I have a new project - made challenging by my considerable and non-negotiable limitations:
Wilderness 1000
My goal is to cover 1000 miles on trails through 50+ designated Wilderness Areas of the U.S. in one year, beginning the first day of Spring 2018.

Generally this would be a moderate challenge except… everything I do is in an “abnormal” context. Thinking it best to first examine the feasibility of this idea, I established a goal of 100 test miles in wildernesses during the last month.  It was enlightening.  Here is why:

• Every day I wake up I have beaten the odds.  Running at all is beating the odds x 10.  Traversing landscapes as I do is beating the odds beyond any prediction.  But I never know what side effect will nail me tomorrow.  While some days I feel almost normal, on others I feel horrid.  I am still a federally-certified disabled person.  No sane odds-maker would bet on me, which is of course a perfect reason to do this.
• This mileage is only within designated wildernesses.  I have found that I sometimes walk or run miles to get to a trailhead.
• This is not like running down the street.  These trails can be brutal and remote.  I have experienced portions of the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails.  They are freeways in comparison.
• Accessing 50 wilderness areas is a logistical challenge.  I based my solar-powered Airstream in adjacent deserts and forests for every single trail thus far.  This may mean freezing temperatures, desert heat, or bathing in snow melt to conserve water.
• I am entirely self-supported, without sponsors.  All water, food, and contingency supplies are on my back.  I have no crew for camera, medical help, or any other support.  All supplies for preparation and recovery must be on hand in my Airstream base camp.  I pay for everything by working.
• This is not my only project.  I also have a paying job, even though disabled, and I undertake other adventures, such as the upcoming month I will spend walking across Spain.
• If I become injured or sick, the consequences are significant.  For example, a previous infection cost me months in marathon training.  I do not heal in the manner of the average person.

Then… WHY do this?

• On the days when I want to pull the cover over my head, and I somehow get out there anyway, I have NEVER said, “That was comprehensively miserable and not worth the effort.”  Without exception, I feel exhilarated, even if I am having a horrible battle with my body.  
• Wildernesses are in danger.  The primary reason they still exist is that they are too inhospitable to be developed, not because our society has a deep desire to preserve them.  I am a professional environmental biologist, so don’t bother arguing with me about this.  Any endeavor that highlights their value is worthwhile.
• I knew that if I survived my ordeal, I had to live a life that was worth the hell I went through, and to be the inspiration I never got and that others probably desperately seek as well.  Risk and hardship?  Whatever.  I would rather die beautiful than live ugly.  But I have yet to develop an adventure that is riskier and harder than what I have already experienced.
  

At this point, I send a message out into the universe.  I am interested in any sponsor, cause, or mission that can associate with my story and adventures.  Even solo, I will do what I do because it is beautiful and authentic, but its value is increased exponentially by associations.  Feel free to contact me.

And lastly, to prove this is real, I have already started.  In one month and one day, I have covered 103 miles in 9 Wilderness Areas, all documented on my website.  That puts me almost two months ahead of schedule. 

It took me almost two days to find the word “inconclusive” and then I didn’t even use it.  That was because by then my mind had lost the sentence I would be using it in, just as it had lost the word before.  This is important because creative writing is an enormous part of my work.  But it didn’t stop the writing; I found that I just wrote something completely different… without thinking about it.



Now… for all the 3.7 people that actually read this blog, let me say that if you feel that you have something beyond “chemobrain”, you probably do, and are: (1) Not alone, and (2) Not crazy.  “Chemobrain” is too trite.  “Cognitive impairment” is incomplete.

My changes are more fundamental than short-term memory loss.  Let’s call it what it is: brain damage.  That means either loss of function or rewiring, and the rewiring part has been the adventure.  I know for a fact that neurophysiology has changed.  For example, I regained my partially lost sense of smell, and I can now smell roses for the first time in ten years.  Also, my preferences have changed.  I’ve held hammers and screwdrivers as an extension of my hands since the age of four.  My natural mechanical abilities and desires guided my life, created my homes, were integral to past adventures.   But now, I have a true aversion to any mechanical task.  Although it still seems a necessity for my lifestyle, I pray to never hold a wrench again.  My tastes are different, as is my sense of humor, or what remains of it.  But it’s the new vocabulary that is most interesting.  It is diminished, but as I speak and write, new words come out of me like little surprises.  And that has made me a novelty to myself, which is really just weird, but at least it’s entertaining. 

