works of wanderlust

Category: running & adventure

My sport involves feet and trails and moving one quickly across the other.

  • Knee-hab (January Update)

    I ran last night.

    Not much.

    But I ran. Outside. On a trail.

    And I can still walk this morning.

    If running three klicks through on a random Thursday evening in January sounds less than impressive, let me introduce you to my Medial Collateral Ligament injury and the fact that I haven’t had a pain-free run outside or beyond the confines of a physiotherapy-prescribed treadmill run in over six months.

    I pushed myself back in September in the park near my house and ended up limping home and elevating my leg for nearly a week.

    This morning, fourteen hours later, I feel pretty normal. Good. Strong. Hopeful.

    Back in July of 2022 I injured my knee ligament.

    I don’t know how. I don’t know when. I don’t know why. All I know is that one day I was running and training and planning adventure runs through the city. The next day I was struggling to climb a few steps in my house.

    I figured a couple weeks recovery.

    After a month I went to see the physiotherapist.

    He told me it may take a couple months, but maybe as long as four months.

    It’s been six months and I’m finally feeling like there is something resembling hope in a recovery.

    It was -15C on the trails.

    My crew meets sporadically but regularly at an elementary school parking lot near an access point a ravine.

    In the spring, summer and fall it’s a beautiful asphalt trail descending into the river valley under a canopy of big old trees.

    In the winter, its dark and icy and hauntingly creepy.

    I recorded a walking tour there just last week and the view hadn’t changed much to last night, except that I was plodding along at one minute run to one minute walk intervals, and listening to the crunch of my feet through the dark forest trail.

    My four companions kept my pace for the first of my one minute intervals, but then I purposely slowed and they dashed ahead. On my second interval I almost felt like if I pushed it I could catch up with them. On the third interval they were little more than bobbing headlamps in the distance and by the fourth I had descending into a canopy of eerie trail that was as much like a haunted pathway towards some frozen hell below as it was the scene of my running recovery run.

    At eleven minutes I made a u-turn and returned to my truck, logging exactly three slow kilometers of winter plodding and setting the stage for a “now we wait to see how I feel in the morning” scenario.

    And?

    And?

    I already spoiled the lede, of course. I feel fine this morning. I can still walk… have walked. Gone up and down the stairs a dozen times and…

    I have an appointment with my physiotherapist tomorrow. Now I need to fess up that I pushed the program. I suppose it all worked out tho, huh?

  • Suburban Ski Day

    A sunny Sunday afternoon in January was the perfect day to go check out a few kilometers of trails through a local green (winter white) space in the Edmonton suburbs.

    I thought Sundays were for run days, you ask?

    That too.

    But with my knee-hab progressing at the snails pace that injured ligaments are wont to do, I made my rounds at the gym this morning logging some klicks on the stationary bike then logging a couple klicks of running intervals on the treadmill and…

    Those ski trails through the vast swath of snow in the utility corridor were calling.

    By chance we live near a utility corridor. There are at least two of these in the city that run laterally, east to west, across the suburbs. About fifty meters wide and spanning the width of the whole city, ish, their purpose is to leave some big open space to run transmission powerlines or major infrastructure without going over, around or through homes. And since there only a minimal day-to-day danger associated with well constructed infrastructure, the utility corridors become huge greenspaces where the only development that can legally occur is an asphalt path or an unfixed trash bucket.

    If you live right up against one of these corridors (and many people do) you are, of course, dealing with the generally unsightly view of massive power transmission towers out your back window.

    If (instead, like me) you live just a few blocks away, you are less bothered by the view but still close enough to walk to a place where long straight asphalt trails make great running paths or groomed ski trails emerge mysteriously in the winter and stretch for kilometers upon kilometers of gently rolling straightaways.

    We parked in the recreation centre parking lot adjacent to where the ski trails passed and hopped aboard, exploring for an hour of exhausting skiing on a Sunday afternoon.

