When Nature Gets Dicey

“Did you see the sunset this morning?” my friend asked at lunch today.

We laughed very hard.

So this blog has to be about nature. Not hard—I love nature. I love sunsets (when they come in the evening); I love wind in trees; I love playing rivers. But the thing is, I don’t really just love to be alone and think quietly in nature. That kind of thing is wonderful, and I do it sometimes, but mostly I love nature because of the adventure it holds. And most definitely adventure with people. Sorry, Henry David Thoreau. No Walden for me, thank you!

Take lakes, for example. Sure, I could sit on the shore of a lake with the dewy grass underneath me and the breeze lifting the ends of my hair, and I could look out at the sun setting in liquid fire at the edge of the water. And that would be nice.

Or—I could climb into a bobbing three-seated inner tube on that lake and intertwine arms with two fellow adventurers, gripping the rough handles with everything in me as adrenalin floods my veins and the boat begins to tow us. I could let the wild spray of the lake rush against me as I fought a war against the raging water to stay on that tube. I’d launch into the air and come thudding back down onto the water’s rough surface; I’d be whipped in great flinging curves that suck, suck, suck to pull me off. Meanwhile, I’d be laughing and screaming and clenching my teeth with my companion fighters. And in the end, I’d be ripped from the tube and crash down against the water, tumbling over myself multiple times with my velocity before finally dropping beneath the water’s surface.

Afterward, I’d be sore and sunburned and shaky and yes, even bleeding. And happy—oh, so happy.

Yeah, I choose Option 2.

Moonlit rivers, whistling graveyards, chalky ravines, rushing whitewater—it’s hard for me to get away from remembering that some of the happiest moments of my life have come to me during adventures through nature with close friends. Some have been simply pleasant, and some have been frighteningly thrilling (that graveyard I mentioned? Oh, yes). Some have scarred me for life. Yes, that’s a joke…I have scars on my arm from one traipse down a river in particular.

And that’s all I have to say on this subject for the moment.

The Nasty Side of Blogging

What they don’t tell you about blogging is the battle behind it. I’m talking about the gut-wrenching, heart-pounding, nail-biting inner battle that rages inside you every time it comes time to post. You think I’m joking. I’m not.

Tell me this isn’t traumatic: in exactly thirty minutes is midnight, the deadline for your class-assigned blog post. You have 1,800 seconds (give or take) until a piece of you, a representation of your skills as a writer, a sample of any potential you hope you have—or lack thereof—will be smeared over the internet for the world to see. Yeah, you just tell me that’s not terrifying.

Your friends know your blog site. Your Facebook friends know your blog site. The entire planet can find your blog site. And in now twenty-five minutes, you will be made vulnerable on your blog site. You won’t be able to hide from anybody.

 You sit in a drama rehearsal, looking at the clock anxiously. Who can focus on a drama rehearsal when there’s a blog due in twenty-one minutes? And the topic—oh, how the topic pressures you. Oh, this isn’t any ordinary blog; it’s a requirement for one of your classes, and it’s got to comply with a weekly topic. So—get this—you have to earn credit for the class and desperately try not to look lamer than a clod of moon dirt to your friends. Possible? The jury’s still out.

You start to sweat in that drama rehearsal as your mind takes you scary places… Say you publish a stupid blog. Somebody reads your stupid blog. Not only do they never read your blog again; they also turn up their nose when your wannabe-writer self finally breaks into the business and publishes a book. But worse, they come across your future book while meandering through Barnes & Noble with a friend, and they tell the friend they know you, the author of this book—and they tell the friend they don’t want to buy the book. So then the friend refrains from buying the book and tells another friend not to buy the book. And then the other friend tells another friend who tells another friend who tells another friend who tells another friend. And your book barely sells because nobody wants to buy it. And then your publisher refuses to take another manuscript because your sales record is so bad. So then you never get a chance to become a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

All because of the stupid blog you published.

If that’s not pressure, I don’t know what is. Man alive, the freaky part about blogging is the part they don’t tell you about—the war you fight to blog without crushing your delicate future career.

