How to Have a Microadventure

Lookout Mountain, Georgia

There are over three billion public land and marine acres in the United States. These are managed by a patchwork quilt of over 15,000 national, state, and local agencies and nongovernmental organizations. The overwhelming majority of these lands can be enjoyed by you and me. That’s amazing. 

Each of us owns our public lands, yet no single person can claim them as their own. It is this beautiful, (mostly) successful experiment in socialism that nobody knows about. At least 188 million acres of public lands are national forests, which operate under the multiple-use concept. This means you can basically do whatever you want out there so long as you preserve it for the next person. It’s that small “d” democratic spirit that Woody Guthrie sang about that makes our public lands so great.

The bicycle is a manifestation of that same spirit. The Nineteenth Amendment, which extended the democratic principle to women was ratified, in large part, because of the bicycle. According to Susan B. Anthony, the bicycle "did more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."  Google it. Bikes do not require a license or permit; anyone can ride one. Bicycling is possible for all ages, race and ethnicities, genders, and is generally accessible to all socioeconomic statuses. (Adaptive bicycles for riders with disabilities sadly remain a different story.) If you have a bike, you have cheap, clean, and healthy access to the world.

The bike is the people’s vehicle.

Public lands belong to the people. 

Together they foster a democratic spirit of adventure – the microadventure. Adventures, Alastair Humphreys says, for "normal people with real lives." Here's how to plan your own bicycle-powered microadventure. 

Pull up a map of your city. Print it off. Throw a dart at any of the green or brown areas and I bet you can ride your bike to it. There is a good chance you can sleep there as well. That is a microadventure. Don’t have a color printer or dartboard? Check out the Protected Areas Database from the United States Geological Survey. It is a national inventory of the United States' protected lands (and marine areas). 

One in every 3.5 acres of land in the United States is federally owned (i.e., you and me) but don't sleep on state parks and state forests (also owned by you and me) and benevolent private land managers. Chances are, wherever you live, there is someplace you can adventure to. 

Once you find a destination, you need a route. This, to me, is the fun part. I love maps. My wife estimates 90% of my non-work-related computer time is spent looking at maps. Several resources are available for planning the best possible route. I prefer unpaved adventures so I use gravelmap.com, mtbproject.com, and ridewithgps.com 

This particular route starts in Chattanooga and connects gravel, singletrack, and roads to Cloudland Canyon State Park on the Georgia side of Lookout Mountain. The route begins on trails managed by the Lookout Mountain Conservancy, the National Park Service, Georgia state parks, and various private landowners like Covenant College and Lula Lake Land Trust. That's a lot of bureaucratic cooperation in one overnight bikepacking trip. And it works! How neat is that? 

Except for the glaring little detail of how it was acquired from indigenous people, America’s public lands are among my favorite things about this urine-soaked hellhole. But the sordid history of land acquisition in the United States is not to be forgotten. There is one other map tool worth exploring when planning your microadventure: native-lands.ca  

Here you can discover what Native Americans or First Nations the land originally and rightfully belonged to. You can read about the territories and treaties and histories as well as visit the tribe's official pages. I suspect some readers will find this exercise performative SJW virtue signaling. Whatever. Native Land Digital tells indigenous histories on indigenous people's own terms and challenges non-indigenous people to learn about the lands we live on. As a social studies teacher and outdoor recreator, I think that matters. You might not. We all reserve the right to be wrong about everything and about this you would be. 

Cloudland Canyon State Park

Microadventures are democratic in the sense that they open up adventure to "normal" people. There is of course a degree of privilege -- the body you inhabit, the equipment you own, or the land you're on -- and the goal ought to be broadening the sense in which every person really can enjoy human-powered outdoor recreation and adventure. I think that bikes and public lands are a great place to start. 

