I used to be an adventurer, then I took an arrow in the knee

Something like 25 years ago, I went skiing for the first, last and only time. I came down the very first slope I attempted on a sled, and didn’t walk without a limp for 9 months. But in the vast wisdom of a teenager who really didn’t understand how insurance worked other than it could go horribly wrong, never got it checked out.

About 12 years ago, I jumped off a small wall, and something went horribly, terribly wrong in my knee. Having mastered the art of insurance, I got an xray which showing nothing wrong and did a summer of PT which fixed nothing. I finally got an MRI which showed that I had no trace of an ACL left, two tears in my meniscus, two cysts, and a bone bruise. I went under the knife for the first time and emerged with a cadaver ACL, a lot less meniscal tissue and a script for PT.

In that dozen years, I have tried to keep my body strong and active, knowing that considerable residual damage lingered in my left knee. I’ve hiked 40 of the 48 4000 foot mountains in New Hampshire. I’ve run 5ks in scenic local paths to stave off weight and stay in shape for the summits. But I’ve always known that there would be a price to pay for all damage I’d accrued to that knee.

Last summer, we did a fun (and cold) two day backpack trip across the Carters. The descent was long and hard and I was wearing a heavy pack, and I could feel my knee go numb under the shock of miles of hard descent.

Last winter, I went for a run and my knee got swollen afterwards. I waited a week or two and went for another run, and my knee blew up again. Having learned from the last time, I immediately went to the doctor and demanded a full set of images of hard and soft tissue.

We all knew that there was stuff wrong with my knee, and the images showed there was stuff wrong with my knee. The surgeon who had done the surgery lo those many years before recommended I get a Peloton. So I rented one (which is a thing, by the way) and worked on rebuilding strength and fitness and finding I secretly enjoyed Cody Rigsby. And the swelling went down, and the strength built up and I started edging my way back onto the mountains after a winter sidelined. I got a few good hikes in: Morgan/Percival. Welch-Dickey. Waumbek. There were also a good number of cancellations with the double whammy of the rainiest summer ever and a knee which just wouldn’t quite be reliable. We cancelled the Bond Traverse on Juneteenth when the temperatures looked dangerous with wet weather.

In July, we had a few weeks before our planned Katahdin Knife Edge three day camping trip. And we needed to know if the knee was up for it. So we headed up Madison by Airline Way. Several thousand feet of elevation, bruising terrain and a nice mile long scramble up from the hut. I made it up, although looking at pictures my knee was ballooning well before I summited. And on the way down, I slowed to a crawl – a mile an hour – and gritted my way down, wincing with every hard landing. When I got to the parking lot, my left knee was a vast swollen moon of pain.

It took three months for the swelling to fully subside. The Katahdin trip fell prey to the dual threats of not being able to walk and also hyperthermic rain. It has been a consolation that the wet summer has meant I’ve missed fewer opportunities than I might have otherwise. But tomorrow will be 80 degrees on a Saturday and I cannot cancel my plans and go grab Chocorua or make an attempt at the Bond Traverse under a full harvest moon. I limp when I rise, and my knee has just now been able to be crossed again with a full range of motion.

I’m too young for a knee replacement. There’s no obvious surgery to do next. My doctor, when I saw him again, recommended getting a new hobby. “Have you thought about kayaking?” I turned 45 this year. That means that if I have as much ahead of me as behind, I’d live to an honorable 90 years old. It’s both old enough to have accrued permanent damage, and too young to accept that damage will forever limit me. But I can’t imagine four more decades with no more summits. No more times gazing across at a mountain range with the dawning realization that the peak over yonder is where you were planning on going this afternoon. I cannot relinquish the quiet of the trail down, when mind and body are exhausted and friendship is quiet in the glinting late afternoon light. Nor can I pass by the vistas that are only attained by strength, determination and the persistence of the body. I’ve loved hiking since I was a wee sprite, imagining myself a Bilbo crossing the Misty Mountains. Since I remember I’ve turned my eyes to the mountains, from whence comes my help.

When I was reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time, breathless in disbelief of the glory of it, I was also the nuisance of my neighborhood. I decided once to be entrepreneurial by selling hand-drawn pictures door to door – which earned me a remarkable number of ribbons candies and long conversations with lonely old folks in quiet houses with lace curtains and antimacassars. After the lecture my parents read me stopped ringing in my ears, I had a favorite of these new friends. Ernie. He was a few houses down the street, in a three story house on a tree-lined quiet street in a small, rural agrarian town. In the year or so I knew him, he never rose from his recliner. But he had an encyclopedic knowledge of every crook and drawer of every floor of his beautiful and packed house and would send me on quests to the crammed third floor (which in retrospect showed a feminine decorating hand that no longer had a matching recliner), or to the manly shop in the basement where odd devices and “tiger eye stones” were stored. I was 8 at the time. I have long since wondered about Ernie. My vague primary-colored memories of him were mostly wrapped up in the glorious book he had of pop-up elves or the tiger-eye stone he gave me (“I have been carrying one for 70 years and never saw a single tiger since I started carrying it”). But looking back, he was a man who had lived a rich and interesting life – almost certainly a combat veteran and a world traveler, as well as possibly an accomplished engineer. He knew many places, but visited them now only in his mind’s eye, and through the sun-drenched legs of curious young girls who could still venture to the mysterious lands of the second floor – wondering if some wardrobe there might transport them to another world.

I know it is the way of some things that only the fortunate get to be Ernie in his recliner with good-hearted but mischievous young visitors. How many friends and loved ones did he lose before he lost his legs? But I also think about the last adventure. The last mountain climbed. The last swim. The last road trip. The last time you visit your own attic. The contraction of the world to the recliner, the remote, the phone.

You might say that 45 is too young for such thoughts, but few of us know when our last time comes. What I do know is that I am NOT READY to have hiked my last peaks. I would like another 30 years, please, of watching the clouds break like waves on the shores of the Whites, tearing themselves apart on Franconia Ridge.

So now what? Do I hike twice a year, and limp for four months between? Do I take up kayaking with extreme prejudice? I got a second opinion, and now have a PT who has ALSO hiked the 48 4ks and can advise me with great precision “Yeah, so we start with Monadnock and we work our way UP to the Bond Traverse”. There’s hope that with very specific strengthening I can work around the damage that exists. And maybe compression braces, anti-inflammatories, ice and poles. Keep my strength up with the Peloton. Let the inflammation fall to nothing. Maybe I can make it work. Or maybe a scoping of the knee can clear out junk that’s getting caught in the joint and leading to swelling. My choices after that get grimmer.

I think every generation is shocked to discover ourselves aging. I look at the glorious strength and beauty of the children I have brought into this world – and how poorly they take care of that glory and how little they appreciate their resilience. Youth is wasted on the young – as it was on me.

But when I next stand on a windy summit, eyes turned hungrily to horizons that have welcomed generations and will intrigue generations yet to come, I will be grateful for another chance.