Moving

I was never a long distance runner, but as a youth I thought that I was a good sprinter. Probably right about the former, wrong about the latter. Either way I never went more than a few miles under my own power until later in life. Sharon and I didn’t get much exercise in either Atlanta, or Louisville, our first two stops after living in Oregon and my short stay in Kansas.

When we lived in Denver from 1973-75 I did some longer hikes with significant elevation gains at altitude. We climbed an easy, uninteresting 14er (at least fourteen thousand feet high) mountain. Despite its reputation as a skier’s paradise, I only cross country skied once. Because of the short summers, there wasn’t weather for hiking. We did most of our exercise indoors at a gym, and I pumped iron.

Our next stop was Los Angeles. We would have a smoothie and walk to local Rancho Park with friend Rick. We got in some walking on the great area beaches. Non-sequitur – Brian Wilson, chronicler of beaches just died.

After our move to Marin County in the Bay Area, we walked more. Sharon walked to the ferry terminal to get to San Francisco during the later part of our stay there. There were lots of attractive walks in Marin and the East Bay. We could see Mt. Tam out our window and we took hikes on it.

Back in the Portland area I got more serious. A friend suggested that I do the Portland Marathon. I ended up finishing (mostly walk, some run) four. My best time was around 5’ 25” on my third, but in the fourth I lost interest and didn’t do another. I did some half marathons and shorter runs around the same time.

After we’d been in the Portland area for two months we joined Lake Oswego Hiking, and that has been our main outdoor exercise subsequently. Our hikes are mostly two to ten miles plus. There may be elevation gain up to three thousand feet, and some tricky trails. We go to the Mount Hood area, down the Willamette Valley, the Coast, Central Oregon, and Southern Washington. At one time we took buses for special hikes farther away. Two of our trips were around mountains in several trips. We went around Mt. St. Helens on the Loowit Trail and observed the results of the eruption. We could see areas of flattened trees and areas of regrowth. The route around Mt. Hood on the Timberline Trail showed places where the old trail had failed.

Outside of LO Hiking, I “climbed” the post eruption St. Helens a couple of times over snow. The snow cover avoids the boulders that would complicate the climb – it’s more hike than climb. I was surprised at the top – it isn’t a crater, a whole half of the mountain is gone. Looking from a safe place one could see a new peak emerging at the bottom.

Mt. Hood is about fifty-five miles away from our home. Several experienced climbers have died on the mountain, so I wouldn’t try to climb to the top, but I have gone to the top of Illumination Rock at about nine thousand feet a couple of times. It got its name years ago by having a fireworks display visible in Portland.

I’m glad of the many walking and running activities I did years ago, but now that I’m an octogenarian, four miles is the new seven miles, and I’ve cut back a lot.

I hope that the physical part of my life is a counterbalance to my intellectual side writing (suppressed giggle).