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Peter Frick-Wright (Host): This is The ���ϳԹ��� Podcast.

I’m gonna suggest something I don’t usually suggest, here at the start of today’s episode. I’m gonna suggest that, if you like taking notes by hand, that you pause right here, and go grab a notebook. If you journal, go get your journal. If you’re like me, and mostly take notes on the back of envelopes strewn around your office, maybe go get the mail.

If you’re driving, and I know a lot of you are, you can use Siri or Google Voice assistant to text yourself stuff that you want to remember. I just learned this. There are also probably dedicated apps that let you take handsfree notes, but… I have no idea what they are.

The point is, there’s stuff in today’s episode that I think you’re going to want to remember. Small things. Nuggets. Bite-sized wisdom about living a better life. Being a better person.

These morsels of insight come to us from National Geographic photographer Cory Richards, and ���ϳԹ��� writer Katie Arnold. Cory is the total stereotype of a National Geographic photographer. He’s spent his life pursuing high-risk expeditions around the world. He climbed Everest without oxygen, he was the first and still the only American to reach the summit of Gasherbrum II in winter. And two years ago, after a mental health crisis at base camp, he walked away from all of it. Next week, his memoir The Color of Everything explains why.

Katie Arnold is a favorite of ours at ���ϳԹ���. An elite ultrarunner, mother of two, and frequent writer for the magazine, in 2016 she shattered her leg in a whitewater rafting accident, and the fallout from that injury forced her to rebuild her marriage, her mind, and the way she looks at the world.

They are both books about overcoming adversity, and healing your mind and body, so, a couple weeks ago at the ���ϳԹ��� Festival in Denver, we asked Cory and Katie to join ���ϳԹ��� contributing editor Florence Williams onstage, to talk about finding peace and a quiet mind in a very loud, busy world.

Here’s Florence.

Florence Williams: This panel is called finding the quiet, but that implies a chaos before the quiet. So I really want you to talk about the chaos a little bit. Corey, let's start with you. You both start your books kind of in the middle of a maelstrom, literally a fracturing for Corey.

It's literal, literal fracturing of an ice field. And for Katie, it's a bone in her body. So why start the books there? What happened?

Cory Richards: Well, thank you. That's such a good question. I, I've heard it said, and I tend to believe for me, it's always been this way that crisis is the point of growth. And it's like a story doesn't really exist until something goes terribly wrong or at least in my life That's when I've started to learn the most when I've really messed something up.

So but the avalanche was You know, I didn't even see it at that point that that was the thing that was gonna change the trajectory of everything but when I started to write It was clear that this was the inflection point, even though it took, it took 10 or 12 years to get that chapter down on paper. So it just felt natural to, that's what, that's like, you know, in the hero's journey or the heroine's journey, that's, that's the entry into the world of the unknown. Even if you don't see it at the time.

Florence: Although I feel like there were a lot of inflection points for you. Yeah, fair enough. But you really almost died in this one. And so that must have been, there must have been a big before and after for you in that.

Cory: In the moment. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I'm in this avalanche and it hits us and it's just like your world becomes chaos quite literally. And the brain does very specific things when you're having a near death experience and it spins and it speeds and time dilates, it slows down, it speeds up and you do see your life, but for me, it was just like Polaroids of bullshit. You know, it was like, and, but, but then, but then. And in that there's the realization of everything that comes before and then you're jumping into everything after.

And there were plenty of invitations before and after to resolve, or I guess, accept what had been happening internally. But that's sort of the trial period where you're offered the, you're offered the invitation, but oftentimes you don't take it. So that's, yeah. I don't know, it just, it just changed me. But I didn't even see that it was changing me.

Katie Arnold: Sorry. Did you feel like you were maybe burying it, pun intended, like the trauma of it? Was that an only later, would you be able to sort of uncover it?

Cory: I mean, I was burying a lot of things. I think it was just another, you know, you don't want to look at things that hurt sometimes, which I think is part of what, you know, what your book really covers is like, it's the turning into it.

Florence: Yeah. Yeah. What happened to you, Katie? Tell us what happened.

