Friction optimizing
Clinging uncomfortably to discomfort
It’s hard to remember the last time I truly did nothing without the pressure of something else simmering in the background. I somehow always have ten projects going at once. When did I last feel really carefree? Maybe in my thirties? The early ‘aughts. Where, even if you had a cellphone, you used it mostly for calling. Phone calls were literally the baseline. You paid for a set number of texts, after which you paid ten to twenty cents per if you went over. Going out to eat didn’t require an offering to the photo gods before you dug in.
Anyway, cell phone cameras then were super low res, basically crayon shapes compared to the NASA quality footage we have nowadays. The good old days.
When no one was performing their own version of the Truman Show. No one was performing a better version of their lives for some abstract “audience.” They were simply being.
I remember reading an article once about how tables were turning over at a 10-20% slower rate specifically because of the photo opping. Restaurants were losing money because of social media. Of course they had to raise prices. Would going out cost less if we weren’t glued to our phones?
Recently, I got a decaf at Canyon Coffee in Echo Park. A smattering of sidewalk tables and chairs surround its corner glass edifice and wood bench interior. People mostly hung out in pairs and groups (like anywhere). Two other solo patrons had their eyes locked in on their screens and a third in an actual physical book.
I poached a free chair from a table and sat down with my coffee and a free hand. Of course, my immediate impulse was to grab my phone and find something —ANYTHING — to read or scroll. To fit in to the social expectations. But I pushed the urge away. I sipped and stared out into space instead. Watched the people. Let my mind wander. But not without effort.
Those initial few moments felt so daring. To sit alone and not be engaging with something or someone felt like a mini cultural revolution.
A ludicrous idea considering this is what humans have been doing for eons. Anyone else try this lately?
The zeitgeist is all about anti-digitizing life these days, so of course a few days after this exercise, the podcast “Being Well” served up an episode called “The Comfort Trap with Michael Easter,” appropriate because it’s almost Easter (ha ha). Easter also has his own Substack, and in a recent article explains that it’s not SITTING that’s killing you, it’s HOW we sit. We should do more ground-sitting, squatting, and sitting in backless chairs to low-key activate core and back muscles. It made me think about how my Korean umma still mostly ground sits or squats when prepping dinner or making kimchi. Maintaining the ability to get up off the ground is one way to live to a ripe old age, as my umma is proving.
Easter’s whole brand is using discomfort to build resistance. As to be expected, he’s a hardcore advocate of rucking — walking with weights — because this is something humans are pretty much ideally engineered for.
My main form of exercise/voluntary discomfort comes in the form of climbing, and sometimes hiking if the climbing requires it, or a place isn’t climbable and I still want to experience it.
Last week, I set out for Utah for such activities. On the way, I met up with Diana, an outdoor educator and fellow climber who I met on a climbing trip in Turkey five years ago.
We rendezvoused in St. George, for two days of climbing before hitting up Bryce Canyon further North. It was going to be a week of Type 2 fun — a term I learned a few years ago. The kind of fun that isn’t necessarily fun in the moment, but you’re glad you did it afterward. For the physical reward or epic views. Hiking might be more like 2.5 for me, tbh. But I was glad to go. To see the last traces of winter in the receding snowbanks, the hoodoo sentries crowded together, the cathedral arches and towers carved into the limestone by frost and wind and time.
To see them required descending down a mile or so of switchbacks on iron-reddened trails. But even steps from the parking lot, Bryce is an immediate wow.
The trails were dotted with novice hikers who worried me:
People with city shoes, or carrying a single 16-ounce bottle of water if that; a white woman at the start of a five mile hike with 1900 feet of elevation gain corralling two two under five year olds, their bare shoulders already blushing red under the intense alpine midday sun on the exposed, shadeless trail in eighty degree weather. Did she plan to hike the whole trail with them?
The danger with these trails is they go down first, so it’s easy to disregard how hard it will be to come back up. I saw one sister and brother duo in perhaps their late teens who looked fairly athletic but were obviously in deep agony. Their eyes were unfocused and dazed, their bodies slumped in misery as they shuffled back up.
I guessed my limits at about 2000 feet of elevation gain. But with the altitude between 8-9000 feet, that actually turned out to be too generous. Although I’m happy to report the hikes were still mostly manageable.
