Sometimes Nothing is a Real Cool Hand

Welcome, newcomers! Welcome, oldcomers. Welcome, all of you. I’m not sure where all the new folks are coming from, but happy to have you. Browse the archives, I get around. Just not this time. Last weekend, I had to call off a Pine Barrens adventure to drive down to DelMarVa and drink with young Marines—purely to help a friend in need—and I can confirm: I am officially an oldcomer.

Expensive beach towns are not for me. I looked up mountain bike trails nearby and even brought two fat tire bikes in case anyone wanted to ride on the beaches, as it was before the season, but none of us partook. Well into my forties, the occasion of a hangover was cured by going to the gym and sparring or grappling, or going for a strenuous uphill hike. Now if I have a beer after dinner, my Garmin watch tells me to call off the bike ride and declare a Rest Day. Not even Recovery! If I tried to sneak in some Pilates, it would buzz out “What Are You Thinking Old Man” in Morse code on my wrist.

So that’s why I don’t have an adventure log for you this week. Disclaimer: on the morning of that beach party Vietnam day, I did ride in a casual mountain bike race at Black Run Preserve, called a Poker Run. You follow a course at your own pace, and stop at five checkpoints to collect playing cards. The best hands at the end get prizes. I entered early and finished pretty quickly, .2 mph faster than last year. And this year was a mudder, with a week of rain pooled on the trails.

Look at all the mud on the Sweaty Yeti! (That’s the bike, and also me.) It was a fun ride, and I met John, I rider I rode with at Batsto, and I kept a good pace for riding a 37lb bike on 4.8” tires. (The rider could cut a little weight himself. He’s trying.) I enjoyed the ride. I knew I’d pay for it, drinking that day at a brewery, and that night at an overpriced seaside roadhouse with a Marine and a protocol officer. But I’ll do a lot for a great friend who I haven’t seen in nearly a year.

As you age, you shed friends like skin cells to a loofah. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll hang onto the ones you can. If you follow Arnold Schwarzenegger’s positive wellness newsletter, staying in contact with close friends is a strong hedge against mortality, at least as important as physical health. Perhaps because you’ll actually feel like living.

But we can become stubborn as we age. A lot of friends with older parents get apoplectic over how stubborn they get about ignoring doctor’s advice, or making it easier for the people who have to assist them in their elder years. And don’t even mention mortality. Why should they exercise, Jim Fixx was a runner and died of a heart attack! Well, I was being stubborn about getting physical therapy for a nagging injury in my pelvis. It didn’t stop me from doing anything, except sleeping again if I woke up at night, and putting on my socks without the use of the word ‘motherfucker,’ so I just lived with it. For at least six months.

I didn’t even take pain medication. It’s so foolish, but it’s easy to get in the mindset of thinking that enduring needless pain is some sort of contest where you win something. All you win is pain. Telling someone to seek medical help in the United States takes a large amount of privilege, so I’ll say if you can afford to do it, don’t let stubbornness keep you in pain. After three sessions of PT to strengthen the hip flexors that have weakened since I stopped training in fight sports, I am feeling much better. And I’m taking pain meds before bed, so I don’t wake up at 5:00 AM and think about whether I should be composting, instead of getting a good night’s sleep.

So, don’t be like me. Don’t wait half a year. I was rewarded for my change of heart this morning with the brief sight of a Belted Kingfisher, a Spotted Sandpiper, and two chummy Blue Jays pecking through the pebbles with a cacophony of birdsong around them.

For those of you who hate video, I get it. I don’t like watching a video that could be text or a photo any more than I like attending a meeting that could’ve been an email. For you, here’s a photo of a little pollinator on a white violet or marsh blue violet. I’m not sure the flower, they grow in the rocks of my driveway.

I started reading Car by Harry Crews, and A Walking Life by Antonia Malchik and I’m enjoying both. Savoring both. A Walking Life doesn’t just extol the simple pleasures of a good walk, it reminds Americans just how unwalkable most of our towns are, and why. The Crews is everything I wanted it to be, and a perfect foil to Antonia’s book: Car is about the American love and death affair with the automobile, from a man who went from driving a chopped Mercury with 27 coats of mirror finish lacquer to swearing off the juice and never treating a car as more than a tool again. It begins in a junkyard run by a car lover whose black sheep child has decided to eat a car on television for cash. If you didn’t exist in the ‘70s, you can be forgiven for forgetting that people who ate bicycles, airplanes, and cars (who presumably shat ten penny nails and 9/16” hex nuts) were a minor fixture on early “reality” television such as Real People and That’s Incredible. This book comes from that era, when cars were big and ugly and Evel Knievel was on prime time, and we’d watch to see if he died, and to not have to watch Tiny Tim on a variety show.

Some things have become worse in my lifetime, but others have gotten a little bit better. Television is still a wasteland that exists to sell crap, but on rare occasions there’s something better than Evel Knievel crashing his exploding rocket cycle into Tiny Tim and his ukulele. Had that happened, the ‘70s would’ve been a lot more awesome.

Rebecca Wisent of Fearless Green has created a place to find nature writing on Substack, and you can learn about it, join, or peruse it all here. Thanks so much, Rebecca!

Coming Soon: A Nature Directory!