny<3

School is also busy. My eleven month anniversary of starting graduate school at CSU is approaching mid-May. In case anyone in the internet world wonders what the heck I've been doing,  I wrote and rewrote a research proposal, then discussed it with big scary smart scientists. The second time through, my proposal ended up being about how a non-native riparian plant may alter terrestrial and aquatic insect communities, and also the larger food web. Through collaboration with the best-group-project-member-ever, we will look at the diet and behavioral responses of riparian birds to this plant. On Monday, I officially start the field work portion of the project, and I hope it's interesting enough to deserve a Master's. Soonish I can finally finish analyzing the results of my attempt to use my adviser's, W.H. Clements' B.A.M.F (bad ass microcosm facility). I looked at how copper contamination may influence microbial respiration and aquatic insect communities differently in pools and riffles. I've gotten all but four credits of my coursework done, and maintained my streak of being the first finished with all five statistics exams this past year.

My friend Becca wrote a blog about wanting "less in life." I see her point in wanting to avoid the sickening addiction of more, but my tendency for perpetual productivity leaves me feeling I should contribute my own nuance. I want more out of less in life.  I want to get more out of my work and spend less time working on it. I am fixated on efficiency so I waste less time working or getting wasted running. Of all the people I've met who are shamefully and shamelessly addicted to their work or their running, I am shamelessly addicted to the challenge of finding balance in both.

Also, in case anyone in the internet world wonders where my cheesy engagement photos are, I draw the line at planning a wedding before my first field season. All I know is Tahoe at some point next year:) Cheesy engagement photos will probably never happen.

Challenge you to balance.

I've grown to dislike competition. It's strange since I was obsessed with triathlon only two years ago. There is competition in sport, competition in work, and competition within yourself, and I have dueled enough with each.

This time two years ago I was around 300 days into my most focused training. I wanted to be pro (didn't we all), at least in the minimum sense that I wanted to win Wildflower. My friends loved training nearly as much as I did, we went places warm, and all I had to do was turn my homework in on time. I swam until 10 pm and woke up at 4:30 am a good chunk of my mornings (I don't know how I did that). While I may not have won, I finished less than 4 minutes and seven positions back.

Hayley, Megan, Dan, and myself before the SHAC Triathlon, 2013. Megan would brush her shoulder off but that would ruin her fueling strategy.

The summer after Wildflower I began "training for life," meaning I just wanted to have fun, not get injured, and train in the name of longevity. Maybe I adopted this mindset because I am not as talented at  pure running as I was at triathlon, and therefore definitively not as competitive as I once was. I have, however, also watch competition ruin many perfectly sane people.

Last year I signed up for nine ultramarathons. This year I am signed up for two. The ultrarunning community is small enough that races are synonymous with reunions. Many of my friends, however, I never saw because they holed up to hide from what they assumed to be the spotlight, but what I interpret to be delusional nerves.

Running is fun. It's cheap. It's what you do with your friends or your parents and your dogs, in the snow and the sun, on the beach or in the mountains. Competition is important for the growth of the sport, and for the betterment of our own personal selves, but it is something I find more joy not getting wrapped up in.

Defenders of the weekend.

I mentioned competition in work, and I think that is a great example. Comparing ourselves to our coworkers motivates betterment, but mulling over it too much is just stressful. If everyone worked on the weekend, those of us who didn't would eventually get fired. So defend your weekend, run only as much as you need to get the job done, and keep it enjoyable. I would not be able to maintain my sanity in grad school if I didn't have running, but I would run myself into the ground if I didn't have grad school.

While I am claiming I lost my competitive edge, I am not suggesting I've lost the motivation to work hard. My overarching goal for what I've deemed my opportunistic off season was to keep it crazy consistent, but not crazy. For me, this ended up meaning four months of ~40 miles running, ~2 hours weights/core, and enough cycling to round off 11-14 hours training per week.

A 35 mile runventure in Canyonlands with John and Hilly was the only crazy part of my crazy consistent off season.

In sum, competition is fun. It's what makes me run faster up Towers with Becca than when I'm alone. Competition is necessary. It's given ultrarunning recent legitimacy despite its perceived insanity.  But competition is nothing if it is not fun.

Backwards gloves. Photo by Myke.

Theodora, sweet remora, I wish you hadn't presented this pandora. 

If I had known this symbiosis would end in blind hypnosis I would have rubbed you off a rock a long time ago. A great deal, you cleaning, me killing. Gluttonous attack after hedonistic snack. Until we could no longer separate the two acts, afraid to expose your sucker head and my suggestive preying.

With your drag on the left, my swimming shrank concentrically until all I could dream of was the beat of my own tail, alone without your persistent flail. Sharks can be social or solitary, so please respect my solidarity.

A morning story and other photos from Kalalau Valley

The chart-topping runs are the ones you literally cannot run on, where your stride becomes a walk then a stupor as you ogle over your surroundings. You never really know when those are coming though.

