works of wanderlust

Category: running & adventure

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

  • 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.

  • Knee-hab (Part 2)

    December 30 of 31 December-ish posts

    For the last couple of days, following a week of bitterly cold temperatures, I took advantage of the milder winter weather and went skiing in the park.

    Nordic skiing or cross country skiing, or whatever you happen to call the skiing that doesn’t involve hills is a perfect sport for our local park. In the summer it’s a suburban field with a perimeter ring of asphalt roughly one kilometer in length. In the winter it’s a snowy wasteland waiting to be trampled and played in by local kids.

    I like to help cut ski trails for neighbourhood skiing enthusiasts.

    Some rough math will tell you that a one kilometer oblong ring makes the diameter of the whole field about 320m. More likely it’s about 400m on the long side and 250 at the lateral cut. No matter how you slice it, this is long enough for some good straightaways, even cutting across the various paths people have already tramped through the otherwise pristine snowfall.

    In the last couple days I’ve spent a good couple hours doing laps through that fresh snow, following a meandering track that I cut and smoothing it out so that other locals (and also future me) could enjoy them.

    It’s been a refreshing change.

    I haven’t spent as much time as I would have liked outside in 2022.

    One word that sums up your theme for 2022.

    Knee-hab.

    Ok. So, it’s not a real word. I made it up.

    But it is what I’ve been calling my now-six-month effort to restore mobility and health in my right knee after a mysterious injury left me with a micro-tear in my MCL, medial collateral ligament, an important bit of tender tissue that helps you balance and move and otherwise enjoy things like walking.

    I haven’t run, not outside of physiotherapy at least, since July.

    This is not a good thing.

    I’ve been in knee-hab: stretching, strengthening, hurting, moving, healing, limping, and hopefully recovering. It’s been a very long six months.

    For anyone who runs you know the frustration of not running. It’s physical. It’s outdoors. It’s a stress valve. It’s a social event. It’s a lifestyle. It balances your mind, body, soul, and beyond. It works your lungs, beats your heart and jiggles your bowels and generally makes you feel better after it’s over. It becomes who you are, even if you’re not fast.

    I miss it.

    Not running has descended a cloud over everything else and I would venture to suggest it has left me with a touch of depression that has been a one-hundred-percent effort to attempt to overcome this past six months.

    Knee-hab seems like a silly theme, but it was my life for the latter half of the year. And as I sit here in the scraps of the year-that-was, flexing my leg at my desk knee still stiff after sleeping, it’s hard not to assume that it will define the first bit of 2023, too.

    The last couple days I spent skiing in the park were brilliant for my therapy, physical and mental. My knee felt fabulous after nearly an hour of work cutting and riding the trails I’d cut. My brain felt lighter. My heart, even in the cold winter air, felt warmer.

    I’ll be back out there again today, when the sun climbs up a bit higher.

    And hopefully the theme of my crumby knee will start to wrap up with some grace and promise for the New Year, even as some new opportunities to be outside (and write about it more in 2023) emerge!

    Now, check out the video I made…