Hardship ... both harmless and otherwise

When I was growing up, I didn't really consider my family to be outdoorsy. Probably because the closest thing we got to camping was buying camping gear. But we really were outdoorsy -- just not in a conventional manner.

I learned to ski when I was 5. I remember that day very clearly -- and with mixed feelings. We lived in Pennsylvania at the time, so we went to a ski area called "Blue Knob." I never gave the name any thought as a kid, but now I figure it must have been named along the same lines as the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I now live. Blue Knob was a little funny because the lodge was at the top! After your last run, you had to go back up the lift to go home -- not just pop out of your skis and go. I often wondered what would happen to all of us if the power went out -- if none of the lifts were running. Would a whole mountain of skiers have to climb their way up, carrying skis and trudging exhaustingly in ski boots? Anyway, I digress.

I was 5. I had this faux fur coat that I just loved -- my "wolf coat." I guess it resembled wolf fur. I can't remember if I first called it that or if my dad did -- but the name stuck. It had neato faux antler toggles over the zipper. It was way cool. Perhaps it was not the best ski coat for a beginner, however. My first day skiing was a grand exercise in frustration. My father was a great encourager, though, and he didn't let me sissy-out. I remember falling a lot. (I believe I resembled more of a snowball than a wolf most of the day.) But getting back up to the top of even that little bunny slope was and remains, to this day, the biggest physical challenge I've ever faced. I could NOT conquer the J-bar. It was my nemesis. I hated it. I remember my dad so patiently teaching me to side-step up the edge of the slope so that I could ski back down. Up and down we went. Snowplow, fall, snowplow, fall, snowplow, fall ... side-step side-step side-step. In actuality, learning the side-step was a good skill. I learned to use the edges of my skis to hold myself still. Years later I would chuckle as I watched beginners' skis slip out from under them because they had not mastered the side-step. But, again, I digress.

There was another lift either above or beside the J-bar called the Pomalift. I couldn't figure out how it worked. But I did notice all the new-fangled ski pants with the round disc designs on the backside. Analyzing the pomalift and its riders helped to pass the time when resting from my climb back up. However, by the end of my first day of skiing, I had been in tears of frustration off and on for hours. I didn't like to fail! Still, over and over, my dad made me get up and go back to the top. And you know what? The second time we went skiing, I didn't fall much at all AND I successfully rode that J-bar. One day, I mastered the Pomalift, too -- and was completely amazed when I figured out that those silver circles on everyone's butts weren't the logo for a popular brand of skiwear, but the thing that you stuck between your legs to haul you up the hill. Remember, I was 5. I skied my whole life because my parents skied. We were outdoorsy!

We also hiked a good bit in New Hampshire. We traipsed down a small mountain and across a broad meadow to swim in a shallow, rocky river. But we never camped. When I was in high school, we started a new outdoor activity -- canoeing. We did that for years! There were liveries all up and down the Clarion River in northwestern Pennsylvania and we would frequent the river -- choosing various distances depending on our time frame and the state of the river. If there had been little rain, certain sections were too shallow and you'd scrape the bottom then end up walking your canoe. Nobody wants to do that. My dad would fly-fish from the canoe some days. Those were the lazy, floating days, not the paddling days. I loved those hours on the river.

Then I became a camp counselor. Mandated outdoorsy-ness. I'm a little like my son in that I don't like taking showers where spiders reside, I don't like bugs and I like my privacy. You have to abandon all of that when you're the camp counselor. I managed to create my own little creature comforts in the three-sided cabins and hogans and somehow eluded the polar bear swims all but one week -- but when I got assigned to the Outpost and then the Canoe trip, all bets were off. No dining hall! We cooked everything over our own fires, ideally even it was raining. (That's a life skill I'm glad to have. The trick is to locate the Hemlocks.) But the fourth day of pouring down rain on a 100 mile canoe trip down the Allegheny River had me near the end of my rope. No running water, no bathroom, no dry clothes or dry sleeping bag -- heck, we didn't even have tents! I was completely miserable, but had to put on the hopeful, enthusiastic face of the mighty counselor. I didn't do it for a second year, but I always tell that story and that experience made me a better person. Basically, it was harmless hardship.

David was a good sport when we were newlyweds. We'd go home to my Dad's for Christmas and go skiing in 0 degree weather. He didn't really enjoy skiing, because he wasn't immediately good at it! (I get that.) But we did go several times and it was a joy to ski with my husband, but when we had kids -- and then he got sick -- it was off the table. He had lost 100% of his peripheral vision on his left side due to necrosis from nuclear medicine and skiing would have been impossible for him from a balance standpoint and deadly from a vision standpoint. I never skied again until just a few years ago.

We did, however, love to go hiking and did that our entire marriage. We even camped a couple times. Our kids started hiking as toddlers. Of course sometimes that meant a wee lad on Dad's shoulders, but we went. We hiked in the Poconos and in North Carolina -- on many trails that led to waterfalls, our favorite quest. He planned a wonderful outdoor adventure vacation one year -- to Maine. We went kayaking and white water rafting. We went on a two day sailing trip. The sailing was great, but the kayaking was not! Somehow along the way, David never learned how to navigate a canoe on the water. We were in one-man kayaks and he just zig-zagged up that stupid river. (Who wants to go upriver anyway?!) He didn't complain, though and I empathized with his frustration! He, too, was unused to such failure. He never got the hang of it. The kids paddled in circles around him. Kind of funny. I wish I had had a video camera.

We are blessed to live very close to the Shenandoah National Forest, where hiking trails of all difficulty levels and distances are available to us. The last time we hiked as a family was on our 22nd anniversary. It was hot that August day and, though we chose a relatively non-strenuous trail, it was really hard on David. He had been on chemotherapy for months. My heart broke for him because I could see that not only was he suffering physically, he was embarrassed. He hated how hard it was kicking his butt. Hubris wasn't part of this. He was apologetic about his slower pace, but he would not have us turning back on his account. He made it to the vista! He did not fail. His son was watching. This was the same man who had walked the entire city of Rome in a day, two weeks following a chemo treatment and just four months prior to this hike. To say he was a trooper was an understatement. I should have known that he would never just go to sleep and let the cancer take him quietly. That man fought to LIVE with every ounce of grit that he could muster -- every single day.

The harmless hardship of that 100 mile canoe trip and the repeated side-stepping up that mountain did accomplish something in me. Character-building is a hackneyed term. Let's see ... what's a good way to express the value of those challenges? Quite simply stated, some of my life experiences prepared me to withstand the trials that would be presented to me during my life with David. Brain cancer isn't for sissies -- for the survivor or for the caregivers. A close friend of mine told me that I was resilient from all the trauma that I have endured -- starting with the death of my mother when I was just 19, extending through a 14 year all-out battle with brain cancer with my husband. That resilience started way back on a ski slope in a wolf coat. Thank you, Dad.