The value of injury: a meditation on moving slowly

My leg isn’t listening.

I’m urging it to take my weight as I attempt to step up onto a large boulder high above Priest Lake in the Selkirk Range in North Idaho on Monday. But my leg, externally healthy looking, refuses my heartfelt commands. I lift it another inch but the pain of a recurring injury quickly puts a stop to any delusions of rock hopping.

So instead of stepping up onto the boulder I amble to the side, looking for a way around. Forced into a slower, more meditative pace.

My hiking and climbing partner is ahead of me moving fluidly across the raucous rock landscape. He high-steps up onto rocks. Then jumps down, or across to other boulders. In my semi-crippled state I watch enviously. His movements take on a hue of divinity.

Is he floating?

I’m hardly a speed freak. But as an average 28-year-old outdoor enthusiast I like to move across the landscape as quickly as possible. Especially when there is a climbing objective.

On this day my leg has other ideas. I’m forced to slow down. Forced to pick alternate routes across the land. Each step carefully placed.

At first I’m frustrated. I keep trying to get my leg to work the way it has in the past.

But as the day wears on I start to find a strange kind of solace and comfort in this plodding pace.

See, it’s all but certain that my body will continue to degrade as I age (I’m told I may even die???). My mother, who was equally active in her youth, is plagued by aches and pains. Her injuries seem to have a predetermined “flare-up schedule.” A hip this month. A shoulder a month later. Next, the knee.

I am in for decades of occasional discomfort and pain.

This is all but certain. And so, learning to live with that pain and discomfort is key if I have any hope of staying vigorous into my elderhood.

And as the day wears on I find myself noticing things I normally don’t think twice about.

Like flowers.

I have almost no interest in flowers. If a floral display is sufficiently obvious – acres of wildflowers, or a bouquet thrust into my face – I’ll notice and dispense the appropriate appreciation. But more subtle displays of floral brilliance? Alpine flowers hiding under rocks? Tiny little things that seemingly have no business growing in a rugged, rocky landscape?

I wouldn’t even see, much less think, about them.

Having to plan each step changes that. I noticed flowers. I have no idea what kind of flowers they were (I nearly failed my college botany class). But on Monday I noticed and appreciated them because I was forced to travel slowly.

So while I certainly don’t hope to remain injured, there are some benefits. Benefits I didn’t expect.

Maybe next I’ll take up landscape painting.