The trails are getting there, but not yet, and this week was a combination of stumbling around in the woods trying to stay upright while hiking through slippery melting snow, pounding out laps on the park’s dirt service road, a combination of both, or recovering/being bitter with frosty adult beverages while watching football—until Friday.
I thought that January broke me on Saturday when I looked out the window, saw heaps of rain-soaked snow, and said, “fuck it, I’m ‘running’ on the treadmill.” I was wrong.
No, January would save the real breakdown for Monday morning’s hike.
The outside was a mess of ice, melting snow, slush, and rain on Friday, and after 15 miles of snowshoeing already completed, I was a mess of aching knees, stiff calves, sore hip flexors, and an arthritic mind. So with that, I took Friday off to bask in the glow of the dank sky and catch up on some long overdue house shit.
The start of the week was awesome, with two 5-mile snowshoe hikes through the cold and snow. It was a great workout, and it felt awesome to be back outside after two days spent goofing off indoors
Do you smell that? It smells like hyperbole.
– Me
I’m no good at this.
While you may think that I’m about to say I’m no good at this whole “life” thing, and I tend to believe I’m not, I’m actually referring to multiple days off from outdoor activities. In post-blizzard Michigan, during the longest, darkest, coldest, rope-to -the-fucking-attic month of the year.
It’s been four days since I was last in the woods, and it might as well be 4 months. While I know it’s near impossible, I feel like I’ve lost every shred of fitness I gained over the last 16+ months; my Instagram feed is set to be bombarded with ads for big and tall stores (again), and the brain that I have worked so hard to semi-salvage from a sticky web of depression and life-long self-loathing is set to go into shut-down mode and return me to the fart scented sheets of The Bed of Torment.
What a crazy week! As mentioned in my previous hard-to-read Soiled mega post, the week started with a 7-mile hike on Monday, followed by a snowy 5+ mile hike on Tuesday, then as more snow arrived, morphed into slow 4+ mile snowshoe stomps on Wednesday and Thursday.
It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, but this week, I once again suffered from Premature Mile Accumulation (PMA). Unlike more awkward premature “ations,” PMA leaves me feeling quite good about myself but similarly leaves me questioning, now what do I do, but with fewer sheepish apologies.
There is nothing quite as satisfying as waking up in the morning, coming downstairs, and not seeing one shred of proof that Christmas ever happened.
I sort of, kind of jest, of course. Despite my loathing of the Christmas season and 97.4% of everything it stands for, I had a damn good holiday, and I have to give a big thanks to Wifey and B for making this holiday perfect by just being their easy-going, lovable selves.
2023 was a year filled with some ups and some downs, but as a whole, it was been one of the best years I’ve had in a long while.
I continued my nearly daily lumbers, lost a few pounds, and, most importantly, finally got my depression under better control. Not perfect, but better.
I only wish I felt as confident about 2024 and what America has in store for us. But, all I can do is keep on keeping on, ignore the news and half of the country, and continue to lumber on through the woods with my camera.
In a couple of days, I will be starting the next leg of my life rebuild tour with the 2024 Lumber Through Hell Tour, which starts on January 1st.
#2024LumberThroughHellTour
Until then, I am going to bask in the numbers my 52-year-old feet put up in 2023’s Soil The Woods Tour:
Total Hikes: 260
Todal Days Goofing Off/Not Hiking: 105
Total Distance: 1,294.76 Woodsy miles
Average Distance: 4.98 miles per hike
Average Time: 1:25:28 per hike
Longest Hike: 8.12 miles
And let us not forget that this whole lumbering shit show started back on September 19th, 2022, with the 2022 Not Dead Yet Comeback Special, and those numbers are as follows:
Total Hikes: 346
Total Distance: 1,657.04 Woodsy miles
Average Distance: 4.79 miles per hike
Average Time: 1:23:34 per hike
I remember back when I first crawled out of the Bed of Torment, walked past my bikes, laced up my hikers, and started lumbering away from my brain; I questioned how long I could sustain hiking at pace 20 to now 30 miles a week. Turns out it’s 468 days and counting, which averages out to 3.54 miles per day.
Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.
-Larry David
While I am in NO way looking forward to the American political shit show that is coming in the months ahead and the possible end to our democracy as we know it in 2024, I am looking forward to more miles lumbering away from my problems. And people.
Photos are from Saturday’s sunrise hike when the temperatures dropped overnight and left the woods covered in a thick later of frost.
Later.
This is a long one, people. No reason, really; I just found myself wasting time every so often this week and writing down random shit.
6:05 AM on Christmas Morning, and I was up as usual.
No, I wasn’t waiting to gleefully rip through a giant pile of presents (although there was one with my name on that I had my eye on); I was up waiting for the freaking sun to start thinking about rising so I could squeeze in a few miles before we did the version of Christmas Morning you do when it’s just a couple and their 19-year-old son who is now thankfully way more into sleep than opening holiday presents.
Sadly, the sun wouldn’t be fully up until after 8, so that meant I had nothing to do but tend to the dogs, drink coffee, and look at the ever-declining interwebs until I had enough light for woodsy lumbering without a headlamp.
