Trail dates and everything mom

On softening the edges of harsh miles and memories.

The day I finished running across Oregon on the PCT was magical in many, many ways. But before it was magical, it was spirit-and-leg crushingly heinous.

Because before I could take my last glorious steps toward the Washington border, I had to run to the Bridge of the Gods from the slopes of Mount Hood. And Oregon’s tallest volcano and the river that skirts the state’s border, are objectively, not close.

According to my extensive GPS records from that day, it was approximately 59 miles between the landmarks, with a casual 8,547 feet of climbing crammed in there.

I did a lot of math after I started running that morning. And none of it did much to comfort me, especially as the day stretched on – and a daunting number of miles still stood between me and the moment when I could finally stop running and sit down forever.

And after 400-something miles of running, pretty much any number of miles that was greater than zero qualified as “daunting.”

I knew that the last time I would see my crew would be at a little lake tucked into the dense forests above the Columbia River Gorge. I’d run from this lake back down to the riverbanks before and as I ran toward my crew, I was trying to remember just how far it was from the lake to the river. The sun was sinking deeper and deeper and I wanted to wrap my head around just how much longer I had to run.

The ideal scenario would be zero miles, but I knew it was a few more miles than that. I hoped no more than eight or nine. Even eight or nine sounded hard enough that I might need to flag down a hot air balloon to float me down to the river.

But when I got to the little clearing on the lakeshore where my crew had laid out every piece of gear and snack that I might possibly want, they informed me that it was 16 miles to the end. They thought this would be good news.

“You only have 16 to go!” they cheered. I glared into my hot dog.

“Maybe they’re wrong,” I thought.

“Sometimes my friends are wrong,” I hoped.

“Maybe it’s actually 8 or 9,” I said as delusion waged a successful siege over my brain.

The next 16 miles were not my finest miles on the PCT. I was tired from the 450-something miles and nearly eight straight days of running. My legs felt like a fleet of dumpster trucks had hosted a demolition derby over the top and bottom of them. My shin pounded with excruciating pain and my friends wouldn’t let me jeopardize my health by taking more than the recommended dose of advil, which seemed like an unforgivable violation of our friendship. And the terrain escalated from annoying to downright hostile.

The descent was steep and rocky. My body was broken and stumbling through every step. Rocks seemed like boulders. Steep sections were cliffs. And those 16 miles felt like 1600 miles. The distance between that lake and the river felt like traveling from Georgia to Vermont through a sea of molasses.

When I finally got to the finish, it was very magical. Very, very, very magical. But nearly every second leading up to it was not. And when I think about that final descent into the Columbia River Gorge, I mostly think very unkind thoughts about it. And most everything I’ve said about that stretch of trail since that last day on the PCT could be categorized as cruel and unusually hostile.

I went back to that slice of the PCT a few weeks ago for a running date with a badass trail lady out of Portland. This summer, Liz ran the NoBo FKT on the Appalachian Trail (that’s runner/hiker acronym speak for Northbound Fastest Known Time of the 2190 mile trail) (Yeah, 2190 miles). We’d been talking about running together for weeks and it finally worked out to meet up. She suggested meeting in Cascade Locks to run the final miles of the PCT, but she offered to make a Plan B if that didn’t sound good to me.

“If you’re not ready to go back to the PCT, we can run somewhere else!” she texted.

I thanked her for her generous offer, but told her I could probably stand to do some relationship repair with that stretch of the trail.

We met up on the Oregon side of the bridge on a quintessential Pacific Northwest morning. Soupy fog hung over the river as we started running up the rocky path. The ferns that lined the trail were vibrant with the rainfall. The dark trees were shrouded in mist. The trail was spongy beneath us. It was a beautiful wintery day in Oregon.

And it was one of those run dates where every mile just flies by. We shared a lot of “holy shit, me too” moments and bonded over the many things we both experienced during our respective long runs last summer, like the vile state of our feet and the size of our appetite and the intense emotions after finishing our respective runs. The run was full of soul-filling chats about running and art and life.  

When I rolled away from that now-familiar trailhead, I remembered how terrible every inch of my body felt and how very low my mind sank during those final miles of PCTing, but I also thought about every step of the very good run I’d just had with Liz and piled that on top of the harsher memories of those miles. A nice thick slice of Vermont cheddar layered on top of the shit sandwich that was the stretch of trail between the lake and the river on August 8th.

January 21st marked one-year since I lost my mom. It was an especially hard day, preceded by many other especially hard days.

This time of year holds a lot of dark memories for me because it coincided with so much of the worst of my mom’s cancer.

Two Decembers ago is when it all started. With my mom’s diagnosis, the initial surgery, the first frantic trip to Vermont, the terrifying reality of her life threatened by cancer.

And last December is when everything really crashed with my mom’s health. The unsuccessful second clinical trial. The explosion of cancer throughout her body. The decline of her daily living. The phone call with her oncologist that informed me my worst nightmare was coming true and I would lose my mom in a matter of weeks.

I don’t spend a lot of time reliving those memories right now because I can’t. They’re too painful. But even when I’m not dwelling on them, they are there. A pervasive darkness that lurks above my winter days.

I tried to intentionally lighten these hard days and weeks with small and big things. Things to soften the edges of this harsh season. Little glimmers of love to stack upon the season of loss. Candles flickering before sunrise. Long runs with good friends. Hours of Dilly snuggles.

But, I wasn’t sure what to do on this first January 21st. It seemed doomed to be anything but an excruciating day of grief. Nothing really felt right, as I didn’t want to relive the day. I didn’t want to think about those final hours in the hospice home – and the panicked emptiness that followed. I didn’t want to commemorate it or celebrate it or even acknowledge it, but it was an unavoidable presence on my calendar. And in my head.

From the moment I begrudgingly woke up to face the day, I found myself drawn to very Andrea Halnon things. I cozied up in her turquoise sweatshirt. The one that I pulled from her closet last January. The one that’s the shade of a moody lake on a wintery day. The one I didn’t wash until I was sure that last lingering scent of her had faded.

I wrapped the fraying and well-loved fabric of her favorite bracelet around my wrist. The one that’s inscribed with a reminder to Stay Brave. The one I wore for all 460 miles of the PCT.

I read in bed for hours with an extra dark cup of coffee. She would have preferred hazelnut, but she would have liked the book I was reading. We would have texted about whatever she was thumbing through at the same time.

I went for a run on the trails behind my house, just like she would have done. I ran a half-marathon of miles through the hilly woods. Half marathons were her favorite distance. She ran one during her last trip to visit me in Eugene.

And I wrote about her, with music we both loved playing in the background. I wrote stories from before cancer. And stories from after. She was so remarkable on every side of it. I cried as I wrote. Warm tears falling on my keyboard as I typed.

I didn’t spend much time thinking about the day she died. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. But I thought a lot about her life. And all of the ways it has shaped mine. And keeps shaping mine. And will shape my life forever.

I exhaled the deepest breath when I tucked myself into bed that night. I had made it through another one of these impossible milestones of loss. They have felt relentless. The birthdays. The holidays. The anniversaries of every gut-punching day of cancer and loss. There are so many painful memories to sift through after such a huge loss.

January 21st was the excuciating day of grief that I expected in so many ways. But as hard as it was, it was also full of everything Andrea Halnon. It was a heart-wrenching and heart-hugging reminder that while nothing can make losing her any easier, I get to find ways to feel close to her. To hold onto her life and her love. And if there was any day that I needed to remember that, and to feel that, it was January 21st. A day that was terrifying, a day that was brimming with horrible, impossible memories, and a day that was full of my mom from dawn to dusk.