Highway 61 Revisited

At the Java Moose, in Grand Marais, MN, circa 1999

"How does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home, a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?" 

- Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone" (From Highway 61 Revisited)


In the fall of 1996, after I’d finished hiking the PCT, I moved to St. Paul, MN, taking up residence outside of southern California for the first time in my life. I was 22 years old.

The beauty of being 22 is that you have enough life experience to give you some confidence and determination without saddling you with the fear and hesitation that age can sometimes bring.

I was an Orange County girl who was a little afraid she would never get out.

Even by the mildest of standards, Minnesota would not be considered by most to be a hotbed of big adventure. (Most people just don’t know!) I’d had a roommate my freshman year of college who was from St. Paul, and she was living there and in the market for a roommate again. Lacking any other plan for my life, it was an easy sell, and I was off to Minnesota, just like that.

Though my roommate was a dear friend, our lives somehow did not intertwine much that year. Here’s what I did my first year ever of living in a city:

(1) Quickly got a job at a gear store called MidwestMountaineering. I’m not sure the Minnesota natives who worked there fully understood the irony of that name. Their store t-shirt depicted someone portaging a canoe. (On the other hand, I guess that did show that they knew what "mountaineering" in the Midwest really meant.)

(2) Learned to navigate the bus system. Don’t laugh. Before the internet era of easily accessible maps and timetables, this was not easy. Especially for a girl who’d always had a car.

(3) Adjusted my “It’s too cold to go for a run” standard to anything colder than -20F.

(4) Attended “employee only” parties with TNF athletes like Conrad Anker and Lynn Hill. OMFG!!!

(5) Got another job as an assistant teacher at an elementary school.

(6) Got another job as a middle school track coach. (See any patterns emerging here?)

Incidentally, it was tough making it to all my jobs on time with an unreliable bus system. That summer was when I bought my little red pick-up truck. Such a symbol of adulthood and independence!

Flash back to a couple years earlier when I was in college and just discovering the world of outdoor sports, falling in love with being a rock climber. Here are a few things that happened at that time:

1. I read a book called Annapurna: A Woman’s Place by a woman named Arlene Blum. In addition to being an accomplished climber and guide, Arlene Blum was the director of an organization called Woodswomen. They led all-women adventure trips in the outdoors. They were located in Minneapolis, MN.
2. I read another book called Leading Out: Women Climbers, Reaching for the Top. I adored this book! Its dog-eared pages and underlined passages still grace my overcrowded bookshelf. It was a collection of essays by a variety of women climbers, many of whom, as it happened, were from Minnesota, some of them former guides for Woodswomen. (Why were so many amazing women from Minnesota??)
3. I distinctly recall sitting in my dorm room reading an article in a magazine profiling three different women and their unusual careers. One of these women was Beth Wald, a climber and professional photographer. She traveled all over the world taking pictures of incredible climbing feats and other outdoor sports. I was a sports photographer for my college paper at the time and an aspiring climber. This woman, I knew, had my absolute dream job. I cut out the article and saved it.

Back in Minnesota, and the track season was over. School was out for summer. With Midwest Mountaineering as my only remaining source of income, I applied for, and got, a job at, … where else? Woodswomen. I was a summer intern.

Now I was guiding women in adventures all over the state, doing sports I’d never tried before. I learned to paddle a canoe. I taught women and kids how to rock climb. I drove the support van on a week-long horseback riding trip. (There was no way they were getting me on a horse!) I was giddy with the brilliance of it all. "Look what I’m doing!" was a daily exclamation I made to myself.

One evening, I was having a beer with a couple friends I worked with at Midwest Mountaineering. One friend was trying to give some moral support to a friend of his, Beth, whom he’d invited along. She was apparently in crisis about what direction to take her life. We’d been chatting about this for nearly 40 minutes before I caught her last name.

“Wait!” I said loudly, slapping my hand on the table, drawing everyone’s attention. My jaw had dropped. “You’re Beth Wald?!” I didn’t know what to say. Here I was faced with this real-life, every-day, normal person, who also just happened to be my personal role model.

Of course, I told her the story of the magazine article. I don’t know if this helped her with her life crisis at all, but I like to think that it did.

That winter, I moved to northern Minnesota to take a job as a dog handler for a musher guiding dogsled trips for women.

Kisses from Wasimo, a badass lead dog on the dogsled team.

Running dogs is still one of my favorite things I have ever done.

That covers my first 18 months in Minnesota.

