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

So I’ve got these two friends, Dave and Kyra. They’re a couple. But they hadn’t been together that long when I met them. This was the summer of 2022, Dave had gotten a trip permit for the Grand Canyon and he was friends with some of my wife’s coworkers and somehow—like a game of reverse SurviPaddyr—we’d gotten ourselves Paddyted onto the trip.

Dave was the trip leader and had tons of whitewater experience. In fact, most of the people on this trip were in their mid-to-late-40s and knew each other from having been sponsored kayakers and going to competitions in the early 2000s.

There was a former Grand Canyon river guide, a currently professional fishing guide, his girlfriend was a former whitewater guide, there were also three ICU nurses, and a paramedic who did Search and Rescue for the Air Force—basically a ton of experience and relevant skills in the group.

Then there was Kyra.

Kyra worked for an equestrian non-profit. Our 16-day river trip would be her first time camping. Ever. She brought French-imported aerosolized water—which is like a can of spray paint full of mist—so she could wet her skin before applying moisturizer. Apparently this is important. How many types of moisturizer did she bring? I have no idea. How many different types of skin does a human body have?

Kyra agreed to come on the stipulation that she would be able to take a shower every day, and one of my enduring memories from the trip is Dave, wearing a headlamp, paddling an inflatable kayak around the eddy we were camped at, on the off chance that the jet black solar shower, which had fallen off their boat sometime earlier that day, might have washed downriver to exactly our campsite right at the moment they realized it was missing.

I realize I am making Kyra sound like a nightmare. And this whole trip I think most of us were waiting for her to become one. But actually, she was great. One of those people with infectious enthusiasm, in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and it turned out there were several backup solar showers on the trip.

I almost feel bad for her. When your first camping trip is floating the Grand Canyon, where do you go next?

Also, you know what’s really important in the Grand Canyon in June? Skin care. Moisturizer. You know what’s not an important or useful skill on the river? Podcasting.

Anyway, having Kyra along was a huge win for the group, and for Dave, who must have known this would be a make-or-break experience for their relationship. They are still together. In fact that whole group has become something we call our “river family.” We even have a reunion each year.

It’s all pretty much best-case-scenario for a river trip. But recently Paddy O’Connell reached out with a story about a river trip that was basically the opposite of being pleasantly surprised by your partner on a wild river. I think it’s fair to call this one pretty much worst-case-scenario.

Here’s Paddy.

Paddy O’Connel: The Middle Fork of the Salmon in central Idaho is arguably the premier wilderness whitewater river in the country, second only maybe to the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

Katie Arnold:  The middle fork is crystal clear, pristine water,  flowing out of the Sawtooth Mountains  through a wilderness so remote, it's called the River of No Return

Paddy: This is runner and writer Katie Arnold. Katie and her husband Steve are river people. Throughout their relationship, they've spent countless days on whitewater all over the West. And the Middle Fork was their dream trip.

Katie:  It was like top of our bucket list.  You can count the rocks whizzing by on the bottom, the trout you could practically pluck with your hands.

They're so plentiful, it's a hundred miles of white water with a hundred major rapids in a hundred miles, so it's just nonstop rapids, busy whitewater, excitement, high stakes, high consequence river,

Paddy: Like most western rivers, the Middle Fork's access is controlled by a lottery permitting system, meaning it ain't easy to get on this water. But, in the winter of 2016, Steve's phone dinged with a text. His pals had won a permit.

Katie: There was really no question we would go. We'd always wanted to go. We felt like we had the river chops. We had been running rivers together since we met in 2001.

this would be the most technical and challenging whitewater for sure that we would do together. It was a private trip, so there was no guide.

But within the group, there were probably at least six or seven Idaho locals who had done the river many times between them, like at every river level and knew the river like the back of their hands. So we felt, you know, confident. That said, like, I was nerPaddyus because it was bigger water than we'd ever been on,

Paddy: Saying yes to their dream trip meant a few things: One, their two daughters who typically come along on river adventures would stay home. The Middle Fork is just too big, so this would be a couple's trip. Two, Steve, would need to level up as an oarsman. So he spent months practicing technical maneuvers on a stretch of river near their home in Santa Fe, and the plan was that he and Katie would follow the boats captained by the six local Idahoans. Best to mimic the folks who know their way around the river.. Other than that, the only thing they needed to do was be at the put-in on June 23, 2016 and not eff anything up.

Katie: A river put in if you've ever spent any time, there is a super stressful place. You want to get onto the launch and off of it as fast as possible.

So you don't hog the space and people behind you can get on and the put in is mobbed, right? Even though there's a finite number of permits issued every day on the middle fork, those groups can be big, upwards of 20 people. And there's lots of boats and it's like people are packing and the river rangers walking around like, telling us safety things and there's a long line to get our boats down and you want to make sure you're not forgetting anything, all that.

It's stressful. And  add to that that Steve and I, like our river ethos as a couple and a family has always been like, don't be those people, you know, like, don't be the people who show up unorganized or missing stuff or late. Don't be the people.

Paddy (Interview):  Keep it tight.

Katie: Keep it tight. Don't be those people. The last one's ready, you know? And so that almost we do to a fault.

Paddy: The group was so large and the excitement to get going so frenetic that moments before they put on Steve and Katie were told their boat needed to add two passengers: a mother and her teenage son. So Steve was not only going to be rowing a river at the edge of his skill level, he was going to be doing it with a heavier boat than he’d been practicing with. But there was also no time to talk about any of this.