Katie: So if Cory's was on a mountain, I was in a deep canyon. In 2016, I was on a river, the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho, which if you know rivers, is one of the premier whitewater rivers in the country, probably second only to the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. And My husband and I were, had been invited on a private trip. It was our 10th wedding anniversary. You know, we've, our relationship had been born in the wilderness and our love had been sort of, you know, cemented in, in nature. And so we thought, what better way to celebrate 10 years of marriage. And we've had a lot of experience on rivers.

It was a six day trip and you know, not 20 minutes into the trip. We had a fluke accident where we wrapped our boat on a rock and the river was high. It's fast. There's a hundred miles of major rapids in a hundred major rapids in a hundred miles. And anyway, I, we wrapped our boat. the boat and I fell in and I knew as soon as I hit the water that I had been badly injured.

I had done something, you know, traumatic to my leg and then we had to make the decision. And as you do when you're on wilderness expeditions, as Corey knows you don't make the decision that. And you have to make the decision as a group, what is best for the group. And we, you know, I didn't know what was wrong with my leg, but we decided to stay on the river.

So we were on the river another six days, another, you know, 97. 5 miles and 97. 5 major rapids. The one that we flipped on wasn't even a major rapid. And so that became this sort of crucible trauma of, you know, Staying in the wilderness, which has always been a source of enormous inspiration for me as a writer and solace through my grief of losing my father and now becomes this real testing ground for endurance, emotional, physical endurance.

Cory: It's so weird you stayed.

Katie: Yeah.

Cory: It's so weird.

Katie: Yeah, you know, I've, you know, to stay was, yeah, I think about that decision still, and there's so many factors that go into it. And I think by nature, and I think we're the same this way, like I'm a stayer. Right? Like I got it out. That's, you know, I was raised that way.

My husband's a stayer and, you know, we never want to be those people on an expedition like who caused the problems or, you know, like we're always packed and ready and organized and never last. And you know, so we became those people and it's humbling.

Florence: I think there's so many beautiful points of convergence in your books, but you're, you are both so good at suffering. Both from external forces, but also. From internal forces. And I think, you know, I think we'll we'll spend some time going there. But your books are so beautiful. I'd love you also just to read a little bit because I think it would be great. For you to have a sense of how beautiful the writing is and, you know, Cory that that avalanche in some ways.

I mean, it really made you even more famous. You know, the picture that you took became the cover of National Geographic magazine. I wish we had actually a visual of it here, but it's on Cory's website. And so in some ways it, you know, it precipitated, you know, even more suffering to come. But I, I know you have a little section about why you, you sort of found some stillness in this madness through doing these crazy things.

Cory: Well, so, and this, like, first of all, it's so true, like, that, so we were on Gasherbrum 2, which is the 13th highest mountain in the world, so, and we just climbed it without oxygen in winter, and so, which again, is like, why the f did you do that? And I'm not, I'm not sure I have a clear answer for that, but this, this little passage, so I was diagnosed bipolar 2 when I was 14 years old.

I dropped out of high school, I was on the street for a little while, and so, you know, I had this long history with bipolar 2. What I used to call mental illness, which I just refer to as mental health challenges. Right. And so there'd always been this narrative that I was going to go crazy. Right. If I didn't, if I, if I didn't do like madness was always right behind me.

So, and this is sort of. Right at the end of the first part where I'm making a decision, like I've found that the only way I can, I'm trying to outrun this narrative, this scary narrative of madness. So I'm about, I think I'm 20 years old when I sort of make this decision. Many friends will die and I'll wish that I had been better to them.

At times it will seem senseless. But I'll ignore the warning of mortality. I'll be criticized by many and adored by others. I won't be the best. And some people will hate me and think my success is undeserved. A piece of me will agree while another laps up the adoration of everyone who offers it. I'll drink and fuck in celebration.

I'll do the same to escape the isolation of the choice I'm about to make. It's irrational, but I can see no other solution, even though I can't see now what I'm doing at all. I'm not only trying to unify myself, but also put as much distance between me and the inevitable madness clipping at my heels. I'm always scared, but the fear also drives me, feeding the pieces of my brain that thrive in chaos.