We camped three nights in a nearby forest, tucked along a fire road. My friend in her (luxurious by comparison) Ford Sprinter van with a real bed. Me in the back of my ancient Nissan Rogue on top of three sleeping pads: A foam one that a friend donated to me years ago, an inflatable one that I had first bought, and a second inflatable that I bought as an upgrade for camping abroad, but which had a slow leak and squealed every time I turned. Stacked together, it was almost comfortable.
Our makeshift campsite came with a stone fire ring and, fortuitously, someone else’s leftover fire wood. It’s been my goal to get good at building fires. I’d tried several times before, but had yet to have one stay lit.
This time, I’d come prepared with an internet-sourced fire-starter idea: toilet paper tubes stuffed with dryer lint. Last time I’d tried this, I’d packed them (too?) tightly. This time, I made sure to keep everything loose and airy.
Pine needles blanketed the ground, so it was easy to collect and sprinkle over the TP roll for tinder. Then a handful of twigs in graduating sizes, small to big. I teepeed a few small ones over the tinder, then lit the tube. It caught quickly. Then I fed bigger and bigger twigs as the fire grew. Once several larger twigs were burning successfully, I gently leaned the skinniest of the firewood logs onto them.
It roared to life and shockingly stay lit for several hours with our quiet tending. My first successful fire! I felt giddy with joy. The fire was perfect for the temperature drop that night, because it got COLD.
I’d checked the weather and had anticipated cooler temps, but the forecast only said low of 55º. Which was so so wrong.
Peak discomfort ensued.
The first morning after, our handwashing water hanging from a tree had ice chunks. So, it had gone below freezing. The next night I wore more layers, and by the third, I was wearing two shirts under a puffy, two pairs of pants, a hat, and fresh socks* inside my 30º rated sleeping bag. This night was the coldest. I woke up with cold spots on my shoulders and hips and could not get warm.
At some point, I finally roused myself enough to crawl into the front seat and turn on the car and blast the heat. The temperature gauge read 28º. How had the forecast failed me that much?
Diana had taught me about the fresh socks tip. Your day socks accumulate sweat and salt, losing their heat-retaining ability, so it’s best to swap them out before bed. You can also stuff the bottom of your sleeping bag with extra clothing or what have you so it’s all snug around your feet — I’d forgotten that part. Nor had I made hot water bottles out of my Nalgenes.
What I did do was drive a few miles and found lower elevation at a balmy 40º. Diana and I were parting ways that day anyway so I took a quick nap in my new spot before a sunrise hike. Even though I’m a sworn night owl in normal life, struggling to go to sleep before midnight, I obsess over catching the sunrise when I’m in the outdoors. I love feeling like I have a place to myself. And that morning, I caught a coterie of swallows? nuthatchers? small black and white birds swooping through the air and circling the canyon below. And a single crow puffed up, gazing out onto the eastern horizon, as the sun came up.
Unfortunately, on the drive back home, I took the wrong “scenic route” and ended up on the eastern side of Zion instead of the western side. Unfortunate because I had to drive through hot af sub 100º temps the whole way without AC. Windows down, air blasting at my ear drums, no chance of listening to a podcast or audiobook. Just the heat for company.
On the other hand, I could actually visually piece together the connection among Bryce, Zion, and the Grand Canyon. The visitor center had mentioned that they were all part of the Grand Staircase, and it was apparent on the drive. Each park sort of melded into the next without any real break in the features. Red hills and cliffs and canyons dotted the drive the whole way from Bryce to Zion. Rounding Zion, a sign read 80 miles to Grand Canyon. How did I not know they were so close? I guess I don’t think of Arizona and Utah being in proximity even though their state lines touch. Or maybe I always think of the Grand Canyon being way further south.
But as I passed the steep red cliffs of Zion on the right, I could see behind me on the left, incredibly, the flat table tops of the Grand Canyon on the horizon. I’ve explored Zion, but I’ve only ever stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon. It was tempting to make a detour, but I was due back home for a photo project and a dog sit. And anyway, my body was frictionmaxxed out.
Recent Taste Discoveries.
The creamy La Croix flavors like Lemoncello are my least favorite, but on a whim, I mixed one with soy milk and kinda love it. Maybe it’s because my brain can’t reconcile it tasting like cream soda without actual cream in it? I don’t know, for some reason, it worked. Lmk if you try it and also come around to the creamy La Croix flavors.
This morning I made a breakfast of grits, trumpet mushrooms sauteed in garlic and butter, vingary blanched spinach, and fresh tomatoes. Splash of soy. Could’ve done with some kochujang or other spice, maybe. Next time.