After that, I got a summer job guiding teenagers on climbing and canoeing trips up in the Boundary Waters. I met my husband there, and we got married in the fall of 2000 on the banks of West Bearskin Lake in the Boundary Waters.

Returning from guiding a 30-day canoe trip, and Andrew swam out to meet me.

The place holds incredibly potent and significant memories for me, but I haven’t been back to northern Minnesota in the 15 years since I got married there.

~

Last month was the 50^th anniversary of Bob Dylan’s seminal album, Highway 61 Revisited. Highway 61 runs down from Canada, through Duluth, MN, where Dylan was born, all the way to New Orleans, connecting him, Dylan felt, to the blues music and musicians he loved.

“Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I'd started on it, always had been on it, and could go anywhere,” Dylan said of his choice for the album title.

My own kinship with Highway 61 goes north from Duluth along the shore of Lake Superior to Grand Marais, rather than south to New Orleans, but I’ve always felt similarly to Dylan in terms of the path it held in my life at one time. From dog sledding, to canoeing, to backpacking and rock climbing – Highway 61 led me to so many new adventures. Let’s not forget falling in love!

Wedding in the Boundary Waters, October 2000.

This week, I’m finally headed back to Highway 61 for another adventure. I’ll be attempting to go 100 miles on the Superior Hiking Trail in the Superior 100 which begins on Friday.

I’ll be trying to tap into that 22-year-old version of myself. That girl who had never been in temps below 30F but decided -20F was acceptable running weather. That girl who thought driving a team of huskies across a frozen lake was a perfect activity for someone born and raised in Orange County.

You see, lately I’m feeling a bit of that “on my own” spirit I had in my 20s, and finding a little of the “on my own” strength that being 22 provided. 

It’s been one year since my mother passed away, and it is not an understatement to say I still feel devastated by this loss every day. 

For complicated reasons, my husband took a job out of state (ironically, in Minnesota, though he will have to work while I am out there for my race). I miss him desperately.

I started a new job last week, and I go back and forth between being incredibly excited and incredibly overwhelmed. 

So many new things.

And this race? I am definitely afraid.

Of course, it’s not my first 100-miler, but let’s face it – muscle memory can only get you so far. I am under-trained, and I’m going without a pacer. "On my own," as it were. A rolling stone.

This thought both thrills and scares me. And that, I think, is a good thing.

And yes, here is where I’m going to put that famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote. Sorry if you’ve heard it too many times to count. It still speaks to me.

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

It’s not that this thing is really going to be a horror. The death of a loved one puts that kind of thing into stark perspective. It is, after all, just a race. Just a run.

But, still.

My running club, the Donner Party Mountain Runners, has the tagline “Unafraid.” It is taken directly from words about the real DonnerParty. In talking about it with a fellow club member the other day though, we both admitted that we are plenty afraid. The important thing isn’t really to be fearless, it’s to go forward in spite of your fear. That is where real strength lies. That is how you grow.

I definitely knew that when I was 22. This seems like a good time to remind myself.

With that in mind, perhaps T Swift’s “22” is a better theme song here than Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” With apologies to Bob for the major shift in musical genre, that’s the direction I’m going.

“Yeah, we’re happy, free, confused, and lonely in the best way! Yeah, it’s miserable and magical, oh yeah!” – Taylor Swift, “22”

See you soon, Minnesota!

Down Memory Trail

This post was written back in January, which becomes apparent upon reading it. It was one of those pieces that seemed to lack enough purpose or clarity to merit publication at the time. I'm always telling my students that their writing must have a purpose, a theme, a main idea. If they don't know what that theme is, then how can they expect the reader to figure it out?

With the advent of the very spring-like weather this week, it felt appropriate to dust this one off and try to clean it up. I'm still not certain I've nailed the purpose to my satisfaction, but it feels worth sharing at least.

My feet hit the dirt in an easy stride, as I head toward the South end of Peters Canyon Regional Park. I bound over the railroad tie at the gap in the fence and head up through the eucalyptus trees. The pace feels gentle, and even the continuous incline doesn’t seem to increase my breathing. I follow the familiar, dry trail, winding upwards until my legs finally seem to feel the effort, and my heart and lungs respond accordingly. I simply can’t run slowly up this hill.

It’s the first day of a week’s visit in Orange County, and I’m planning out my daily runs with child-like anticipation, fueled by nearly six weeks of holiday excess and sloth instead of running. My legs are ready to get back to business.

