Outer Banks Tradition
I always look forward to my family’s biennial(ish) excursion to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. We typically rent a big house shared between us and family friends. No formal activities are planned during the day; it’s “choose your own adventure,” be it playing on the beach, reading, running, puzzling, or anything else. Then every evening we come together for a home cooked meal–each family takes one night of cooking duty–followed by a group walk on the beach. It’s a simple, yet lovely tradition.
In the throes of my first year at grad school, this trip served as a really nice carrot to look forward to. A week where I don’t have to think about or do anything, aside from keeping up with daily runs and planning one meal. My sister and I made a taco bar and I kept up with my own tradition of baking a pineapple upside down cake.
There were a couple “full circle” moments including running a small local 5K that I’d raced in four years prior. About it I wrote:
I like to think of life as cyclical, or in variations. At our core we are who we are, but our experiences shape us along the way. I also like to think in years of four because of the Olympic cycle (or Olympiad as I just learned it’s called), and four years ago I was here at the Outer Banks and ran the same small local 5K that I did today. I finished within 20 seconds or so of my last time which I’ll take after pretty minimal running during grad school!
Later that same summer I discovered my love for and ability to run lots of miles on trails multiple days in a row and my life changed forever. It wasn’t THAT long ago but a lifetime of world and personal events have happened since then. If present me could speak to past me I’d maybe be tempted to give a bunch of dire warnings of all the trials ahead but ultimately I know I did my best and that’s all we can do. So to my former and present self I’ll say, “Keep going, girl. You’re doing just fine.”
I also finished something I started three years ago on my road trip from Tennessee to Oregon following my Appalachian Trail thru-hike: the book Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. It’s an Odyssey-like story about a wounded deserter from the Confederate army journeying through the rugged Appalachian mountains of North Carolina to be reunited with his love, Ada, at Cold Mountain. It is beautifully written, but very dense, which has made it a struggle to read. I determinedly cracked it back open and finished what I started. And I hated the ending. It actually made me upset. Three years for this??
All the same, I finally released myself from Cold Mountain and was able to get on to the pile of reads that have been next on my list, including Heather Anderson’s Mud, Rocks, & Blazes: Letting Go on the Appalachian Trail which has been sitting on my bookshelf since its release two years ago. I’d been almost afraid to read it, not sure what memories it would stir up from my own hike. Two days later and nearly finished, I’m wondering what I’d been so scared of. In my notes I jotted down, “I thought this would be hard to read because of the memories it would stir up, but it turns out it’s hard to read because it makes me long to go back.”
Lastly, this trip made me contemplate my need to always be doing something. It gives me great pleasure to have purpose and to be working toward a goal or completing a project. To take an intentional pause, take stock of everything, and just sit with my thoughts, well, it turns out that can be a pretty uncomfortable space. When there’s nothing to distract or fill my thoughts like goals and deadlines, the things I feel sad about grow like weeds, easy to pluck or stamp down when life is busy, the source of their growth buried deep. So that’s something my eyes were opened to this week, and something I’ll need to be more intentional in checking in with myself about. Time in nature is always a good way to get in touch with oneself and feel all the feelings, and I’ve got a lot more of that coming this summer. The forest heals all wounds, after all.
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