30 Jul 2026 5 min read Field Notes

Steeper Gradients

What changes and what doesn't when illness sets the terms.

Two hours into a job, standing got expensive. My customer put a hand out to keep me from tipping over. It wasn't actually needed, but it looked that way to him.

It was a real signal not to be ignored, so I took a thirty-minute break, hydrated, let my system settle, and finished the job. Managing one variable over a stack of variables always on the move.

It's like a stupid game of musical chairs in perpetuity.

Ten years in and if you asked me what's wrong, there's no one answer. Rheumatoid Arthritis as a teenager and increasing cervical spine trouble in my twenties from two bad car accidents when I was four and seven. It was the 70s, back then seat belts laws and mandatory child car seats weren't really a thing.

Then a spontaneous brain bleed at 47, followed by intracranial hypertension, lupus and POTS. I'm 57 now and swimming in enough inflammation, joint damage, organ compromise and endocrine dysfunction to lose track of what's what anymore, or why. And lurking in the shadows, endoscopic cancer surveillance every six months.

None of those things are individually the whole story. It's the accumulation and stacking, the different timelines and origins. No system is fully stable and won't be, ever.

You learn to just hold on loosely, but don't let go. It's either loosen that GI-Joe Kung-fu death grip on expectation -or- you get ingested, macerated and spat out of the perpetual chaos machinery.

For the first eight years of the last decade, I hoped not to awake most mornings. Not quite like ideation, but the thought of nothingness sounded comforting, like relief.

Perpetual pain, continual losses and grief can grind you down to dust, if you let it. To quote that Billy Preston song, totally out of context, yet still somehow fitting...

Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

Life is still a gift and that's something, as corny as that sounds. And it's not that gratitude and perspective make anything easier, it doesn't.

The physics of long-term illness didn't go anywhere. It's that the alternative is a ride to oblivion while carrying every regret of not trying.

At some point, I started walking around the block, nothing symbolic. Just the distance that was possible that day, then a little further. It was years before I was capable enough to be on a trail safely. Steady enough not to be a danger to myself out there.

A slow rebuild, block by block, season by season. Plenty of ground lost to flares along the way.

In 2024 I logged 2,400 miles on trail, in 2020 I could hardly manage a flight of stairs. Even getting up from a chair was a pretty dicy proposition. It took years of clawing and scratching for every mile around the neighborhood before I was actually ready for the trail.

That first year back on trail I found myself in a pretty surreal circumstance. I was doing things that seemed impossible just a year earlier. Out on rugged terrain, steep single-track, 5–6 miles straight through. No breaks, a real load-out (35 lbs. min.) and doing it 5–6 days a week, excluding flare days.

A stark contrast to those previous eight years. It wasn't hope exactly and I wasn't sure what to do with it other than ride it until I couldn't. If I can get out the front door, they're probably going to have to scoop me off the trail before I stop.

At present, I'm over eight months into a major setback. Or more honesty, what's clearly a decline: a shift toward higher disease activity and everything that comes with it. It's been ten days since I opened my front door, let alone crossed the threshold.

A decade in, it's hard to tell whether I'm grinding or getting ground down. I've got dozens of reasons to lay low and resign myself to "it is what it is" or believe that "with acceptance comes peace."

However, I'm not writing from the other side. I'm still in it.

Whether I can pump the brakes on disease, let alone rebuild again, is largely besides the point. People need reasons and mine used to be about getting better.

In the last two years it's been more about aliveness, not just being alive. Those are two very different things.

Training and hiking aren't about winning. They're about not letting disease be the only thing that decides what life gets to include. That's still true on hard days.

Especially the hardest ones.

About a month ago, coming off a flare, I went out for something quiet and easy. Not for conditioning, just movement. No pack, just a water bottle and the chest rig with my med kit. My cardio was so far off that an easy rolling climb had me breathless and moving slower than I wanted to admit.

There's a eucalyptus stump near a trail crossing that overlooks Wildcat Canyon Trail proper. A place I usually stop to stretch before moving on. The approach rolls gently, and coming off the last rise, I look up. The valley opens below, mostly obscured by trees. Just there, an ordinary view, nothing epic or even notable.

The gratitude wells up, along with everything that tends to arrive alongside it.

Two days earlier, I'd been on the floor with an ice pack against my skull, trying to find any relief from the pressure and stabbing behind my eyes.

It's not that the hike proved anything or that suffering enough first earns the view. It's that forty-eight hours prior, getting off the floor wasn't even an option.

Then standing on that stump and feeling, briefly, completely, the fullness that appears. Nothing bridges those two states; they just happen.

Richness and meaning need a reference point. Mine just seems to run on a steeper gradient at times. The distance between the floor and that stump is where the fullness lives.

I don't come back cured, the pain's still there, there are no days off. I came back without comparing myself to a version of me that doesn't exist anymore. Just changing gradients from moment to moment.

Some months build toward something. Other months just take it away without warning.