Adventure Swimming

I heard the pop-pop-pop, felt the white hot burning as I slammed into the ground with sudden force. I was 5 miles into a trail run, and seconds before, I felt wild and free, like the trees I was running through. It was the first day of summer, after a year of pandemic, in person, public school teaching. I could feel the stress and slipping from my shoulders only moments before, feet gliding over rocks and roots, and now here I was, face down in the dirt, scared to look down at my ankle, sure there would be a compound fracture or something else horrific. Turns out it was only a severe sprain, and I dragged myself the last half mile out of the woods, realizing this was going to be a different kind of summer.

But wasn’t it already? Our nation was just emerging from a global pandemic that killed over 600,000 Americans, and caused interruptions, loss, shifts, and pain in all of our lives. As a response, I had been going, going, going, parenting, teaching, feeding people, and trying to stay healthy and mentally okay. Then, late at night, doing the third shift, emails, looking at my kids’ school work, checking school and practice calendars until my eyes closed.

Not free. Not wild.

And all of a sudden I had to stop. Everything. I needed to stop moving and ice and elevate my ankle. After a week of crutches and icing and hobbling I remembered a goal, a thought I had…