I won't understand any of it until I break on a mountain 19 years from now. The decision is an outright and unbridled expression of my unquiet mind. I'm choosing a life of polarity. In order to escape madness, I will live madly. I will risk my life in order to save it. So it's this idea that, like, maybe, maybe, maybe, If I go do these insane things, I won't become insane because it's only there that I could find some semblance of structure and quiet in my mind.

Cory: And it was a, it's kind of like, I missed, I made the mistake of assuming that that by doing more, I could, I could become somehow whole, you know, and that. And that's so often the case. It's like, you know, the doing, doing, doing, we've talked about this, that sort of is trying to fill a void that can't be filled by an external source.

Florence: It works until it doesn't.

Cory: It works until it doesn't. It's a great adaptation until it ends up becoming the thing that hurts you the most. Yeah.

Katie: Until it becomes the thing that brings it all down.

Cory: Right. Because you can't sustain it.

Katie: Yeah.

Florence: But for both of you, your sports were such huge parts of your identity. And so for you, Katie, I know you have a passage about what this, what this injury, this potential, you know, sport threatening, identity threatening injury was like for you.

Katie: Yeah. I'll read this.

Cory: Katie's a much better writer than me, so I'm happy, like I'm happy I went first.

Katie: Let's see, where is it?

Cory: It is funny though, I was reading her book and I was like, Oh, I wish, her writing is just so much, so, anyway.

Katie: Cory's book is so alive, you feel like you're inside his mind, which as a, I've been a writer my whole life, and that is an incredible gift, so.

Florence: To be a writer is also to hate writing, often.

Katie: Okay, so this is this is on the river, the first night after the accident. Time ran together. It was night, but not yet dark, because it was Idaho at the summer solstice, and I needed to sleep, but couldn't. My leg was a wad of stiffness. In the tent, I had to lie on my back and not move with my knee propped up on my dry bag to keep the swelling down. Steve lay beside me. That's my husband. We were fighting, but trying not to be heard through the thin nylon walls. It was our same argument we always had on rivers about control, only in reverse this time. Why hadn't he pulled us off the rock? Why hadn't he been more assertive? Why hadn't I, why hadn't I fallen out of the boat the right way?

Hard, blaming words hissed back and forth, compounded by shock and fatigue. The adrenaline had worn off and my knee pulsed with a deep, thumping ache. I lay awake for a long time, waiting for something. An apology, remorse. Mine and his, but soon Steve was snoring and I must have fallen asleep eventually too because when I opened my eyes, I was alone in the tent and the light outside was gray and thin. Dawn. I dreamed that my leg was fine and had healed in the night. I could walk again. The dream was so vivid, it seemed real, but when I tried to roll over, my knee throbbed and I knew it wasn't true, and I felt like crying. I peered through the tent flap. Steve was in the camp kitchen. All around us, the trees were blackened matchsticks charred into spears by the last fire.

Katie: It was pretty, the torched forest that was slowly coming back to life, when you looked at it in a certain way. Hadn't I wanted to know what it felt like to become the fire?

Florence: You can, you can feel in that passage. You can just feel the power of that dream, you know, that you can will yourself into health and how Devastating for it not not to work, right? Sometimes our strategies are not enough

Katie: Yeah And I think we've all had that dream, you know after something awful very traumatic and there's so many traumas in the world where we wake up and And we think, our minds want us to believe that it's not true. And then we're sort of hit with the despair that it is. But in the, in the reverse to our minds, and I write about this, in the book our minds can really heal us from the inside. And you can have dreams of being healed and whole, and in my case, running again. And that's actually your mind and your body healing itself. It's really powerful.

Florence: Well, I think what's so interesting about your book, Katie, is it's really about using your mind to heal your body. And Corey, your book is so much about using your body to heal your mind by climbing these mountains and climbing these mountains and going for these summits. You get to the top of Everest, right? It's this huge achievement. And yet there was something missing. Can you talk about, can you talk about what that was like for you?

