This morning my husband and I were talking about what this blog post was actually going to be about. His idea is that I will tell you that I went on a beautiful hike near Breckenridge and here are my photos and aren't I so cool. The end. So... here is that post:
Earlier this week our neighbors, who are amazing by they way, invited us to join them at their vacation house in Breckenridge, CO. As an aside, you know how it is generally a really good thing that non-discrimination rules exist? Well I'd like to discriminate anyone who thinks they are just going to move onto our street if a house comes up for sale. No... I want to discriminate against you if you are not cool. Everyone who lives near us is so friendly and nice. No jerks allowed! Anyway, this one set of neighbors were headed up to the mountains to road bike up and over some of the high passes because, not only are they amazing, but they are also annoyingly athletic. I used to road bike, but I am certainly not up for biking up Vail Pass. However my ridiculously (and also annoyingly) athletic husband is. So two days ago I throw my spinning wheel and knitting in the car, Carl packed up his bike and a bunch of spandex and up we went.. We arrived mid-afternoon and the three of them took off to bike up Hoosier pass while I took a nap and then got some spinning in. I'll tell you, nothing beats spinning in a beautiful vacation home in the Rocky Mountains. I think the yarn comes out better up there or something.
The following day, yesterday, they decided to ride up and over Vail pass, twice! Well, from Breckenridge to Vail and back. So I had 4 hours to myself while they were gone. I decided to go for a hike. After spending some time the night before staring at the topo map of the area, which I can do for hours because I love maps, and with the advice of our neighbors I decided on the 3 mile out and back Lily Pad Pond trail. It was steep-ish, but short and after 1.5 miles I arrived at a pond (surprise!) to chill out at. And the hike was stunningly beautiful. I stopped often to take photos because the views were just too incredible to not take in. I also took a selfie at the pond for good measure. The End (not really. scroll down for more!)
A bit more than half way. Views like this are pretty inspiring.
Just the beginning. Steep but rewarding
Tree roots, also doubles as a lovely bench
The aspens has just started to get a touch of green.
So my personal version of yesterday, not that what I wrote above was not true and the hike wasn't amazing. But this trail is incredibly popular and probably photographed a bazillion times. I did a 3 mile hike yesterday, so what... I live in a state where people do 3 miles hikes to warm up before pilates. Or run the 3 miles on the trail before work. Three miles? Who cares. Well, this was an achievement for me and I am pretty proud of it. I was acutely aware with every freaking uphill step yesterday that my automatic nervous system was not regulating my heart rate and vascular pressure like it was suppose to. All those photo breaks I talked about? It was because I would hike uphill for about 3-4 minutes and have to stop to allow my heart rate to calm down and convince my heart to stop trying to vacate my chest via my ears. I have to be nice to myself, and also reasonable. I told myself that if I hiked for 10 minutes and had to turn around, that was okay. That was 10 minutes more than doing nothing. And there were several times I had to sit down because I was dizzy and decided that it was time to turn around. But I was having a good day yesterday and was able to keep moving up. Finally, when I had decided that I'd gone far enough I looked up and the pond was right in front of me. I don't think anyone had ever been more relieved to see that tiny mountain pond than me yesterday. You can't tell in the photo, so my face and hands were beet red and my hands were swollen. They felt like balloons on the ends of my wrists, painful, painful balloons. To those who saw me on that trail yesterday, I'm not crazy, nor was I being held up with a gun to my back by an invisible ghost (because again, I am not crazy). I was holding my hands above my head while hiking to try to get gravity to help where my body was failing, getting the blood out of my pour balloon hands before they popped!
It looks like I'm smiling. I'm actually gasping for air
As a final note, I read an article, probably on The Mighty, about how its not beneficial for those of us with chronic conditions to post our achievements because someone else with similar medical issues may not be able to do that and it makes them feel like shit. Well, it was written more eloquently than that, but you get my drift. And I understand. I see someone else with dysautonomia who is holding down a normal 9-5 and I get jealous and feel like perhaps I am just being a wimp (I am not. But those thoughts happen). So let me just say this- I had a good day yesterday. I am having a relatively good day today. These things are cyclical though, as most of us know. This was the achievement I was able to do yesterday. In a week my greatest accomplishment might be getting out of bed to make grilled cheese. And the effort exerted might be about the same. We can have good days where we can do extraordinary things. But day to day we know that we can not fight through the fatigue or pain. We have to learn how to live, deal and cope with it, along side it. It can not be our enemy, because it will win. Celebrating everyone's victories and accomplishments is incredibly important, be that working full time or taking a shower. In the game of chronic illness life, blue participation ribbons should be worn with pride!