I grew up running these streets and trails with the Foothill High School cross country team, and even during my racing days in college I returned to train here over school holidays. My legs know these routes better than my brain, and they turn instinctively onto the East Ridge View Trail, a rollercoaster of hills laid out across the crest of the ridge.

The park is comprised mostly of dry, hard-packed trails, winding their way through the openness of coastal sage scrub, offering rare moments of shade with small stands of eucalyptus trees. The creek running through the canyon below supports a riparian habitat and attracts a variety of birds. The dominant green hue gives testament to the recent rains, and I enjoy the relative lushness that is the privilege of late winter in these grounds where brown normally dominates the palette. New grass coats the dirt between shrubs, and green shoots foreshadow the golden poppies that will grace February and March.

At my current home in the small town of Truckee, high in California’s Sierra Nevada, the trails are deep in hibernation under the snow. It feels good to get some dirt under my shoes in January, and to run at sea level, where the oxygen is thick.

I ran through this canyon at 15 with my high school teammates. It was private property back then, and we had to duck more than one barbed-wire fence to get here. Resting on the edge of the neighborhood, it stretched out into a vast wilderness beyond. As the recklessness of youth often does, our disdain for the rules lent a heady sense of freedom and power. We flew through the canyon without caution, the only humans around, and felt a giddy kinship with the coyotes and mountain lions with whom we shared the trails. We reveled unknowingly in the sweet immortality of youth.

Now the park sits trapped between major roadways and housing developments packed with swimming pools and red tile roofs. But the trails still speak the same language--one I know fluently.

In contrast to my high school days, when we dove into the bushes at any sign of people for fear of being caught trespassing, the trails are now packed with hikers, runners and mountain bikers. Rather than feeling sad at the loss of the wilderness, as I am typically inclined to do, I find myself appreciating the number of people who are out enjoying the trails today.

Automatically, I push hard up each short, steep hill. In spite of my off-season lack of endurance, I decline to take this trail at a relaxed pace. That’s simply not how I run here, and my muscles know it. With the slow awakening that accompanies a long slumber, recognition dawns. We know this place, they say, this is where we run hard, where we search out our limits. And they take me, a passenger seemingly along for the ride, over each hill with a short, quick stride, arms pumping and lungs heaving. It feels good. It feels familiar.

The following day I am headed out to Colonel Barber Park to meet my sister and her two young boys. I pull out of the driveway in my dad’s ’68 VW Bug, and this, too, feels familiar. I hate to even call this car “my dad’s.” This was my car for the first 5 years of my driving life. It still feels like mine, and as on the previous day’s run, my body agrees. Muscle memory kicks in as my heel naturally shifts over, toes still on the brake, to tap the gas pedal so the cold engine won’t die. I need the full foot to brake at the first corner, so it dies anyway, but it’s downhill, and automatically, I roll through the quiet intersection without stopping and pop the clutch, like so many times before.

Cruising down Barranca Parkway, I inhale with quiet pleasure, enjoying the warm January air of Southern California. I flip open the front triangle windows to adjust the wind directly at my face. As my hair blows back, the breeze carries with it the freedom of a teenager with her first car. I am sixteen, and I can go anywhere I want. I briefly contemplate heading down to Balboa. I could cruise the peninsula for hot surfer boys, music up and windows down. But reality snaps me back from those years to my playdate with the toddler set, with its promise of smiles and laughter, and I happily pull into the park a half an hour early to meet my sister.

Unsure of what to do with this nugget of free time, I automatically look at the endless, grassy playing fields with longing. I’m dressed for a run, except for the flip flops, and I silently curse myself for not wearing running shoes. It’s only after a few minutes of staring at the vast expanse of empty soccer and baseball fields that the patently obviously finally occurs to me: With so much well-groomed greenery, who needs shoes? I drop my jacket and kick off my flips at first base, along with any remaining cares, and trot off through the grass.

This particular park is new since my migration from the South, and I’ve never run here before. My feet explore the terrain with that sense of freedom gifted by the absence of any sort of plan. I don’t have an intended number of miles to run, nor a certain pace to hold. I don’t even have a direction, as I’m prancing aimlessly around the sport fields. I decide to make it an interval workout, and alternate my speed: sprint, jog, sprint, jog. I don’t know how long each period lasts – either in time or distance. I just enjoy the racing of my heart, the spring of my toes in the grass, the sweat between my shoulder blades as it trickles down my back.