Cory: Yeah. So in 2016, I went with this guy, my climbing partner named Adrian Ballinger, and we had, the plan was to climb ox without oxygen. And on summit day, we started together and Adrian is a much, he is a much better athlete than I am. And, and so I was sort of, you know, half expecting him to just be ahead, but the plan was always if one of us couldn't do it. The other one would keep going if they felt safe. And so at about 3. 30 in the morning, I was well ahead of Adrian, and I could tell on the radio that he was, he was too cold. Like his words were becoming these mumbles, and finally he made the decision to turn around.

So now, it's not, it was not like the pictures you see. I think there were five other people on the route. We were on the North side that day and I was completely alone. I had nobody around me, no oxygen. And there's this decision. Well, am I going to keep going? And I decided to keep going. So when I summited, I was completely alone and there was nobody else on the summit.

There were a couple of climbers below me about, you know, an hour or so below me. And I just sat down and I cried and I, Cause I was exhausted. I was scared, but there was also a sense of fulfillment and everybody, but, but in hindsight, it's really interesting because I kind of realized that in some ways, Everest, the summit of Everest without oxygen was almost a rock bottom because it was, it was like, I had gone to the highest place on the planet, the hardest way I could imagine and to get away from myself and yet there I was.

And so in so many ways, it was like this view was so beautiful. It was achingly beautiful. And yet I was looking down at there's, there's things you have to go down and you have to go in and there was this realization, at least subtly, probably subconscious at that point that like, it was like, there's, I can't, no summit is going to take care of this.

No adventure is going to resolve any of this. And it's easy to hide behind that stuff because people like, Oh, that's amazing. You know, and it is, but it's also just amazing because you do the thing and there's, the box is always empty is one of the things, you know, like, and you can just keep doing, I tried to keep doing it, you know, I went back and then I tried to do a new route and then it's just like, and then finally it's just like the box is like, how many times do I have to learn that the box is empty?

And then it's, there's sort of a cone, it's, it's not quite a zen cone, but it's like we always say it's not about, you know, the summit doesn't matter. Yes and no, because, you know, only this, and I'm quoting myself, I apologize in the book I write, only the summit can illuminate its own insignificance.

Katie: That was such a great line, I wanted to underline it, but I couldn't, because it's not my book.

Cory: You know, that's it only only that place can show you how that it doesn't matter. So you have to get there So it does matter but it doesn't matter

Katie: And then when you have those, I mean, I have that same realization in writing my book that, you know, as a writer you see the narrative arc, you see like literally this sort of like, you know crisis down in a Canyon, the low, you know, the quote unquote low point, the inciting incident.

And like, if this were a fake movie, it would be like, you know, the, the low point. And then there's the middle point where, you know, I, I meet with the surgeon who, you know, it's like, if I were you, I'd. Find a new hobby and I would never run again. And so that's like the clanging, like doomsday, you know, symbols clashing.

And and then you have this sort of peak experience very literally on the top of a mountain. And but because this book is largely about the teachings of Zen and how they're not a religious doctrine or dogma, but a way of being alive that, you know, I know from Zen that the low point. Is also a high point and the high point is also a low point because you always have to come down the mountain I mean, this is where our work is.

So, you know kindred because you know, there's the saying after Enlightenment the laundry, you know, and there's a lot of laundry to be done After i'm sure an expedition After you know a hundred mile run or running across the grand canyon. You don't

Cory: burn it I just burn it

Katie: all, just have a campfire and burn it, yeah. And so, right, you have to come back into your life, you have to bring whatever brief flashings of enlightenment and awakening back into your everyday life, which is, you know, for me, I'm a mother, I have two kids, it's like, you know, making lunches, it's, you know, you know, with my husband, getting stuff done.

And so I, you know, I love this because the writer in me was like, Oh, there's this great, you know. Journalist in me was like, there's this great narrative, but it's actually inverted right like the the low point in the canyon became this great turning point for me to Discover Zen and the teachings of Zen and how that could really free me from Because I too felt that it's it's really You know, the, the outdoor industry is very much like a what's next, what's more, do more, be more, and you get on that cycle and, you know, your ego likes that for a while and you're, you know, I like my ego likes to win and it's fed by social media and then yeah, it's hard to sort of step away and, you know, And just check in with why am I doing this? And, you know, what will be enough if, you know, a hundred mile race is not,

Cory: yeah, what would be

Katie: just this, just this is it. That's the thing. And then just, this is it.

