The Dignity of Risk

I'm falling behind with my stories.

They collect in my pockets untold. Its that time of year. Endless daylight with mountains to climb and gardens to tend. A house to build, children to corral, beaches to comb.

Days full of doing with an endless sky that never grows dark, the stars hidden behind a veil of pale light. Our white and black world of winter transformed into every shade of green, punctuated by birdsong.

And yet untold stories grow heavy with time, my pockets bulge, pants sag, and the heat from the hearts of memories makes me want to strip down to nothing, to release sentence upon sentence, metaphor, image, climax-- until I run naked and free.

But storytelling takes time.

And the sun beckons, the mountains persist: climb, climb climb.

The Mt. Marathon race, dubbed by Outside magazine as "the toughest 5k on the planet" takes place in two days.

Olive will join 300 junior runners, ages 7-17, to race to midway. I'll share the trail with 300 women later  in the afternoon.  It may reach 70 degrees here in Seward Alaska on the 4th, a temperature we are not accustomed to in our rain forest home. I'm sweating just thinking about scaling the roots, ascending the cliff, clamoring through the salmon-berry bushes, crawling up the shale ridge-line to race point, 3022 feet above Resurrection Bay.

Why do this insane race again?

"You must not love her," a fellow runner and Mom said to me when I told her eight-year-old Olive was participating this year. Her daughters, now teenagers, started doing the race at Olive's age.

I smiled as I laced my shoes.

Why did I agree for Olive to do Mt Marathon with me?

 

Why do alpine wildflowers take root and bloom on a precipice instead of remaining in the meadows below?

I keep thinking about a term I learned through my work with the Independent Living Center (ILC) during my training about the history of the disability rights movement.Ed Roberts is known as "the father of Independent Living", struck with Polio as a teenager he and his mother decided he would not live his life in an institution but fought for Ed's right to attend school, to go to college, to work.

First told by the Department of Vocational  Rehab in California that he was "too disabled" to work, Ed Roberts eventually became head of that department, proving that a disability or two or three does not define nor limit the possibilities for the people who experience them.

My son Elias injured his brain at birth resulting in impaired vision, balance, motor control, processing skills and  communication. He walks like a drunk. Falls often. Trips on just about everything. Still, I took him out on a fishing charter to the Gulf of Alaska as part of ILC's TRAILS program that provides inclusive recreational opportunities for people of all abilities.

Elias doesn't even know how to swim. But he stepped onto the stern and greeted the captain with his enthusiastic grin.

Elias, me, and four older women, all part of TRAILS, held onto the rails as the boat crested and dropped with each wave. We waited for our poles to arc with hopes of giant halibut on the other end of our line.

And it didn't take long for Elias to reel in a forty-pound fish, he gripped his rod and followed Captain Neil's directions on when to pause and when to reel. As if he always listened so well. 

Along with Halibut we caught Rockfish and Salmon Shark, as the clouds broke and the sun found our fishing boat across from Johnstone Bay.

In the process, we sacrificed Elias cane to the Gulf.

The second time an ocean would reach up and claim Elias's crutch, the first one lost to the Atlantic, only to wash back to shore a few days later, this one fell from the end of the boat when the door didn't latch as we moved to a different fishing hole, and if it were to arrive on the black sand beach of Lowell Point I'd believe in magic, in god, in miracles, in the possibility of return.

If it fell to the unknown depths, where unnamed creatures roam, never to be seen again, I'd still believe in something.

In the dignity of risk.

This is the term I first heard during my orientation for my part-time job as an advocate for people who experience disabilities: The dignity of risk

It is the term I repeat in my head when Olive says, "Mom can I go first down the cliff?" When I want to say no but hear a quiet, "Yes." When I stand behind her, unable to break her fall, unable to extend my arms and catch my child as she descends into the unexpected.

The dignity of risk.

I could keep my kids in a cotton bubble, massage their every need, fill in every crack, place pillows under the soles of their feet, stitch them wings of steel, a net as wide as their first stumble, as long as their emerging selves.

But.

I could resign to my forty-five years and replace trail shoes with loafers, swap ridge-lines for recliners, waterfall descents for a steaming hot bubble bath.

But-- there is dignity in risk.

And the mountains persist: climb, climb, climb....

Comments

[Carolyn S]

Beautiful photos, Christy! Happy 4th!

Carolyn

[Sara]

So happy to read your shared stories again :-). Happy Fourth, and good luck to you and Olive!!

[Greta Campanale]

Yes!

[Christy]

Thanks friends for reading and following along. Love and risks to all:)