Following Elias

Endless Possibilities

I didn't dream about Alaska as a child. I favored the warm sunny beaches of California when I imagined myself leaving Connecticut for someplace exotic and new.

Even as a young adult, I would have spit out my drink if someone from the future met me at a party and said, "You will someday settle on the side of a mountain in Seward Alaska, thousands of miles from your friends and family."

With close ties across New England, at that point in my life I considered Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont my wilderness to explore, a short car ride from my parents on the Cape and my friends in Boston and NYC.

And yet as the year 2000 loomed over 1999, I found myself drawn away from the crowded East to the lure of Alaska, with its wide open spaces and endless possibilities.

Much to my parents' surprise, I ditched my half-finished graduate school application to Harvard and applied to Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage.

A few months later, along with my dear friend Kim, I drove from Maine to Alaska, via Texas, as free as I will ever be again.

When we rode past the Matanuska Glacier, nestled amongst the August wildflowers, the pink Fireweed and purple Lupine, the king and queen of the vibrant meadows, after saying out loud--oh my god, oh my god-- in response to the beauty of it all, I thought to myself: "Why would I move back to Maine when I could live here?"

A few days later, I met Nick, and his warm blue eyes and kind smile made me ditch my resolve to spend the next two years of graduate school as a single woman. By the end of our month long expedition course that involved fifteen days in the Alaska wilderness, I knew I wanted to marry Nicholas Jordan.

And well, here we are, almost twenty-one years later, carving out a life together amongst the salmon, Spruce, and ever-changing views of Resurrection Bay.

We add new garden beds to our land every year, creating more work but more beauty. Digging dirt, moving stones, planting seeds. The native plants, the Elderberry, Devil's Club, Goat's Beard, Salmonberry, to name a few, encroach upon our more cultivated centers, but we create a tentative truce between the chosen and the untamed.

We embrace the hybrid chaos between wild and settled.

Somewhere deep in all of us, regardless of what space we call home, a city skyline or mountainscape, a tropical island or farmland, this confrontation exists between the civilized and the wilderness.

May it be more of a dance than a battle--A tango that changes with the seasons, never static, always moving to the music of the moment.

Last weekend we camped on the Kenai for our annual dipnetting trip, a subsistence fishing tradition every July. Olive off playing with her cousins and new beach friends, Elias standing with us in the water or waiting on the shoreline, fish bonker in hand, under sunny skies.

One afternoon I found myself standing chest-high in the saltwater next to an older man with an Australian accent who was part of a whole crew of fisher folks from multiple generations. He smiled at Elias and me as we worked the net together to catch a big ole red salmon. When Elias opted to stay on the shore, the gentleman told me he used to work with children with disabilities and ended up fostering a teenager with cerebral palsy for years. He spoke about the challenges and rewards, and about the hole left when the young man moved to a group home, despite the transition being right for all involved.

I looked back at Elias on the shore, with feelings of both loss and relief braided together with the unknown, thinking our intricately intertwined years may be limited.

More work, more beauty.

During our weekend at the mouth of the Kenai, I often wouldn't see Olive for hours, she would check in with us when in need but otherwise navigated her time and space with ease. At age eleven, Olive currently balances on that fine line between childhood and adolescence-- and as much as I want to lasso her innocence, I know her unfurling wings will carry her beyond my reach.

Back home, I walk the gardens, making plans in my head to transplant the Columbine, Sorrel, Chives, Iris, from my more established overcrowded gardens to the wide open spaces of the newer ones.

Endless possibilities lay ahead.

A peony on the verge of blooming catches my eye, plush with promise.

 

An eagle calls, maybe for its mate, or for its fledgling, or perhaps for the sheer joy of singing on the side of the mountain over Resurrection Bay.

 

MT Marathon: The toughest 5K on the Planet

The Day Before:

I try to hydrate. Stretch. Rest. Repeat.

I picture the mountain looming over the small town of Seward Alaska. Mount Marathon--a crazy little race with a 3022 foot rise to race point, where adult runners circle a rock before decending back down to Jefferson Street and then around the corner to the finish line on 4th Avenue right by the Yukon Bar.

With an average slope of 34 degrees, it is more of a scramble up than a run, with no set route but choices between roots, cliffs, and muddy switchbacks. All the options eventually funnel into the bushes, where thorny salmonberry plants reach over our heads and the air stops circulating. When its wet, few roots and rocks exist here for handholds and runners often slide backwards into each other creating a domino effect.

