Diana Nyad reminded me ...

As you likely know, 64-year-old endurance swimmer Diana Nyad just became the first person on record to swim unaided from Cuba to Florida. (For Robin Roberts' interesting interview with Nyad, click here.) She had tried several times before, beginning in her 20s (shortly after she swam around Manhattan). More recently, after passing her 60^th birthday, she decided to give it another go. She tried three times over the past few years, but was stymied by weather, currents, and jellyfish. She said this would be her last try … although apparently she’s said that before. In any case, she made it.

As she came out of the water, after 112 miles and 50 straight hours of swimming, she had three messages for her assembled fans (including the assembled news media, who dutifully passed her message on to us):

1.      Never, ever give up (a phrase she credited to abc’s Robin Roberts in the interview linked above)

2.      You’re never too old to follow your dreams

3.      It looks like a solitary sport, but it takes a team

In interviews after her swim, she talked a lot about how being older actually helped her: the concentration, the patience, the knowledge that you can push through the tough moments. Her “mantra” as she swam: “Find a way.” She talked about the importance of stepping back, being committed, and then persisting despite setbacks. It wasn’t the athletic feat that mattered, she said; it was what it said about “the human spirit.”

Her messages were inspiring—to folks of any age, but especially to those of us who might have thought we were past fulfilling any long-standing dreams. And her insistence that even endurance swimming, one swimmer in the water for hours and miles, is a team event—this was also important for me to hear. Now maybe more than ever in my life, I am aware of how important other people are to my well-being. How life is a team effort. I learn this regularly from friends who have done a better job than I of building community. And it is something I am, honestly, working on at this very moment in my life. More on that later …

Back to Diana Nyad. In addition to my delight as I followed her last miles to shore (Online, that is. Not in the water), two other trains of thought drifted through my mind. The first was something I’ve written about here before: my concern about “bucket lists”—that designated pile of things we want to be sure to do in our lives. For me—and I know this isn’t true of everyone—what works better for keeping my life full and vibrant is to watch for the unexpected opportunities, the things I hadn’t planned that make me excited and give me a goal, even a fleeting one. I think of things like writing this blog, joining a bird-watching excursion during raptor migration season, swapping a sunny hike in the Utah desert for a photo blog of a rainstorm there, spending a week in New York taking a course in astrophysics, hiking up Storm King Mountain on an unanticipated pilgrimage. 

So, although I have huge respect—and perhaps a dose of envy—for Diana Nyad’s feat, I do not regret that I’ve had no persistent, focused, singular lifelong dream like hers. I’ve had dreams, but they’ve been far more amorphous, and they come true in small ways all the time rather than in one momentous step from the Gulf onto the shore. That suits me well, although it would likely not suit her.

And my second train of thought was this: I am working these days on relinquishing lingering feelings of loss and regret that come from seeing other (usually younger—Diana Nyad being close to the exception) people do things that I have done but can’t any longer or that I just wish I could do. The reality is that there are places I will likely not see, hikes I can no longer take, academic subjects that I won’t master in this lifetime, bike trips that are now impossible for me, books I won’t write. And I’m trying now, with varying but increasing success, to treasure the wonderful memories I have of the times when I have done those things, or things like them, rather than getting caught in sadness and regret over the very real limits to what I will still do in my lifetime.

So, another part of my response to Diana Nyad’s wonderful achievement was to remind myself that phrases like “You’re never too old” and “Never give up” do not mean that I am a failure at life if anything remains undone. I have no absolute bucket list. I’ve had and continue to have a rich, varied, often surprising life. And that’s enough.

Well, that and being part of a “team,” which actually is lifelong wish.

Project “Leaving Linus” update

My fledgling project to avoid mindlessly hanging out with Linus (the name I gave my computer, in case you missed that episode) when I’m not doing something actually meaningful has had some nice results. One is this photo … more on that in a minute. For now, on to the status update on Project "Leaving Linus."

Great blue herons

The first change is that avoiding this mindless thing has made me aware of how much time I typically spend at the computer when I have no particular goal. I also realize that deciding to hang out less with Linus has left me more open to things that happen to pass my way, things I might normally dismiss (“Maybe, if I have time” or “Nah, that’s not convenient” or “I’ll probably be too tired” or simply “I’m too lazy”). It turns out that some of those things truly interest me, if I can just get past my lethargy and sloth and actually consider them as genuine possibilities.

For instance, here are some things I did in the past week or so that I likely would have dismissed in favor of aimless time at home (which usually translates to time in front of the screen):

• At the tamest end of my adventurous continuum, on a couple of occasions, I simply packed up my reading and headed for a local coffee shop—for no reason other than to get out of the house, away from the computer, and into some of the reading I claim to want to do. Not exactly wild, but definitely atypical for me. So it is an adventure in the scheme of things. BTW, Stephen King’s new book about JFK’s assassination is pretty gripping!

