October 23rd, 2018 (The date this tale began)
I love hiking and being in nature but since I moved from Topanga to Sylmar in 2015 (both are in the Los Angeles area for those not familiar with Southern California) there hasn’t been a whole lot of natural beauty in my vicinity to partake of. There are a few trails in the hills behind my house but they terminate at the bases of monstrous electrical towers and most of the time, they’re covered in dead brush and dust. Power lines and desert drab aren’t exactly my idea of “nature”. The word “nature” generally conjures up images of things that are alive, particularly things with healthy amounts of chlorophyll pulsing through their veins. The hills behind my house are generally devoid of any such imagery.
So in the year of our lord two thousand and eighteen on the twenty third day of the month of October, I decided to venture outside of my neighborhood to a park I had driven by multiple times on my way to and from the grocery store. It had green grass which was a step in the right direction. I prayed it also had hills to climb that weren’t draped in power lines.
It turned out there were two parks. The one that faced the road was just a regular park with picnic tables and swings, etc. But the park behind it had not just hills, but a veritable mountain!
The park was called “O’Melveny” and I was excited. There was the potential for me to get lost in nature which I hadn’t been able to do in over 3 years.
I pulled into the parking lot around 10 am and happily bounded out of my car. I went in search of a trail and followed a sign that said “nature trail”. Simple and straight-to-the-point, it seemed like my kind of place.
However, about 15 minutes later when I ended up on a small hill surrounded by the same dead brush I’d left behind at my house, I started to wonder if this had been a wasted trip. The meager trail I found myself on didn’t seem to be going anywhere special and there was a neighborhood in full view, a constant reminder of the civilization I’d been hoping to escape.
There was definitely a mountain nearby but I couldn’t determine if there was actually a trail that led to the top of it. I contemplated going back to the car and going home but I figured I might as well get my daily lunges in before I did. And it was those 6 long strides that would end up changing not only that day but in some small sense, my life.
My lunges brought me to a small ledge that led to a steep downward trail that fed into what looked like a bigger trail. My pulse quickened at the sight of actual trees. Maybe the day wasn’t lost after all!
Because I have all the coordination of a newborn giraffe, I very ungracefully descended the trail which threatened to twist my ankle with every awkward step I took. But alas, I made it to the big trail with all bones, ligaments, and tendons intact.
About 50 feet in front of me, I saw the figure of a woman moving up the trail. She had a neon blue and pink jacket tied around her waist which acted like a fishing lure on my nature-starved brain. I could tell by her confident walk that this woman knew where she was going and that she’d been here before. I decided I would just follow her brightly colored jacket wherever it bobbed. Instinct told me it would lead me somewhere interesting.
I was right but “interesting” can mean so many things. Great art is interesting but so are bloodthirsty serial killers. This kind of interesting was somewhere in between.
After following the jacket for several minutes, a near-vertical incline came into view and it wasn’t a small one. I went into risk-assessment mode:
Despite the fact that I’m chronically ill, I am in decent cardiovascular shape because my illness demands that I do 30-60 minutes of steady, low-impact cardio every day in order to stay out of pain. Cardio-wise, I could easily make it up the hill. I was also born with thighs evolution designed to walk 20 miles a day with a baby on each hip even if I didn’t regularly do lunges so the incline would be child’s play for my quads. The main obstacles I would face were with my hips, my calves, and my balance in trying to get back down (because of my aforementioned coordination of a newborn giraffe).
Because I am mostly housebound due to illness, I am also mostly sedentary. This has left my calves weak and the muscles around my hip joints so tight that it hurts to walk for extended periods of time.
My hips were already hurting by the time I got to the base of the incline, which I considered a small price to pay for some time in nature especially since the pain quickly goes away with rest. But my calves were almost certainly going to get ripped to shreds so just walking around the house the next few days was going to be painful. I was also probably going to have to slide back down the incline on my ass because of my lack of coordination and balance.
A reasonable person with a decent level of respect for her health and wellbeing would have turned back and looked to see what else the park had to offer on more level ground but I am not such a person. I am the epitome of hubris: I’m arrogant, I rarely back down from a challenge, I tilt at windmills, and worst of all, I trust the voices in my mind that tell me I can make the impossible possible through a simple alchemical process of transmuting disbelief into unconditional, consummate faith. In a word, I am a fool.
And, being a fool, I figured, “What the hell? It’s one incline. It will be an adventure!” Famous near-last words.
I made it up the incline without a problem. I did have to pause for some shade and water because the sun was climbing and there was little escape from the intense heat of its midday rays. What I didn’t count on was that the trail would be uphill the entire way with four or five more inclines like the one I’d just climbed. This trail was definitely going to the top of this mountain and fast and the temperature seemed to be ascending just as quickly.
After about the third incline, I felt the symptoms of heat stroke coming on. I had to stop every few yards to drink water and crouch behind bushes to try to cool off. I was in a predicament. The mountain and the heat had pushed me to my absolute limits but I am relentless when I set my sights on something and my sights were set on standing on the very tippy top of this mountain if for no other reason than to exact revenge upon it. All I was looking for was a pleasant, invigorating walk in the woods and instead this mountain decided to pick a brutal fight to the death with me and I was determined to win.
I pushed myself past where I should have. I had gotten stranded in the woods from symptoms of heat stroke before and I was in danger of getting myself into a worse situation on the side of this mountain. No one knew where I was and I was still going to have to get back down all those insane inclines at a newborn giraffe’s pace and without the benefit of shade or much water since my canteen was nearly empty.
I inched up the mountain trying to stay as cool as possible because my spirit was throwing an absolute temper tantrum at the thought of not beating this mountain at its game. My soul didn’t care that my body was literally and figuratively becoming toast; it refused to concede defeat. But as I crested another uphill portion of the trail, I came face-to-face with a fourth incline. The mountain was taunting me.
The woman I had been following was long gone by this point. I was mostly alone. A few hikers passed me by at speeds that stunned me. I’m more sensitive to heat than most though. I suspect they probably didn’t feel their brains pulsating against their skulls and threatening to punch through their ear drums like I did.
I stared at the fourth incline for a while. Every couple of minutes, I would charge toward it like a caged animal at the zoo might charge at its moat but not leap because it knows from experience it can’t make the jump. I watched other hikers ascend in the distance to try to ascertain how far I was from the top but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t make it up that incline and hope to survive much beyond that and if I was going to die on this hill (ha ha) I sure as hell was going to make it to the top before I did.
With a heart full of rage and despair, I spun around and stormed back to the car as fast as the fastest, heat-stricken, newborn giraffe on Earth possibly could. The whole way down I plotted my comeback. I would wait until winter when it was cold. I would get my calves in shape (they were on fire at this point) and I would walk for several weeks ahead of time to loosen up my piriformis muscles which causes the pain around my hip joints.
I made it home alive but I was livid. I WOULD return to the mountain and I would beat it senseless. Even if it killed me, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that one day I would stand on its highest peak and claim my victory.
(My approximate mood leaving the park:)
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