WatershedEvents

THE WAY BACK

I wonder if the uninitiated realizes how much effort a sustained kind of approach to blogging really takes? The fact is that under certain circumstances it can be a weighty kind of experience, the kind that leads to neglect, and ultimately to abandonment. I had more or less reached that point – considerations of permanent abandonment – when physical circumstances in the form of major health issues removed the chore from my hands.

I had a stroke, the third and most catastrophic in just over a year. For a short time it left me paralyzed on my right side and partially paralyzed on my left. I made a partial recovery in relatively short order, but that pace of recovery did not continue. As a result I am hemiplegic now – my left side has healed completely, but on the right I am still mostly paralyzed. I make my way around mostly by wheelchair, but am able to use a cane for short distances.

It’s been two years since the stroke (and the heart attack which followed a year later) and I’ve regained a lot of strength. I feel inordinately lucky to have survived it all, and am beginning to approach the future with a fair amount of optimism – tempered of course by the reality of who I am and what I have endured. All that being the case, I’ve decided to put a little bit of my remaining energy into the maintenance of WatershedEvents, the blog I started in 2007.

I began writing the blog primarily to support a book that I was writing at the time. Titled Up Fanno Creek, the book was an exploration of creek’s natural history and my emergence as the biggest fan and advocate. When I was finished with that project I continued working from time to time on the blog, partially to support some writing and research projects, but mostly just to keep my hand in. Blogging had become a part of my life, more or less, and I was using it mainly to stay in touch with a few close friends.

I’ll probably work the blog the same way this time around, using it as an informal sort of communication/introspection kind of outlet for my natural tendency towards gregariousness. One thing is certain, however – I’ll try to keep politics (other than local) at bay. I’ll also try to focus as much as possible on the natural history of things around me, and will do my best to keep it light. Goodness knows the world on our phones and pads is heavy enough!

I think the main reason why I have decided to return to the task is self-care related. Recovering from a major setback of any kind – physical, professional, or psychological – requires a great deal of commitment and self-affirmation. It’s hard work, and you need all the help you can get, especially from yourself. Writing in the blog is, in many ways, just another form of the inner conversation that people tend to engage in everyday. Or maybe it’s just a way of thinking out loud. Whatever the case, I have always found it to be quite satisfying.

WALKING TO MULESHOE

On August 11th I had a "small" stroke and temporarily lost control of most of the muscles on my left side. Luckily, recovery was amazingly fast. Within a matter of hours almost all my fine motor skills had returned, and within 36 hours I was back home, hard at work getting back to pre-stroke condition. Things went well - until August 27th, when I had a second stroke, this one much more serious. Again it was the left side that felt the bulk of the attack. It took almost 72 hours for me to gain enough motor control and balance to head home, and even then I required the use of a walker in order to simply move around the house. 

For a few days it was not clear how many of my pre-stroke abilities might be reoverable. But I was lucky a second time, as no permanent damage apears to have taken place. The difficulties I experienced with speech and fine motor skills in the first couple days are well behind me, and I've made a great deal of physical and mental progress in a surprisingy short period of time - I was discharged from Saint Peters Just under seven weeks ago. I'm up to over a mile walking a day, can operate the riding lawn mower properly (including emptying the bags when they are full), and feel safe eough to drive on back roads with Kitty as copilot. My flute playing is better than ever.

Still, It will be quite some time before I am back to pre-stroke levels of strength, coordination, and stamina. It's the stamina part that may prove to be the most difficult to win back; right now even small efforts can leave me a little winded and wobbly in the knees. Tackling that problem will require a lot of self-discipline and hard work. I'm into my second month of a fairly aggressive physical therapy program supervised by the same specialist who worked with me on my right shoulder a couple years. We were very successful with that therapy, and I expect we'll be equally successful with the task at hand. 

Something I learned the very first time I had physical therapy - in an extremely successful program aimed at sparing me a knee operation - was how much it helps to have a clear objective in mind. That first time around, my goal was to be able to hop from rock to rock along a trail without falling down or breaking an ankle or a leg. That may sound simple enough, but it took over six months and a lot of hard work, a suite of exercises, and buckets of sweat to acheive that goal. 

This time around, I have another simple goal - I want to be able to go tent camping with one or more of my children before I turn 78. That's just a little less than a year from now, and to make that deadline I will need to get my body into a lot better shape. A lot of the work involved will center on walking, and that's where the idea of "Walking to Muleshoe" comes in. 

Muleshoe Campground is a BLM site on the banks of the John Day RIver in Oregon. I've been camping there since the summer of 1996. I like to use it as a sort of home base whenever I visit the Sutton Mountain WIlderness, the Painted Hills, and other attractions in that general area. I'd like to get back there for a few days sometime next summer. It's almost exactl 289 miles from my front door to the tent pad at Space #6 in the park. (I prefer that site above all others, and only three times out of dozens of trips have I ever had to camp in another space.)

I'm fortunate to live in a neighborhood where walking is safe and fun, not to mention very invigorating. There are areas where its possible to walk on soft surfaces - dirt and grass -as well as pavement; and every mile-long walk involves an elevation change of at least 200 feet.There is also a good trail through some beautiful woods that leads into Mclane Creek Natural Area. Beyond that lies a huge network of steep and rugged trails through great stands of conifers. I'll use these resources and others to walk my way back to Muleshoe.

My watch tells me that I put in 3.22 miles today - Only 285.78 miles to go!