Changes in personality are suggested in the scientific literature on this subject, but they don’t note how unnerving it is to live a perpetual out-of-body experience.  I imagine it must be uncomfortable for friends and family.  At least they wake up with themselves each day.   And it is not about some divine gratitude that comes from survival against the odds.  I didn’t need leukemia to have an unusually deep appreciation for life.

So here is the message.  One can pine for the lost soul or just ride the crazy train and see what comes up next.  Like Rod Stewart sang in 1971, you didn’t ask to come here anyway.  What I don’t embrace I at least accept, because either a thing is or it is not.   Whatever.  Everything is out of character anyway.

Adapt or die.  The basis of mindfulness teachings and Ecology 101.  I should know this, given that I teach that second item for a living.

After successfully completing the Rota Vicentina through southern Portugal, the responsibilities of my particular life story meant a semi-emergency, sleepless 38-hour journey back to the United States.  No onward travel to Spain or Morocco as planned.  Instead, an absolutely anti-exotic turn of circumstances.

I am left with another satisfying physical accomplishment … with an aftertaste of failure.  The fact is that my life is a collage of responsibilities and limitations that I cannot seem to negotiate away. 

It is true that I have moved beyond Daily Epics (which are still essential), and now have the ability to take short hops into the outer world.  Still, in a previous life I would be racked with despair at this seemingly “limited” situation.  But now I have all that wisdom gained through the transformative power of soul-altering amounts of suffering, so I should know to just leverage any circumstance. Right.

So work and other deferred life stuff can now be handled before spring.   With unusually decent weather in California, I am tackling more upgrades and maintenance on the Airstream.  (It is 66 years old.)  No doubt, it is a great time to take the old slug out to the desert, only a long day’s drive away, and search for wildlife and hot springs.  Besides, Phoenix and Tucson have international airports that will take me to any landscape I want.

I have to remember that every day of my fractured and beautiful life is an adventure.  This is my right now, and I am still knee deep in it.  I just get over it and move on.  Anything else is a waste of time.

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With my marathon goal reached and countless miles traversed on difficult trails, it is time to break boundaries.  In three days I begin a fastpack of the entire historic Rota Vicentina through southern Portugal.  I will be entirely disconnected from my medical care.  I have ongoing mild graft host disease affecting every system in my body.  There is no medication that will improve my situation, so I don’t take any.  I will be traveling solo, with all my possessions in a 20 liter, 12 pound ultralight running pack.
 
How and why?

How:  Hard choices. Effort.  Planning.  Letting go.  Embracing the grace and beauty of epic failure.

Why, from my earlier post: 

    I am doing it for myself, for the indescribable joy of experiencing the essence of humanness.   I am doing it for those who can’t, and for those who think they can’t.  I am doing it because I love dirt and hate pavement. I am attempting this in the name of love, truth, grace, and beauty, which is the reason why I do nearly anything in my spartan and highly distilled life.

I have called out to the universe to tell me that survival and physical accomplishments don’t put me in a tiny demographic.  The response has been silence.  So I might as well just continue creating my own demographic, my own universe, and see what happens.  This then is my own social movement, even if it is a social movement of one.  But I know this:  There are people facing dire circumstances right now who need to know what I am doing.  I have lived in their hell, a place where one cries each day with desperation and aches for some tether to the world of possibility.  So if you are reading this, pass on my story to them.  They, along with the rest of the world, need to know that everything coming from me is the truth, and not a staged version of the real thing.  Apparently that reflects a tiny demographic as well.

There is no doubt.  It is definitely time to go. 

Beginning 22 January, I will be posting daily from the trail through my NEWS link and social media.