Poker face

We've already walked circles around each other,
passing over-the-shoulder glances until our tread

formed a Venn diagram clearly defining what's mine
and yours but especially where we keep mixing up

the point of holding these cards so close to our chests,
biceps strained to deny that photos are worth their weight in gold

like that elementary trick where palms pressed against a door frame, 
suddenly released, give arms a mind of their own to feel

the fleshy figments of imagination shuddering, in real life,
from the simplest massage: wrung out forearms.

Photos are worth a thousand words, but only a fraction
of the action freely translated senses can take.

See two sharp jawbones with bristled clenched
fists advantaged with emptiness you fear are revealing the

Feel of air displaced by one jawbone onto mine, kinematically conjoining
hands to ears to stop the words you can't keep from explaining

Hear what I'm saying about the fingertip tracing
to rouse you back to your photos.

Swoop them up and pivot each just right. These photos are worth their weight in the gold we seived over leaf-matted fingers. Not worth much, so pretend I never saw those.

Water rights

Pretend this is a story about getting my Master's degree.

In reality, I've stopped thinking about it as a big person job. Coffee cups and personal spotlit office desks aren't fooling anyone.  It is a servitude to my unflagging synapses. It is true it is the most fun I've ever had. Someone also once told me it is the best running I'll ever do. Hear me say "I agree" as I sit here with an unrun jelly knee. For example, I realized this week while mapdreaming that I nearly connected a third of the trails on my two National Geographic maps on backyard runs this summer. 

In this story, people and places are fictionalized and sensationalized. Any resemblance to persons or places living or dead is purely coincidental.

Tucked north of the Colorado, engulfed a vineyard of wrath, lays a Steinbeckesque valley, though only in character. In person, it's only shrubby dry land with squat little valleys. This land can be taxed as agricultural because its mostly sageland, rangeland and weedy hay fields. In character, the valley is weaved with silty roads leading to gleaming well pads riveted for permanence and economic dismemberment, or houses unplumbed by wind and winter. These are the homes, respectfully, of the man with the upper hand and his minions.

That's not very fair. Not minions like farmer ants, blindly following some scent, blazing some unforeseen trail. People with families, hard jobs, smart minds and belligerent self regard. Like you, and especially me.

The "man" with the upper hand should also not be misconstrued as anything different from his subsidiaries. Same family, hard job, smart mind, and belligerent self regard, just a bigger pay check to dress it with.

It's easy to dislike this guy, so delay the temptation. He towers like his machined blazing chimneys, but his disposition is no where near as hot. His good nature can be trusted, if only based on his signature spotless leather hat. His worn leather cowboy boots leave tenderer footprints than the cement ones he supervises. For months after we met, I could not relax around him until I discovered he obsessed over fluids other than the semi-gas he siphoned from earth's pitch.

Water! Water rights! You can't fix stupid! He was always says that last one. We became our own exclusive book club, teasing out embarrassing facts about water history and legislation. To him, water is the fruit of the loom dangling over the line we crossed when we sunk our teeth into this apple. Proof that it isn't his natural gas that made him owner of the land and its people.

Thanks to the book club, our conversations moved beyond land, past water, and onto ourselves. He told me I indulged too much, I told him he worked too much, we both agreed we spent time alone too much. He at least had an excuse. It is not easy to make friends if your job is to legalize and sanctify all human behavior. I just thought it was confusing making friends. We'd debate if our passion for solitude made us a wild beast or an Aristotelean God. I said he could be the God. Him, standing cast under the shadow of his leather-rimmed hat in his ropey artery watershed. All I saw when I closed my eyes was a stock chopped slide show of increasingly resolved topography.

Here is an interesting fact about surveying rivers. You can keep right and left bank straight in your head by facing downstream because you have to work upstream. That is how I arrived at my final site. Face down working against a current. A small current. These are only 1st or 2nd order streams. But still. I looked around at the pinnacle canyon walls that encompassed my last site, and saw my water was borne through a hole in the wall.

My River Continuum

Us crazy ass humans can be thought of as a continua of patches and kinetic aggregates.

Such an image is particularly appropriate to streams. Generations of fishermen have visualized streams as omnivorous gradients of species assemblages, adjusting its insatiable appetite according to physical gradient and landscape morphology. We call this the River Continuum Concept. Population density and gross domestic productivity measures metrics of humanity's successes and tribulations across a landscape. The River Continuum Concept describes the structure and function of communities along a watershed.

Headwaters are perched on a high shelf in clear cool round jars. Inefficient unproductive oligarchies with a sense of slipping place but no sense of purpose. So they fall, don't shatter, and ripple instead. Spreading wider through grout valleys of linoleum I swear will be granite one day.

Lakes were once thought of as microcosms. It was assumed if the world outside underwent an "annihilating event," lakes would feel the effects decades later. Apparently language like that isn't used in research papers any longer, which is probably why no one has stopped to consider lakes as microcosms of their own annihilation. 