John and I did not know. We were just happy to feel light beneath the weight of our packless backs after two days of packing 11 miles into Kalalau Beach with my moms. I was surprised my shapeless socks and Saucony Peregrines still worked for running, leadened with water and mud.

We followed Kalalau Trail back, the same one we'd hiked in on the afternoon before. Barreling waves to our left, tarp-topped camps to our right, and earthy smelling "locals" passing towards the front. Eventually, sandy beaches gave way to rounded lava rock shores. As we climbed out of the beach camp, we looked over our shoulders to the spired cliffs that buttress our home for the next two days.

The new trail veered up canyon to our right, no more than a mile from camp.  We climbed up valley, passing smooth barked eucalyptus trees and  bamboo forests. Mud always intermixed with ancient terraces bolstered with those rounded lava rocks, now coated with neon moss bright still beneath a thick canopy.

The only person we saw the whole outting, which ended up being around 2.5 hours, was one woman. Young, a little older than me, and far too clean to have been out there more than the morning. She definitely could not have been out during the downpour we endured in our moat-lined tents for 13 hours the night before. Her hair was wrapped in a small turban and she carried a bushel of chard in one hand.

"What are you picking?" John asked after breif casualties.
"Oh it's from the community garden. Is that where you're headed?"
We had plans to go to the "big pool" but we were next informed by this apparition to turn left at the cut guava tree after the second river crossing.
"Do you know what a guava tree is?"
I admitted no, was descriptively informed, and as we headed out of this conversation on our way, she called out, "have fun running around out there."

The left turn after the cut guava tree was inconspicuous for 50 yards, then an obvious foot path. We dipped down a few more terraces and suddenly the canopy opened up, prefaced with a sign warning tourists not to pick unripe fruit. This garden is filled with taro paddies, squashes, orachard trees, and the tickling trickling sound of irrigated water from the adjacent creek. Breathtaking and obviously maintained in the constantly growing foothills of the world's rainiest place.  But the trail was not run out, so we continued its course through the garden.

We crossed the creek and followed the footpath up the slope to another terrace. This one different, huge. Most noteable were a handful of old 15 foot-diameter trees evenly dispersed around the large pad, as if delineating rooms or compartments of some ancient family's dwelling. We found ourselves tiptoeing around this old landing. We could see, if not feel, what it would be like to live here. Life here. And not just the life of modern day hippies, but ghostly life as if walking through the coleseum.

A little freaked out, we decided to start backtracking. We headed down to the creek we last crossed, but instead of crossing, followed the path up alongside the creek. It began to rain, the double rain consistent of densely vegetated landscapes. One drop from the sky, two drops from slapped plants. Our path petered out alongside a pool. The big pool? Swollen from the previous night's rain. Maybe, but probably not. We briefly strategizd under the cover of the Na Pali coast's giant bromeliads, then headed back down to seek the trail that would finally lead us to the big pool.

We crossed some creeks and terraces only vaguely familiar until we finally reached the garden. But with a sinking feeling, I creepily realized this was a different garden. This one with an orchard tree sagging from grapefruit, shading a colorful Bhuddist shrine. We had felt lost for awhile, and John had already asked if I was fucking with him, but you can't admit to being lost in a valley where all streams lead to the ocean.

All we could do was follow whatever trail we were on down. Who knows how long those little footpaths have been there. Trodenned by bare feet of history's ghosts, a labyrinth remain of an ancient civilization. Dense tropical vegetation made the place feel huge, except for the brief glimpses of humbling canyon walls through the overstory.

Down we ran, looking for anything familiar, until we passed the cut down guava tree. We passed it coming down the main trail. A complete, tidy loop. A time warp, into an 800-year-old civilization and back out into modern paradise. Gratefully it had stopped raining, and releived to know where we were again, we stopped to explore a few more terraces, then continued down the trail.

"Have fun running around out there." Was she a dream? We ran back down through the same tree tunnel, marked by its whorled branches, we had run up hours before. This time, we understood it to be an entrance.

The Kalalau Trail on Kaua'i is 11 miles one way, with one 2-, 0.5-, and 2-mile out and backs at miles 2, 6 and 10. Check mark them all.

The trail can sometimes be hairy, especially if you catch it in the rain.

.

A special time! Living carefree, all things damp.

Camp!

The waves were straight from my reoccuring nightmares of shores sloped so steeply, waves would suck you out and toss you up before you realized where the sand went. Except it was heaven. "The most random wave pool," our camp neighbours Neil and Chelsea called it.

I only heard one account of flesh-eating bacteria in the water. Skin dips so worth it.

Boardrun on the impressively extensive boardwalks in the Alakai Swamp, located on the flat-topped ridge 4,000 + feet above Kalalau Valey. 8.2 miles that day, plus 4 hours of waiting in the windy sun for my mas to do the same hike. It would only be appropriate that John and I get our most epically dehydrated a stone's throw away from the wettest place in the world, depending on the year. 

The understory at the Alakai Swamp.

From tallest to shortest: John, me, MK and Vicky. They are though mamas.