Florence:  I, I love it that, you know, the Zen teachings are about all these paradoxes. Yeah. The low is high. The high is low. Everything in life is sort of a perpetual what's, what's the The phrase perpetual failure, continuous mistake, right?

Life is a continuous mistake. That is not what your sponsors are telling you when you're climbing in the Himalaya, right? I mean, you, the terminology is like the climb failed. You failed to reach the summit. It's failure. This failure that You know, I mean, you and I have sort of grown up in this world of outside magazine and outdoor sports and it's all about the summit and the big adventure and the next achievement and the first descent and the first descent. And Corey, I mean, at some point you kind of learn this lesson that, whoa, this is not working for my brain. You know, how, how did you even like, like at what point did you say, This isn't working.

Cory: It's well, there were, there were brief flashings, not of enlightenment, but of honesty for a long time before, you know, like working for National Geographic magazine is a really phenomenal gift.

It's a huge opportunity. And, and the irony of it is that I missed it in so many ways. Sometimes it sounds like I'm really sad about this stuff. Or I'm like, I'm not, it's just the, it's just the journey. And people would come up to me all the time and they'd go like, they'd look at it. They'd look at the picture and they'd go, you, you, you have the best job in the world.

You, you have the best, you know, and, and I would go. I would have this guilt because I'd go, why am I so unhappy if I have the best job in the world? And so that's like a brief flashing of honesty that I'm not paying attention to. And then we were training to try to do a new route on Everest. The pandemic hit in, and so the mountain wasn't open.

So we went to the seventh highest mountain in the world called Dhalagiri. And the plan was to do a new route on the Northwest Ridge of Dhalagiri. And over the week after we arrived in Kathmandu, I started sleeping less. I wasn't eating. I was very emotional. And, you know, after a, you know, decades long journey with, with mental health and depression and bipolar, you'd think I would recognize what was happening, but I didn't.

And, you know, we got to base camp and all of a sudden, like I was incapacitated. I was both manic or like hypomanic where my, my thoughts were going so, so fast. And yet I was so deeply depressed. And so there was like this, this incompatibility. And I, I realized two things were happening. One, I was immersed in what's called a mixed, a mixed episode, bipolar episode.

And the other was that I was realizing, and I think they were very much tied because I believe very strongly in the mind body connection. And then when things aren't working, eventually the body and mind will break down. It's, it's all the information is there, but ultimately what I was realizing is like this life didn't work for me anymore.

I had, I had pursued it. I had rung it dry. It was over and my heart, which I had completely missed for, I think, since I was a child, I'd locked it up. I got hurt when I was little. So many of us do. And I'd locked it up to keep it safe. And then I'd spent this lifetime cycling between trying to unify my mind and my body through art and through climbing.

And, and ultimately at Dalgiri, it was like, my heart was just like, let me out. This isn't working. And so that put me in a psychosomatic state. And I also realized this doesn't work. Like, I can't keep going, I can't, I'm exhausted, and I broke down, and I left the expedition much to the displeasure of the people I was there with, and it caused a huge riff, and the New York Times wrote an article about it, you know, and the headline was, Should a mental health emergency derail a dangerous climb? And I was like, well that's fucking a weird question, of course, like,

Katie: I mean, that is the weirdest construction, like,

Cory: Which, the article was great, but it was just like, Okay. I mean, yes. Yeah. I mean, what else? Yeah. But yeah, that's what, that was the end of it. And I haven't touched it since. And I think it's a really strange, I love this community.  I love this audience. I love our passion and our fervor for this stuff, but also there is a cautionary tale there.

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Florence: Well, I mean, there's so much we love about adventure about having goals, about getting out there and exploring. But there's a seed in those things. Of what can also destroy us. You know, when you start talking about some of the, the heart blinding sides of it, right, of competition or of bravado, or, I mean, I'd love, I'd love this line.