Around the halfway point, where the junior racers (ages 7-17) turn around, the trail breaks out of the brambles and the rest of the climb follows scree and shale over multiple false peaks before the flags at race point.

They call the way down a "controlled fall", noodle legs from the uphill, as different muscles rev up for the descent through the hopefully soft scree to the more technical section know as the gully, or the gut, that involves a series of  small waterfalls to scramble over on our way to "glory rock" at the foot of the mountain before the shock of the concrete for the final .7 mile run through town.

Known as the toughest 5k on the planet, the 3.2 mile race claims a piece of you, whether its blood, sweat, tears, heartache or glory.

I almost deferred this year due to a foot injury from playing pick-up soccer back in April, I strained the fascia between my heal and arch and though it is not healed completely, the pain no longer cripples me in the morning or after a long day on my feet.  With under 24 hours till the start, I plan to participate, knowing my time may reflect the loss of April and May for training. Considering I need to finish in the top 50% of my age group to earn priority status for next year this is a bit of gamble, as I could easily lose my spot. If so, I will either put in for the lottery again and hope for the best or stand on the sidelines and cheer for my friends and family.

Olive will most likely earn a spot for next year and so I can still train with her, I can breathe in her dust as she beats my ass up and down that mountain. Regardless, it will be my 5th time running Mount Marathon, with my main objective to complete the race safely.

Now if only it were already over so I could know the outcome.

 

The Day After:

I sit with my legs up sipping coffee in my bathrobe, happy to be home and not in the hospital or worse. More on that in a minute, but first I need to tell you about my rockstar daughter Olive.

The Junior race goes first every year, with boys and girls ages 7-17 all running together to the halfway pole. This year, as part of their Covid mitigation plan, instead of a mass start, race organizers broke the kids into seven different waves, boys first and then in age order. This placed Olive in the final, seventh wave, with the rest of the pack ahead of her on the trail.

"Its not fair," she insisted when I read her the plan. "It should be based on our previous times." Not by age and gender. But the Junior race was cancelled last year due to Covid and the previous year due to wildfire smoke, so with so many new runners in the race the organizers couldn't fairly base the waves on previous times.

"You'll just need to weave your way around everyone," I told Olive. "Your little enough to squeeze past. Just be polite, say 'trail' and work your way up the mountain."

With this strategy in place, Olive felt ready to run her heart out.

And that she did.

The first leg of the race is on the road and Olive pushed herself to the front of her wave of 7-14-year-old girls. Nick and I watched her turn the corner towards the base of the mountain and then we just had to wait and hope she made it safely back down.

Knowing how technical the trail is in spots its awfully nerve-wracking to send your child off with a pack of male and female teenagers imagining every possible scenario that could go wrong. Rock fall is one of our biggest fears, as racers ahead could pull anything from pebbles to boulders free; and falls in general, especially in the chute or on the cliff, the route Olive prefers over the roots and safer switchbacks. 

Within a half hour, the top male runners started streaming across the finish line and as we cheered them through I received a text that Olive was on her way down. We clapped for the first female runners and long before we expected to see her familiar face, Olive appeared at the top of the hill for the final sprint to the finish line.

(I misread the text and my friend was actually telling me Olive was coming off the base of the mountain not just starting the descent.)

As we screamed for our daughter, I was pretty sure she won her age group (7-11) because she was the smallest girl we'd seen cross the finish line. I thought she was somewhere in the top 25 for girls and amazed at her speed on her second Mount Marathon Race. 

After hugs and high fives, Olive wanted to wait in the finishers shoot for her friends so Nick and I walked Elias over to meet up with his respite worker who planned to hang with him while I ran the woman's race and Nick volunteered as a sweeper, following behind the last woman and making sure we all got off the mountain safely.

As we sent Elias off, I heard the announcers recognizing the top five boys on the podium. They said they would recognize the top five girls next. We walked back over to check on Olive and check the screen for her final time. At the finisher's tent, the screen showed ten names at a time and then flipped to the next ten. As we approached, we saw Olive's name on the first screen but didn't catch her place; so we had to wait till it flipped through all the finishes back to the first screen and that's when we saw she finished 5th overall. 

"Oh my god she needs to get to the podium!" I said to Nick, as I ran to grab her from the finishers' chute where she was still hanging out chatting with friends. This is when I finally noticed announcers had been calling for her over the intercom and friends were texting to tell me.