• In a slightly more adventurous vein, I decided to go to a performance of the Interactive Theater Project at CU. The performance was about the distinction between old-fashioned and modern racism and about being an ally to other folks who are facing (often subtle) prejudice. Both of these topics interest me a lot. But this was an evening performance, and I had no one to go with. So usually, I would have stayed home instead… it’s easier, more familiar, less hassle strategically, less of a stretch psychologically. But I went anyway. What else was I going to do—hang with Linus? As is almost always true with ITP, I enjoyed the performance and the discussion afterward. Cool.

• Feeling my oats, I went to a movie at the Boedecker, the small theater at The Dairy, my first time there. The movie, “Tomboy,” was, as the title suggests, about a girl who violates traditional gender norms—a French film, with the slow-moving quality common to many French movies. It was an interesting portrayal of a complicated topic, with great acting by a couple of kids. This, too, I usually would not have bothered with, for no good reason. But I was really glad I went, although the audience’s understanding of the film was a bit “off,” IMHO. Still, I learned some stuff about how folks on the streets of Boulder think (or at least talk) about these things. Wow. Twice in one week!

• Then, as if Linus hadn’t already been abandoned enough, on Friday evening, I went to a talk and slide show at REI, “Wildlife in Winter.” It was informative and fun, with lots of great photos. The whole experience took me back to the days when I knew a lot about wildlife. Interestingly, I felt no urge to take notes. This is a new phenomenon that has just cropped up in the last couple of years. This was the third evening outing when I usually would have hunkered down at home. I could get used to this.

• To round out the week, I spent most of Saturday cruising around north Boulder County with a handful of volunteer naturalists and a gaggle of folks eager to learn about—and to spot—raptors. Most folks had sophisticated equipment: high-power binoculars, fancy cameras with long lenses, high-tech spotting scopes. I had my camera phone. Oh, yeah—and my trusty binoculars from trips to Alaska many years ago (like, 15?). My tools worked totally fine for my purposes. (Although I must admit to moments of envy when I would have loved to snap off a great photo.) I loved being outside all day, focusing on wildlife, and soaking up the fresh air, the sun, and (true to Boulder) the afternoon wind. 

Here’s my list of sightings for the day, from memory rather than recorded, so the accuracy is iffy:

o   First thing in the morning, before the official wildlife trip even began, I watched a cow licking her brand new calf, welcoming it to the world. I’m sure it was a new calf, because on my way back a short time later, a cute little wobble-legged calf was standing in front of mom at the same spot. The meadows are sprinkled with what we call “cow dots” now. It always seems too early to me. But I guess nature knows more about these things than I do. This means coyotes will be hanging around these meadows, too.

o    As the birding group gathered before we began our tour, a single bald eagle flew across the water right in front of us and scooped up a fish as if s/he had seen it all the way from the other side. Not a bad start to our outing!

o   Just as we started our drive, we saw a golden eagle perched in a tree right by the road, posing for photos. My camera phone was not up to this challenge (my first hint of the camera envy that would flicker through the day), but I have a picture in my mind’s eye. Then it took off, flying right above us, as cameras snapped all around me.

o   Along the way, we saw many red-tailed hawks, which are very common in these parts. I learned a lot about how varied these birds are—including the fact that even the red tail is optional. Who knew?

o   We spotted several American Kestrels, very small falcons that you can often see perched on a wire or a fence. This is one of my favorite birds—tiny, by raptor standards, with beautiful markings. I love it when they hover, which we didn’t see on this trip, but I also have a mental picture of that, from earlier encounters, and it serves very well.

o   As we were stopped to view a large heronry (a “rookery” for herons—lots of nests gathered in just a few trees), we also saw several great blue herons hanging out near a pond nearby. Again, I couldn’t capture the heronry with my mini-lens camera. But through a bit of desperate ingenuity, I managed to maneuver the lens of my phone over the eyepiece of someone’s spotting scope and captured the picture at the top of this blog. I’d love to say that I planned the artistic quality of this picture, but the truth is that I just didn’t get it lined up well. Oh, well. Artistry is always part serendipity, I hear.

o   And, to finish the day with a certain symmetry, we saw three coyotes—a single one early in the day and then a pair that we watched for quite a while, just as our trip wound down. They were “spotting,” too. They seemed especially interested in scenes similar to my early morning experience with the calf.

When I got home, somehow more tired than I should have been (too many wild adventures in one week, I reckon), Linus was there, apparently unperturbed by my absence. In fact, she seemed oblivious to the fact that she had been deserted so often.

Do you think this intense connection might be one-sided?