Friends holding it together. Photo by @mikenhike541
I grew up in Cedar Rapids, IA, a city is known by the moniker "The City of 5 Seasons". The city will have you believe that the 5th season is 'time to enjoy the other 4'. We locals know that the real 5th season is what we call 'Crunch Berries season', the random days throughout the year when the Quaker Oats plant, one of the biggest employers in town, produces Cap'N Crunch Crunch Berries cereal, spreading the delightfully sweet smell of sugary cereal all across our humble land. When I feel homesick, this is one of the weird things I miss.
Moving to Southern Oregon 10 years ago, I get nostalgic for those early years of getting my local feet wet by learning of our own weird idiosyncrasies, our own "5th seasons". We were lured here by words like "ski season", "wildflower season", and by the promise that yes, you may just throw away your snow shovel because we have lots of sunshine and yes, you can just drive to the snow if you want it. A siren song to any midwestern.
The last few years these romantic monikers of our seasons in this wild, wonderful valley have taken on new names like "smoke season," "fire season, "hot and dry season." The thunderstorms I loved from the midwest, the memories of sitting on my porch listening for the seconds between lightning and thunder to calculate how many minutes away the eye was from our house, has taken on a new, more ominous tone. Lightening is to be feared, not admired. Same with nature. At its worse, there is fear and uncertainty. From a practical day-to-day perspective, these new seasons out West are just plain inconvenient and often sad. Maybe we should be used to having things we love to do be disrupted - we certainly got a lot of practice in the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. But we were supposed to be back, baby! Back to our beloved outdoors, our time for planning races and group runs, travel and gatherings, and long hugs, using calendars and counting on them again. Instead, we're refreshing our air quality apps and wondering to ourselves, why do we live here again? Is this what being a Southern Oregon local is now? Maybe. Maybe it is. So...what now?
The things I didn't share about that charming midwest cereal-smelling town of my youth? It's surrounded by water and twice in the past 10 years, there have been 500-year floods destroying thousands of homes and businesses. Last year there was a land hurricane with 140 mph winds called a Duracho that destroyed nearly 65% of the trees that gave shape and character to the city. On our last trip home, I wept at the losses...AND I wept in hope. Okay, this happened, so...now what? From the floods, the downtown came back alive, vibrant with shops, new housing (much low income), and thriving businesses. New trees are planted, new zoning for housing, food cart pods, art installations. We're building back better. Together.
When you live long enough, you experience suffering and the passing of the suffering. We should no longer be surprised by being surprised. You learn to adjust to a changing world, to care for the things you own, and, above all, to love and care for the people most important in your life. We are facing a new season of challenges. WE. Together. As tempting as it is to run away to another place, that other place wouldn't have the community we have with Woodlands Running Co., Women of Woodlands and Party in the Back, this trail amazing running group that cares deeply about the trails and woods that hold more than trees, but our tree friends. We GOT this, friends. Together.
By Wednesday, Joe Chick, RD of the Mt. Ashland Hill Climb, will communicate if the air quality will be safe enough to run on Saturday and to (with full consent) slap some asses in celebration from the Bull Gap aid station and up at the lodge, where we'll be slinging the new gear we launched this past week. Dang, we hope so. We also hope to run together on Tuesday and Thursday with you all this week. The standard we've set for making these running decisions is if the AQI is <150 we are running, if it's more, we will not. We will post if the group run is canceled on our Facebook and Instagram feeds the same day by 5:00 PM before the run.
The good news about hanging indoors on a smoky day? Housing some Cap'n Crunch and watching the new UFO docuseries on Showtime or Ted Lasso for the 10th time in a row. That in and of itself should be a season.