Cold AND Wet. Dirty was irrelevant. |
Most of my life I spend operating in a way where certain distinctions between things not only make sense, but have great bearing on my decisions. Clean vs. Dirty is a prime example. Adventure racing takes me to a place where this distinction is useless. Cold vs Warm - sure, thats important. Wet vs. Dry is useful too (wet packs weigh more than dry ones). But clean and dirty drop away.
I get closer to a primal (as overused as the notion is in pop culture) state. I realize the resilience of my body. I can survive deep forest teeming with mosquitos. I can sleep in the middle of a swamp standing up. An open lake paddle after 24 hours of racing (26 hours awake) becomes blissful because the sun rises to warm and dry me after a cold, wet night.
I let things go. The natural world is no longer the 'natural' world. For those 30 hours, it is simply the world - 'natural' no longer provides a meaningful distinction.
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