Ammi Midstokke: 40, and other seasons to try to resist

It seems rather silly to me that we all exclaim with the same shock and wonder each year when the leaves come tumbling down.

“Can you believe it’s fall already?” we say as we don our muffs and start wearing real shoes. In a kind of seasonal resistance, I flip flop my way across streets until the snow flies. The only indication that I’m willing to accept a change of season is in my fantasizing about eggnog and a gentler approach to bodily abuses.

The garden is laid to rest. The wood is chopped. I should probably sign up for an ultra-marathon.

This is exactly what I did, because next year I’m going to be 40 and there’s another season I’m trying to resist.

If there was logical reasoning behind these sorts of things, it would go something like this: Do something that makes you feel like your a drunk 85-year-old with a broken hip on chemotherapy, then wake up a week later and be grateful that you’re only 40 and can still walk.

It’s not strong logic, but it’s all I’ve got.

In light of this ambitious goal, I decided to run(ish) up a mountain behind my house before the snow falls. For those of you who are not familiar with the term ‘run(ish)’, it refers to an intention to run that actually turns into a gimpy sort of slog in which one’s heart rate and breathing mimic that of an Olympic sprinter, but said person is moving approximately the speed of an injured caterpillar. In other words, slightly slower than my Norwegian running pace.

You might have a problem when you tell your kid to make their own breakfast as you’ll be out on the trails and she asks if there is also food for lunch and dinner. For the record, I was home before dinner.

Five hours, fifteen miles, and 4,300 feet of elevation later, I wondered why I couldn’t be into yoga instead.

That’s a silly question, of course (see: every reference ever to my squatty Viking heritage), but it sounds sexy when you’re miles from home and your quads are jello.

As I walked into my driveway considering a host of alternative, less painful sports – curling? Pilates? pie eating? – I realized that these epic adventures are a spiritual journey of sorts to me. Joy can only be felt if one knows suffering, I suppose.

And yet…

There is something about the autumn that allows me to explore a softer side of activity, as if the falling of the leaves lay not only a blanket upon the earth to rest, but suggest I do the same. I remember that when plants are not growing upward and outward, they are growing roots deeper into the soil. It would seem to serve us if we allowed ourselves the same cycles.

Time and movement will slow for me this season. The snow will make my trail runs a slow meandering. The cold will add layers and time my logistics of getting outdoors. Sometimes the weather will insist that I stay inside to knit instead.

And I will pause long enough to hold a yoga pose or two, to feel my bare feet in the soil, to ground and root myself with intention and strength so that, like the trees, I am stronger through storms.

Such as the gale force winds of midlife.