    My knee was a bit tender from my morning workout, but in the end it was a perfect day for some low-impact outdoor sport, and a bit of suburban skiing adventure, too.

  • adventure dog adventure

    This may seem a bit silly, but I started editing together little one minute videos of my dog and posting them on Youtube.

    We go for a long walk, explore some trails, capture some 4k footage on my phone or go pro camera.

    I have a couple of these that I did with my last dog but I regret not taking more video of her when she was still around.

    The thing is, people seem to like them.

    Most videos I post get a few dozen views from friends or family.

    These have crept into the 1000s.

    Such as, our adventure walk through the snowy local river valley:

    Or, the new one I posted earlier today about a wandering adventure through some local suburban trails:

    I know she’s cute, but the interest has caught me off guard a little bit.

    … in a good way, of course!

    Check them out and tell me what you think. Cute dogs are an easy sell online? Or are people suddenly vibing for some dog-meets-world video fun?

  • Public Service Announcement: Ski Trails Aren’t Walking Trails

    To be clear, everything that follows is NOT about either an inflated feeling of entitlement or a misperception of my rights. Public parks are public places for everyone to enjoy.

    But.

    But imagine a huge suburban field covered in snow.

    After a long winter, that field will almost always be crisscrossed with trails of various sorts. People of all ages trudge through the snow and make walking paths. Animals run into the crisp snowfall and tramp down courses. A maintenance vehicle might drive through to clear a path or empty trash. And skiers lay tracks that are groomed by repeated use into great recreational loops.

    Yet, even after a months-long winter these paths need rarely cross.

    Walking paths can pack and trace to useful places like benches, sledding hills, ice rinks.

    Ski trails can loop and whorl away from the walking trails.

    Even with almost no planning or coordination, the two uses of this space need never interfere with each other and still but a mere fraction of the field of snow be disturbed.

    So, it was a little upsetting that after a week of work to cut, groom, regroom, use, groom yet again, and eventually make into a useful ski trail…. that someone decided to use that trail as a walking path and crush the effort that myself and other local cross-country skiers had put into building our trails.

    Again, we’re not entitled to respect of those trails, but it has long been an unspoken courtesy that unless it is unavoidable or has cut through a high traffic area, you DON’T walk on ski trails.

    Walk on the walking paths.

    Ski on the skiing paths.

    And we all get along.

    There’s no sign. There’s no law. There’s no one to yell and say ‘no’ when someone does this. There’s no tit-for-tat revenge plot. There’s nothing at all whatsoever stopping someone from doing this.

    It’s just kinda rude and frustrating. Unneighbourly.

    Thanks for understanding.

  • hoar frosty

    hOr / frawst – (noun)

    From the old English, hoar frost evokes the hairy, beard-like frost that grows upon trees and other outdoor objects when the combination of temperature and humidity crystalize ice in a white, icy fuzz on all the surfaces of the world.

    It is a kind of magical scene, assuming it is not too cold to be outside.

    The dog and I felt compelled to walk for over an hour through this wintery wonderland.

    If you thought it was magic walking through a gentle snowfall in the evening, with the flakes drifting through the air all around you and in every direction like stars descending slowly through the spaces and places, try instead walking through a winter forest the morning after a fog when the hoar frost covers literally every branch with a frozen crystalline twinkle.

    To reach out an touch the delicate ice is to destroy it, either shattering or melting it into nothingness, back to dusty snow or a drop of cold dew on your fingertip.

    And as the sun reaches into the sky, the apricity sublimates it back into the atmosphere, like fairy dust returning to the magical source, suddenly and subtly gone without explanation. The fungal-like growth slinks back into whence it came.

    To walk between and under trees covered in hoar frost is to feel the deep cold of mid-winter with your eyes and to understand the power of nature to decorate itself in such a visualization of the weather.

    Powerful and gentle, peaceful and extreme.

    Crisp.

    White.

    Cold.

    Frosty.