Like everyone, I'm hammered by the stress of the pandemic. Like all Californians, I'm shackled by wildfire closures and climate apocalypse

I count on moving to get rid of stress. I'm a fit outdoors-woman. I'm on a mountain search and rescue team. I have too many bikes, an embarrassment of skis, snowboards, crampons, ice axes, rock-climbing gear, kayaks, tents. I spend alot of time outside.

On the surface, my whole life has been committed to pursuing my outdoor passions. Recently, I've begun to question -- am I even pursuing? These days, it seems more and more like I'm running away, not towards.  It took the perfect storm of the COVID pandemic and California's wildfire Armageddon to realize it...

This running from stress maybe isn't about staying fit.

I should have pieced it together years ago, when I found myself cycling 80 miles just four months after cancer surgery. I'd started moving within days of surgery, walking, hiking, then cycling. Why? Was I really such a fitness fanatic?

No. I didn't realize it at the time, but it’s because - deep down - I needed to escape.

At the time, my mind was a jumbled mess. My stomach was a knot. Every night, when I slept, I plugged air pods in my ears and turned on books. No room for dark thoughts in the wee hours of the morning. During the day I was restless. Unable to concentrate, I’d start moving and be unable to stop. Ten miles of hiking later… Eighty miles of cycling later… I’d come home spent, but with a blank mind. Calm, but empty. I even believed it when people said it was amazing how I’d recovered so quickly from cancer.

So, here's the point. The COVID pandemic has sent me --and many others-- into a similar obsessive flight, escaping into nooks and crannies of nearby Regional Parks, into other landscapes behind my bay city, and into far-flung national forests and parks.

I'm definitely not the only one dealing with COVID angst with restlessness. We NEED to move. We NEED to take a break and forget, even if just for a few hours, the stress we're immersed in every day.

During one of my recent attempts to cycle an inordinately long distance, I chanced for the first time upon the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest and discovered something wholly unexpected. Bristlecones are found on the cold, exposed summits of the driest peaks in California, where the high desert reaches 10,000 feet in the White Mountains. I had thought that the oldest trees would be in sheltered areas where conditions were good – lee slopes, water seeps, nutrient rich soil. Not so. Research shows that the tougher their life, the longer these trees live. Even within the same grove, the oldest of the ancient bristlecones are the ones most desiccated by sun and most hammered by wind, stunting their growth, twisting them into gnarled shapes, and—ultimately—granting them long life. Stress has given them stronger more resilient bodies.

Looking for meaning in trees... it seems to be a weakness of mine.

One simple headline teetered my world today. "USDA FOREST SERVICE CLOSING ALL CALIFORNIA NATIONAL FORESTS FOR PUBLIC SAFETY". At first I cheered the response to fire Armageddon around the state. But then the hard truth settled on me like a giant rock. These National Forests had been my escapist terrain, their wilderness had quenched my wanderlust... but now they were off-limits to me, too. My world suddenly shrank and disappeared like the circle at the end of those Looney Toons cartoons. I can’t backpack into Mt. Ritter. I can’t jump into swimming holes along the Stanislaus River. I can't explore any new terrain in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness. These had all been September plans.

I’ve been shackled. My restless feet have been told, "No!" at the state level.  The claustrophobic panic brought on by forced immobility made me finally realize my need to move was something other than fitness.

I'm not prepared to be so city-bound. I don't have the skills to stay in place. Or face my fears.

My heroes have always been the giants of outdoor extremism… Arlene Blum, Lynn Hill, Sarah Marquis, Fred Becky. Possibly also restless, definitely hero-worthy. But with self-knowledge comes new perspectives. And growth. Like when I learned through experience that there’s also a hero’s journey in motherhood. 

New times definitely need new heroes. As I sit, hammered by the stress of the pandemic and shackled by climate apocalypse, who can I look to? Is anyone emerging gracefully from all this?

What about that kid skate-boarding past me on the sidewalk—fluid, in-motion right here in the city?

What about that older couple playing pickle-ball in Cedar-Rose park—running miles even while caged in a tiny court.

What about the thrumming beat of that drummer at the BART station—making a small, urban space danceable?

by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Here buses rattle like buckets
of bolts; brake drums made stronger
by prayers to Santiago. The paint of these buses
regalo blue, cielo red, tierra y sanguine.
Up front Old Virgin Mother rides lookout,
and it is the law: all bus tires must be square,
all drivers must be certifiably blind,
all riders must have springs in their necks
and their ass cheeks.
The men wear their hats extra jammed on.
The women tie the live chickens together loosely
on purpose, just to make trouble. And the old
toothless one sags next to me. She has always
just eaten a tub of garlic, she has always just rubbed
her armpits and genitals with vinegar and goat cheese.
She is always leaning toward me, never away.
And I am always her seat mate, or that of her older sister
or her aged father. Always I am sitting thigh to thigh
with La Muerte. Now this La Muerte, this old one, laughs
maniacally at absolutely nothing, and over and over,
and always right in my face. Her breath fogs my vision, wilts
my hat brim, makes my nose cry. I work hard to stay by her,
to love her, love her cackle, love her odor, to love the pain
that I feel. If I can love her, if I can stand this pain,
of being near what others flee,
I will be able to write tonight,
and maybe for as long as a month.

Ah La Muerte, patron of las chupatintas, the pen-pushers,
you who only travel by bursting bus or teeming train or
broken car or bombed-out lorry, you who run
all over my page, screeching, "Catch me if you can,"
you who hide between the lines as though they are hedges,
peering over like some old baby in a macabre peek-a-boo.
Ah La Muerte, my love, my lover, pray for us, your writer children.
Give us all those acrid, sour, dour, and sickeningly sweet
smirks and smells, exactly the ones we need to write right.
Please, I beg you in all my authorial insanity, sit beside us
now and forever, fertilize our writing for ever and always
with the holy compost of your smiles.