That Was Not the Plan

Stories we tell when the sh*t hits the fan

Parenting anxiety.

Writing about anything else this week would be at the very least an omission, a white lie, or just a lie. Having finally finished my book proposal for True Nature, I’ve been querying agents and editors, and was excited to share the Preface and Intro with you all, but it will have to wait. What’s another week?

Exactly a week ago, I was hiking along on my favorite local trail for the first time this spring. The sky was a cloudless Colorado blue, the freshly emerged aspen leaves were translucent green of a lime lifesaver, the yellow arrowleaf balsam root was splayed open to warm their bellies with the May sun, and my sweet pup Willow was skittering on and off trail in search of varmints. It was Friday around noon; I had just submitted a project for a consulting deadline, had coffee with a friend, and a massage was scheduled for the first time in six months later that afternoon.

Bounding down the trail thanks to my new knee replacement, the thoughts running through my happy brain went like this:

This is a perfect day. This is the kind of day that, on your deathbed, is the way you hope you lived.

Then my downer brain immediately reminded me: These days never last forever … but they are the days that make it possible to deal when things get bad.

Happy brain replied: Stop ruining it, worrying about nothing.

A few minutes later, just short of my turnaround spot at a rushing creek where Willow would dive into the cool pool, my phone rang. It almost never rings anymore, and if it does, it’s usually a kid, so I looked and saw my ex-husband’s name. “Upha, I don’t want to talk right now,” I thought and kept going, but on my way back, I couldn’t resist a nagging feeling, so I stopped and checked to see if he sent a text.

“Nico had a crash on the pass. TC SAR has been called.”

Fu*k. Fu*k. Fu*k. Fu*k. I frantically called back, but there was no answer.

“The pass” is Teton Pass, which meant either a car crash or a mountain bike crash on one of the world-class downhill trails. “TC SAR” is the Teton County Search and Rescue.

Fu*k. Fu*k. Fu*k. Fu*k.

My heart racing in fight—or—flight, I was at least 45 minutes from my car and another hour from where he was. I had the idea to call his phone, and thankfully, one of his friends answered.

“Nico had a crash on Parallel Trail. He’s conscious, and Search and Rescue is here. He’s got a broken collarbone, but he’s talking.” He gave a few more details like the names of two dads and good friends on the scene—a ski patroller and a mountain guide—so I knew he was in good hands.

By the time I got to Jackson, he was at the hospital. The first thing I saw entering the ER was the neck collar–a precaution when someone is knocked out. But as a Mom, of course, you’re thinking of paralysis. My brain freaking out with every worse-case scenario, I just put on the biggest smile I could muster and squeezed his 16-year old hand and wondered how it had become so calloused, likely from months of holding a lacrosse stick. And then we waited…and waited… and waited, the ER buzzing with activity on the eve of Memorial Day Weekend, the kick-off to another busy summer in Jackson Hole.

To make a long, long, long story short, a series of CT scans, X-rays, and eventually a MRI revealed a collarbone in multiple pieces, no brain bleeding, no neck or back injury, a bruised lung but no broken ribs, and, the pain-free but ultimately most serious injury, a “grade 3” lacerated spleen which required immediate admittance to the ICU for “the grade plus 1 = 4” days.

No one knows exactly what happened, as no one saw him crash. We know he was riding a trail he’d ridden many times over the years. It was NOT on a big jump but instead on a left-hand burm. His friends riding behind him report his bike was 30 feet away over the burm; he thinks his back wheel spun out on the burm, bucking him to the ground inside the turn. TC-SAR packaged him up and rolled him down the trail to an ambulance. A few days later, TC-SAR was called out to the exact same spot to rescue another local biker, a 39-year-old with a severe ankle injury.

Not the best way to make the front page

Looking back as I write, I can’t believe it’s been a week, but while we were in it, it was torturously (literally) slow. Hours staring at the walls, waiting for doctors and test results, watching your baby deal with waves of disappointment and pain as reality started creeping in.

What this all has me thinking about as I choose between 10 half-written Substack posts is 1) I really can’t justify writing anything without acknowledging what happened this week. Not that I want to drum up extra eyeballs by sharing a harrowing story, but hopefully as a cautionary tale that inspires some other kids to dial it down a notch, and, 2) the stated purpose of this newsletter is to highlight the practices of people living wild, peaceful, resilient lives, and I’m astonished how reslient are.