Jars fall off shelves to prove a point. Pursuing a passion with simple minds geared towards the least resistant path. Taking opportunities as they come with increasing velocity, though their free fall trajectory approaches undefined. But the depravity of gravity is headwaters leave that mountain high to seek autonomy in a less corroded valley, weakly spreading thin on the littered floor, only to lose the shelter they started with. A puddle weakly gaining ground, growing big with tributaries from other jars so inclined, cannot help but feel honed to precision.

Glamping in June.

Some call this a "mini Hardrock 100," but I would like to point out that we would need to squeeze in another 4,000+ ft climb to be stoichiometrically correct. Hat's off, Hardrockers.

How Not to Train for a 50 Miler

Get plantar facistis.
Stop running.
Run an average of nine miles/week during the three critical weeks you should be running closer to 65.
Run 30 miles in two days less than two weeks out. This is in order to test the foot's resistance and resillience...and to panic train.
(DISCLAIMER: "How Not to Train for a 50 Miler" may or may not be coach endorsed.)

How to Train for a 50 Miler no one, Including Yourself at Times, Thought you Would Start

(Same circumstances, different list)

Get over your fear of cycling.
Ride an average of 120 miles/week during the critical weeks, ending with a 20 hour week of "moving" (sensu E. Forsberg).
Stay consistent with 2 hrs/week of core (ie core, physical therapy, plank, push up, weight routines).
Be the best you can in every moment (sensu L. Hawker).

But mostly, I just glamped.

June 02, 2014, Lamoille Canyon, Ruby Mountains, NV

Urban Dictionary defines glamping as (v.) shorthand for glamorous camping.

More Rubies

I stayed outside, since that's what I like doing.

June 04, 2014, backpacking 35 miles of the PCT with my Ma and Murph, Carson Iceberg Wilderness, CA

June 05, 2014, More PCT

June 07, 2014, more PCT

Eventually, I had to stop glamping. I spent my first week of graduate school reading about the outside. Reciprocal subsidies, the difference between stream metabolism and and energy budget, Google Scholar stalking scientists.

Then I blinked, and we were glamping at Lake San Cristobal, and the Front Ragers were few and far between, and the San Juans overwhelmed me like I my glamping binge had been akin to ascending something like Dante's Inferno, and I was running 50 miles.

San Juan Solstice, near mile 12

SJS, near mile 14

SJS, near mile 24, PC: ever-loving John Fitz.

SJS, near mile 25

SJS, I don't know same area

SJS, near mile 46

My foot is fine, although I wonder if the sheer amount of hiking spared me. I felt good, then I felt really bad. Short of breath, and my breath's shortness was filling with nausea. The last 2,000 ft climb at mile 41 I spent leap-frogging uphill with another man as we took turned trying not to puke on the side of the trail. I walked some, I let gravity run me downhill some, and then it was over.

12:34, 8th woman for the day, 1:36 back from female winner Kerrie Bruxvoort. Nothing to be too disappointed with. Onto the next.

Glamping on the Solstice's eve, Lake San Cristobal, CO

When asked who inspired her, Ann Transon replied, "happy trail dogs."

It is illustrative to imagine a giant's finger tracing the Earth's surface. Feeling a skim of liquid across the oceans, ripples over the grand canyons, bristles of patchy burns, and braille peaks of the tallest mountains. Velvet farms, spongy lowland, sandpaper poles. Strokes of cities catching like the barbed side of Velcro. A giant could tilt the world in his fingertips, peer closer, and watch a city's pulse.

There would be other pulses, like the sporadic gaseous blemishes exhumed from Earth's infernal core. But cities pulse in tune with human-paced entropy, in diurnal rhythm no matter the speed a giant spins a globe. Regardless, a giant fingertip skips over the intricacies of a season's pulse, or feel the pressure of living in that pulse.

Injured because I'm obsessed, or obsessed because I'm injured.

Midafternoon, after my Zion 100k ended, I unzipped my tent, stared at the mesh wall, and listened to all that kinetic energy in my head. Energy from mucus squeezed out of my throat from its cheesecloth lining. And the next day adding more energy by tinkering with good old ΔPV = ΔnRT driving home over the excruciating great divide.

My mind raced over treadmills trails powered by mucus energy and the paranoid feeling my mind was still in the race but my body was not. Within days, I figured out how to fix this. I spent the winter exploring each open space park in Jefferson County (around 10 since I was counting only the sizable ones, and minus Apex since it's mostly closed). So next, I would do a 42 mile solo run around a desert Wilderness in southern Utah.

Can you understand my thought process? I signed up for a bajillion races this year so I could explore my new surroundings, why not do it outside racing too? So many people at races, makes me want to hide! I will go hide in the wilderness.

Man his dog and the city.

Throughout the month after Zion, as my scabbed head finally cleared up, my foot began niggling. This has brought a little realism to my newest obsession. A stiff foot reminds you there is no logic in living to run, running to be outside, therefore running all day everyday outside.

