deeper thoughts

Here you’ll find posts about big ideas, interesting words, or introspective imaginings. This is a big bucket of writing that might be a little bit navel-gazing, but at the heart of any personal, blog-for-the-fun-of-it blog is a place where the author can write about personally interesting topics that may not necessarily appeal to every reader.

Posted on episode 331

Knee-hab

Ten days ago I was climbing up a mountain trail near the Crowsnest Pass, a low peak along the continental divide on a sunny Sunday afternoon, looking at views like this:

I could feel the start of some bit of twinging in my right knee, but like anything else for a guy in his mid-40s, aches and pains are sometimes something to worry about … but usually just the biological squeaks of rusty joints and complaints of underused muscles.

That logical gamble didn’t pay off for me this time, and after a week of continued mumbling and grumbling noise from my knee joint, it finally stopped pulling punches and objected outright and fully to my continued lack of care to it’s needs.

I’d say it walked out on me, but walking is something that we do together and not as much for the last few days.

I seem to have developed a bit of a strain or a tear in my MCL, or medial collateral ligament, an important tendon on the inner side of the knee joint that is pretty important (I’ve found lately) for doing things like standing, walking up stairs, and (of course) running.

I’m on a break from running for at least a week or two.

Instead, I’ve grudgingly renewed my municipal fitness centre pass and paid up for a whole year of access to the weights, machines, and lap pool. I’ve been reintroducing myself over the last week to the joys of lane repeats. It’s a kind of cross-training, rehab, knee therapy that I hope will reduce my down time.

But in the heart of summer, despite the heat and humidity, I’m more than a little sad to be missing the sunny trails and green-lined river valley paths because of an injury I don’t even really know the origins of: suddenly it just started aching, and progressively got worse.

In the meantime, I may be able to use some of that down time to write a few more posts about hikes, runs, and my recent adventures in the mountains.

Posted on episode 328

Cast Iron Convinced-ish

After nearly nineteen years of marriage, I’d like to think I’ve learned something about not just my own spouse, but about being married in general. One of those lessons is that a good spouse is one who can keep the other in check, balanced, and grounded. And vice versa, of course.

Introvert and extrovert. Left and right. Yin and yang.

I can’t tell you when exactly I became a die hard fan of cast iron cooking. It came on gradually and evolved proof-wise from an ever-growing, ever-expanding collection of pieces and recipes that validated my obsession.

I can tell you that my wife has been — tho largely supportive — mostly skeptical of the effort and has never fully jumped into the crucible of molten iron that is my cast iron fandom.

Insomuch as she has enjoyed the results of my cooking efforts, there have been a wave of negs from the gallery, commenting on their weight, or the space they occupy in our cupboards, trotted out like a curious exhibit for visitors who get a peek into the cast iron cupboard.

Then last week I found her cooking dinner having unearthed a Teflon frying pan from the depths of our pantry.

Betrayed!?

Or, yin and yang.

“You’re using an old frying pan?” I asked.

“I wasn’t in the mood for a heavy one.” She replied.

Don’t get me wrong. She knows very well that there are jobs for which a cast iron pan is just a pan and others for which cast iron is king. This past weekend she led the charge for Father’s day, frying up a sizzling pan of smoked pork chops fried to a crispy finish in my ten and quarter inch Lodge.

But her convinced quotient still leans the “sorta” column whereas mine is camped in the “fully convinced” lot.

Her caution is the balance to my obsession.

And for any stray reader who stumbles upon this website or post, perhaps googling a query like of “how to convince my wife to switch to cast iron” or “great reasons to buy your first cast iron pan” the advice I would offer is simple: maybe you never will. Maybe you never should. Maybe you only need to convince yourself and then just cook. The proof is in the pudding… or pancakes. And anyway, who cares if no one else does. Do you and find joy where you need to.

We have a cupboard full of cast iron and I use it almost daily to prepare our meals, bake our bread, or grill up interesting things to share. Years on, my spouse still doesn’t quite get it… and maybe she never will.

Maybe that balance is a good thing.

It reminds me to enjoy and use the pieces I have, to keep learning new skills as to bring her closer to team “fully convinced” and overthink it all to maintain that balanced yin and yang of a good marriage cast in something probably much stronger than iron.

Posted on episode 327

Monday Zen: Pulling Weeds

In a previous post I mentioned that my vegetable garden has been sprouting through the spring in a particular state of ambiguity. 

As all the little seeds I deliberately planted in May began to germinate and grow, so did the variety of weeds and volunteer plants begin to emerge from the soil.

