Thanksgiving

As I approach week …11(?) post surgery, I'm freaking out because I'm not nearly as healed as I thought I would be.  And I'm not nearly as wise as I assumed I would become from all the time spent being injured, cooped up, and miserable.  Every time I open my computer I look at 8a and am so proud of my friends for crushing as hard as they do every day, but sad to not be able to trudge through rhodos carrying a pad full of snacks and yell them up boulders.  I'm getting used to not climbing, but I'm not getting used to how much I miss my Boone family, some of which don't even live in Boone right now.  I love seeing everyone on the weekends I drive up, but it's not enough.  I miss living in the most amazing town over the summer.  Maybe it had something to do with having no job and no school and spending my days training and laughing with everyone about how greazy it was out at Grandmother.  And the surprise visits from Meria and Drexel or Juliet were always so fun!  I can't wait to see everyone in December at Rocktown, where it all began (I <3 Trey Worley).

The physical therapy milestones I'm supposed to have met for week 12 (two weeks from now, aka right after the end of final exams):
~full active range of motion
~full rotator cuff strength

What I have accomplished:
~nothing.

I had planned to do so well that I'd beat all the milestones and miraculously heal in time to train and climb v10 over Christmas (lolz).  How time gets away from you when you keep telling yourself that you'll start tomorrow…

On the bright side, I got to visit my Cecil family over thanksgiving!  I'm so thankful for my wonderful family, everyone cares so much about each other and it's just so great to be around them, even for a short time.  I love them all so much, family family and friend family.

What I would be doing

This post was just a title until right this second.  I made this title when I was super bitter about not being able to climb, and I was going to write a tirade about the boulders I would be falling off of, the routes I would be looking at but probably still not climbing, and all the campus rungs I would be pulling through on.  But that would be miserable to read/write/think about.  (I do think about it allllllllll the time.  I look at the ticklist and training plan I had planned for this season multiple times a day and it's a moment of sadness before I move on because you can't change things by being sad about it.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Right now I'm sitting in Espresso News, starting hour five of being in the same chair, and I'm thinking of all the things I could be doing.  I could be across the street, training at the src.  Or I could be at Horse Pens, $50 poorer, but happily exhausted after a long day of climbing on new rock with great friends.  Or I could just be home.  Or I could be at the zoo, petting camels.  Maybe I'd be in Italy drinking wine and eating bread with olive oil.  (That was a stretch)

But the point is, I could always be doing something else; we could all always be doing something else.  But we're doing what we're doing, so let's enjoy it.  I'm listening to these two older men have a really interesting, but mostly nonsensical, intelligent sounding argument, and it's pretty cool.  Sure, I'd way rather be training or hanging around a campground with my friends, but I'm not.  And I'm okay with that.

He's okay with it too

What's that cliché saying?  Be where you are?  I don't know, you get what I'm saying.

Controlling my psyche when it happens at the wrong time

Sometimes psyche happens at the wrong time, like right now as I sit in the quiet study floor of the library "studying" for my Matlab test in a few hours.  It feels like a beautiful mountain stream is rushing around my entire body, threatening to bubble out like a spring.  I start breathing too loudly and rhythmically, like preparing to start a hard boulder, but actually I'm just disrupting the people around me who think I'm having a panic attack because that's the most exciting thing that happens on the quiet study floors.  Calm down.

Here's a short poem about how I feel:

"Too psyched.  Cannot do pushups.  Breathe quieter."

That's how I feel right now.  In the past when I get too psyched and am not around boulders or in any position to drop everything and go on a run, I drop and do pushups - really fast pushups.  And sometimes jump and yell and wave my arms around.

Little Olivia writhing on the floor because psyched

This has happened my entire life, even before climbing.  Now, I just have something to direct this giant explosion of happy energy towards.  As a child I would randomly scream and jump in the air and sprint to wherever I was headed, like the bathroom or the refrigerator, or the pencil sharpener in my elementary school classroom.  I could never explain to my teachers why I had to run outside real fast and pump my arms and scream at the sky, it just absolutely needed to happen now or I would die because aimless energy is exploding out of me and it won't stop.

Now it's called psyche, but it's still just as bad.  Luckily I have friends who understand and something to direct it into (and I no longer have to sit in a classroom for seven hours a day).  One perfect example occurred last december in a Hardee's in LaFayette, GA: it was freezing at Rocktown that morning, below freezing and windy plus everything was frozen, so I decided to go along with Trey and a few other friends to Hardee's to get warm before heading out to the boulders.  It was about to be a really boring morning, but Carson had his laptop with a bunch of climbing movies on it and we were all huddled around him watching Dave Graham bouldering in RMNP when it happened to all of us.  We all got so psyched and decided that cold weather couldn't stop us from touching boulders.  But I was uncontrollably psyched, as opposed to everyone else who had a handle on themselves.  I was running in circles around Trey's car in the parking lot while we waited for everyone to brush their teeth, and when Trey finally unlocked his car I jumped in the backseat and freaked out because we were all in the car and we have to leave right now!!!!!  But, as Kyle pointed out, I was the only one in the car, so more waiting and panting and shaking.  Then the whole way to Rocky Lane and up the mountain I laughed and rocked back and forth, it was ridiculous.  I don't even remember getting the the trailhead, I just remember everyone telling me to calm down.  But they were all psyched too!

I'm not too psyched anymore, this helped me calm down and I'm going to study now.

This is so much more important than my injury complaints

The funnest waterfall slide in Boone

One reason of the reasons I love climbing, like everyone else, is because nature. 

Cute salamander under the Long Wall at Gma

Sunset off the parkway

I love spending time in the woods, on real rock.  It's beautiful, peaceful, and what climbing is all about.  Un/fortunately so many people realize this and want to love and experience nature and climbing that it's hurting the ecosystem and endangering the very things we all love.  The possibility of climbing areas disappearing is horrifying and awful and scary to think about, but if we don't all work to protect them that's exactly what will happen.  

The least anyone can do is get educated about outdoor ethics and be respectful the next time you're out climbing - or hiking or whatever it is you do out there.  

Check out this Dpm Article, this video from the Access Fund, and commit to the pact here.

Picture from the Access Fund's website

* On a side note that relates: Andrew and I went to Rocktown last weekend and were blasted with music from one direction and loud didgeridoo from another, and it was sad.  Please, please: don't play loud music at the crag/ boulder field.  At the crag it's dangerous, and at the boulder field it's just disrespectful.

Appreciate the beauty and solitude of nature because:

Mountains are beautiful and we get to climb them

Sunsets are beautiful and they happen EVERY NIGHT

Rest days from summer training spent at swimming holes