Dick's Blog

I'd like to think that rubbing shoulders with a famous writer stimulated me to begin writing. Before I started memoir writing in 2002 and before the year of his publication of his nonfiction treatise "On Writing" in 2000, my wife and I found ourselves sitting next to Stephen King at a little country store and restaurant in Lovell, Maine, near Kezar Lake, where he owned a cottage. The following is an excerpt from Chapter 20, Friends Like This, from my memoir "Taking a Walk" (2022).

"When I started reading books by Stephen King, I was impressed with his characterization of children and how their bonds were built on laughter and compassion for each other. Several years ago in Maine, my wife and I, by shear chance, sat at the same lunch counter right next to the man, a short time before his terrible accident as a pedestrian on a local highway. He was having breakfast and an orange soda, voraciously reading three newspapers at his side. He says in his recent non-fiction book, "On Writing", written after his accident, that you can't write if you don't read. We were having lunch. I kept silent during the meal, but as he got up to leave, we nodded, and I told him quietly that I enjoyed his work. He graciously thanked me. The people there all knew him. He was a frequent visitor to this local restaurant and country store. It made me feel good."

As he was paying his breakfast bill, a little old lady came up to him. Paraphrasing, she said, "Mr. King, I have a story for you. It's true - - - and it's a Mystery!"

Being a local, he obviously knew her. Graciously, he replied, "Gladys (I believe that was her name), Stop by anytime. I'd love to hear it."

The photo is me in my back brace June 21, 2022, still recuperating from spinal fusion surgery in March. I'm holding my copy of "On Writing" by Stephen King.

Collateral Damage: Consequences and Complications

In battle we have collateral damages, for example civilians killed in an air strike on military positions. From surgery, we have post-surgical consequences and complications including pain, loss of mobility, tissue swelling, potential blood clots, and with narcotic pain control, the loss of alert function and the side effect of constant constipation. You get the message, limited mobility, loss of conditioning, frustration, and worse of all for this avid but aging hiker, depression and putting hiking on hold. That's the biggest frustration of all. I haven't hiked in almost five months, trapped in a virtual cage created by surgery and the recuperation process.

The attached photo shows this frustrated hiker, trapped in a real cage, on my last hike. I guess you would call it an old cattle guard with barbed wire fencing extending to either side, allowing people (hikers) to pass through a chain link labyrinth, but too tight for cows to fit through. It's on the Metacomet Trail, south of Orchard Road, in Berlin, CT.

Hiking is more than hiking. It's a process involving three key repeating steps:

The Hiking Cycle

1. Planning

2. Hiking

3. Reminiscing

followed by planning, hiking, and reminiscing, etc. an endless source of fulfillment and enjoyment.

I remember in my early hiking days after a long backpack weekend, of driving home tired and bone deep sore, thinking that I wouldn't want to repeat that trip again. After a day, my mind, which was not tired, would be active, thinking about what I had just done, and planning the next hike. The aching body would just need a few days to catch up with my aspirations.

My last day hike was over 4 months ago in early December 2021. Shortly after, I was scheduled for back surgery in January. That was postponed for six weeks because of a Covid Omicron variant surge in Connecticut and lack of surgical support staff at the hospital. My new surgery date was late February, the day after my eighty-fourth birthday. That surgery was followed four weeks later by emergency surgery in mid-March. This week will mark 6 weeks post-surgery and a slow recovery process to fuse five vertebrae in my low back and the wearing of a back for three months until late June.

So how is it going in the hiking department and the hiking cycle? I have graduated out of a walker back to my hiking poles. Last week, I hiked (high risk) out to my back yard. My best excursion was today, a tenth of a mile on the road around a small block. I'm planning to up that to a quarter mile by next week. That is a lot to reminisce about. Ha. Ha.

The big challenge is to increase my distance, but under controlled conditions mostly on the road, I dare not take a spill which rules out any kind of uneven terrain including roots, rocks, steep inclines, and declines. Every step I take is with a lot of care and pre-thinking about what I'm doing. As my distance increases, my confidence level also improves.

My long-term plans will have to wait until the brace comes off. I expect any kind of extended woods hiking will be in September 2022 which will be 9 months since I last hiked. We are booked for a week in Maine and Acadia National Park. I do spend a lot of time reminiscing, especially when my son asks me a question about past trips in the mountains. It's a far cry from my hay-days of hiking, but time does fly when I'm having fun thinking of much hiking has affected my life. My aspirations and achievements have been modified with age and mobility, but the process and hiking cycle remains the same. 

 Blinky

My wife was in the kitchen preparing dinner. I could have been helping her, but I was in the recliner with my feet up, getting the pressure off my swollen ankles. My back brace chest piece was riding up and poking into my Adam's apple. My back surgery was just over five weeks ago, but the swelling of my lower extremities has persisted. She was making quite a chatter in the sink, but it seemed to be reverberating from one end of the house to the other. Not all the noise was coming from the kitchen. "Honey," I said. "I hate to ask you when you are busy, but could you come down here and check the back deck. It sounds like something is scratching and knocking on the slider door." She has been doing a whole lot of fetching and doing things for me for the last five weeks, including tucking me in at night. She passed my chair to peak around the corner.

