Dick's Blog

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.

Javelin Missile: The One in My Back Yard

Hikers will love this tale. Often when looking up, you will see these magnificent birds of prey. Occasionally, you will see a hawk flying among the trees. That's often a goshawk, a large hawk which is highly adept at maneuvering and hunting in tight places. Red-tailed hawks usually hunt in more open spaces.

I've been mostly confined by back surgery to watching wildlife out of my sunroom windows. Our squirrel proof bird feeder at the edge of the woods is busy with small birds and woodpeckers. At the base of the feeder, squirrels reap the rewards of the messy birds which drop half of the sunflower seeds. There is an occasional chipmunk, but they are very careful and limit their exposure out in the open. They usually venture no further than the edge of the woods. Then we have foxes, which grab a squirrel that lets down its guard and forgets there are foxes. I call it Dick's squirrel farm. Once in a while, a small hawk will take a songbird. "Bad hawk," says my wife. This week, I witnessed something far different.

It's impressive how the advanced Javelin antitank missile locks onto and proceeds to its target. All pertinent information is stored in the missile's memory with no further guidance or instructions from the launcher. I think of the term, autonomous, able to think for itself, at least programmed to complete its lethal mission from launch to kill, adapting to changes in wind speed and motion of the target. The unusual thing about its flight path is, it swoops up and then dives down on the target, hitting it in its most vulnerable area, the top, not the highly protected sides of the tank.

We have a javelin missile at our house, it's a red-tailed hawk, programmed to hit its target. During its whole flight plan, it has its prey in its deadly sight. Its flight path is somewhat different than the javelin missile, but the result, the kill, is the same. From a great distance and height where it first sees its prey, it gathers speed like a German Stuka Dive Bomber, with its wings tucked in a plunge from high altitude to just above ground level. Now with open wings, it silently rockets parallel to the ground towards its unsuspecting prey. Then "Whack" the kill. This happened (I suspect the same hawk) twice in my back yard at the edge of the woods in the last two days. The prey each time was a chipmunk, oblivious to its impending doom. The moment of impact, the hawk's wings flared open to break its speed, its talons opened to clutch the chipmunk. I would have loved to catch the action on video. It happened so fast and so unexpectedly. I've seen similar scenes countless times with eagles and hawks on Public TV Nature programs.

Before I retired 25 years ago, my good friend at work, Bud, trained birds of prey including falcons and hawks in his youth. Bud was adept at looking up into the sky and spotting his feathered friends. On our noontime walks, he told me stories about his adventures. I too, habitually, during my walks and hikes find myself looking up and finding hawks circling above. Nine time out of ten in Connecticut, it turns out to be a turkey vulture. You can identify them by their size, black color, and shaky tippy-tippy wing to wing unstable flight pattern. Sometimes, it's a majestic red tail hawk. It's a treat to see them up close. As a hiker, I've seen evidence of a hawk's avian kill, a bunch of feathers and remains on the trail. Twice this week, I was rewarded to see them in action, unfortunately for our resident chipmunk population.

The accompanying image, my artistic rendition (I sketched this based on an image I saw on my computer) of a hawk on the attack, gives you an idea of what I saw as it opened its talons just prior to impact. All this reminds me of the flying dreams I had in my youth. I could skim just above the ground, maneuvering around any obstructions in my path. Later as a hiker with poles (I call myself the four-legged hiker), I had dreams of propelling myself in a prone position with my legs and arms, floating just above the ground. How may hikers out there watch for hawks, or had dreams of flying like one?

I understand that nature is cruel. There are no medications and hospitals. As humans, through our social connections and modern medical care, we can find comfort, solace, and peace in our pain and at the end of our lives. I've heard that animals experience a surge in adrenalin which renders them numb, unable to suffer, or they go into shock when faced with and experiencing a sudden attack and death, that the pain is blocked from their brains, that there is a natural anesthesia. I would l like to think that.

  Pushing the Envelope, Without It Pushing Back

Pushing the Envelope means to surpass normal limits, any boundary pushing activity, or attempting something that might be viewed as radical or risky in achieving a new physical accomplishment. Two good examples would be the advances you see every four years in the challenging sports of Olympic snowboarding and gymnastics.

As a hiker, I constantly pushed the envelope, increasing the number of mountains to climb. First, it was all the mountains in the New York Adirondack High Peak Region over four-thousand feet. Then I added the New Hampshire four-thousand footers, then all the sixty-eight New England four thousand footers, the peaks of the Catskills of New York over thirty-five hundred feet, then the hundred highest peaks in New England, the hundred highest in New York, climbing the Presidential Mountains in New Hampshire in winter including Mt. Washington, and many more in New York and New England in winter, from day hiking to backpacking, from trail walking to bushwhacking and route finding where there are no trails, snowshoeing, climbing with crampons and ice axe in subzero temperatures and windchills, pushing the envelope. The list goes on.

Now, my envelope is more limited, just getting through the night and getting out of bed with minimum pain. That has proved to be bigger than life, way beyond my hiking challenges. My wife and kids are hoping I show some measure of improvement following my recent emergency back surgery. They expect me to tell them that I am experiencing less pain each day or week or month. One month following my surgery, I'm experiencing the same pain. Am I discouraged? I am being tested, but I do view progress in my own way. My rationale is, if I define the envelope as the boundary, threshold, or limit where I experience the same pain, then I'm making headway if I'm pushing or expanding the envelope, meaning expanding my activity and mobility within that pain envelope or threshold. I'm doing more, achieving better performance, at the same pain. One thing I've done is graduate from a walker to my trusty hiking poles, the indoor ones with rubber tips to protect the hardwood floors and rugs, the outdoor ones with carbide tips for gripping the terrain. What self-respecting hiker would ever use a walker. Expanding the envelope, I just "hiked" to the back yard to inspect the bird feeder. I'm also starting to cook out on the propane fired grill on the back deck.

As the engineer in me, another way at looking at this is to imagine a spherical snow globe with its outer transparent surface and inner volume, detail, and scenery. The surface area of a sphere is proportional to the square of its diameter or D². The volume of a sphere is proportional to the cube of its diameter or D³. The ratio of its volume to surface area is proportional to D³ divided by D² which equals D. Think of the surface area as the envelope, my pain boundary or threshold. The volume is my performance, my mobility, the positive advances in my recuperation. As I recover from surgery and push the envelope or its diameter, D, the ratio of my performance to my pain threshold increases proportionally to the diameter, D. As I recuperate, the snow globe keeps getting bigger with increasing detail and performance. That is good.

If I exceed or push beyond the envelope, I'll pay for my indulgence, resulting in higher pain, setting me back in my recuperation. It's best not practicing the "no pain-no gain" philosophy, rather staying behind the pain. In my overconfidence, I exceeded the pain limit and am paying the price. Just when I was feeling better for a few days, I seems like I'm starting all over again. My wife and kids encouraged me to stand up straighter in my back brace, which I will be wearing for three months to assure and protect the slow fusion process of vertebrae in my low back. I'm too bent over in my walker (one with wheels and tennis balls). So, I leaned back against the counter and held myself straighter, happy to do so, feeling kind of good in the place where it hurts. That night I experienced severe muscle spasms. I had exceeded the pain boundary, envelope, or threshold, not staying within it. My question is, when and what is too much? How do you push the envelope without tearing past it? Two steps forward, one step back is ok. Sometimes it's two steps back. When I push the envelope, I wish it didn't push back so hard.