I said I’d given up on New Year’s resolutions. Forever. Then, last summer, everything changed. I got a brief glimpse of my own mortality.
It’s taken about four months to sort it out, but I’m beginning to understand the larger implications of the accident. I never was really angry with the hapless fellow who backed his car into me. After all, I had almost hit someone last winter in a similarly careless move. The problem, or so it seems, is that the whole episode made me fearful, or at least wary. And since I’ve never questioned my good health, I couldn’t understand why I was now aware of every heartbeat, every slight swelling of an ankle, every pain in the knee or hip. I’ve never been afraid of falling. For most of my adult life, I hiked, skied, rode and climbed completely unaware that I could misstep and lose my health, my independence, my life, at least the life I’ve always led.
Believe me, California is not the place to live if you can’t drive your car, and living in the mountains is dumb if you can only walk on the flat. Trying to tend a hillside garden is total frustration.
So after two months of bumming rides to doctors’ appointments and to the market-forget the movies-then two months of driving, ever so carefully, there are still limits to what I can expect to do. Hence the resolutions for the coming year.
I resolve to stop listening to doctors and start listening to other people who have had hip surgery, recovered and got on with their lives. I’ve heard a few horror stories, but I also learned useful things: like how to bend over without dislocating that ceramic implant to which surgeons can’t attach a ligament. Like how to sit on the floor, and better yet, get up again unassisted. How to rearrange cupboards and closets so the things you need most often are at least two feet off the ground and not higher than you can reach standing flatfooted. I’ve learned to put a foam pad between my leg and the seat belt buckle and to fill the space in the bucket seat with a special pillow that allows me to drive pain free for up to 90 minutes. This will not get me to Montana, but I’m still working on that.
I’ve decided to just plow ahead and do everything I want while I still can because who knows … It’s a long list, but then I’ve been putting things off for awhile. No longer. Last year, in a fit of frustration over the administration’s assault on our national forests and wild lands, I said I would visit every endangered wild place, at least in the West, before logging, mining and drilling despoiled them all. I’ll see Glacier Park before it melts; the Tongass before it’s clear cut; the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before it’s littered with oil rigs and pipelines; the Rocky Mountain Front, which may require some hiking; and while I’m in the neighborhood, maybe a trek through the heart of Canada’s boreal forest. Then I’ll revisit my favorites: Alaska’s Haines Wilderness Area, a great place to hole up and write all summer, maybe take a week off to explore Denali.
Just as this is starting to seem too ambitious I turn on the Travel Channel and discover the American Orient Express, which makes a week-long trip from Salt Lake City to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Bryce Zion and the Grand Canyon. I could be dreaming every night in a beautifully restored sleeping car, dining on gourmet food, gazing at magnificent scenery from a comfortable swivel chair in the observation car. I have always loved trains. My mother took me from the New York hospital where I was born on the Super Chief all the way to California. And when I was three, we made the trip to St. Louis to visit the grandparents. On the way home, I woke up early one morning in my lower berth and saw the sun rise over the Rockies. It was magical, emblazoned on my subconscious, maybe in my genes. After all, Grandfather Powell was a railroad engineer. I even take Amtrak’s not-so-luxurious trains that rarely go where you want to go or when you need to. Actually, the Coast Starlight to Seattle isn’t bad.
I don’t know if I can complete this itinerary in one year, but since I won’t be skiing, I’m going to give it my best shot.
One slightly endangered human exploring our vast endangered wild lands.