End Week One
** The following words are a record of my personal journey and are
not intended to replace or circumvent any recommend guidance provided by
your health care provider. Before starting any life changing endeavor,
such as a diet and/or exercise regimen, please start by having an
honest conversation with your doctor. Oh and please don't ask for cave
locations. Believe me, if I can find them, so can you.**
I had a fairly horrid afternoon. But I'm choosing not to dwell on it. I have to keep moving.
I sat last night at my desk writing what would become this post, unable to gather my thoughts beyond a handful of reflections and witticisms from my past that. I have pages of such dribble spread out in drafts scattered across every digital storage medium available to me, like a handful of dry rice stomped into a throw rug. And while some entries are inspiring and relevant, for now they need to stay left in the margin. Maybe some of those ideas might find a home here, but certainly I can do better than rehash and lament my shortcomings.
Moving on...
It has now been a full seven days since I have modified my eating habits, and, I am glad to report that my resolve remains safely fortified - that means I have not cheated, not once. Being prepared for the condition, the inevitable 'keto flu' passed with little notice three days in. On other attempts, I've had to fight the urge to self-administer intravenous doses of jellybeans or felt sort of panic. The supplements I was given did their job burying that for me and are now stowed safely away. I've had an extra cup of coffee here and there, but I have never been one to add sweaters to it, so I don't play to any guilt at the deed. C'mon. It's coffee!
I've managed social situations extremely well; I've dodged
my daughters with brightly frosted fresh cookies, pizza at work and a mall food
court full of teenager fuel twice. No bread, no sugar, no potatoes and nary a
drop of soda have found their way into me. But changing one's eating habits is
not about abstinence or aversion. It's a process of refocus and re-centering;
accepting that having eye-teeth and stereo color vision places you squarely
atop the food pyramid as an apex predator, that perhaps it's OK to find what
works for you and your life, even if you end up questioning the food norms
& traditions that permeate privileged human culture. And to that point,
Christmas is a perfect example of one such corruption in practice. But I digress...
On an typical day, I am consuming no more than 19g of carbohydrates, often less and have begun tracking calories as close as I can without developing a complex. When I speak to others about my cooking, full in fat and savory flare, noses wrinkle up as if was describing roadkill begin seared and served on an oil pan or some mystery chemical cocktails sure to sicken naive fad dieters. Maybe a high fat diet does seem counter intuitive, yet I've not bent to the piles of cookies and home baked goodies that exist by the baker’s dozen everywhere one looks this time of year. Holding fast to the plan, for me, has meant being ready, prepared to exercise reason, not indulging preference driven by habit. The deeper I embrace this path, the more I find that I am personality responsible for the food I eat and the palace I take in the food chain. And not to sound trite, but a ketogenic diet ensures I eat fresher, greener, more organic meals with far fewer humans & machinery between their source and my mouth. It's a fact.
Onward into week two, with our best foot forward....
*****
After two seasons caving, we planed a week long caving expedition to the infamous Deadhorse Cave & surrounding area. This would be our first camp as a crew and I was giddy at the notion of pulling all my mates together in one place for a single purpose. Fewer caves in the western side of the continent are as cherished as Deadhorse. With more that 14,000 feet of documented passages of moderate complexity, a creek and a rumored warm spring deep within, Deadhorse Cave reigns supreme above all other lava tubes in the continental United States. Arrowheads were once common in and around the cave and a some years back, an obsidian hand axe was found inside, hinting at the cave's use as a shelter far, far deeper in the past. It has a complexity about unlike most other lava tubes that is apparent immediately after entering. Several overlapping flows of molten rock, all with consistencies that vary as wildly as do heir colors, engage both emotion and reason alike . Deep reds, pale, gritty yellows and blackened basalt all commingled with no obvious pattern, other than that decided by gravity. The skeletons of gas bubbles frozen in the stone overhead gave way to drips of silvery rock, speckled with quartz and fragments of volcanic glass spilled just below a stream that seems to simply vanishes into the rock at an oblique angle to the passage. There are twist, turns, side passages and collapses that break from the norm, making Deadhorse irresistible to any caver accustom to the ubiquitous straight-shot lava caves that drape the flanks of the surrounding volcanic vents & cinder cones.
Steve and I had scouted Deadhorse's location the year before and again a few weeks before our trip to check for water flooding the lower entrance. This tends to happen in the early months, but as it subsides, the jagged, silica rich breakdown provides path for the adventurous. The upper entrance, known axiomatically as 'the rat hole', would never grant passage to a physique such as mine and has always been 'off limits' to me. Well, most of us are a little to shy to risk it for one reason or another. For some reason, just looking down the tiny slack space gap between pillowed sections of lava seemed and accomplishment, but I carried a sort of mental stigma away, pondering what adventure lay beyond it for those fit enough to entertain the feat.
The Rat Hole at Deadhorse Cave. Photo by Steve Carroll
The July air was a heavy one hundred degrees as we dropped into the lower entrance. Immediately, we found an unexpected relief in the forty five degree breeze that made its way down from the innards of the hills somewhere above us. My fingers still sore from the New Cave incident, cautiously we pressed on. As we moved up past the 'river passage' and into the lower end of what is called 'the masochist maze' we encountered passages that ranged from 'crab walks' and 'stoops' to standing spaces and scrambles over breakdown. After a few hours, we headed back to camp. We did have all week, after all...
In addition to those that had become the club 'regulars', an old friend, his new wife and my wife & daughters would join our roster. And for the first time since i was much younger, I felt a sense of home in my compatriot's company; we had moved from begin a crew, to somewhat of a family. With but few faces missing (family, friends and club members alike, you know who you are, ditchers), nearly everyone I loved was with me. When we go underground, it is understood that we do so with those whom we trust our lives with without question. I could not have been in better company.
My wife has no appetite for caving what so ever, but she loves to be out of data-range and cooking a steak on a stick as much as I, and has always supported my caving any way she can. This time, she would manage camp, read books and 'just be away' from our routine. My mother even dropped in for a visit, delivering treats for the kids as she inspected this new fascination that had eviscerated her two sons of their free time. She's never really enjoyed camping and even though she didn't stay, I was flattered that she showed up. But to my girls, well, Nana appeared in the woods with a bus tub full of cookies... a true miracle.
But there were more caves to be seen that week...
More to come.....
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