Sticking with Physical Therapy

Why haven’t I blogged in a month and a half?
B/c without tales of physical challenge and adventure, no siento que meresco su tiempo.
Here I humble and share a personal path.

In sleep, I dream to ski.
Recognize unfamiliar terrain, huck rollers and cliffs with effortless grace, the sounds as present a sensation as what flies beneath my feet. Coming into power there, recognize infallibility and take off from the ground altogether.

Until I wake, choking on tears.

Exactly 4 [four] months into healing from allograft ACL surgery and, while most physical pain has subsided, accepting its constraints has been an ongoing struggle.

Only wanting to perpetuate positives, I share aloud each time I hope to defy odds and get out on the mountain again; accountability makes reality, right?
Check myself by inquiring of Physical Therapist and other knowing and invested minds whether such is advisable and am warned strongly against it.  Told I must “let the season go.”
I am unreliable.
I am resentment.
I make promises better not kept.

I want to defy this, having always defined myself as such.
I’m not a paper pusher, I’m an envelope pusher.

My life changed that day. It is a painful process, to adapt to a new perspective of self; accepting yet another mantle of maturity. To become a person who listens to “no” and calculates risk. According to an earliest Emotional Blueprint, I equate this to succumbing to fear. In looking back, recognize I counted on others to do it for me, to reign me in.

As a child, parents and little sister played this role. This is why, in dozens of “pack your pillowcase and bring all the Oreos, we’re running away,” I always brought a younger sibling. It was a way of making sure I’d have to come home without being the one who admitted she wanted to.
As a youth, it became all authority figures against whom I railed. Not realizing I was setting myself up for failure; for, without something to charge into, I could only run forever [exhausting], fall over [defeat], or wreck.
Fortunately, my family were strong enough to admit when they could do no more without taking pernicious damage, so delivered me to the hands of a guide with the gift to match adolescent defiance against boundaries of natural absolutes.

Love is not mitigating the pain of repercussions, love is standing strong and embodying the positive returns on their struggle to find their own solid ground and reason to stand.

In nature, I encountered constructive indifference.  The consequences of my actions were mine alone to bear. If I refused to make a fire, fine, then no hot dinner. I was forced to account for myself out in the open spaces of Montana and found substance there.
I looked back to realize, limits were not imposed to hamper me, they were given to protect me and I rewarded those who did as much by doing my best to make sure it came at great sacrifice to personal dignity.
When that power was neutered, I was diverted to scramble up a healthier trellis.

Trusting nature’s teaching techniques, I return time and again, always finding growth, grounding, and motivation.

What is the difference between butting heads with someone and leaning on them?
Direction and Conflict.

Thru-hiking became my quintessential paradigm; each step is a meditation.
I found a healthy fit for my nature in my PCT clan. I tugged us forward, they reigned me in, kept it steady. I would have pushed myself too hard too fast and burned out early on. Over the long  haul [2650 miles] I would not have made it without them.

The first constraints and walls we are best to challenge, are our own.
After a few years of wandering the avenues of civilization alone, have come to realize, sometimes you must be both your own motivator and mitigator.
Though it helps when you falter, and falter you will, to have friends and family on whom you can rely.

This is why I sit inside and write, even as it is puking snow outside.