Falling Off the Trail

Our first campground in New York was at the top of a hill/mountain in Watkins Glen State Park. (The hills in the finger lakes are much much bigger than ours, but I don't actually think it was an official mountain.) On Tuesday I decided to run down into the town, which was on the lake shore, and try to find a way to run by the lake. The lake is something like 50-60 miles around or some such distance I couldn't possibly manage. On my way out of the campground, I found a little semi-hidden trail, so I decided to take it. It took me down (literally) to the entrance to the part of the campground we were staying in. Then I took the road to town which was windy and down down down. I had only gone two miles or so when I reached the town and the bottom, so I tried to find a lake trail (there wasn't one) and explored the town some. After I had run another mile or two, I realized I had better start back up. Up was harder than I thought. I was glad I had done the small hill at Johnson's Mound a few times the week before. Two miles of steep incline is more than I am used to, and I was thoroughly done and very satisfied when I finished. I had that pleasant exhausted muscle buzz the rest of the day.

Because I sincerely intended all along to be extremely cautious to protect my meager running gains, I took Wednesday off. I had found a way that the tiny trail out of my campground area connected with the rim trail of the gorge which we hadn't hiked yet. (We did the more exciting and treacherous and popular gorge trail to see the dozens of waterfalls.) Thursday, I decided to explore the trails. Of course, since my tiny trail went down and down, the rim trail, which went to the top of the area, went up and up. I had my Garmin watch, so I could see that between the incline and my cautious trail running, I was going very slowly. For a moment I contemplated turning around and repeating Tuesday's run, but then I decided that I don't often get to trail run in the woods up a gorge rim and that I could always go easy on the trail and hard on the road the next day. Good plan, I thought. I ran the rim trail, being cautious, and came out at the top in less than two miles. Boo. Not long enough. I started down the road I found at the top, and only a few minutes later, I passed a little sign that labeled a "punchbowl extension" trail. I decided to take it. It took me straight down into a little clearing by a large pool of water, maybe the river just before the falls? I don't know. It was clearly a planned trail but very little used. I hadn't seen a single soul on the rim trail either, but this place seemed even less traveled. From the clearing, I spotted an even smaller trail (perhaps my definition of cautious is a bit stretchy,) and I started down it. I hadn't gone even a quarter mile around the edge of the "punchbowl" when I tripped on a root or a hole or something. It happened so quickly. My left ankle twisted and then slid off the trail towards the pool, and my right side--all the way up to my right cheek--hit the trail. Moments later, when I had time to reflect, I was rather impressed by my body's survival instincts. Although I haven't run on a trail in a couple of years at least, and even then I only had the chance a few times a year on vacation, my body knew what to do. I live in a flat part of the world, so I don't ever practice falling off of a precipice. I didn't think about grabbing hold of the vegetation on the side of the slope or digging my fingers into the trail, but I did those things. When I caught my breath, I pulled myself up on the plants and the roots, hoping I hadn't grabbed a strong vine of poison ivy in the process, and regained the "trail." "Well," I said to myself, "I guess that's the end of that run."

The problem, of course, was that I had a short, steep climb to get up to the main trail, and then a longish trek back to the join with my little campsite trail, and I had clearly sprained my ankle. The steep incline was rough, but I found another trail with roots and things that I could use to pull myself up with my arms, mostly. Then on the main trail I told myself it was not so bad. I could definitely make it. I had been reading Into the Wild, so my head was full of stories of people who have done crazy things and survived against the odds. (Of course, the main character survives for quite a while and then makes a rather small mistake and dies from it, but I chose not to focus on that part of the book.) A less than two mile hike on an obvious trail in a state park didn't seem that extreme, even with a sprained ankle. But it was slow going, to say the least. I felt like I was not moving, and the longer I walked, the worse I felt. I considered sitting down and crying for a while, but I talked myself out of that decision. I could be sitting there for hours. I had at least managed to get myself onto a real trail, but no one had taken the trail yet, that I had seen. I decided that really my only option was to gut it out and get myself back. I confess that I did cry a few times, but I kept going.

I was watching my Garmin to judge how much longer I'd have to hold it together. I knew I'd be back by mile four, since I had fallen around two and had taken a short-cut up from the bowl. When I had been walking for about a mile, I saw a glint to my right, away from the gorge. A car? A road, then? I thought a road would be much easier to walk on than a trail, but then I wouldn't know where I was and might end up walking even farther. I stopped and stared. I decided that it was not a road, but a campsite! I figured it must be somehow connected to the campground I meant to find--at least part of the same state park. I decided to leave the trail and walk through the woods to the campsite and figure it out from there. Again, I must marvel at a fortuitous turn of events. Not only did I not fall all the way off the trail when I fell, but when I did leave the trail on purpose, I walked into the only campsite with an awake camper. A woman was sitting in her sweats having coffee and doing a crossword. I came up behind her and apologized for startling her by crawling out of the woods and then explained what had happened. She said she had a map of the campgrounds in her car, which she fetched, and we determined that she and I were camping as far from each other as was possible. She said she would drive me back. I generally hate to impose on people that way, but I had to. I thanked her profusely and got in her car.

As she drove, we talked a bit about running. I said that I had, to amuse myself, asked myself if I had been in a trail race, would I have tried to finish? I concluded that I could not have finished. She said her boyfriend had recently sprained an ankle in a trail race and did finish, which she thought was a stupid thing to have done. She, it turned out, was an ER nurse practitioner! My guardian angel maybe dozed off a bit when I was down in the punchbowl, but she worked hard afterwards to make up for it! The nurse reminded me to stay off the ankle as much as possible for at least 48 hours and to take it very slowly after that. She reminded me that a sprain takes much longer to heal than a fracture (grrr) and could bother me for up to six months and that the worst thing I could do is push it before it's ready. As she was talking, the pain, which I must have been keeping at bay with adrenaline or desperation, started to climb. I could barely tolerate the jostling of the car on the rough roads. I felt myself going into that sort of semi-consciousness that happens in labor and other intense pain situations.

When she dropped me off, my family was all still sleeping, so I called out for some help. The nurse asked me if I needed help making it to the picnic bench on the far side of my campsite, and I said no, I had just walked a mile, and someone would come help me in a minute, but then my vision blacked over and the world tilted and I got hot and cold at once. I grabbed for the car and held myself up, and she dashed out of her seat and caught me. By then Doug was out of the camper and the two of them carried me to the picnic bench, where I laid down. The nurse commented that she probably could have just carried me herself, and I should have said I was going to faint. She said to lie down for a while and whenever I felt faint again to lie down with my foot up.

We put ice on my ankle for 20 minutes at a time, and I started to shake. It was a chilly morning, and I was wearing a tank top and shorts. Doug gave me a blanket and some towels to cover up with, but I couldn't stop shaking and shaking. I shook for about two hours. I should have eaten something, but I was too wrapped up in my pain and too light-headed to think of it. Finally my family got up and ate, and I ate too, but I couldn't stop shaking. Was it from cold or pain or fear? I don't know. I kept replaying in my head the moment around the fall and the scenarios of how that all could have ended differently. I decided it was always going to end up OK, one way or another, but it certainly could have been much worse than it was.