I Survived!

 Yes, a similar posting title, but a very different context.  Yesterday was the solstice, the longest day as the earth starts to wobble back the other direction.  Hmm, having written that line, I think it discredits the value of the hours without sunlight, which are just as much a part of the standard day of a uniform 24 hours.  So, more correctly, yesterday was your usual length day, just with a lot of time tilted toward the sun.  With that, I'll move on, having simply failed to acknowledge the whole southern hemisphere.

Being the generous planet that it is, the earth gives us two solstices each year.  In December of 2019, I not only hatched, but executed the idea of honoring the day by riding my bike for every moment of sunlight, from full-dark to full-dark.  It was a cold day that topped out in the 20s, and I was at multiple times a cold boy, even dismounting for various climbs as the best method for stomping some warm blood back into my feet.  It worked, both the stomping and the ride in general.  I adapted, trained my body's circulatory system to attend to all its parts, and when the sun set I realized I was not in a rush for the full darkness so I could finish.  I ended up riding an hour into the full darkness with an extra loop, satisfied that if I could not just complete, but enjoy, what was bound to be my hardest outing of the winter, I, in effect, owned the season.

And yet, in that context, "ownership" is the wrong outlook, in a similar fashion to my avoidance of the the words "will be" or "supposed to" when relating weather forecasts.  For as much of a often frightening impact as humans have had on this planet, we are not in charge.  We can't own it and the weather will do whatever it wants despite our predictions.  Likewise, I didn't own the winter that or any year, but I did feel a special and new kinship with it.  To borrow a line from Wallace Stevens, I had a "mind of winter."

But to bring my opening tangent back around, yesterday was the solstice!  Since that opening of winter in 2019, I'd been reenacting the full-dark to full-dark ride twice a year with a rather notable exception of the start of last summer, but I have the excuse of a brain injury which had my mind thinking it was 2014, many years before the start of my tradition.  So, yesterday wasn't just A solstice, but the chance for me to, in some ways, make up for what was lost last year.  Yes, there had been a winter 2022 solstice ride, but as you might imagine, the opposite ends of the earth's wobble have two rather-and-then-some different feels.  In 2019, definitely the coldest of my four solstice rides, I wondered if the summer observation would be easier or harder.  I don't have a sure answer, but it was definitely a lot longer.  So far, it is the longest distance I've covered in a single day at 215 miles.  On a swift-ish rolling mountain bike.  On more than a couple miles of dirt road in the hills of Vermont.  No, I can't say which was easier or harder, better or less better, but they were both special days and experiences that I value.

Yesterday was the solstice!  And this time, I intent that to hold as a proper introduction to this paragraph.  Yes, my tradition had been a "ride", but a week before yesterday, I realized there was no particular "ride" for which I held excitement to spend the day.  I did consider a one day romp up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire which had been a likely option if last summer's ride not been waylaid, and I credit that prospective plan with why my "2014" brain also thought it was in the "Live free or die" state for at least a few days.  But riding is just one way to move through the environment, and while bikes are simple downright wonderful, there is something even more pure, elemental, and basic about travel by foot.  Yesterday, I walked.

While I didn't tap technology to know more precisely how far I traveled, as like the summer ride of 2020, I can confidently say that yesterday's solstice outing was also my longest one day hike, which had previously stood at 35 miles, looping over Moosilauke from a start in Ellsworth, NH.  I could use mapping technology now to figure a more accurate number, but I'll suffice with a guess of 40-45 miles.  They are just numbers.  Possibly a more fitting valuation is akin to my Batchelor Brook rain gauge of seeing how far up my body the water comes: specifically, my feet were more than a wee sore when I walked back in my door a couple ticks post 10pm after leaving at 4:15 that morning.

Wild blueberries: a better gauge of the day than any numbers

Another solstice, another special day, this one was also different from past outings aside from just leaving the bike home in that I had company for some of my travels.  For at least my first couple weeks in the hospital last year, my phone was elsewhere, but when it was delivered back to me in my final days there before transfer to the recovery facility, the outpouring of contact and care from others was truly heartening.  I knew there was a mound of recovery for me to climb and the distinct likelihood that my mind and body would never recover to what, or possibly even who, they had been, but in that bevy of support I realized that I would never be doing that alone.  So yes, people are important to me.

I set out alone yesterday, and one of the things years on a bike teaches is development of a rich landscape inside ones own head.  At times, I've quipped that all I need for entertainment is a place to sit and a blank wall for staring.  I'm comfortable roaming the space in my head, but people, especially the right ones, are an even better option, and while I've never really thought of having others join the ride inceptions of my solstice forays, it felt completely natural to extend an invitation to the local trail runners to see if any were game to kick the pace back a few clicks and hike some or more with me.  The initial taker was Steve Kerr, a runner whom I first met as the last person I caught at the 2019 Seven Sisters trail race.  Steve credits me with helping him decide he wanted to work on his descending speed, and I credit that to the fact that I caught him at the end of a long descent and flat section, and then probably immediately had him wondering how someone who was walking up the next hill had caught him.  Since then, I'd run with Steve a number of times as part of a local group, but yesterday was the first one-on-one encounter, and at the more conversational pace of hiking no less.  What a score!  To begin, I of course appreciate-and-then-some that Steve rode his bike!!! down from Greenfield to join me at 11, but then after together shooing off a too inquisitive bear at our meeting point, I was delighted to learn that we share the habit of eating at much of the trailside foliage as possible, and Steve definitely knows more of which greenery is or isn't edible.

Steve at the water trough

Steve and I meandered through the north end of Amherst for almost four hours before I showed him the outdoor water bottle filling option at Amherst College and then parted ways to continue south for my next fortunate encounter with company.  Understandably, an all-day-and-then-some outing on a Wednesday doesn't align well with many schedules, but after posting my invitation to the run group, Jake had invited everyone else to join him at 5 for a true run from the Holyoke Range notch.  Leaving Steve at 3 meant I had just enough time to string together a few conservation trails through South Amherst to join at the notch.  I even had a moment for bathroom and water stops at the visitor center!

Then we ran, and "I" is a part of "we".  While my past rides have been substantially faster than running pace, the effort, thanks to the efficiency of a bicycle, has been substantially below that of a run.  Granted, while dropping my pack for the faster romp felt wonderful, and I did feel good running, it is possible I felt too good and ran a bit more quickly than advisable three quarters of the way through a long day.  In fact, the really good advice that I didn't receive would have had me join Colleen when she departed one bonus loop early so she could attend to a beckoning Zoom call appointment.  Instead, I stayed with the rest of the group, making it back to the notch for what I figured was a two hour return walk home.

Ah, numbers again, my math was bit off.  I did feel good running and am glad I did that, but with the pack back on, I discovered my two hour estimate was lacking about 50% of the correct number.  I exited the woods at 9:15, donned my reflective hi-viz vest (TBI: not any smarter, but I sure hope noticeably brighter!), and walked down Harris St to my welcoming bed.  I like the solstice and I like honoring it by being outside for all the daylight it has to offer.  A couple sore feet is a small price to pay, especially for someone who was retaught how to walk last year.

My just-miss of sunset from Long Mountain