If you live in Chattanooga and have a bike and sleeping bag, you can start here. The route is a mix of gravel, singletrack, and road. With a little bit of walking or guts, even the vintage, rigid, 26" mountain bike gathering dust in your parents' garage can do it. The entire route is on Cherokee and Yuchi land. Stay the night. Make some coffee. Reverse it back home or find one of the scenic highways to bomb back down to the valley. See you out there. 

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Not My Words: How to Dress While Riding a Bike

source: instagram

I enjoy an IPA (though increasingly less so) and I like riding my bike long distances (if camping is involved) but dang, that meme goes hard. This month's "Not My Words" is short and sweet from Grant Petersen's Just Ride. Based on Goodreads reviews, it is either an angry polemic against the influence of racing on the bike industry or as a delightful curmudgeon's reflection on the simplicity of riding a bicycle. 

"In its need for special clothing, bicycle riding is less like scuba diving and more like a pickup basketball game." -- Grant Petersen, Just Ride: A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike (2012)

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12 Months Sleeping Outside

Suck Creek Canyon and the Tennessee River Gorge

Sleeping outside is good for you. Evidence? Oh, so you’re Mr. Science Guy now. Here’s a sentence from the Journal of Environment and Behavior that’ll make you absolutely want to scrape your eyeballs out: 

“Analysis revealed a positive, linear association between the density of trees and self-reported stress recovery, adjusted R² = .05, F(1, 149) = 8.53, p < .01.” 

STEM ruins beauty. Compare that to this poem by Wendell Berry:

"I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." 

I spent the year trying to regularly, once a month, rest in the peace of wild things and it was liberating. This dumb little goal helped me feel a lot more like myself but I have no evidence to prove it and also I'm no poet. So here's some beauty-ruining data and crappy iPhone photos from a year of sleeping outside once a month. 

Figure 1

I did not sleep outside in February or August. Mid-February, Rebecca and I took our first trip away since the pandemic started. Ultimately, because of COVID restrictions, we really just did the same thing we do in Chattanooga, except in a cabin in the woods. We went for hikes, watched T.V., got dinner out, brought it back to the house, and ate. R.V. people call that "camping" so it's on the list but is not included in the subsequent data. August is just terrible and I didn't even try to sleep outside. Who cares? Not me. 

I wrote trip reports for a few of these, which you can read HERE. 

Russ vintage mountain bike-packing through north Florida pine forests

Figure 2

Ten out of 11 trips were with friends. I think that speaks for itself. I also appreciate the variety of folks I was able to share these spaces with; ranging from my life-long best friend, Russ to Reid and Leah and their one-year-old daughter. Max and Brooks take the cake for most trips (Max was part of the King Family Campout). 

Max riding out of the fog in Prentice Cooper State Forest

Figures 3.a and 3.b

Getting outside doesn’t have to be complicated. “Aim small, miss small.”80% of these monthly adventures were overnighters within an hour or two of home. This is pretty easy in a town like Chattanooga and I'm thankful for that. But I think that a lot of us can find these small adventures near our respective towns. 

adventure from the front door somewhere on Lookout Mountain

Figure 4

83% of nights slept outside were on public land. Public land conjures images of dense forests and spacious deserts managed by the US Forest Service or  Bureau of Land Management but let's not forget about our state parks! State parks get a bad rap, I think, because, well honestly, they can be bougie and touristy and feature things like zip lines and golf courses. But some of our iconic outdoor spaces are our state parks: Eldorado Canyon in Colorado or Cloudland Canyon in Georgia. What incredible resources we should protect. 

Becca overlooking Savage Gulf at the South Cumberland State Park

Figure 5

2021 was the year of bikepacking. This was by design as part of the reason I set this goal was to bikepack more. A note on the "other:" this includes car-camping with Rebecca's family and sleeping in my parent's backyard. 

all that bikpacking and only one flat...

Figure 6

I slept outside for years, months at a time even, without owning a tent. Cowboy or cowgirl or cowperson camping is the purest form of sleeping outside and it’s in my blood. I finally bought my first nice tent back in 2018 and I got some good use out of it this year but I still prefer no separation between me and the open air. Again, I want to emphasize the point that camping doesn't have to be complicated. Camping tentless is lighter, simpler, and in my opinion, better. 

