When I moved back to Washington State in 2016, at first I felt devastated to learn that the western summits of Tiger Mountain had been logged during my four-year stint away in Colorado. Yes, I’d always known Tiger was a working forest, but nevertheless, grief hit me hard the first time I ran up there again. I missed the trees so very much. The once-dense forest canopy had always felt like a blanket—protective, safe; a comforter, in the truest sense of the word. After the logging trucks had come and gone, all I could see was the loss; the disorientating sense that what once had felt like home—literally, the mountain where, 14 years ago, I met my future husband—was now barren.
It took time for me to shift my narrative from sad Lorax vibes to the sentiments, instead, of Japanese poet Mizuta Masahide: “Barn’s burnt down. Now I can see the moon.”
You know what you can see from the top of the West Tiger summits now? Mount Rainier. Mount Baker, on a clear day. The snow-capped Olympics. Puget Sound. Glistening lakes galore. The Tinker-toy skylines of Seattle and Bellevue. Come summer, a sea of pink-purple foxglove flowers—described, in the poetic words of my friend Ben, as growing “where a forest once grew high and wild, for what is a funeral without flowers? And ten thousand tombstones reaching for the sky.” That metaphor is never far from my mind whenever I’m running those treeless trails up top now, reflecting on cycles of death and rebirth; loss and growth; grief and joy. Two sides of the same coin.
Anyway, the metaphorical clearcut I’m dealing with now is a painful zinging between two metatarsals in my left foot: a pain that turned up, highly unwelcome, in the days following the Orcas Island 100-miler I ran back in February.
The race itself was an incredible joy: Katie Laco and I both dipped under the women’s course record, becoming the first women to run sub-24 hours in this race. We finished ahead of all the men this year except one. (Ultrarunning legend and Orcas Island local Lon Freeman. Go Lon!) Katie’s a badass, though, and did so twelve minutes faster than I did (while also joining the esteemed Tower Club, which I confess I skipped). I went into the race imagining a relatively chill “season opener,” only to recognize right off the bat that there would be no letting up on the gas. Kudos to Katie, Joanna, Christine, Audrey and Brittany for all making it one hell of a women’s race from start to finish! Five of the top ten overall finishers were women. It was such a cool race to be a part of.
But I paid for it later, with the first real showstopping injury of my 15-year ultrarunning career: a Morton’s neuroma that made itself known in the week following the race. Essentially, inflamed nerve tissue in the ball of my foot.
I won’t turn this into a ramble about the ins and outs of this injury. The short version is this: I cleared my race schedule for the rest of the year. I’m not running at all right now, trying to let the inflammation come down naturally, without cortisone shots or foot surgery or other invasive procedures—but man, when you piss off a nerve, it’s not one to readily forgive and forget.
My mom—who’s always been my own personal Mizuta Masahide, encouraging me to find silver linings—was quick to point out how much more time I’d have for writing this year. Yes! I thought with excitement, too, at first. Except that, I was soon reminded, exercise is indispensable for me—all the more so now that I’m a mother myself, and help care for my own aging parents, and also work a full-time desk job. I can’t show up well in any of those arenas if I’m not regularly getting my own wiggles out.
Running is off the table, at least for now.
Hiking is also out, which might even be more devastating, frankly. The number of times Sahale has begged me to take her to Cable Line (our favorite hike up Tiger) in the past three months, and she’s had to settle, instead, for balance-bike cruises to our neighborhood playground. Girl, I miss those mountaintop sunsets and mac-and-cheese picnics, too.
“Well, I wish you the best in your new cycling career,” a runner friend joked when I told him about my foot. But riding a bike—many an injured runner’s best friend—aggravates my foot, too. Even yoga sucks.
Listen, though, here comes the moon; the foxglove; the expansive and glorious new view: I’ve started swimming. Swimming doesn’t bother my foot in the least. It bothers my shoulders and arms (hi, upper body of mine, welcome to exercise), my eyes (the chlorine! The goggles I’m probably wearing too tight), and my knees (the only swim stroke I know how to do is breaststroke, so I just do that for hours each week and lord, my poor knees).
Swimming laps did not capture my immediate imagination. It’s been a slow burn. But in the yawning cavity left by this (hopefully temporary) cessation of running, I’ve built a new routine: waking up at 5am to read an essay from
’s beautiful new book, The Book of Alchemy, then write by hand in my journal for 15-20 minutes, then drive to the pool to swim for an hour before starting my workday.There are regulars at the pool at that hour, and I look forward to seeing them. They are all dudes, and they all know how to swim properly, which I do not, but they are nice and do not make me feel like a loser, even in the first few weeks when I refused to wear goggles or put my face in the water. YouTube has figured out that, in this season of my life, it should serve me swimming how-to videos instead of Golden Ticket race livestreams (good job, algorithm!) and already, I can feel how much my technique has improved.
The fun part of being a beginner at something is how quickly the gains come.
When I told my mom how excited I felt to try to master a new skill, she smiled and said, “You are definitely your father’s daughter.” My dad swam competitively in his youth, and was a lifelong tennis player who always found joy in the pursuit of mastery. I can still picture the row of Vic Braden VHS instructional tapes lined up next to our TV. Today, my dad and I live two thousand miles away from each other, and illness in recent years has stolen much from him—but I feel close to him when I’m in the water, doing a thing that he once loved.
That, too, is a gift.
Swimming won’t ever replace running for me, but the same part of myself that weirdly enjoys track workouts and treadmill sessions sure is enjoying lap swimming, too. Maybe it’ll translate to more open-water swimming this summer so I can scratch both itches—the need for endorphins, the need to be outside—at once, the way trail running always has.
Anyway: In the span of just a few weeks, I’ve managed to build and cement a doable daily routine around writing and exercise—a thing I’ve been trying and failing to do for literal years because, of course, whenever I run or write, I can’t help but want to do it in excess: uninterrupted marathon sessions in that glorious flow state; all-nighters at my computer, all-nighters on the trails. Swaths of time that just aren’t compatible with my daily life at the moment, regardless of the status of my foot.
When I was in elementary school, a visiting author came to our school to speak about her writing life. (In my memory, it was Mary Downing Hahn, though I’m not confident I’m remembering this accurately.) The two nuggets I do remember this author sharing: (1) if you’re going to be a writer, don’t do it for the money, because authors usually only earn about seven cents per book that’s sold; (2) her daily routine consisted of a half-hour walk on the beach each morning, followed by a writing session. And I recall, even at the tender age of nine or ten, thinking, “Yup, this is the life I want for myself someday.” (Money, schmoney; proximity to water; mornings steeped in the delicious solitude of exercise and imagination.)
When I think about what running and writing and swimming and my dad and Vic Braden and this author who may or may not have been Mary Downing Hahn all have in common, I think it’s this: there must be joy in the process. If you can cultivate that, the particulars may matter less.
Of course I want my foot to heal; of course I want to run and hike in the mountains again. But in the meantime, I’m open to—and grateful for—the consolation gifts the universe has been nudging in my direction.
So sorry your injury is keeping you from the trails but so glad you have found swimming!! It has also saved me during many forced breaks from running 💚
Here's to healing and happiness, Yitka.❤️