And then the clock chimes midnight. Heartbeat hammering inside your chest, you close your eyes, suck in your breath, bring your arrow over the fateful button, and PUBLISH POST.

Once My Name Was Iron Woman

Iron Woman. That’s what my family used to call me. (Incredibly sweet and feminine nickname, I know.) I was Iron Woman because after fighting strep throat a whopping nine times in kindergarten, I never got sick again. It was as if my immune system had fought a death-struggle with any illness above the little nuisance of the common cold—and had won. When the stomach flu—or anything else—raked my house and literally up to all six of my family members fell prey to its mayhem, I’d stand tall and healthy.

“Wash your hands!” people would warn when the wind changed and sick season came around.

Oh, sure, I’d wash them, but I’d laugh inside as I did so. I wasn’t getting sick, and I knew it.

Alas for Iron Woman.

One year, the stomach flu (one illness in particular that delighted in plaguing our house year after year) apparently got fed up with my iron-like qualities. It knew my masterful white blood cells had raised me above its villainous reach, and it hated me for that. Unfortunately for poor stomach flu, there was nothing it could do about me.

Or so I thought.

After sweeping through my family with full force, the stomach flu left that year in a rage. As usual, I’d scoffed in its face, washed my hands before eating, and remained agonizingly healthy. Everything was entirely, hopelessly normal.

Such was the sob story the stomach flu tattled to its big bad brother, the flu. Yeah, you read that right. I mean the flu. No twenty-four- or seventy-two-hour vomiting mess here—think bubonic plague. Black Death. Influenza. It’s not a pretty thought.

Unfortunately for me, influenza took up the case of his poor little stomach flu brother and set out to get me. When I came home one Monday afternoon in November of my eighth grade, I began to feel odd. I imagined I was restless. In reality, I was meeting influenza while the stomach flu watched and laughed.

I remember irritably flopping my history book on the floor that day, unable to focus. My head felt hot. What do you know, I discovered that I was running a fever. Not a bad one, but a fever.

Foolish Iron Woman…it was so unusual for me to actually be sick that I was happy at first. After all, a little fever for one afternoon can be worth the pampering it comes with, if you’re in the eighth grade.

But the next morning, I was still sick. Now this was strange. In fact, I wasn’t just still sick; I was worse. To my own astonishment, I quickly sank onto the sofa in the living room and did not get back up. I didn’t eat (and for stocky little me, that was a huge deal). I could hardly think.

Rapidly, life turned into a nightmare as the flu wreaked havoc in my body. In the mornings, I would hobble out in my pajamas to the sofa to escape my dim room. Then, literally, I would languish on that couch all day long, growing weaker by the minute. Sometimes I lay limp. Sometimes I writhed. My fever skyrocketed to peak at times at over 104°. I’d eat almost nothing all day, knowing I was weakening but unable to strengthen myself, miserable in mind and in body.

Days passed. A week. Nothing got better.

By the time the week mark passed, I had pretty much made the record for the sickest ever in my family, at least among my siblings. Meanwhile, they quietly carried on their lives around me.

Healthy.

The stomach flu laughed harder.

And yet my war with influenza was far from over; a second week of couch-ridden agony stretched out before the nightmare finally began to fade. Even when those two dreadful weeks were over, though, I could hardly function.

A monstrous two weeks behind in school, I tried that third week to begin to catch up. Fail. Though at last the flu had released me from its talons, my recovery was excruciatingly slow and almost as miserable as the two-week-solid illness.

By the end of the third week, I was at last a bit more of my old self—and I do mean a bit. I was very nearly literally half the girl I once was. My body had changed from vaguely resembling a marshmallow to the spitting image of a string bean in a scant three weeks. Almost overnight, my appearance was completely different. I could almost go swimming in my jeans. Though I would go on to gain back a healthy portion of my prior weight, I would never be the same again.

The next year, when the stomach flu washed over our family, I still washed my hands. I still didn’t get sick. But I never laughed at it again.

So much for Iron Woman.