The Art of Falling

work in process//4.

Happy Friday evening! I had a post planned for today about new beginnings. After writing last week about adventures in micro-running, I got on a roll thinking all the other spontaneous fresh starts I’ve made of late—tennis, screenwriting, book publicity—and all the ways to be a beginner again.

Then I fell.

I was out for a quick little jog early last Saturday morning with the dogs, when they took off chasing a coyote. A pack of them live in the sandy arroyo behind our house; often we hear them yelping at night, and the dogs bark back through our fence. I imagine they are calling out to each other in a secret canine camaraderie. Hey, friend it’s me! Whatcha up to? Probably, though, they are actually saying, come any closer and I will rip you to shreds.

Pete & Banks in quieter times

Pete and Banks skidded out of view. Over the din of barking and yipping, I yelled for them to come back. A single coyote howling has a creepy way of sounding like a dozen coyotes howling, and I pictured Banks and Pete being torn apart like roadkill. Without thinking, I broke into a sprint. The cul-de-sac was icy, but not the bumpy ice I’ve been running on trails all winter. Black ice. Instantly I was down, crashing onto my elbow and tailbone, the impact reverberating through my arm. Stunned, I popped up just as fast I’d fallen. The dogs were slinking back, remorseful but intact. I jogged slowly on, testing my body for brokenness.

Right away, I noticed something weird. My elbow ached, but my stride felt better: longer and more natural. My legs were—how to say it?— more integrated with the rest of my body. I was running slowly, yet I felt as though I was bounding. All my limbs were moving in the right order in the same direction at the same time for the first time in months.

At home, I rubbed herbal salve on my arm and hoped it wasn’t my rotator cuff. We were driving to Taos to ski for the day. It was sunny and calm and the snow was surprisingly good. We hiked and skied bumps and steeps til lunch, and then again after. My knee felt strong and lined up, orderly, like my knee again.

Maybe, in a strange way, falling was just what I needed.

It wasn’t the first time. A few years ago, running down the mountain, I tripped and slammed into the dirt. Shaken, I nonetheless felt looser, freer, like all the pent-up energy in my body had flown out of me when I hit the ground, like I'd been reorganized, readjusted. Even my usual worries were gone. Afterwards, I heard about a psychological study on children that found that minor physical jolts could reset the nervous system and relieve emotional distress.

I thought back to all the other times I’ve fallen or gotten hurt. Each one—some more traumatic, some less—has offered me a shift in perspective, a new opportunity, an unlikely upside. When my dad died, I turned to ultra running. When I was charged by a bull on the mountain and fell into a hole, I took up tai chi. When I broke my ankle running, I started strength training again. The aftermath of most recent knee surgery led me to yoga. And, in the story at heart of Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, a wilderness accident inspired me to explore Zen.

I don’t mean to sugarcoat adversity and struggle. It sucks to be sick, injured, anxious or sad. Not every low point has a silver lining, nor is every misstep a magic reset button. It may take time, years even, but if you look carefully, chances are good you’ll find something meaningful.

When I got home from my run, Steve and the girls were waiting expectantly. They’d heard the coyotes going wild behind the house—well, maybe it was only one coyote—and wanted to know what had happened. Steve smile-frowned at my mama bear instincts. “It’s not like they would have chewed you all to bits,” he said. He was right of course. I didn’t need to abandon all thought of life and limb to chase the dogs. They would have come back anyway. But I did—and all week, my legs and heart have felt a lighter and my shoulder only a little bit worse. It’s a tradeoff, but I’ll take it.

This month we’ve been watching “Reservation Dogs,” a hilarious and heartbreaking series about friendship, hardship, and family on the Muscogee Nation in Oklahoma. At least every third or fourth episode, it seems, one of the characters utters the show’s unofficial motto: “Everything is connected.” This is how I understand the body and mind, Zen and running, writing and life, time itself. Everything goes into the mix, becomes part of something else, even if you can't always see the connections.

Last week I was interviewed on the podcast “Ten Junk Miles” (listen here). It was my first official, pre-pub press for Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, and what a great way to start! The host, Scotty Kummer, is a major advocate for running as life, without all the hype—a vision I love and share. We didn’t even talk about running for the first 20 minutes. We talked about grief and love and music, lots of music. Scotty’s my age and loves Bob Dylan as ferociously as I do. He even got me to mangle a few lines from the Men at Work song, “Down Under,” an inside joke you’ll get when you read Brief Flashings (stay tuned for the BFPW playist!). We were having so much fun, I wasn’t even embarrassed. Scotty gets it that when we talk about running, we’re always talking about something else.

Everything is connected.

Just like this post. I wanted to write about fresh starts but instead I wrote about falling. Maybe they're the same thing, after all.

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ICYMI, Brief Flashings in the Phenonmenal World is available for pre-order! And if you hurry, Barnes & Noble is offering members 25% off though the end of today, Friday 1/26. I’ve really been into pre-ordering lately because I always have a long list of books in my head that I want to read, but by the time they come out and I walk into my local bookstore, I’ve forgotten half of them. Plus when I order in advance, it arrives in my mailbox on pub day, like forgotten little treasure!

Every single pre-order and share helps build word-of-mouth and bookseller buzz, essential for helping the book find its readers. I’ll share some of my own most anticipated picks next week!

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Flow Camps 2024!

11,000 feet at High Camp Hut

Join us for writing, running, hiking, yoga, Zen, and meditation at these upcoming retreats. No two flow camps are ever the same because together we make the flow.

• River Flow Camp for Women: May 30-June 2 at Field Trip NM on the Pecos River

• Mountain Flow Camp for Women: Sept 5-8 at High Camp Hut, Colorado

• Desert Flow Camp, Co-ed, October 2024, Marfa and Big Bend, TX. Date and details TBA & registration opening soon!

Thanks for reading! ‘Til next week!

with love, katie