At one point you're in your therapist's office and you said my corporate sponsor should have been Kleenex. Yeah. You both really have had to challenge the orthodoxies of, of, of, of, of Right. And I know, I mean, for you, Katie, you also had this iron will you, it took you a while to sort of figure out what your heart wanted to say also.

Katie: Yeah. I mean, I've been a runner my whole life and right around the same time I want, I knew I wanted to always be a writer. And so those two are not coincidentals about age seven. And And I discovered as a child of the seventies you know, but mostly we were left alone. And if we came home by dinner alive, it was a win.

And that was how parenting went. And I, you know, my parents had gone through a divorce and I write about this in my first book, running home. But the outside was where I felt most safe. And also it's where I discovered my imagination. And so just by luck, like no one told me this because it was, you know, pretty Hands off parenting.

But when I would go outside and ride my bike around the neighborhood, I grew up in New Jersey or, you know, walk or just that I would make up stories in my mind. And so for me, movement and creativity have always been inextricably linked. And so my relationship with running. For most of my, you know, into my thirties was a personal expression and it was where I went to clear my mind.

I wrote many stories in my head as I ran I worked on, you know, you know, sentences and magazine articles I was writing. And I worked through that and I knew that I had this very special thing with running and it was private and it was only after my father died And that I had turned to ultra distance as a way to heal that I discovered I was, you know, quite good at the long distances.

And so the, I'm very curious person that part of me wanted to find out what I could do how far I could go in my body and in my mind. And. And so I started running and competing and I started winning right away. And I felt myself on this precipice of like, it would be really easy to go deep into the competition and be ego driven and lose.

What I knew was at risk was that private part that was totally linked and in service to my writing. And so I was always walking this fine line. And it's hard because our world prizes, you know, wins and podiums and what's next and longer distances. And for a while I got pulled in and then it was like this accident that really was this fracture.

That kind of woke me up to if I ever did run again, I knew that I would run differently just as I would be different. And even in that sort of very dark time, right on the river and immediately afterwards, I knew that that change that would be necessary was actually a really good thing and maybe the very best thing that could have happened.

Cory: I think it's so interesting that like there is this again, it's sort of the Zen paradox because like, There's the, there's the duality of like, yeah, that the being on the precipice of losing it but also really returning back into it so wholeheartedly and so whole spiritedly and so in alignment with so much integrity.

And then, and then that is very healing for, you know, for you and, and, or at least that's the way I read it. Yeah. And it was, and it's almost like the exact opposite again for me where it's like the thing that was healing was leaving it. You know, I had to leave it.

Katie: I, I so admire that Corey, because

Cory: I wish I'm like, can I do your way?

Katie: So, yeah, I'll give you the Zen book. No no, but I think that's really, you know, this word is overused, but it's so courageous to walk away from this thing upon which you've built entity and yourself and your selfhood and probably your livelihood. And Yeah, I just, I think that that is an act of just radical courage.

And, and I envy it in partly, right? Because there's part of us that we want to hold on. And, and that's very, you know, that's one of the big lessons in Zen is don't clutch, you know, don't hold on. When we hold on to something and resist change, we actually just increase our suffering. Like suffering is universal.

We can't get away from suffering, but when we resist it is when we increase our suffering and so that you could in very harrowing moments have that clarity where you're like, this is it. I'm walking out, I'm going down Valley. And I just think, yeah, what a radical act of letting go. I, I applaud that.

Cory: Thank you.

Florence: I think it's also a radical narrative act. To write about what happens after the failure, you know, the hero's journey is often about the hero goes out, conquers dragons, comes back a hero, you know, learns life lessons. Some of them are hard. But there's very little about what actually happens when they're back home and what happens after the failure.

And I think you talk about the power of story a lot and the, how you had to really rewrite the narrative because the narrative that you experienced didn't exist. How, how, like, for example, the stories that were told, you know, in Addiction, for example some of those served you, but some of them didn't.

Cory: So yeah, that's, uh, I love this question because it really, I want to challenge, like my book is really not about climbing it's it's or, or anything. It's not about fatigue. It's about mental health and it's really about stories. So. When I say stories, there's like, there's the narrative arc of a story, but then there's the stories we tell.

