Animas Outdoors Blog — mountain biking

There Are Good Times And Then There Are Bad Times 0

There are good times like this......

Injury for someone who loves the outdoors is a revelatory stage.

I made the above video over about a month period of time late this summer as I spent many trips with my adventure partner and wife Emily road tripping the SouthWest.

It was an awesome few long weekends we took full advantage of and then randomly one night, thankfully when we were home in Durango, a cyst burst and she internally bled 2 liters of blood into her gut. 

And then there bad times that happen right in the middle of it all....

  Awesome futuristic laparoscopic surgery immediately  ensued after rushing her to the ER, saving her without any hiccups.

Now she's  back to crushing cracks and overhung limestone with a  bit of fatigue just a few weeks later. So damn grateful for modern medicine. 

This weekend at Indian Creek amongst other awesome souls and new friends - we met a kind women from Canmore Canada who I noticed climbing (only top rope) with a neck brace that had a Wu Tang quote hand stitched on it in pink. By the ease she was moving up stout cracks it was obvious she was a very strong climber... who happen to have broken her neck 2 years ago in a white water accident. We all got to talking at the crag.

When I've seen those people who love the outdoors get injured. You know those people who have such a high appreciation for staying active that they define a lot of their lifestyle by a specific sport like climbing or mountain biking and strive to push the grades and technical challenge? Yeah, you know them or more likely you are one. 

When that inventible big or small injury occurs and you're able to get back to doing what you love there is this beautiful appreciation that occurs deep in the heart. The heart really softens to feeling fulfilled by simply getting on the rope or bike again no matter the difficulty. For even being able to take a hike down the same trail you've done a hundred times. 

It's just so evident the gratitude exuded from these lovers of life with past injuries who seem to universally seek simply being out there, for the picnics & snacky food mainly. Injuries puts a huge downer on your day to day, hopefully temporarily, but eventually bring about a lot of love and compassion for the small things. 

I encourage you to try as we do to really take advantage of as many weekends and evenings out after work pursuing your passion or just being active. You never know when all this could be taken from you in an instant.