"OMG," she exclaimed. There is an owl on the deck pecking on the slider window. It's flapping is beak like it's trying to talk to me and "blinking" its big yellow (iris) and black (pupil) eyes. By now, I had lowered the footrest on the recliner and grabbed my hiking poles (with the rubber tips to protect the floors). "OMG. Get your camera, I shouted. So started the picture taking and questions galore, more questions than answers, like who should we call, animal control? A lot of the questions were directed at the owl, which just continued to flap its beak. We ended up leaving a message for the animal control officer and got a number for "A Place Called Hope" a Connecticut birds of prey rehab center. In the meantime, after mesmerizing us for about twenty minutes, "Blinky" we've named already, has decided to move on, jumping off the deck and running for the woods. My, this guy has big feet and long talons. "Blinky" is covered with soft grey down feathers. It's a juvenile. It can't fly. What is to become of it? How does a flightless bird protect itself? It's so vulnerable.

Long story short. Tis the season for fledgling Great Horned Owls to leave the nest, by accident or kicked out by the parents. The babies have climbing ability and when settled in a tree, the parents will find them, protect, and continued to feed them. I learned all this from A Place Called Hope, the Internet, and the almost three-hundred responses to my post I got on a Hiking in Connecticut Facebook site. They are still coming in with more OMGs, factual data on owls, and helpful suggestions.

You never know when an owl will come into your life. One summer, my folks were sitting in their living room over 50 years ago. My mother said she had this strange sensation the someone, something was looking at them They glanced over at the fireplace. Behind the glass door, sitting on the grate, was this big-eyed owl staring at them. The owl had fallen down the chimney. Lots of questions, more questions than answers. In the end, a neighbor came in with a big sheet, enveloped the owl, took it outside and released it, no photographs and social media impress anyone.

Thirty years ago, my son and I took one of our backpack trips in the Adirondack Mountains in pursuit of the hundred highest peaks in New York State. My story of that adventure "Dreams at Sucker Brook" is in my first memoir "Hiking Out." The story involves two owl species, the first, a little guy with a shrill voice called a Saw-whet Owl, the second, an adult Great Horned Owl, a magnificent bird of prey. He or she landed on "silent wings" on a boulder in the middle of a stream right next to our encampment, staying for about twenty seconds before drifting silently downstream out of our view. Two times I have been blessed by a Great Horned Owl, this week by one that stayed long enough and seemed to be trying to have a conversation with us. I guess it was us that did all the talking.

 Hiking Poles to the Rescue Again

I learned my lesson the hard way.

After years of day hiking, I graduated to backpacking, and then at age 34, got my family into backpacking. Heavy loads, especially going downhill, puts a lot of stress on knee cartilage. My son, the physical therapist, explains that this is called eccentric loading which is very stressful on the knee joint. That's the opposite of loading the knee joint when going uphill. Around age 55, I started experiencing increasing jolts of pain in my left knee, particularly going downhill. This led to three arthroscopies over a few years to remove torn cartilage. I had started using a single hiking pole to help with the heavy loads but too late to stop the irreversible damage in my knee. Eventually, there was no cartilage remaining, down to bone on bone. This led to my left knee joint replacement. Sometime in all this, I graduated to two hiking poles. Not only did they help reduce my discomfort going up and down hills, but I also used them for propulsion, like ski touring, at the end of the day when the legs were tired and felt like they were close to giving out.

After my last surgery, I was forced to use a walker to assist me getting out of bed, to the john, the shower, and around the house. The walker also provided a sense of security. Even with a heavy duty back brace, I felt unsteady and lacking confidence, deathly afraid of falling and hurting myself and undoing the slow healing and fusion process ongoing in my back.

Mobility with a walker is a challenge. My son installed yellow tennis balls on the back legs of the walker (wheels on the front) that allowed the walker to slide on floors and rugs, eliminating the need to lift the walker at every transition from floor to rug. Just lifting the walker was causing shooting pains in my back. But the walker is slow and cumbersome. And it ruins my image as the confident macho hiker. What self-respecting hiker would get caught dead using a walker? Alas! I have lost all my self-respect. What should I do?

Hiking poles to the rescue! The problem is you can't use hiking poles with carbide tips (good outdoors, especially on ice and rocks) in the house. Goodbye hardwood floors and rugs. But I do have poles with rubber tips installed over the carbide tips. Now, making the transition from walker to poles is not that easy. The walker is stable. I can support half my weight when the back is yelling at me. The poles are not stable. You can't balance your weight over a single point and expect not to tumble.

Now, I'm thinking. What did the poles do for me as a hiker? With the poles in my hands, I had become a four-legged hiker? This hiker was walking on all fours, like an animal. It gave me incredible purchase and added force going up and breaking going down hills. Even better, it also gave me the increase balance that cannot be achieved with only two legs. I had become so adept at locomotion with hiking poles, they had become a natural extension of my body. Slowly, with some trepidation, I made the transition from walker to poles. After a few days, I have my confidence back. My posture has improved as I concentrate on standing straighter and not leaning on the walker. The surgery has temporarily left me all hunched over. Now, I'm a four-legged walker, next a four-legged hiker. Compared to the walker, I've gained mobility. I can go outside. I "hiked" all the way to the back yard last week. We went (my wife is still doing all the driving, I haven't in two months) to CVS for our second booster shots yesterday. With our increased immunity in a couple weeks, we may even go out to a restaurant, if my wife thinks I am standing up straight enough.