Kensington, MD, Spring 2024 — Being president of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club is a full-time job. It doesn’t leave time for extra curricular activities including this blog.

As winter tightened its grip, so did my volunteer gig. From a raft of regulatory compliance issues to a key staffer with an unfortunate cancer diagnosis, slogging through the so called dormant season has had all the joy of chomping into a tepid corn dog at the Iowa state fair.

The stale air inside was smothering me. Much like a pup with a full bladder, I wanted out.

Then I broke my wrist. How’d that happen?

It was a leaden day in mid-January with light snow on tap.

A group of my friends organized a trip to crosscut several blowdowns on hiking trails in a federally designated wilderness area near the eastern boundary of Shenandoah National Park. Count me in? Hell yes!

Hell yes! That is until I was literally thigh deep “in” the Thornton River slipping on snot rocks. As I unsuccessfully Attempted to stiff arm a chilling dunk, I smashed my right radius at the distal head. Then I slipped on another snot rock cracking my knee and jamming my wrist again. Ouch!!!

It felt like a polar bear swim in Chicago’s Lake Michigan. There I was … soaking wet, scrambling up the river bank while assessing the growing, throbbing ache in my right wrist. It was about a nano second before it was absolutely certain that I needed to get the hell out of there before I morphed into a lime popcicle and became a carry-out casaulty.

Working my way across the river on a fallen tulip poplar. The going was good on this end of the trip.

Knowing three water crossings were part of the day, a full change of clothes was ridding on my back, nestled next to my store-bought Italian sub and water jug.

Changing clingy wet clothes one-handed was a contortionist’s circus trick. Once dry, and a little safer from hypothermia, more than a mile separated me from my Subaru Forester which was parked along an access road. Fortunately the crew was full of folks with advanced first aid credentials. We had enough splints and ace wraps to equip an ER.

I immediately thought the wrist might be broken, but chose not to splint it so I could better balance on my hike out. We wrapped it tightly with an ace wrap to retard the rapid swelling and everyone hung around while I waded, avoiding the slippery stepping stones, to recross the river.

Patiently waiting in the Page County Hospital, (Luray, Virginia) ER for the diagnosis post X-rays. Doesn’t look that bad. The ace wraps really kept the swelling in check.

The movie “Barbie” was inspirational in choosing the color of my cast.

I have been a woman’s basketball fan (WBB) for decades.

Squeezing medical putty … over and over and over and over.

The swelling made it too painful to type, even after the cast was off. The rest of the winter has been limited one-armed weight lifting, squeezing putty to rebuild forearm muscles and coaching the neighborhood trail crew to fix some muddy spots on the Silver Creek pathway.

Prognosis: Full recovery. Late summer.

Susu