Brooks cowperson camping in Suck Creek Canyon

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Zen and the Art of Hike-a-Bike

photo by Brooks

Unpopular opinion: I love hike-a-bike. I really do. Hike-a-bike is the act of pushing, pulling, or carrying your bike, usually because the terrain is too steep or too loose to pedal. In the bicycling community, this would be like saying, “I enjoy paying taxes” or “I love washing the dishes.” A friend once threatened to extend the ride by 13 miles just to avoid a short hike-a-bike up a steep horse trail. Paying taxes, washing the dishes, or pushing your bike up a hill can be difficult and tiresome but also incredibly mundane - Sisyphean even. 

Thich Nhat Hanh claimed you can meditate while washing the dishes. Think about that. The second most-famous living Buddhist (second only to the Dali Lama), a world-renowned and revered Zen master says you can do this transcendent-touching, nirvana-actuating activity while doing something as banal as washing your dishes. That’s amazing. And, I think, if you can meditate while doing the dishes, you can meditate while pushing your bike up an enormous hill. If you don’t ride a bike very much, copy and paste this into your word processor and word search and replace “hike-a-bike” with whatever “hard thing” it is that you do. The same can probably be said about trail running, climbing off-widths, or sinking a putt for birdie. 

A Buddhist once described meditation to me as the middle of a three-circle Venn diagram, where the three circles are concentration, awareness, and mindfulness. Concentration is the ability to focus tightly on an anchor or object of meditation. Richard Rohr, a Catholic contemplative, describes this exercise as “a long, loving look at the Real.” While a ridgeline, the end of a switchback, or the backside of your friend who’s way ahead of you is not the Ultimate Reality, I find the ability to focus tightly on an anchor like this good practice for the real deal — the lotus position under a bodhi tree or washing the dishes kind of real deal.

Awareness and mindfulness are more difficult to differentiate. Both help us be present. Anyone can white-knuckle grin and bear it to the top of a hill. Or clasp their eyes shut  until finally the singing bowl bell gongs. I have. These experiences sucked. Meditation is more than the furrowed brow of concentration. It also requires the space to have a sense of all that is happening around you. In other words, having a sense of our physical sensations and mental contingencies while keeping an object of meditation. 

The textural sound of pea gravel beneath my shoes and tires. The pleasant ambiance of the forest: locusts, birds, and streams. The feeling of sweat in my mustache, hunger in my belly, and fatigue in my legs. Seeing the path of least resistance ahead of me. Noticing the rutted dirt, the blocks of rocks, or even the owl in the tree. Noticing it all for what they are while ever moving toward the anchor. That's meditation. 

If this sounds all too much for you, try this. The next time you’re pushing your bike up some heinous climb, take some deep breaths. Begin to notice 5 things you see; 4 things you hear; 3 things you feel; 2 things you smell; and 1 thing you taste. I promise you won’t regret it. You may not achieve nirvana but you’ll be closer to getting back on your bike and with a more “present-presence” than you would have otherwise. I think a 20% grade climb up loose gravel in a forest is a worthy monastery or meditation cushion. There are no to-do lists, emails, or notifications. Really, the only thing that exists is the present moment. So just be there. Or rather, just be. 

Meditation or looking deeply, Thich Nhat Hanh says, is to see the true nature of things. Which, according to Buddhism, is to see and understand things as impermanent. You don’t have to be Buddhist to appreciate this. The hill I am pushing my bike up; the feelings of joy and grief I experience; the thoughts of compassion and greed that come and go inside my head; indeed, my very life is not forever. How could they? The future doesn’t exist (this is a hill I am willing to die on). 

