Ammi Midstokke: Running off whiplash

If it weren’t for the frozen-solid soil and layer of sparkling snow, one might want to bury their head in the dirt and wait for enough time to pass for a few empires to rise and fall. Not a day goes by when one person or another is not relating the most recent catastrophic impact to their livelihood (federal employees, people who eat eggs and the tea drinkers – who I always found suspect anyway).

As a kind of balance to this calamity, an elderly man approached me at the pharmacy this week and felt inclined to let me know how much safer the world will be now. While I’m glad he feels as though he does not need to “wear a gun behind locked house doors anymore,” I know others feel differently.

As the parent of a transqueer kid, I feel differently. As a woman who has reproductive health care needs, I feel differently.

There is a kind of whiplash I experience every day as my friends lose jobs while others celebrate new cabinet appointments, as policy scrubs a broader idea of gender while activist groups create safe havens. For every disappointment I am served, there is a side dish of hope and resilience. One minute someone spews vitriol in one direction, the next I hear compassion, patience, empathy. My body and brain feel like they are stretched taut between contradictions.

I am trying to run it off, like I always do. I head outside to seek pockets of seeming constants, evidence of rhythms that beat to a drum slower than the ping of my filling inbox, cycles that last longer than political campaigns or even civilization.

It seems romantic to be an anti-capitalist, but I like new shoes and the convenience of online ordering. Also, I don’t want to wait eight years for a Trabant. I want to save the planet, but I have auto-start on my car – a decidedly ungreen invention I adore. I want to be politically informed, but I lack the dogmatic conviction to believe I’m right about much of anything. (My husband might argue this point.) I see one person suffering and another feeling relieved about the same thing.

Back and forth, up and down, round and round. I am not the only one purging media, reading news sources with intention and careful dosing, and treading lightly in conversations. It reminds me of having a fight with someone you love: Everything feels tender and raw, and one must proceed with caution. It is not a sustainable state to live in.

The cold snap has turned the fresh snow to glitter and it crunches under my feet with a kind of squeak. The deciduous trees look like the sun-bleached bones of a forest. It is too cold to smell anything. Nature has slowed down to imperceptible movement, though I am reminded of Rumi saying the roots beneath the snow are riotous. I wonder how fast they grow in that dark, steaming soil that stays 55 degrees all winter. Inches? Feet? And are roots more afraid of living or of dying?

I spend the next chilly mile asking myself that same question. So much for running endorphins. Perhaps the cold delays their release.

I desperately want everyone to have their needs met, to feel they can live freely within their own values, to agree to disagree with kindness. Apparently, this is quaint these days, the naïve wishful thinking of a girl who grew up on “The Butter Battle” by Dr. Seuss.

A few winter songbirds flit from stark-white branch to stark-white snow, their tiny feet kicking up shimmer and sparkle. They ignore my passing shuffle. I wish for their obliviousness but not their fragile wings. Maybe the minutia will save me: I can bury my head not in the sand, but in bird books and seed catalogues and stories about sequoia that have been around longer than any president or policy or pathologizing.

I wonder if the towering trees look down upon us with a measure of patronizing condescension.

“Look at that critter there, layered in wool and lycra, scurrying around on the arbitrary lines they’ve drawn with their machines – as if they’ll ever be able to find their way to anything that actually matters.”

My eyelashes form tiny frozen crystals on their tips and stick together when I blink. My lungs burn as I climb the hill to my house. I notice rabbit tracks and deer tracks and moose tracks on the road. I see the footprints of the other runners who took this route today – their strides and soles familiar to me. Tom wears a Hoka and his toes land wider than his heels. John wears an Altra and has a long stride for his tiny frame.

There is a small reprieve in these observations, a gentle familiarity and kinship with everything that eases my heart.

At least I am still running, I think. It is an indicator of everything from health to privilege, an internal barometer and my own metric for the state of climate crisis. (How many days are lost to smoke season now?)

Even with this small measure of gratitude, I don’t feel much better when I get home except for this: My world slowed down for a moment, just long enough to note the insignificance of our supposed significance. My hope is the sequoias and the songbirds are still around to watch us prove it.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com.