We wake up every morning and every single person in this audience tells themselves a story about themselves, about all their relationships and the world they live in. We all do it. That's consciousness. We are story machines, right? But some of those stories don't serve us. They wear out. They're old. Some of us, we build them to keep ourselves safe.

And then all of a sudden we realize. Shit, I'm not in danger. Why am I holding on to this story and they can be stories of identity They can be so I am this I am that I am, you know, right I am wrong I and and so much of my life and specifically as it pertains to mental health It was this story of I am broken.

I am somehow fundamentally flawed My brain is off and then I was like, wait a minute. Is that story about? What pieces of this story don't actually work? What pieces of this story are holding me captive? And when it comes to like addiction, you know, I identified as an alcoholic for six years and it was a story I needed because I needed to get away from the behavior.

But what I've learned is that the story of being an addict for life for me doesn't work because I don't find it to be accurate. I don't think it's accurate. There's a beautiful book called Chasing the Scream by Johan Hari and he says this incredible statement. He says addiction is, is, is not a disease.

It's an adaptation. And my addictions were about adapting to an environment and an internal landscape to try to keep me safe, right? And then I let go of that. And also, I'm a, you know, I was in AA for a long time and I'm a huge supporter of AA. But there are things about it that I'm like, when we go into a room and we reinforce and reaffirm our trauma over and over and over again, we stay in the story of trauma.

And I'm not saying, if you're in AA, by all means keep going. I'm not saying, like, I'm just saying there, there's things to look at in these stories of addiction. There's things to be mindful of and, and just because we say, Oh, I'm not an addict. Doesn't mean we're not going to have problems with it. It just means that we should be aware and awake to the stories we're telling and really be curious about. Are they serving me anymore

Katie: or are they somebody else's story? Are they

Cory: somebody else's stories about us that we've just inherited and told ourselves, you know and there's real power There's freedom in that there's liberation In that's in that that inquisition.

Florence: I love that you use the word awake it seems like that's sort of a fundamental Zen message as well.

You you know, you you do have to find your own path and Your own path could look like anything You As long as you know what it is, in a way. I wonder, Katie, can you talk a little bit about what your Zen teachers really, how they helped you through this? Because you found these wonderful women, Natalie Goldberg, Roshi Joan.

Katie: so I had been sort of Like dabbling in zen ever since my father died as a way one of my grief symptoms was an acute anxiety And I had just given birth to my second daughter and so it was like postpartum and grief PTSD my father died, you know quite Suddenly of his illness. So everything kind of came together.

And so I would try meditation as a way to calm myself and to calm my, my really busy and scary mind. And and I befriended in this time One of my dearest friends, her name's Natalie Goldberg, and she's a really well known writer and Zen practitioner. And we became friends and we would hike up the mountain every week.

And she joked that I was teaching her how to hike and go up mountains in like adverse weather, cause it would be freezing out and she would call me and she's like, are we meeting? And I'd just be like, see at the mountain and I'd hang up. And I had an infant, you know, on my chest and, and we would go up no matter what, and that's really what Zen is.

It is continuous practice. It's showing up for yourself, no matter the conditions and making true effort for the good in the moment and doing it with true spirit. So as yourself and that's really what Zen is. It's, it doesn't have to be a religious doctrine and, but so, you know, I had been talking about Zen and learning about Zen just by learning about life with Natalie and, and what I realized is that.

Running is a Zen practice. And so shortly after my injury Natalie shows up at my house and she's in her seventies now. And from her sort of cotton purse, very unceremoniously, she whips out a copy of this book and it's called Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which is a classic Zen text. It was written in the late sixties by the late Zen master, Shinru Suzuki.

And she's like, it's time you read this. And She's like, but you're probably not going to understand it. And, and Natalie's quite outspoken, but I knew that she did not mean that as kind of a commentary on my intellect. It's just that Zen can be very esoteric and slippery and enigmatic. And so I, I guess I took that as a challenge.

I started reading and I was like, I understood everything. And I didn't understand it in my brain, but I understood it in my body. And I understood Zen because I understood running and it's really the same practice. It's showing up, it's making consistent effort for the good. It's trying to let go of a desired outcome or what in Zen is called a gaining idea.