Don’t believe me? Listen to Marc E., from Collection 8, Episode 3 of The Great British Baking Show. Marc finished his showstopper dharma wheel cake while the other bakers worked frantically to finish their final touches. Sitting on his stool, like a zen master with a Cornish accent, he counseled, 

“I take every opportunity I can just to take a mindful breath. Just kind of brings me back to the present moment. ‘Cause when you think about it, when we’re worrying, we’re worrying about things that happened in our past. Or [we’re] worrying about the future. And ultimately, we’ve got no control over that, have we?… Of course, it’s easier said than done.”

Easier said than done. Like pushing a bike up a hill. Thanks, Marc. 

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5 Things I've Noticed While Riding a Bike

Figure 1

I'm no Alex Howes but I've ridden my bike enough to notice some things. For example, the more miles I ride, the more pizza I need. The more pizza I eat, the more miles I need to bike. (Fig. 1). I've noticed other things. Like, cyclists love data. Cyclists are on Strava because they crave the data. They need the data. They want to become one with the data. And since I am a visual learner who loves charts and graphs, I have systematized the data for you to consume and become one with. Let's start with some easy direct correlations and ease our way into more advanced behavioral economics.

Figure 2 

A redneck friend of mine said that anybody with tires over 33” is compensating for something. Whether that is true or not, and it definitely is, it is true that anyone driving a truck with tires over 33” is guaranteed to not give you your three feet (T.C.A. §55-8-175). This is especially true if they have a Punisher symbol anywhere on their Jeep or truck. These people do not care if you live or die, and they take some pride in that misanthropy. I am nearly convinced in a medieval, Dantean, abysmal hell because of people like them. Essentially, the bigger the truck: the bigger the pile of loose, sloppy stool in the driver's seat. 

Figure 3

The same can be said for sports car people. Generally speaking the louder the car (or truck) the more inconsiderate (re: deadly) the driver. This includes American muscle and imported Fast and Furious wannabes. A while back, I lectured some mid-life-crisis in a convertible at a stoplight about T.C.A. §55-8-175. It states that a cyclist does, in fact, ride in the road, not the sidewalk (and may even take up the entire righthand lane). He flipped me off, revved his engine, and “drag raced” me at the green light. Cool? I casually rode my bike and pulled up next to him at the next red light. Nice.

Figure 4

I’m always in an imaginary race with geared cyclists on the trail. I'm like a little wiener dog with a Napoleon complex at the dog park. I just want to run with the big dogs. RIP legs. 

Figure 5

In Figure 1, I stated that the more miles I ride, the more pizza I need. True. But I also noticed that I don't have to ride my bike very far to demand pizza. In economics, a perfectly inelastic demand curve means that no matter the price, the quantity demanded will always remain the same. For example, a person’s demand for insulin stays the same regardless of how much it costs (we need Medicare For All, now!). Assuming “miles biked” is represented on the “price” or y-axis and “pizza” on the “quantity demanded” or x-axis, the demand for pizza stays the same no matter how many miles biked. Whether I ride my bike 10 miles or 100, pizza and beer sound nice. 

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5-Word Gear Reviews: Thermarest Z Lite Sleeping Pad

photo by Ry

The Therm-a-Rest Z Lite has been in production since 1989. It's used by alpinists in Denali National Park, thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail, and bikepackers on the Tour Divide. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of reviews online. Why do the internet and your email inbox need another one? Because alpinists, thru-hikers, and Tour Dividers are hardcore. These folks can rough it. But what about the normal folks, the weekend warriors, the semi-rad fun-hoggers looking for an outdoor sleep system? Let me tell you.

I have slept outside on a Therm-a-Rest Z-Lite sleeping pad since 2013. Before that, I had a Therm-a-Rest Ridgeline I cut and duct-taped back together to accordion fold like a Z Lite. This did not work well. I have put my Z Lite through the wringer, spending hundreds of nights sleeping on dirt, sand, rock, and snow on this 3/4 inch thick piece of dimpled foam. It is amazing. I fiddled around with inflatable pads from the industry's giants -- Therm-a-Rest, Big Agnes, and REI -- but  I always came running back to the indestructibility of the Z Lite. No popping. No waking up in the middle of the night on the ground due to a slow leak. No snorkeling in the bathtub trying to find the impossibly small hole in need of repair. 