Resilience: The ability to pivot. The capacity to withstand shock without permanent deformation or rupture.

A week later, it feels eerily like the pandemic, where we are stuck at home, wondering how, in the early hours, everyone will get through the day. This is quite the opposite of most days, when the days fly by and there’s never enough time to do everything.

Nico is doing well; clavicle surgery has stabilized everything, and he’s off the pain meds, using his arms, and walking around. But, with the spleen injury, he’s been given a directive of 5 - 6 weeks of NO strenuous activity, no lifting, nothing that could result in the slightest fall, no messing around, blah blah. This is not going over well for him for obvious reasons. For me, the anxiety of watching him slip into the never-ending draw of his cell phone doesn’t help.

Parenting has never been easy for anyone, but for me, the hardest thing is supporting the most extreme activities that kids in mountain towns thrive on. In the past few months, he made it through the Freeride Skiing Nationals unscathed, the Idaho Lacrosse State Championships with a second-place finish with a lot of bruises and a sore ankle, then jumped right into downhill mountain biking. I often wonder if I’m crazy letting this all happen, then I realize I don’t have a choice. Being outdoors is where he thrives, and anything I do to stifle that is, well, the opposite of “loving his potential into being.”

It’s not like I wasn’t doing the same thing when I moved to Vail after college—pushing myself to the absolute max in the outdoors. Back to the cell phone, at least I know when he’s skiing or biking or playing sports, he’s not staring at a screen, which seems like a pretty good trade-off. The trouble is that hanging around home without SOMETHING to constantly excite, interest, and thrill you in a world where kids are constantly stimulated is torture and, at the same time, a valuable reminder that it’s OK to just chill. Languishing makes me nervous…even though I know dealing with boredom is an important skill we’ve all but lost in our modern world. Too much, though, as we saw in the pandemic, can be detrimental.

I’ve often preached “resilience is the new happiness,” and in this situation, have been thinking about languishing versus flourishing concerning mental health. "Languishing" refers to a state of stagnation and apathy, characterized by a lack of motivation, purpose, and interest in life, essentially feeling "blah" or stuck, while "flourishing" represents a state of optimal well-being, marked by positive emotions, a sense of meaning, strong social connections, and active engagement in life; essentially, thriving and experiencing high levels of fulfillment across different aspects of life. The question is, can we flourish despite a significant disruption to the activities that bring us the most joy? So far, the answer is yes.

What we have going for us is an incredible support system of friends and family, a tight community, caring and compassionate Search and Rescue volunteers, and medical providers who smile their way through a long, gorgeous, holiday weekend. Most importantly, we are surrounded by plenty of nature, even if that means sitting in the backyard completely overgrown with garden projects, playing backgammon as the sun sets in the West.

If we didn’t have the Tetons as our playground, I suppose he may never have gotten hurt, but the alternative would, well, suck.

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As part of my creative process, which I’ll argue in an upcoming post is critical in resisting authoritarianism, I’m really trying to check my perfectionism and push out less-than-perfect ideas. To that end, here’s a draft of a poem inspired by our first day back home.

Memorial Day 

When the shit hit the fan 
work obligations, yard projects, city council meetings, the
allure of verdant spring hiking trails 
covered in larkspur and 
promise of Memorial Day BBQs
was shattered by a text.

Your child. 
Unconscious.
Search and Rescue.
Ambulance on the way. 

All worries of my overgrown garden, 
finishing the blue trim on my house and 
starting too many sentences with “the” are 
consumed by brain fog from staring at heart rate monitors
waiting for physicians with the drone of podcasts 
about shipwrecks failing to distract us. 

Trapped inside while the sun melts the 
last of the winter snow on the Tetons while 
foxes frolick in the sage fields outside our window. 

Compassionate strangers who 
let us bring a puppy into the ICU and 
teach us fast moving card games 
while we languish help lessen the burden of
worst-case scenario worries, 
intensified by a barrage of MAGA injustice, and

leave me just enough space to think
of those who sacrificed everyting for this 
incredible American life. 

I appreciate each one of you who follows this page.