I haven't been injured for close to three years, when I used to be plagued with shin splints for a couple months of every year. In a way, I am grateful for it. Before Zion, I told myself I would give my body a break from running and ride my bike more. I would need some recovery before San Juan Solstice. And now, look what I am wholly having to commit to? Injury is always a learning experience, so much more mind blowing than the most epic of runs.

I talk as if I embrace injury with a sun salutation. There were a couple mornings I spent crying, frustrated, and cooped in my room until 2pm. Luckily, my puppy's pawpaw, my love and my best friend quadruples as my coach. Even if he had no idea what he was talking about, he would still be subjected to hours of discussion about thoughts in my racing head. By definition, "runner" is a synonym for neurotic masochist, so it is important to have a soundboard for irrationality.

Here are some fortune cookie thoughts that help me remember that runners are not defined by the act, but by the desire.

Because being injured can make you feel like soaking sobbing pathetic crazy person.

Listen to your body and embrace your journey, not others'.

Plans do not become stories until they are past.

Stay focused, commit to what you can.

Devote yourself to something new. Experience the learning curve.

Repay loyal companions.

Change what's been wrong and do what's been good more.

Weights, to remind you of your strength.

Physiotherapy, to remind you of your weakness.

I like to roll hair balls out of the carpet between rest intervals.

Savor extra time with your loves.

Savor each step of every run.

Photo credit Myke Herms

What are you waiting for to be afraid of?

Is it running into resident ghosts of the landscape, or is it never running into water? Both sources watch from their ancient dwellings high in the canyon walls, trickling down so you can find each other on the floor, not alone anymore in your anxious solitude. You think the resident beings are eerie too. The Puma concolor pounce off the canyon walls, not trickle, but they are just as spooked by your mousey passing. 

Besides running dry, you fear the storms too. I know, just as the metronomic pitter patter begins to feel like a rhythm you have to find a new one. But remember: storms manifest wind chimes and lull us to rhythmless sleep. Besides, those storm clouds brewed in the mountains are not as ominous as they appear. It would not surprise me if they had fears of leaving their towering roots for the deep abyss of the plains.

So what are you waiting for? What you are afraid of? Make enough plans and there is nothing to fear. You love planning, even though I think you just need the distractions. It’s fine. Making plans is a creative process, where you add structure to the imaginary story we are slated to act out.

Zion 100 recap: about my veins.

I was not watching from my brief requiem, in the soft pink of dim florescent, pulsing orange monitors, and neon green exit signs. I could sense another pair of lenses in the room besides my dad’s thick bifocals. My eyes snapped open as the shutter’s snapped closed. What are you doing?

My dad said he took the picture so I could never forget what I looked like. I’ve never seen the picture, but I haven’t forgotten. The feeling, at least, of liquefying after trying to overdose on something as stupid as Aleve and alcohol. How tight they wrapped my forearms that I never bothered bandaging before.

I’m writing this because it amazes me how we are the same changing person throughout our lives. I was 15 and determined to destroy myself as slowly and inefficiently as possible. I never slept well because at night gravity would overtake my meticulous calculations and weigh on my flesh. Thin flesh so I could not lie on my back or my bones would grind and puncture.

Eight years later I still think that irrational voice is in my head.  The voice used to command me to sit staunch and unfeeling in front of a room full of my tear-streaked family and a plate of food. Voicing opinions about making cryptic cuts like how the Indians used to gird trees through the phloem. The difference now is I learned to work with this voice, and I do not deny it is the same voice that commands me to run all day. Where before I would run three miles and shake my way through a futile family dinner, my body and mind in direct opposition, I’ve learned to make my body and mind work in conjunction.

Hanorexic (n.): nickname middle schooler's daub Hannah's hovering around 100 lbs.

I didn’t realize how well that voice and I started working together until I started working at the coffee shop in Golden, CO. As someone who’s adopted new methods of movement to hide my scarred arms, the comments I get from customers surprise me. No one sees my scars. They ask if I climb or what I do to get these veins. The same veins once traced with razors, that I worried showed my weakness, tell a story of strength. 

Little guy just resting.

I don’t regret dropping out of the Zion 100k. I maybe regret starting. My mind tried to coach my body along, but I know when a body is useless. My throat was so swollen that my breathing turned into a wheeze, I couldn’t cough, and I wouldn’t talk. I’ve gotten a lot better at listening to my body, eating intuitively and not running through injuries, but toeing the start line sick was a new one for me.

I was terrified of finding a clown on course because I was afraid he would do this to my esophagus.

I wrote this because I guess it is not that amazing we are the same person throughout our lives. I hear of family and friends battling their own irrational voices and I hope they learn to listen. What sounds like self-destruction might just need to be spun around on a baseball bat and sent in a different direction.

Scumbaggin' (verb): If running ultras doesn't make you feel scummy enough, camping sans showers and plumbing might do it for you. 

Virgin River, around mile 16. 

Gooseberry Mesa, around mile 30.

Both a bunch of dropped pants, trying to make John smile about it.

We both got sick two weeks before Zion, thinking how lucky we were. So many siestas in my near future again.

Virgin River below River Rock Roasting coffeehouse, the best for caffeine and calories.