However, the Z Lite has a lot of naysayers. "It’s not plush enough." "It’s too dirtbaggy." "It’s not for side-sleepers." Of course, none of these are true. I recently returned from a camping trip with family. This kind of camping involved extension cords running to box fans inside massive dome tents filled with queen-sized air mattresses. They were all flummoxed when Rebecca and I put together our tiny backpacking tent and their jaws hit the ground when we whipped out our matching set of Z Lite sleeping pads. My sister-in-law was even concerned if we were "going to be okay." Eventually, I convinced her husband to lay on it and he said in five words what reviewers at Outdoor Gear Lab, Backcountry, and Gear Junkie have struggled to say in hundreds of user reviews: 

"Oh, it's not that bad." 

And then he fell asleep. Like, he took a nap right there. This is the power of the Z Lite. It's really not as bad as the inflatable crowd says. My brother-in-law's laconic pre-slumber gear review got me thinking about some more 5-word reviews for this industry standard:

You can sleep on it.

It's only a few nights.

Tummy sleeper? No! Buy it.

Maybe don't if you're eighty.

Basic comfy pad cuts mustard 

Closed cell foam gold standard 

Let's be real: it's cheap.

It gets the job done.

Super-lightweight and ultra-durable

And if hyphenated words count as one word: super-lightweight, ultra-durable that never fails.

*This gear review was not sponsored by Therm-a-Rest and I purchased my Z Lites with my own hard-earned monies. This review was also more than five words. 544 to be exact. I apologize. But please continue to support megasplitter by subscribing to the mailchimp, commenting on, and sending the posts that you like to your friends. 

Bikepacking the Big South Fork

Big South Fork photo by Ry

The Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era lasted about 64 million years. Over this epoch, continents merged and mountains were born. It's impossible to conceive the slowness of time that allowed for the glacial transgression and regression of ancient seas and rivers that exposed what are now the Appalachian Mountains and Cumberland Plateau. Impossible, that is, unless you have pushed, pulled, and carried a fully-loaded bicycle up loose, baby-head-sized "gravel" at 24% grade for miles and miles. Then you can understand the glacial passage of primordial time. 

Last June, Ry, Brooks, and I bikepacked around the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. Here, those primeval waters carved a vast system of narrow, v-shaped gorges stretching northeastern Tennessee and into southern Kentucky. Due to flooding, our route (a variation of the loop from bikepacking.com) generally avoided the river and instead explored the deep creek gorges that drain into it. The 90-mile route combined loads of delightful gravel, flowy singletrack, and a handful of burly horse trails to make a figure-8 around the west rim of the canyon. 

When you see pictures of gravel biking on social media it's usually looooong stretches of gravel farm roads through expansive flat fields or gently rolling hills. This is not Appalachian gravel. Our gravel roads are punchy climbs followed by woefully short descents repeated ad nauseam. It is not uncommon for a ride in southeastern Tennessee to surpass the "golden ratio" of 1,000 ft elevation for every 10 miles. However, the Big South Fork is just far enough west to offer a little taste of what it's like to ride the famous routes of the Great Plains. There were stretches of gravel as far as the eye could see. There were climbs, to be sure, but we never exceeded the golden ratio in our three-day ride. 

super aero! peep that sweat thong photo by Ry

Trip Report

Day 1: Bandy Creek to Pickett State Park (Strava)

There's a certain kind of joy to riding single-track on a fully-loaded bike. Weighed down with camping gear an otherwise banal trail becomes spicy and exhilarating. After a sandy stretch, the course takes a turn down an improbable horse trail. We triple-checked the map, went for it, and got absolutely jackhammered. Burltown, U.S.A., population: 3. The route descends and ascends this equestrian path before meeting back up with that sweet sweet pea gravel all the way to Pickett State Park.   

