Unknown Effects

The weather has been beautiful this past week and I've finally gotten the chance to get out to hike after a few weeks absence. I think the lack of fresh air and exercise have contributed to my recent case of the mild blues. But I digress.

Today while hiking, I got to thinking about an incident that occurred this past summer while I was hiking...actually more specifically while I was running. There are some sections of the trails that I like to run and in particular there's this quarter of a mile long somewhat treacherous hill that I love running down. It's long and meandering and steep in some places, and it consists of compacted dirt, loose gravel, and exposed bedrock in some spots. The gravel and bedrock as well as the grade in some spots make it a bit treacherous to run, and thereby making it exciting to me. I've been running that hill for more than two years and I've gotten to where I practically run like the wind down it. My 18 year old son certainly hikes the trails much faster than me and can run faster than me, but even he concedes that I own that downhill even against him. To be sure, I've slid and stumbled a few times over the last two years, but I always managed to catch myself until one day last summer.

The funny thing is that I had just started running down the hill along the easiest part and had only gone about 20 yards when all of a sudden a rock jumped up from the ground and tripped me! Actually my toe just caught the top of a rock jutting up from the ground. And you know what? Time really does slow down when you're in the middle of an accident or other trauma. I tried to catch my balance but it was to no avail and I took a nasty tumble. My left knee and left elbow bore the brunt of the crash and luckily the water bottle that I held in my right hand protected that hand. It hurt like hell, but mostly the shock of the tumble kicked in. I stood up and noticed that both my elbow and knee were bleeding pretty freely. I pulled the gravel bits and other debris out of my skin and put some weight on that knee to test how bad I banged it. It was tender but overall seemed okay, and just bloody. I pulled a couple of tissues out of my pocket and dabbed the wounds dry as best as possible. And what did I do next? Well I guess the adrenaline from the incident kicked in and I continued on my hike and I actually ran slowly down the hill the rest of the way. I actually completed the whole hike as scheduled and with being on an adrenaline high, at the end of my hike I went back to the hill to hike up it to run down it one last time. The adrenaline high lasted long enough for me to stop at the store with my knee lightly bleeding to buy some hydrogen peroxide and antibiotic cream. By the time I got home, the adrenaline high had worn off and my knee and elbow were throbbing. In fact they throbbed so much I thought for sure that anyone could see the throbbing. I cleaned myself up and noted later that night that my knee swelled to twice its normal size. I didn't hike again for at least a few days and it was a week or more before I tried to run the hill again.

My knee and elbow healed although my knee did get a bit infected which is why I think I have a dandy new scar on my left knee. Since I got right back up and started running that hill the very same day, I figured that I wouldn't sustain any ill effects from my fall. I figured and rightly so I think, that it was one of those things...one moment of not paying attention. I figured that the only lasting effect of my tumble was going to be the scar on my knee.

Well today while running down that hill I realized that I was wrong. I'm not the same. I noticed that all these months since the fall, I've been a bit tentative while running down it. I haven't really been able to let loose and fly like I did in the past. Ironically I think I'm in more danger now of falling by being so tentative and a bit cautious. I'm not sure I can go back to the way I was, but I need to try. I didn't realize how much fun I derived from my personal version of an extreme sport. But I want to be able to run like the wind down it again.

So all these months I had just assumed that the fall only had lasting physical effects...namely my scarred knee. But it unexpectedly it affected my psyche too. So that got me to thinking while I continued on with my hike. What other events, namely emotional events, have we each experienced that we shrugged off as being a blip in the radar but in actuality has had lasting effects on how we act, think, feel, and interact with others. Maybe a past event that occurred with a friend or a teacher or a parent was shrugged off only to have affected us more than we realize. So perhaps when we each wonder sometimes why we act or think in a certain way, maybe we can't trace it to a specific defining event perhaps it was something that we didn't take seriously at the time but it had lasting and unforeseen effects.

I'm not sure I have a conclusion here. I guess if I do have a conclusion it would be that I need to take care not to so readily shrug something off or discount its potential effects on me. Oh and one last thing, I need to pick up my feet when I run downhill!