Despite just running the race, Olive ran up the street with me to the main stage where one of the organizers told us they almost missed her placement because she came from that last wave and they had to subtract the time. In an awkward moment, a local teen who was waiting to get up on the podium was told she was actually 6th place as eleven-year-old Olive surprised everyone by placing 5th. The young woman handled this last minute change with grace. So in front of a large crowd, Olive stood next to the four older runners with her 5th place plaque, making her hometown of Seward Alaska proud.

And after all this excitement I still had a race to run!

I told a few friends that I should be done-- that was enough adrenaline for one day. Can't I just say I'm Olive's Mom and call it good?

But run I did.

Road running hurts my foot the most, so I hadn't trained for it and that was obvious as I reached the base of the mountain gassed from the uphill run, ready to quit and just discreetly fade into the crowd. I can't believe I still have to climb a freakin mountain!!?! Between lactic acid in my legs and my heavy breathing, I had nothing in me for the first half of the climb and it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other without stopping to catch my breath. 

Normally, I'm strong on the climb, but this year I was passed by women in the wave behind me as I struggled to keep going. I wanted to stop so many times, but my mantra I repeated, as I often do in races, especially when I question my sanity for joining in the first place, was: I'm lucky my body can do this.

I thought of Elias who told someone earlier in the day, "I didn't choose to do the race." My boy who works so hard just to move, who tackles tough trails, literally and figuratively, with determination and grit.

I'm lucky my body can do this.

I kept putting one foot in front of the other and by the second half of the uphill I no longer felt dizzy. I didn't feel fast, but I knew I could continue climbing to the top.

The day started out sunny and hot and then it poured on us on the upper mountain, cooling us off, softening the scree for the run down, where I finally felt strong, passing more cautious descenders as my legs tumbled one foot after the other.

One of the longtime contributors to Mount Marathon, Flip Foldager, says something like: If you don't come down bloody or muddy than you didn't try hard enough. His words were somehow in my head as I made it down all the scree and to the gut without falling. I made it over all the small water falls and the loose rocks to the now super muddy trail to the top of the cliffs.

I let a woman pass me on this part as I slowed down to navigate the downhill mud track. "I'm trying to be cautious here too," she said, when I told her she could pass.

At the top of the cliff, I waited for her to turn the corner to go down the most well-traveled line, with well-worn handholds that we crab crawl along. I took one step and my foot slipped, most likely from the mud in my shoes, and next thing I knew I was falling straight down the worst part of the cliffs. Luckily, I fell on my side and slid down without tumbling head first. I remember seeing a volunteer's outstretched arms ready to catch me as I somehow either landed on my feet or bounced up from the bottom.

"I'm good!" I said, amazed to have landed so well without apparent injury.

"Do you want us to check you out?" the volunteer asked, as I started running down the end of the avalanche chute.

"No, I'm good!" I yelled back. Adrenaline masked any pain I felt and when I reached "glory rock", in view of the cheering crowd at the base, instead of running around the boulder as I have always done to avoid injuring myself so close to the bottom, I slid down that rock too.

All that was left was the .7 mile street run, mostly down hill, with lots of familiar faces in the crowd calling my name. Covered in mud and blood, I got some good cheers as I made my way down Jefferson and 4th Ave to the finish line, where I sprinted the final 50 yards.

I finished in an hour and twenty-one minutes, which in all the previous years would have been fast enough to earn priority status for next year. With the new rule of finishing in the top 50% of my age group, and a smaller more competitive pool due in part to all the folks who deferred because of Covid and/or medical reasons, I did not make the cut this year.

If I want to run the race again, my name needs to get picked in the competitive entrance lottery. That's the gamble I took by not deferring till next year due to my injury. 

But despite it all, I have no regrets about choosing to run the race. I completed my 5th Mt Marathon race despite a foot injury and falling down the cliffs. That cliff fall could have been so much worse--though I'm covered in bruises and scrapes from my shoulders to my ankles, nothing is broken and I didn't hit my head.

(I fell from the top of the cliff in this picture to the right of where the boys are climbing.)

I am beyond thankful.

The race claimed a piece of me as predicted; and whether I return next year as a fan, volunteer, or lottery winner, the Mount Marathon Race will always be a part of me.

And holy shit, Olive made us all so proud!