FITNESS
As my EM827 touched down on the top of a mesa; as I Sunday-strolled down the near-deserted main drag of St. George, Utah; as I pulled the stiff motel covers over my lonely head; as I left a wake-up call for 5:30 a.m., I wondered what had brought me to all this unrecognizable adventure.
As I pulled my creaking bones out of bed the following pre-dawn, I wondered again.
But one morning later, waking up in a darkened room shared with a stranger from Edmonton, I felt in my bones a promise being fulfilled. They didn't crack as I crawled out of bed. I didn't, as a matter of fact, crawl. I floated. Every muscle and bone and tissue working in unity.
The dawn before, the knees cracked as they bent over the matress. The toes cracked as they touched the floor. The neck cracked as I centered my head over my shoulders.
What had gone between? Six miles of hiking up and down a sandstone mountain, dodging stones and cactus. Fifty-five minutes each of water aerobics, step aerobics, body conditioning, slow stretching and yoga. Rewarded with whole wheat pancakes, salads of greens and oranges and reds and whites, pasta and frutage' to still the need for sweet.
I was vacationing at a fitness resort.
Every morning after the first was springier. Each was preceeded by a day of hiking, sometimes up inclining roads. Sometimes over torturous terrain. Sometimes up circuitous paths leading to cliffs and canyons. Stunning and tough mornings followed by mellowing water exercises. And afternoons filled with body conditioning movements.
Every day, as the sun reached its zenith, as I sensed my body could continue not a step, not a bend further, the dining room opened to vegetable soups as thick as stews, breads as dense as steaks, teas as aromatic as Morocco.
The lure of a fitness vacation culminated a year-long steady climb in weight. With every pound I acquired, I reasoned that it was only a pound. Soothingly I kept convincing myself that a pound, or two, is not too hard to lose. But fifteen? Fifteen was a monumental project requiring drastic planning.
I searched for the heartiest regime. The intent was not beauty (although I did return with highlights of color on my face and in my hair). Nor was it stress relief (although the majesty of the Wallshock Mountains reduces citified priorities to dust). I focused on health -- tough regime, clean living, simple schedule.
I found it in the southwest corner of Utah, on a pinoint of a campus buried in the towering terrain of Snow Canyon. With it I discovered life without oils, without salt, without fermented liquids, without caffeine, life with swollen toes, self-imposed nine p.m. bedtime and courage.
The sun was rising that first Monday morning as the van and its three new guests bobbed along, grateful for the chatter of the resort driver snaking through the pass from St. George to Ivins, the town growing up around the resort. As we entered the last stretch he pointed to the stop sign that controlled the traffic entering the highway we were leaving. "That sign is a major goal of the hikers," he announced, adding that a special badge is awarded to the sturdy who reach it. We nodded in interest. A mere ten minutes later we were walking up the steps to the reception lounge for check-in.
Tuesday morning, shod for bear having been on one two-hour trek through gullies and over mounds already, I welcomed the march along the roadway our van had originally carried us over. I welcomed it less and less, however, as it became a relentless climb that promised no respite. Since I kept my conversation to a minimum, preferring rather to breathe in and out rather than talk, it was forty-five minutes into the walk before I asked where we were headed. "To the stop sign," was the casual reply.
This cannot be, I screamed. To myself of course since I could not waste precious breath on such outbursts. I had just arrived, from the midwest prairies yet, and I was moving along on a heart-pounding incline to a stop sign that I had been forewarned about.
But it was. When I felt that this cuel hoax could not continue, a walking mate encouragingly confided that we were about two-thirds of the way there. Jubilation surged through my muscles with that uplifting news. I thought that I did not have the stamina to continue much longer.
"However, another added, the first two thirds is easy. From here on in the going gets steep." I plunged on without considering the ramifications of that last statement. I didn't intend to drop out on a rumor that the final two miles were double the difficulty of the first four only to repeat the effort on another day. I knew my psyche would insist on my achieving this goal. With my mind unplugged, step followed step until I sensed a massing of heaving bodies. I looked up to see again the highway and its protective stop sign surrounded by hikers in various stages of collapse, milling around it, hanging on to it, lying at its base.
That done, and so early in this fitness game, there was no mountain tall enough.
