Eight Days in the Grand Canyon (Supplement 1): My Physical Take-Away

A few months ago, I was texting with a friend of mine and I mentioned that I'd been working on getting in shape for our trip to the Grand Canyon. (See previous post for a full account of the adventure.) He immediately made fun of me: he had seen the trip and knew it was motorized -- not a paddling trip like one we had taken on the pretty deadly Upper Gauley river in West Virginia, a few decades ago -- so he good-naturedly accused me of being dramatic. I shared a laugh at the joke; but I told him that I really wanted to be in shape for the side-hikes and other physical challenges of the trip. And the heat. (Though, there really was no preparing for that heat.) 

For a few months, I went, every day, to a three mile system of trails near my New Jersey home. I'd wait for the hottest time of the day (or, at least, not worry about how hot it was) and I would walk my usual paths and then speed-climb a central hill (the lazily-named "Blueberry Hill") two or three times before going back to the trail head.

On the Canyon trip, as a result, I was pretty proud of how I held up. I felt strong on the trails, the whole time. My back was good (occasional issues there, in the past) and I suffered no aches and pains. (I had started out taking Advil, preemptively, at night, but I stopped that on the third of eight days.) My cardio was pretty solid the whole time: no excessive panting with climbs and camp setups/breakdowns; no insane heart-thumping. 

It all raises the question of the connection between weight and fitness -- a question that has been a central one for my wife and me for the past year or so. 

I am simply not at a weight I want to be. I'm at least twenty pounds over, by my standards. Maybe, at this point, I have to admit that I have been telling myself a lie for years: that wanting to be thin is not out of vanity. I think it may be, but I also think that might be okay.

I used to say that my desire to be thin is a result of two things: 1) How I feel. 2) Having this notion that I have a "thin mind," so I want my body to follow suit. It just helps with social clarity. 

Well, when it comes to No. 1: I feel pretty good now and it is because I have been moving. I'm 54. My joints and muscles feel good. My back is fine. I can motor along on a trail or scramble up rocks with the best of them... If I keep my regimen of hiking and stretching up, I should keep feeling this way. 

Then, I see myself in pictures, and I think: Who the heck is that? He looks neither like the guy in my head nor the guy in the mirror. (I can only hope that it's true about pictures adding ten pounds and some quick research shows it is probably true, so I got that going for me...) Sometimes I look at pictures of myself and tell my wife that I look like Peter Griffin, from Family Guy. I say this to be funny, but it also kind of hurts the old pride.

I do have thin mind. That, I keep in shape with constant exercise. I may not be a genius, but there is certainly no belly flab in the old mellon. 

Maybe I need to see all of this as a prompt for a separation of thought. I used to look at diet and exercise the way we are told to: as partnered weight-loss efforts. For me, it's better to think of them as separate goals: Exercise makes me feel good, physically; weight loss makes me feel good mentally. 

And both are important, right?

In the end, I guess it is more important to be strong than to be pretty. We'll see where that takes me. 

Some Post-Stockbridge Thoughts

I.

View from "Laura's Tower," The Berkshires. 

We spent a weekend in Stockbridge Massachusetts, in New England's beautiful Berkshires. You might know what famous American illustrator lived there. You might not. I'm guessing you know him if you are my age and that -- based on some anecdotal evidence I gathered yesterday while teaching my classes -- if you are under the age of twenty, you have no idea who he was; or, that, even if I mention his name, you still don't know who he was. (You might, however, say, "Oh... That guy," if I show you a picture of his work.

He is, of course (of course?) Norman Rockwell.

My first (typical and self-disappointing) reaction to my students not having ever heard of Norman Rockwell was to think of it as a deficiency in the kids. But, as always, I realized it is not their fault but the fault of the adult world if they are ignorant about anything in our culture.

It could be that we didn't teach them well enough. But, more likely, it is because we have created a world for them in which the philosophy is that the more information we can have flying around our heads, the better. These kids know more about more things than I did at their age because of the Googlenet. More is not always better.

Would we like to have a TV in every room? Every closet? Inside our silverware drawer? Some might say yes, but all must agree it would be a tremendous distraction.

How do they not know who Norman Rockwell is, when, in my mind, an American not knowing who he was is the equivalent deficiency of an American not knowing what baseball is. Will the world end? No....but it just ain't right...and it means we are doing something very wrong.

II.

At the Norman Rockwell Museum, we watched a good documentary video about the artist. It fascinated me and it broke my heart just a little. (Don't worry -- it's already full of cracks. It's not like it's that first "ding" in a new car.) There was a recorded statement by Rockwell saying that he knew that what he did wasn't "high art." He even emphasized that point by saying "No one knows that better than me..." 

What the hell does that mean? If Picasso is high art, why isn't Rockwell? Was Rubens "high art"? Was Edward Hopper "high art"? Whatever the answers to those questions are, somehow, Rockwell allowed himself to be beaten into submission. The snootier critics were always rough on him (as was evidenced by his "artistic crisis" referred to in the film; he went to Europe to study "modernism") and it had its effect: he decided -- like an obese person making statements about his fatness just to let the world know that he is aware his physical deficiency -- to join up with them. 

It's tragic. Of course what he did is "high art." Rockwell was both a mirror and a lamp on our world even if, as he said, he chose to literally paint an optimistic pictures of how things "ought to be." In the end, his work is no less "high art" than is the world of film composers like John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith; than the popular music of Paul McCartney or Leonard Cohen; than the plays of Neil Simon... 

Are any of these people's work not "high art" because they are popular? Is inaccessibility the key to the "high art" label? How stupid would that be? Are people disqualified from "high art" -- in the cases of the film composers -- because they are "hired guns"? Is any artist working on commission not an artist? Is art automatically low because it is made to compliment another kind of art (scores; illustrations...)?

It is horrible that Rockwell felt that way about his work. Again, and always: damage done by the "world." Rockwell had everything he needed and felt that he didn't. 

III.

Rockwell is part of American culture -- a culture that all Americans share, regardless of descent. I once heard someone say that he is not relevant anymore because he depicted primarily white America. Truth is, he was consciously active in painting multicultural characters, especially later in his career...

...but who cares?  How long are we going to think along lines of color and race? We're Americans and Rockwell was a treasure. We should all be proud of his work. While -- especially as a teacher -- I understand the importance of and audience "relating" to the material at hand, I also think great is great. Langston Hughes and Robert Frost are both brilliant poets. We shouldn't skip teaching one of them because of the color of our classroom, nor should we accept ignorance to one or the other and make cultural excuses for it.

IV.

Standing, after a hard, uphill hike, upon "Laura's Tower," looking down upon the Berkshires, I realized that feeling small can really teach us how vast we are, within. Original? No. But the truth seldom is, I find.