Day 2: Pickett to Parkers Mountain (Strava) 

Besides a dramatic climb up a highway, Day 2 was a pure gravel grind. The textural sound of tread on terra is the stuff dreams are made of. Like cams rattling on a climbing harness or a skateboard carving up a swimming pool, gravel biking is so auditorially pleasing, and the day offered up 44 miles of ambiance. We biked a bit out of the way for a swimming hole, which was nice. But we camped on top of a ridge with no water source, which was not nice. 

Day 3: Parkers Mountain to Bandy Creek (Strava) 

Priority numero uno: find water. We did a few miles away, off-route, on an overgrown single-track trail at Massey Creek. Priority numero two: get back to the car and back to Chattanooga before supper. We did, but not after more insane horse trails that eventually retraced, in reverse, the same insane horse trails from Day 1. Jackhammered, again. And it ruled. This ride included a substantial hike-a-bike that prompted a guy passing us in a 4x4 to roll his window down and laugh at us. This made us all laugh, which was nice. He was also nice and offered us a ride but we declined. 

a really great candid or just me checking for ticks photo by Brooks

mermaid Brooks photo by Ry

Trip Review

Aside from our team of six dwindling to a team of three before our departure date (and our night on top of Parkers Mountain) this trip went according to plan. We met our singular objective: have fun outside on bikes. Inadvertently, our trip also lined up with the Swift Campout weekend. I'm essentially a Quaker, but I'm too much of a sacramental theology nerd to actually convert. So, to me, it felt a bit eucharistic to know I was partaking in this sacrament of nature with people all over the world at the same time. Here are some other lessons learned along the way: 

1. I think my favorite kind of riding is horse trails. Every horse trail I've ever ridden has been absolutely heinous. Not designed for bikes or cars or even bipedal animals, horse trails hit this sweet spot between gravel biking and trial biking. Bombing down a steep grade with loose rock chunks the size of my two-year-old niece's head on a rigid bicycle makes me feel like a poor man's Danny MacAskill. Yeah, I crashed. And yeah, I still loved it. 

2. When a one-eyed man and an ex-carny with multiple Insane Clown Posse tattoos tell you where a swimming hole is, you go. 

3. When you don't want to share a campsite with a one-eyed man, an ex-carny with multiple Insane Clown Posse tattoos, a gun-toting and ax-throwing woman, and their multiple screaming children, it's okay. Don't feel bad. Even if they invite you to share their chili. Or especially if they invite you to share their chili.

You can watch an instagram reel of our ride here: 

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BONUS: The Cohutta Death March (S24O)

viewpoint midway up Cowpen Road

Less than a week after posting a blog titled, "The Art of Sucking It Up," I found myself sitting in the middle of a monstrous hill climb contemplating my existence and wondering if this was all worth it or not. Maybe not, but I did not want to keep going. When Max pitched the idea of riding the Cohutta Death March, I thought it would be hard but not that hard. As it turns out, this classic southern Appalachian gravel grind lives up to every bit of its name. I won't write a route description or trip report as many exist online, but you can watch an Instagram reel of our ride HERE. 

For the folks thinking about doing the route, I'll just say this: Max and I started at Cottonwood Patch Campground and did the loop counter-clockwise, which meant a 2,000 ft push condensed into just a few miles. This turned into a lot of hike-a-bike on my singlespeed, but even Max had to walk some of it. That said, I can't imagine doing this loop clockwise. I'd rather knock out the climb on West Cowpen Road the way we did and "coast" the back half (still a bit of climbing) instead of slogging up those gradual rollers and then squeezing my brakes the whole way back down to the valley. 

elevation profile for CW, we rode CCW 

Here's three things I learned while on the CDM: 

