If not now, when?

I'm in my granny hike era.

Hello friends, as it’s summer with a generally slower readership, might try and experiment with this format of short-ish essay, but lots of photos & links for the month of August as we all enjoy the last few weeks of summer.

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A couple of months ago, I was having a conversation with someone many years older than me about our various health ailments when at some point he laughed and said, “you do realize that I am old but you are not?”

He chided me in the same way I sometimes chide my 21 year old when she complains about being tired and everything hurting. I’m reminded that my friends and I used to chuckle when the kid was nine years old and would declare that all adults ever do is drink coffee and complain about how much their back hurts. It’s funny because it tracks, and at some point the tables turn. Kids grow up and discover for themselves that their comical, but astute observations about adulthood are basically true.

I guess the point of this preamble is that age and health are all relative. But back to my friend’s comment. I, too, was beginning to notice that I was starting to sound like an elderly woman prattling off about my health issues lately. But listen, I’ve taken some really bad falls in the past few years, including a spectacularly public one for all of NYC to see, and another which had me bedridden for three weeks when my ribs came crashing down on a chair mid-flight. So I sort of feel like I’ve earned my right to grumble like an old person.

After two episodes this year that landed me in the E.R. and urgent care each time I’ve travelled, I’ve become really anxious about getting on planes and going on long car rides. It’s a problem. But I’m pleased to say that we’ve completed our summer travels with no major incident so far.

I guess occupational therapy and all those strict dietary changes have made a difference (I still miss coffee). That, and remembering to breathe.

I have a tendency to hold my breath as if I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I suspect that I’ve been doing this for years, maybe my entire life even. This showed up as a minor partially collapsed left lung on a recent CT scan, one of the more curious in a list of findings I did not expect. It sounds way worse than it actually is (so the doctors say, but also WHAT) and apparently, I have to remember to take deep breaths. It’s also related to holding all my stress in. Human bodies are so weird.

But right now, I feel emboldened and I want to travel everywhere. I want to hike mountains and wade in cerulean waters and eat endless plates piled high with everything that’s now forbidden. I want to sit in forests, breathe in the scent of earth, and listen to birds. It’s a complete turnaround from earlier this year when I was sometimes afraid to leave the house and lowkey wanted to die during my worst chronic episodes. Now, I feel a sudden urgency to get busy traveling while I still comfortably can.

Desire and reality don’t always play well together, but if not now, then when? In the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, my mind goes into overdrive entertaining the possibilities.

I’ve entered what I’m calling this summer, my “granny hike” era. You know, where you drive to the visitor’s center of a national park and go “hiking” on a paved trail accessible from the facilities so that you can get a good look at the summit and say you hiked a mountain? Yes, that kind of faux hiking.

On our return visit after fifteen years to Mt. Rainier this month, my heart wanted to hike miles and miles to see majestic vistas unfold in front of me. The kind of payoff earned when you huff it up a mountain not knowing when the trail will end, until you reach a view so breathtaking that it swallows you in its beauty—but I know now not to push myself. Instead, I followed the crowds where everyone clamored to get that social media money shot of the snow-crested peak. We lost our minds over a marmot sighting and we took our photos, but I wanted more.

I decided to try a real hike a few miles away, which ended up being too ambitious so we turned around halfway without getting our payoff view. Oh well. It may very well be that my hardcore hiking days are over, but we did have the trail to ourselves, at least.

Heartbreak isn’t always dramatic and it doesn’t always involve people. Sometimes it seeps in quietly as resignation settles in. I sat on a cliff with my legs dangling over the edge and wistfully remembered my past wilderness accomplishments of hiking and roughing it in the woods for weeks at a time. Not bad for a city kid who never hiked before in her life until then.

But really, I’m thrilled that I was able to do everything we planned on this trip. It was a litmus test to see how well I can still travel and it was the escape that we needed to feel something other than doom and disgust.

I’ve been reeling from The News and sometimes city parks just aren’t enough to disconnect, truly. Not when we’ve gone from the price of eggs to covering up pedophilia and wrongfully detaining citizens. There is nothing like being in big nature to ground myself again. To spend time in ancient forests and national parks. To feel the pine needles underfoot and watch the sunlight dapple and dance on forest ferns. To be mesmerized by water currents ripple like satin.

Despite it all, there is still beauty in this world. Yes, we will have to fight harder to protect it, but there is so much more to experience, to be dazzled by, to chase a light more brilliant. I have to believe this because the alternative is too dark. It reminds me that we have yet to live through some of the best days of our lives. We don’t know what or when, but I promise you those days are still ahead.

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Related reading

Life is indeed short. Take the vacation.

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Links & recommendations

To read:

• The end of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is a concerning nail in the coffin for comedy (The Guardian)
  I really do hope Colbert goes scorched earth in the next 10 months he has left on air at the Late Show.

• Sandra Oh Knows What’s Great About Middle Age (NY Times)
  The first time I saw Sandra Oh was in 1994 in Double Happiness, a Canadian film about an aspiring young actress who struggles with her independence from her Chinese Canadian family. We’re around the same age, and it’s been fun to see Sandra take her career to such far heights.

• The truth behind the endless “kids can’t read” discourse (Vox)
  Is it just a generational thing to complain that kids can’t read? Or is there really evidence that screens and AI weaken critical literacy? The data tells a more nuanced story.

• Have we reached peak trinket? (Dazed Digital)
  I admit, I do have a few trinkets hanging off my tote bags because…well, why not.

• The Dreams of a Descendant of Sirenuse: Works in Glass (ecotone)
  Amber Cowan uses recycled glass to create intricate and detailed sculptural pieces in vintage glass hues that remind me of medieval ivory carvings of the gothic era.

• How Trump’s anti-immigrant policies could collapse the US food industry – visualized (The Guardian)
  I’ve always said that you can deport immigrants or enjoy cheap food, but you can’t really have both.

• OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent can control an entire computer and do tasks for you (The Verge)
  Is this a future where everyone is going to have a personal assistant via an AI agent?

• Only 3 years left – new study warns the world is running out of time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change (The Conversation)
  Governments simply cannot get it together.

• A New Kind of Mommy Blog (The Cut)
  I guess mommy blogs won’t—or maybe they never did—go away.

Just for fun:

• Half an Hour of VINTAGE Commercials From the 1970s! (YouTube)

To buy and use:

• After Bite - Our doctor relative recommended we carry around these bug bite pen applicators to apply immediately after a mosquito bite. With two of us especially perceptible to mosquitos, we don’t leave home without it.

• Fortnum & Mason flower tea infuser - I picked up two of these infusers in London earlier this year and while not particularly cheap, they are so sturdy and well designed. Really the perfect gift for the tea enthusiast.