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Here’s an edited transcript of this installment of Amy’s Outdoor Diary. Listen to the episode on iTunes, Google Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
How often do I have to learn the same outdoor lesson before I remember it and don’t have to learn it again?
Today I’m recording this from the top of Lion’s Head, a small mountain with a perfect line of sight to the Matanuska Glacier. It took me about 35 minutes to do the 1.25 mile ish up here. If it sounds different, it’s because I’m recording this literally outside on my phone on top of this mountain.
We decided to celebrate Memorial Day weekend with a trip to Valdez, Alaska with some friends. When I looked at the weather forecast I saw that the weather was going to be very very very rainy and very cold. We are talking 35° and raining or, maybe a high of 48° but still raining. That’s not exactly pleasant camping weather, and it’s definitely not how I wanted to spend my holiday weekend or any weekend for that matter camping or not.
But because we had committed to go I decided that we should go anyway. And so we loaded up the van for its first camping trip with our whole family, and drove five hours to rainy and cold in Valdez, Alaska. You could say my attitude was not that great.
I also had a little bit of running to do this weekend, including an 8 mile slow run on the trail somewhere. I plan to do it in Valdez since it was on my running schedule, but I really hate hate hate hate running in the rain.
We spent a cozy first night in the van. It was really comfortable. And the next morning Luke went out to get on his halibut charter to catch some fish. But the charter was canceled because of high seas and no one likes barfing that much, and so we had the day for me just to run and for us to find something to do where it was rainy and we didn’t mind getting wet. Or, we had to find something to do to stay dry.
I put off running as long as I could and finally posted on a group page of the event that I was going, so one of the people we are meeting from out of town could come with me if they wanted to. A gentleman who I just met who had flown in for this event from Texas decided to go with me. Bless his heart, as they say in Texas — 45° and raining it’s not exactly Texas weather.
Carlos, my new friend, and I went out for my run on a very very wet trail and very wet conditions. I had warned everyone that I had we could only be described as a mediocre attitude about the whole thing. But I decided to see if I could drum up some positivity for the sake of Carlos also, for the sake of myself
And what do you know but that run was pretty great. Yes it was very very very very wet and cold yes we went very very slow. But it was low tide and we found that we could run on the beach against the water off the coast of Alaska. And the very very wet trail was also overgrown by tiny rose bushes and so we found that we were surrounded by the most beautiful pink flowers. Those flowers are always a welcome sight after a long winter. It’s only Memorial Day weekend and I know I have a long summer ahead of me. I definitely don’t regret doing that run or any of the time we spent in Valdez. It was wonderful. I only really regret that I had such a bad attitude to start with about the whole thing. When will I learn that my attitude determines my Outlook, and that if I choose to have a good attitude I might find positivity after all.
If you can figure out when I learned that lesson, let me know so I can plan ahead for it.
I hope you had a chance to catch some of my last full length episodes of season three of humans outside, including an episode with Florence Williams who wrote The Nature Fix which is literally the book on going outside, and a show packed with stories of the wildlife kind from both listeners and past guests of Humans Outside it was really fun to record and hear all of those funny stories and I sincerely hope that you enjoy listening to them.
We will be taking a break from our regular season full length episodes through the end of August and I’ll be publishing outdoor diaries almost every week between now and then. If I’m being honest I’m feeling pretty burned out with life in general, certainly not the podcast which I love but everything else, and I just need a break and some time to think about how to make Humans outside season four everything that I want it to be.
If you have any ideas for guests that we should have on season four of Humans Outside please send them to me at [email protected] because I would love to hear your ideas. I also have a fun adventure packed summer plans with friends and family and I can’t wait to share all of those photos and experiences outside with you.
If you’re looking for something to do outside you can subscribe to my newsletter and get for free in your inbox or instantly on my website both an outdoor habit tracker and a summer outdoor bingo game which you can play or use just for some good ideas to head outside.
You can also check out humans outside.com for ideas of how to spend your summer or adventures and maybe even things you did not think of before.
And of course you can follow me on Facebook and Instagram for all of my daily outdoor photos and inspiration how I’m spending my summer outside of course I wanna see your outdoor photos to and you can share those with me with #HumansOutside365. Until next time, we’ll see you out there.