And to be, make whole hearted effort in the moment. And it's not passive, right? It's not about like not having goals or just, you know, going with the flow and letting life happen to you. It's actually a more rigorous way of living because you have to make true effort each moment. And so I was very fortunate.

Natalie is, such a dear friend to me. And then I've had other Zen teachers, some of whom are dead and have been dead when I, when I encountered them, including Suzuki Roshi and another Zen monk and their teachings just went in me physically on a physical level. And I'd encourage anyone in here who has even a remote interest, not in Zen, but just life to get a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, because it's, it's, it's It looks like a manual on meditation, but it's really a guide to being alive. And read it, not up here, but in your whole physical body.

Florence: I, I, I wish we had loads more time. We have a little bit, I, I would love to find out from both of you how your heart gets expressed now. What, what brief flashings do you have? means to each of you. And you know, Katie, I mean, you know, just to spoiler alert, I mean, you are still a phenomenal runner. You know, you have gone on, you've, you've still, you've still found a lot through your sport, but you've really taken these lessons. Could you just tell us a little bit about that? How you've taken these lessons into your running practice.

Katie: It's kind of like going back to sort of my root practice as a child, which was a very personal expression of my imagination.

And so now when I run, I'm not competing right now. And running now feels again like it's in service of my writing and oftentimes I'll run to get to my writing table where I do find the flashings but the, the brief flashings like are all around us all the time and like we are the flashings ourselves and like this is a flashing and And we just get so distracted, right, by our phones, our to do lists, our work.

And so for me, it's really being in nature, ideally moving into nature, into wild places when, where I can go wild in my own mind and then bring it back to my writing. And so. Many days it is running. Some days it looks like riding my bike around up and down mountains. I love mountains. You know, they're such a teacher.

They're like the stalwart presence. But as I write about in my book, they also have this deep energy that we can tap into that's far bigger than our own and that we can ride the mountains energy. And so I'm just always out there just trying to move in whatever way my body will allow and yeah, feed my spirit that way.

Florence: And Cory, your book, I mean, it has so many Buddhist lessons in it as well, too. You know, finding beauty now. Can you just bring us home? How do you, how do you express your heart now?

Cory: Well it’s funny. That's, there's the Alan Watts quote. We're all just walking each other home. Sorry, that makes me

I think the biggest thing for me has been in order to, you know, see, stop looking. Photography was about looking. Climbing was about looking. And also there's, there's a profound, you know, you talk about rediscovering the heart, there's a profound thing that happens when we allow ourselves to truly be loved.

And I think it's a courageous act. I think being loved is so much harder than loving to open ourselves up so completely. And so being loved.

And also like, I, I, I love how powerful the, the, the outdoors nature is, right? But the brief flashings for me more recently have been opening myself up to seeing them right here. The phenomenal gift of literally living, the profundity of waking up in the morning. This is a gift. It is so fucking precious, and it's so short and, and as much as I wanted to go into the unknown and the phenomenal to find it, what I'm realizing and what I'm waking up to every day is that it's all around us.

Every moment, this is nature. We're not separate. Everything we've created is nature. We are in it constantly. And all we have to do is open our eyes and look around us and see, just open ourselves to those flashings of how fucking special this is. And it's always accessible. And it's so ironic that I had to go so far to forget.

How special it was and only coming back to it sitting on a stage Like I was just noticing as you were talking. I was like My mind hasn't wandered at all. Yeah, I've just been here and that would have like again what a gift like

Katie: Yeah, the flashings are so ordinary. They're beautiful because they're ordinary right? they're all around us and you don't have to go to the summit or, you know, win a huge race, you know, to see them. They're in the tiniest moments. We just have to be awake. Mm hmm. It's,

Florence: look. Well, I feel like this has woken me up. Thank you. Beautiful words to end on. Thank you all and I, I hope we go find some flashings today..

Cory: So, thanks for being here. Thank you guys so much.

Peter (Outro): Cory Richards book The Color of Everything is available now. As is Katie Arnold’s Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World.

While we’re at it, Florence Williams’ book is simply called Heartbreak.

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