Staying Fit
Illustration by Chris Lyons
I travel frequently for work, and six years ago, at age 52, I landed an assignment that took me to Grand Canyon National Park. On a bit of a whim, I called my friend Marcy, then 48, and invited her to come along. We’d been close, tell-each-other-our-every-thought companions, but our friendship had faltered, then finally shattered, over some long-brewing issues. As awkward as I knew calling her would be, I missed our relationship and wondered if we could rebuild it.
She hardly paused before saying yes, but the moment I hung up the phone, I regretted what I’d done. Did I really want to hike from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon down to the Colorado River and back with someone I’d had a falling out with a few years earlier? What the heck had I been thinking?
But something inside of me told me that a physical challenge might help us sort things out. We’d once trained for a marathon together, and both knew from that experience that a little dose of shared misery can draw two people together. I also knew my friendship with Marcy was worth repairing.
On the surface, we might seem like an odd pair of friends. I’m an extrovert; she’s an introvert. I love to be around people; she’d rather be alone. I like to putter around town on my bicycle; these days she drives a big red pickup truck and knows how to load hay bales onto a tractor. I’m forever scampering around the globe, chasing adventure. She loves to plant herself at home.
Still, we share a love of the outdoors, and it’s safe to say that both of us would rather sit on a bench looking out at a grove of trees than go party in Las Vegas, get a manicure or shop in boutiques. We met through our husbands more than 25 years ago. From the moment we went for a run early one spring, then flopped onto the grass in my front yard afterward for a shared belly laugh, I knew I’d found the perfect buddy.
Back then, we both lived in Austin, Texas. Over the course of the next 15 years or so, I dragged her along on occasional adventures. We nearly got blown off our bicycles while pedaling a two-lane highway in west Texas. Once, we wandered into the blissfully named tiny town of Happy, Texas, on a fluke, then spent a day meeting locals. We explored museums and discussed books. We skinny-dipped in a west Texas river. She got me back on a horse and encouraged me to start running. But mostly we just trusted each other enough to share our deepest truths.
In 2009, we signed up to run a marathon together, and the preparation involved lots of long, early morning training runs. While we chugged up hills and down trails in all kinds of weather, we discussed everything from our hopes and dreams to our digestive ailments. Running with Marcy did more than just keep me moving; it helped me process everything that happened in my life.
“The canyon had shown us that even when things erode, they can survive. Our friendship felt like that rocky gorge. Something had eaten away at it, but it could withstand the beating.”
A turn for the worse
Our friendship, you could say, covered a lot of miles. Then, somewhere along the way, it ran off the road. It's hard to explain why. I’m not even sure I know.
No single event led to the fracture, which felt like a steam train grinding to a slow and noisy stop, with flying sparks and metal scraping on metal. One awful afternoon, we wound up standing on my front porch, hollering at each other.
I’m opinionated and strong-willed, and she was upset that I often criticized her choices: She watered her lawn too much. She shouldn’t have bought a horse. She spent too much time away from home, hiding from her problems. She served it right back at me: I was buried in my work. I didn’t have time for friends. I had a holier-than-thou attitude about a lot of things, from my job to the environment.
Those were the surface issues, but the resentments ran deeper, like currents in a river. We disapproved of each other’s lifestyles.
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