Rattled on the Umpqua
Tales of misadventures and the spirit spectrum.
I’m all kinds of excited that BOA is sponsoring Trail Mix this month. I started wearing BOA shorts a few years ago purely because they look so damn fun and I was lured in by their rainbow of colors and fun prints, but I soon discovered they’re really, really good at running, too. They are now my go-to shorts for any long run or adventure. And the short ones, too. Also, hanging out at home every day of the week. I pretty much live in BOA. And they’re giving you 25 percent(!) off with the code BOATrailMix25. (I love their split shorts and their new crop’it tanks, both worn during the run featured in this misadventurous story).
Dilly barked every single minute of the 32-mile drive to the trailhead two Saturdays ago. He was displeased with the fact that dogs usually ride in the back of my friend’s truck and not perched on the console or snuggled into the passenger seat like he prefers. Dilly is not a fan of boundaries or barriers. Or separation from people. And so he let us know that he was unhappy.
It was a real shrill bark. Like someone was torturing him for information about where he buried his bone in the backyard. I’ve made that drive hundreds of times, but on the day Dilly was in The Back, it took a million times longer than ever before.
We counted down the seconds until the trailhead. But instead of finding sweet, sweet relief from puppy pandemonium, we discovered another layer of chaos: Eric had packed two left shoes and zero of the right ones. So, we drove right back to Eugene (with Dilly happily and silently perched on the console) and bailed on our run plans.
My recent long runs have been a comedy of errors. A symphony of mishaps. And they’ve challenged me to respond with an attitude that doesn’t make the challenging situation any more challenging – but there’s been some room for improvement.
I trekked down to the North Umpqua River this past weekend for a long run with a couple of friends and a tornado of rascal puppies. The run was on an absolutely beautiful trail, but turned into quite the misadventure when we realized our map of the area hadn’t downloaded properly and had also lied to us about the mileage of our route – leaving us with several bonus miles before we reached our prearranged pickup spot. And we had no good way to communicate with our picker-uppers about our predicament, as we were out of cell service and only had a pair of hand radios to fall back on.
And this was all shortly after a standoff with an angry rattlesnake.
“Soooo what should we do now?” Eli sighed. We had just popped off the trail and onto the bustling highway that intersects the trail. We could see a trailhead sign on the other side of the road and the quick ascent into the steep hills above the river.
Going that way would mean several more miles of slow-going terrain as it traversed hills, downed trees, and landslide debris.
And, most unappealing of all, there was the possibility of another rattlesnake encounter. Which did not sound super fun. We’d both been imagining swarms of snakes along the trail after bumping into the especially large and especially rattle-y snake.
Much like Dilly in The Back, the snake had let us know that he was angry.
He’d been an inconvenient rattlesnake, as he picked a spot on the trail that was flanked by steep and loose terrain on both sides. We’d managed to get around him but we both left the encounter….rattled. And had a hard time feeling safe on the trail after our dicey dance around him.
The alternative to taking the trail was to run down the highway until we reached the road to our pickup spot. But because our map hadn’t downloaded, we had no idea exactly how far this was. We assumed the miles would be cruisier, but instead of snakes, we’d be battling fast and loose cars careening down the highway on a holiday weekend.
“I think we go highway,” I said, and flashed my watch at Eli, who had sat down on the guardrail in a momentary surrender to our predicament.
“It’s already almost 6pm and we’re at mile 24,” I went on. While we could both handle the physical demands of the next stretch of trail, we were already well past the time our friends had expected us – and well past the time our legs and brains had expected to be done.
So we started running along the highway with cars ripping by and glass littering the shoulder. The punishing sun bounced off the pavement, roasting our bodies from every angle.
The uncertainty of when we would be done combined with the certainty that I wanted to be done presented a real challenge for my brain and my spirit.
I knew I had a choice about how to respond to the situation and I could feel that I was devolving into a dangerous reaction, that would not help anything at all. My tone was becoming progressively more annoyed. My thoughts were spiraling into a dark place. And instead of remembering any of the good or fun miles, I was having trouble thinking about anything other than how badly I wanted to be done and eating ice cream.
And I knew there was a much better path forward than the one I was heading down.
I thought back to a time when I totally screwed my friends on a run up one of Oregon’s biggest mountains. I’d left my key hidden at my car – but when we got back, we could not find it. Not even when we ripped off the bumper in a moment of desperate scouring.
Everyone’s keys, phones, and wallets were locked in my car, which was parked many miles up a forest road with no cell service. My spare car keys were two hours away, in my second-floor apartment, which was locked. The key to that apartment was trapped inside my car.
Despite the fact that we were royally clusterfucked, my friends remained miraculously positive. Jokes kept flying. Teasing happened. People fired up their problem-solving muscles. And when this stretched into a two-day affair, that involved hiking to cell service, calling for help, scaling a ladder to break into my apartment, and then driving two hours back to fetch my car (and everyone’s belongings) the next day, no one dipped into a pit of despair or negativity.
All that positive attitude really helped a hard situation not nosedive into a totally miserable affair. It stayed (mostly) fun for everyone, even when disaster hit.
I’ve also experienced the other side of the spirit spectrum. And there’s a big difference in how it feels when negatitivity takes over. A lot of negativity can make time and distance feel like Dilly in The Back miles, about one million times longer and less enjoyable than normal.
When a big run around Mount Adams unexpectedly stretched into the night, Eli tried to find a silver lining in how pretty the stars are, but I told him unless the stars could bake me a pizza, I didn’t really give a shit about all the sparkling light in the sky. And I’m less proud of how I handled that moment than others. We were already struggling, and my response to our hurdles certainly didn’t help us get through our remaining miles.
As we kept running on the baking asphalt along the river, I could feel Screw-the-Stars Emily trying to rear her ugly attitude.
Up ahead, Eli pulled out the radio and tried to reach our friends for the 137th time in the last two miles.
“This is Sparkle Pony on channel 9!” he yelped.
I laughed. A ridiculous radio call name was exactly what I needed to hear while I was dangling over the edge of a blackhole of negativity.
For the first time in the last two miles, we heard a crackle on the other side.
We cheered like we’d just won a lifetime supply of cheetos.
“This is Sparkle Pony!” Eli cried. “Sparkle Pony here on channel 9!”
Our friends answered with a plan to scoop us up, so we could proceed directly to a freezer full of ice cream.
Our misadventure on the Umpqua finally ended. But I know I’ll be on another misadventure soon, probably on my next long run at this rate, and I hope the next one doesn’t have any more encounters with angry rattlesnakes or Screw-the-Stars-Emily. This weekend was a good reminder that runs are much better without them.
If you dig Trail Mix or a story resonates with you or makes you laugh or cry or laugh-cry and you want to say “hey thanks for typing these words and sharing them on the internet,” you can buy me a coffee (or beer!). I can’t thank you enough for supporting this little storyletter.
There are also monthly membership options if you want to support Trail Mix with a regular coffee or beer. I love connecting with folks through these stories and want to keep writing and sharing every week and your support helps me do that! Big, big cheers and thanks for supporting Trail Mix in whatever way you can - through coffees, and notes, and letting it land in your inbox, and sharing it with friends. I am so grateful for any and all of your Trail Mix-ing!
You can share Trail Mix with friends (real life or internet ones). (Link to webpage here!) You can also send me notes about Trail Mix-y things through email, comments, instagram or twitter.
Trail Mix is a weekly newsletter full of stories about running and life, dispatches from the wilderness, and essays about how it all collides. You can subscribe to Trail Mix for more stories in your inbox.