In many cases it was difficult to tell them all apart, good from bad, wanted from unwanted.

In one particular case, the case of the neat rows of deliberately planted carrots versus the scattering of rogue dill weed, the new shoots looked virtually identical in their one and two leaf stages.

Unable to tell the guests from the squatters, I left them all to be — carrots, dill, and a small assortment of other little plants turning the raw soil into a lush gardenscape of green sprouts.

Then this past weekend something interesting (though not unexpected) happened.

The dill began to mature into delicate, blue-green thread of delicate feathery leaves, while the carrots began to mature into paler green wisping fronds.

In the matter of a couple days I could suddenly tell one from the other. Amazing! At last! And I knelt at the edge of the garden box and acutely began to pluck the invading dill from those neat rows of young carrots.

Pulling weeds is not particularly interesting, but gardens, weeds, and all that sprouts in the spaces of those efforts makes for a well worn analogy for many aspects of living a well-cultivated life — pun intended.

Being able to pluck the weeds from your own life, be that from the emotional or physical or whatever spaces of your day-to-day seems simple enough advice.

But then again, just like the frustrating ambiguity I encountered with my carrots versus dill problem, sometimes deciding which bits are the weeds and which are the germinating seeds that you’ve planted deliberately is not always one hundred percent clear.

The mind, the heart and the soul are fertile soil for ideas and thoughts and emotions, some purposefully cultivated with care and attention, while others drift in with the wind and grow of their own accord.

Either can flourish, but it’s up to us with patience and practice to weed the gardens of beings and ensure what grows inside us is meant to be there and will yield the fruits (or veggies) that we want to harvest at the end of the process.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this process lately, both literally as a gardening practice and metaphorically as an act of self-care — and somehow coincidentally both tend to lead me to be on the ground on my knees in my backyard, hands covered in wet soil.

Posted on episode 326

After the Storm

Exactly one week ago, almost to the hour of me writing these words, I finally tested positive for COVID-19. By all accounts and on a severity scale of one to ten (one being no symptoms and ten being the most severe fatal variety) I would rank my infection experience at a 4 or maybe at most a 5.

There were a few hours in the middle where I considered asking my wife to take me into the hospital, but that feeling was short-lived and a good-night-sleep later I was back to slouching it off on the couch and sick-napping through a Netflix marathon.

This morning I feel almost normal.

I mention here for two reasons.

First, I feel like I need to explain why I haven’t posted in over a week. (Answer: I was sick.)

But second, this was a blog (and now blossoming project) that was conceived out of the rippled effects of this global pandemic. I can’t say for certain, but I doubt you’d be reading any of these past three-hundred and twenty-five posts if it were not for COVID-19. That pandemic provided both the space and motivation for me to start a little more self-evaluation and personal reflection and refocusing of priorities… and all those fancy things that make one take stock and dive into a new hobby, or reinvigorate an old one… even if it was just me stanning on cast iron cooking and raving about trail running adventure.

Living through the pandemic, which we’ve all done in some shape or another, has likely left an indelible mark on each of us, the scale and scope of which will only be understood in time.

For me, living through the pandemic in the first year of that event was marked not actually by a personal infection but rather by being on the front lines of my job, putting in erratic twelve hour days, burning out, being crushed emotionally and physically by the effort and the decisions and the reactions and the uncertainty of it all. I pounded a stake into the metaphorical sand and anchored myself to words and ideas and a reinvented self that I projected outwards through this space. It may have seemed trivial to those who were reading, but this was me tethering myself back into reality and hand-over-hand pulling myself back towards normal.

None of it is over. Many others have their own COVID stories to conclude, but I realize that by living through the actual infection, even a mild version I’ve kind of put a pin in my pandemic adventure, at least the first volume of it:

Learning about the pandemic, going through lockdowns and panic and societal shift. Working from home to avoid catching the damn virus. Mountains of PPE, masks of every shape and colour. Three vaccinations. Symptoms and tests and dozens of negatives, false alarms. The slow toe back into the new reality of post-COVID life, work and play. Demasking and lowering defences and then finally getting the damn virus and taking it on the chin for seven full days of fever and cough and headaches and utter fatigue, until…

Reaching healthy?

And in the blur of that two-and-half-years-long story, learning a lot about my own self, what I believe in, cherish, value… and how I want to write the sequel to it all.

The storm has passed. At least, my storm has, and I’m just pausing here for a deep breath — literal and metaphorically — as I look around and ponder where next.