1. Unless you want a raw tushy, do not sleep in sweat-soaked chamois. 
2. Leftover pizza is the ultimate in bikepacking nutrition. 
3. Max is a modern-day mystic; I think everybody should have a friend like him. In a world desacralized by modernity, Max still sees a world of mystery, meaning, and myth. Max inhabits, what Max Weber said of traditional societies, a “world that remains a great enchanted garden.” Everything is suffused and enveloped in import and our conversations demonstrated that. I think the way he reads the world is necessary and beautiful. He can also enter the Pain Cave with a Zen-like coolness that I am jealous of. I want to be a bit more like Max. 

the descents are hard-earned but fuuuuuuun 

Max

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The Art of Sucking It Up

*~SpRiNg BrEaK 2007~*

Have you ever woken up to a pack of raccoons tickling your feet? I have. I was 18 years old, camping on the eastern end of St. George Island with Russ. It was spring break and we were backpacking with our skimboards in tow. Two seniors in high school living on the beach for spring break? I had high expectations. I can't speak for Russ but I had envisioned the trip to be like hiking into the actualized lyrics of Katy Perry's "California Girls." But my eighteen-year-old brain vastly overestimated how many "daisy dukes, bikinis on top" would be hiking to a primitive backcountry campsite on the beach. The sum total was zero.

Instead, the trip went like this: Russ and I backpacked into a desolate campsite by the bay. It was cold. Sand filled every crevice of our bodies while sand gnats and mosquitos ravaged every exposed piece of our flesh. We wore makeshift burkas to shield our faces from the bugs. Even the skimboarding was bad. A couple of nights in, I forgot to hang our food and awoke under my tarp tent to a pack of raccoons tickling my feet, searching for treats. I got Russ up, packed our bags and hiked out. 

Some cherished memories happened that night, like hiking without headlamps by the starlight over the Gulf of Mexico (Russ told me years later, it was so beautiful he cried). But that doesn't change the fact that we gave up. We quit. When it got hard, we went home. That wasn’t the only time something like that happened either. In fact, Russ and I began making “a thing” out of hiking out in the middle of the night to find the nearest Waffle House. It was fun. But as I began to spend more time outside and the trips got longer and more remote, there weren’t any Waffle Houses to retreat to. Eventually, I had to learn the art of sucking it up.

You should read Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. There's this line: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” I think about that all the time when I'm out trail running or rock climbing because I have a choice in how I respond to pain and discomfort: give up or keep going.

Renowned psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl maintained that between stimulus and response, there is a space. And, “In that space is our power to choose our response.” Whether climbing mountains or running long distances, I think human-powered endurance activities help build the muscles used to make the responses required for suffering in the real world too.

Whether you’re running an ultramarathon and every muscle in your right foot is screaming...

Or you’re festering in a tent while bad weather batters your high camp... 

Or you’re working two jobs to pay off medical debt from a routine hernia surgery because Americans pay 40% more for healthcare than the rest of the industrialized world...

Each creates a space where the pain is inevitable but the suffering is optional. 

"Suffering," here, is the choice made to see it through. I don't mean this to romanticize or make light of anyone's actual physical, emotional, existential suffering. I think there's a difference between suffering and "things that suck." Yet it's all very subjective. And to be fair, navigating a pandemic, working an unsatisfying job, or arguing with a partner is not the same thing as trad climbing, ultra-running, or waking up to raccoons sniffing your feet. But the ability to take a deep breath, figure something out, and keep going when you're in the mountains might also help when you need to plan a budget, discuss your feelings, or finally find a therapist. 

Alpinist Kelly Cordes said of ultrarunners, "To keep going when given the option to quit is hardcore." If you're reading this then you made it through 2020 and you probably suffered something. We all learned a little about the art of sucking it up this year and I think we all got a little more hardcore. On a recent bikepacking adventure with Russ, I brought up that 2007 spring break trip. I talked about how thankful I was that playing outside taught us the same lesson running taught Haruki Murakami. Russ looked at me and spoke through the cloud of mosquitos and campfire smoke."It's funny you mention that," he said, "because I really wanted to call it quits today." We laughed and kept eating our ramen bombs and then we got back on our bicycles the next morning.

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