As the weather changes, old injuries come out to haunt. A couple of dislocated knees commiserate with a pair of shoulders who shared their fate. Tingles and pops remind of awesome, decade-old stories, but the fame shines on a point just at the ball of my right foot, where cold weather becomes searing pain and taunts me with the notion that I may have crippled myself away from the very freedom I once swore by.
Yes, five years after the infamous rock in the dark that ended my cross county hike, I still enjoy frequent pains from that damned foot.
An update for those of you just tuning in, Stocked for a 72 mile trek up the rails aside the Eel river, I turned 220 lbs of pack and body weight onto a upturned rock in the middle of the night, and destroyed the inside half of the right foot behind the big toe. Live long lesson learned: Yes, "hiking boots" use less calories to lift than mountaineering boots, but even civilian roads can occasionally call for heavy soles and steel shanks.
I want that rock.
It's probably about two inches long, an inch or so at the bottom and half an inch on the business end, and if you look carefully, you might see shards of shattered dreams left across the narrow end. I collect odd mementos. I am willing to trade my deer molar for this one. Consider it a bounty and a mission.
Mission accepted. I will endeavour to hunt down that pesky rock and I will batter it before trading with you. A deer molar would look pleasant hanging from my neck.
ReplyDeleteYou mean you haven’t gone camping or trekking since that rock incident? You must have missed out a lot of the activities. I hope you feel better soon.
ReplyDeleteTheresa, Far from it. In January 2007, I moved back near the last farm we worked on, and started restoring a cabin on 44 acres near the wildderness we had walked through. In 2008, we moved full time into a camper on the last parcel backed up against 300,000 acres of third cut timber, damaged, yet well healed. We spent two years camping there, and rebuilding a native milled redwood cabin. I may have lost my feet, but I learned to grow roots.
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