The Kind You Can Move Through
The last time I was in New Zealand was two years and three months ago and I had a bum knee.
For eighteen years I’d run the stairs at Harvard Stadium and had never lost my footing. Not even a that-was-close skid while scampering down the narrow red steps trying to beat one of my rowing teammates on total time. Then, three days before I was scheduled to fly to the other side of the world, I was most of the way up the third of thirty-seven sections when I caught my toe and went down - hard - directly onto my right knee cap. The moment I felt the pain radiate up and down my leg I had the thought that will sound familiar to most athletes out there: “It’s fine. If I can get up and finish the workout that means I’m fine.” So I got up, dusted off my knee (my spandex didn’t rip, can’t be anything too bad), and climbed, section by section, thirty-four more times. It didn’t start to feel any better. It kind of hurt like hell. But it didn’t get any worse, either. “I’m fine,” I thought, “See? This is fine.”
I repeated some version of the F-word over and over in my head as I got into my car, drove home, took the elevator in the parking garage for the first time ever, and got inside my condo. And I was able to keep repeating it until I sat on my couch and pulled my tights down over my bloody, swollen mess of a knee. Holy crap that looked bad. I hobbled to the freezer, grabbed an ice pack, and lay in the middle of the kitchen floor holding it tight against my knee cap.
Two and a half days later, “hobble” was a euphemism for what my right leg could manage. I wore the same pair of loose pants to work three days in a row - the pressure of jeans making contact with my knee was enough to make me shriek. I took four Advil every four hours. I didn’t know how I was going to do this. In less than forty hours I’d be landing in Queenstown, with twelve days and three major hikes ahead of me. If I hadn’t been too cheap to get trip insurance I would have bailed. No question. If I hadn’t been planning to meet up with my good buddy over there, who’d spent the better part of a year talking me into this epic adventure, I would have bailed and just eaten the cost. So instead I did the thing I always do when disaster strikes: I called my dad. It’s been my go-to move my whole life when I feel scared to do something and need a buck-up pep talk (the “I’ll be fine” mental mantra was learned, not instinctual). He was quiet for a minute after I described the shape I was in. “Maybe this isn’t the smartest thing to do,” he said. Yikes. That was level-headed dad code for “Bail.”
But I didn’t bail. Because this was my final adventure of 2017, which I’d dubbed “The Year of Yes.” I’d broken up with my boyfriend of eight years the prior fall, moved into the first place I’d ever owned in February, and decided I would say “yes” to every invitation that came my way that year - parties, dates, trips to the other side of the world. And I’d stuck to it. I’d be damned if I was flipping the “no” switch now that I was so close to the finish line. So I got on the plane, straightened out my leg (2017 was also a year of saying “yes” to the business class ticket), and told the flight attendant to keep the oaky chard coming.
By the time I got to Queenstown my knee was feeling a tiny bit better. I climbed the steps of the hostel (gotta make up for the plane ticket somehow) left foot first. I stepped off the curbsides onto my right foot so I could bend that leg as little as possible. I skipped the day hike that I was supposed to do as a warmup with my buddy and the group we’d be climbing with, did some team bonding with the staff at the local REI instead, and two days later I was at the trailhead of the Routeburn Track, new hiking poles in hand so I could support as much of my weight as possible with my upper body. I was about to set off on a three-day hike on one of the Great Walks of the World. Thirty years of competitive sports and general Millennial anxiety had left me super well-acquainted with pre-race nerves. But it wasn’t nerves that I was feeling that morning. I was scared. Crazy scared that I’d be in too much pain to do this. I took a deep breath. I leaned on my poles. And I started walking.
I made it to the first hut that night, lagging badly behind the rest of my group. It had rained most of the day and I found them sitting by the fire, changed into dry clothes, their gear hanging to dry. I lay down on the floor of the common room, a puddle quickly forming as the rainwater ran off my gear and pooled around me, and put my leg up in the air. This time there was no freezer and no ice pack. There were two more days to go - the next day was a straight-up climb to the saddle - and my dad had been right. This was not smart. I didn’t join in the group’s animated banter around the fire that evening. I shoved a handful of trail mix in my mouth, my stomach churning too badly to choke down a proper dinner, and went to bed before 8pm. I was afraid that if my buddy or anyone in the group tried to talk to me that I would burst into tears.
I woke up to a miracle. The all-day rain had turned to snow overnight. There were eighteen inches of it (and counting) outside the front door of the hut. Trees had come down all over the place across the pass to Lake Mackenzie. We weren’t going up. The only option was to wait for it to warm up then hike back out the way we came. It wasn’t comfortable. But it was all downhill. It was slow going for everyone. And each step had more than a foot of fluffy frozen padding. The group was bummed. I was saved.
We got off the trail with two extra days of unplanned rest in Queenstown, made a day trip to Te Anau, and by the time we set off on the Milford Track four days later my knee was able to handle it. I didn’t set any land speed records. But I made it. If I’d tried to continue on the Routeburn earlier in the week, I wouldn’t have been able to. I don’t know how I would have gotten off the trail. But I couldn’t have moved on.
I came back to New Zealand a week ago carrying a different kind of pain. The kind caused by falling way too hard for the wrong person. The kind of pain that starts in your chest or the pit of your stomach and radiates everywhere. If you’d asked me a week ago to choose between the two, I would have volunteered - I would have begged - to take a digger into that football stadium concrete every damn day.
But yesterday I finished three days on the Routeburn Track. The first day I hiked up to the Routeburn Falls Hut - the spot I’d barely made it to a couple years ago. When I arrived I dropped my friends there, hiked back down to the Flats where I was staying, dropped my pack, hiked back up with my dehydrated food, had dinner with my buddies at the Falls, then hiked back down and got into my bunk, feeling pretty damned good for having ten gnarly miles under my belt. I crushed the predicted time standards pretty hard. And I got up at 6am the next day to attack the climb up to the saddle then down the switchbacks to Lake Mackenzie. I was sitting at the bus stop at the Divide a day later, the entirety of the Routeburn behind me, thinking about how different an experience 2020 New Zealand has been so far. I thought about different kinds of pain. The kind you can move through. And the kind you can’t.
Two and a half years ago I was in a kind of pain I couldn’t move through. My leg couldn’t take my weight to step up onto a rock. It couldn’t bend to step down. I was fired up for the challenge. I was hell bent to finish what I started. But I just couldn’t move. This year was different. I was lethargic. I was distracted and quiet and had flashes of “I don’t want to be here” at points along the trail where tree cover made things dark and my mood made things darker. I carried my pain along with my sleeping bag and snacks and cooking pot, and I felt the weight of it. But - I moved through it. My healed legs carried me and all my dead emotional weight across one of the Great Walks of the World. I hoisted some cold beers with my group when we made it back to the main town. I laughed at Reji’s dad jokes and took one of the best showers ever. Now I’m writing this post in a ramshackle bar at the foot of the mountains in Te Anau with a glass of red in front of me and Fleetwood Mac blaring from the speakers. The pain is there. But it’s lighter.
Redcliff, Te Anau (the Lord of the Rings’ cast’s local haunt during filming)
Tonight I’ll take a walk around the lake and tomorrow I’ll hike up to Kepler and try to time my turnaround to catch the sunset. I’ll keep moving. And I’m not scared that I won’t make it.