“Auntie Gretchen! Auntie Gretchen!” calls the five-year-old voice from the playground. Like a school bell at recess, that’s my signal for the end of the workout. I round first base to collect my shoes and head off to push swings and chase kids through the sand.

The following day I talk my mom into going to Irvine Park. She’ll walk; I’ll run. I don’t usually get as many miles here, or as much dirt, as I do at Peter’s Canyon. Still, this park holds even more memories.

One of these memories revisits every time I run the paved hill on the South side of the park. It was here, when I was 19, that I had my single encounter with a mountain lion in the wild. As I neared the crest of the hill, the lion emerged from the bushes at the side of the trail 30 or 40 yards in front of me. She stepped casually into the trail, and I immediately halted the forward progress of my run. Having grown up in the area, I was well-educated in the behavior of the lion and knew I didn’t want to trigger its prey instinct. In spite of a disconcerting lack of fear, I still had immense respect for the animal.

She paused to look at me, and the moment of mutual curiosity makes me smile when I think of it now. I was so naive. But truly, it’s better that way. I felt safe enough because I thought I knew that one should act aggressively toward the mountain lion in the event of an attack. What I didn’t realize was that my own choices and behavior likely meant nothing at that moment. All of the power lay with the lion. And again, I am reminded of the infallibility of youth.

On that day, after the lion continued across the trail into the bushes on the other side, I merely continued (at a walk) down the trail. When I reached the point where she had disappeared into the bushes, I looked up the hill to find her sitting there, calmly looking back at me. What would most likely be a heart-racing, fearful encounter at this point in my life, was then merely exciting and beautiful. I have that lion to thank not only for choosing to give me nothing more than a few casual glances, but also for giving me a powerful memory that’s often been cause for reflection.

Irvine Park was also the site of every one of my home cross country meets in high school, and I can’t run on a section of the course without recalling the feel of that particular point in a race. The specificity of those memories has faded with time; I can no longer recall specific races, and I no longer race rivals of the past as I flee down the trails. The mountain lion, however—I can see her face clearly every time I am there.

These are the thoughts that amble through my mind as I let loose on the dirt downhill that comes in the first mile of the old x-c course. The sunshine of the previous day has given way to a warm drizzle, and I wipe wet hair from my face as I cruise through the section my coach used to call “through the oaks.” On the far side of the creek bed I catch up with my mom and opt to walk the last mile with her. It only makes four miles for the day, but mileage is still trivial in January. Walks with Mom are precious and few.

I’ve heard it said that in life, we are our current age, and we are also every age we’ve ever been leading up to it. This makes perfect sense to me. I am 36, but I am also 12 and 15 and 19 and 26. On the trails of Orange County, more than anywhere, I am a teenager. I’m not the confused, angst-ridden teenager that I may once have been, but I still recall the joys, some of the challenges, and the simplicity that often accompanies youth. When I run here, I can let go of goals and needs, and yet still run hard. Somehow, I can tap into every type of runner I’ve ever been—5K road runner, miler, trail runner, ultra-runner—and be all of them at once, while defined by none. If a place can have a memory, the trails of Orange County remember exactly who I am.

Jesse Takes the Long Way Home

Last week, Jesse Zweig began a planned run to raise money for the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. The 18 year old from Lake Forest hoped to double his impressive 100 mile run of last May where he raised over $6000 for the hospital.

Photo OC Register

He began last Thursday, planning to run through several cities in Orange County along the same course he covered in May in under 24 hours. This time he would take two laps in an effort to raise $20, 000 for CHOC. You can read the OC Register article here.

I can’t help but be in awe of these kinds of goals. When I was a high school cross country runner I thought 8 miles was a really long run. It’s only as I’ve matured that distance seems a more intriguing goal. Apparently Jesse was inspired by Dean Karnazes, and that isn’t surprising. Many of Dean’s long solo runs have also included a goal of raising money for charity. I couldn’t confirm it, but one website did say that Dean joined Jesse for part of his 200 mile attempt.

Although Jesse was forced to quit after 124 miles, I would say his event was a huge success. Jesse did a lot of things right, and he still managed to raise quite a bit of money for CHOC. (The numbers are unconfirmed, but it seems certain that he raised at least $10,000) I applaud him for being smart enough to have a good support crew, and to give that crew the power to make the decision as to whether he should continue to run or not. As it turned out, they decided he should not continue due to sore blistered feet and low temperatures. You can read another article about his finish here.

Great job Jesse! I for one can't wait to hear about your next fundraising adventure.