Katie:  It's just go time. Some of the old timers  launch one by one, and  Steve and I are the last ones to launch. And before we know it, they are out of sight. our Flotilla has spread out, and they are around the next bend, and the river is so choppy and riddled with, rapids, and it's the fastest thing, and it's clear, and it's just like, five seconds ago it was snow melt, and now it's like, falling over itself to get to the sea.

It's like the busiest river you've ever seen. And it's so loud, you can't hear yourself talk over it.  I can tell Steve's energy is high because, there's so much coming up at once  just constant moves he has to make.

Paddy: Because of the noise, and the surprise passengers, Katie and Steve had a hard time looking out for and communicating obstacles. like rocks. And ten minutes into the trip they've been longing to take for years... disaster hits.

Katie:  We come around a corner.  And there's this big rock in the middle. And the next thing we know,  this rock just sucked us in like magnetic shavings. And the current was coming under our boat and pushing us, more and more into sort of a vertical position against the rock. And Steve yells high side, meaning get up on the top of the raft. To sort of bring the boat down. So we're both up high. And  I am holding onto the boat. I do not want to go in. The river is fast. It's white.

It's frothy. It's also really shallow. The water is probably like a foot deep. You'd think, Oh, that's not scary at all. Somehow that made it scarier, right? Because it's like, everything's going faster and you're gonna hit the bottom.  And I can see Steve letting go.

And he's falling in and I'm like, Oh shit. And so that makes me hold on tighter. Then the raft is tipping, tipping, tipping and I'm over the water and then I'm just in and as soon as I'm in my knee is jostling in my joint. It's like flapping like a grisly piece of chicken fat.

Paddy: Katie’s knee was obliterated. It felt like a loose bag of parts. She could barely control her lower leg as she floundered in the ice cold rushing water.

Katie:  And I'm in the middle of the river. The raft is floating on. Steve is floating on. I'm trying to find Steve's head to make sure he's okay.

And then, you know, you just have to dog paddle to the shore. And my leg is just,  completely loose in its socket. And,  I get to shore and then, I kind of have to heave my way up because I, my leg is throbbing  and I know that I'm really badly injured and that the trip is over and that we're going to have to walk out or get out somehow.

That's not what happened

Paddy: The group collected the scattered gear, Steve, the mother and her son, and the boat. They assessed Katie's injured left knee and decided that it would be impossible to bushwhack upstream given the rugged terrain. Katie and Steve would stay on for the entirety of the trip. But Katie's injury was also merely the most acute symptom of a deeper set of problems.

Katie: And suddenly now, after  all of our years together trying not to be those people, we are those people.

We are the people who, had an accident, messed things up for the rest of the group. So there's this immediate sense of guilt and shame

Paddy: In Katie’s mind, their accident—Steve’s inability to keep the boat off that rock—had ruined everyone’s trip. Her injury had become a burden on the group, and so Katie’s [ahem] knee-jerk response to Steve’s mistake was to try and absorb all of that inconvenience. She was going to stay on the river. No matter what.

Katie: Everything now revolves around the question, what are we going to do? How do we stay the course? How do we get through this?

Paddy: This stubborn stick-to-it-ed-ness is a characteristic of her personality that Katie says is both good and bad. You don’t become a renowned author and runner without a deep aversion to quitting. Head-down, unwavering movement toward the finish line is a great characteristic to call upon for career goals and long distances on a trail. But it can also lead to flashes of heavy and arguably unneeded struggle in her relationship with Steve. And it goes back to their very first date.

In the summer of 2000, Katie was 28 years old and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working for a little rag named ���ϳԹ��� Magazine. She was heartbroken having just called it quits with her longtime, long distance boyfriend. She was dead set on being single. Then she met Steve.

Katie: Our first real  date, we hiked up a mountain speaking of like not turning back, it was gale force. Like the kind of like crazy making wind where you're like, this is really unpleasant and I think I'm going mad inside my brain. And it was so windy that he like we held hands so I didn't blow off. And then we ended up like holding hands. like the whole way up the mountain. But he insisted on taking us like a shortcut across the scree to get to the summit and down faster.

And this, this, I think Paddy, if I had to say like both concretized, like our love of adventure together, but also set up the initial, , kind of power, struggle, emotional conflict that has haunted us ever since, which is like, he'll go off road, right? He'll go off the beaten path to get to where he's going, and I like to know a little bit more like that.

I'm on the trail, and that needing to trust him  in moments like that has replayed like countless times, like who's got the control and who's trusting the other person? And , that has kind of been our Achilles heel.

Paddy: Katie says that she and Steve usually teeter totter between trust and control pretty well. But on that river trip on the Middle Fork with a broken leg, the balance was totally off. And it felt like their relationship was in a pressure cooker.

Katie: I think probably he was totally caught off guard by my anger. and It would probably seem unreasonable to him and mean, probably mean spirited that I would be angry about him rowing us into a rock.

Paddy: The group decided that Katie should spend the remaining river miles laying with her leg elevated on the back of Frank's boat. Frank was a friend who'd run the Middle Fork numerous times before. Steve would then follow Frank's lines through the rapids. And this separation gave Katie the chance to spiral.

Katie:  When they moved me with Frank, my first reaction was relief. Like, okay, I'm going to be with someone who has done this river a lot, who's going to, take care of me, which in my mind, Steve had not done. So I was relieved to be with Frank because he exuded such a deep calm and he'd run the river so many times and he seemed to know that what I needed, um, was just this quiet steadiness, which is normally what Steve is.

I mean, that is Steve. And it's like this big story then. It becomes this narrative. Oh my God, I don't feel that way with Steve. I don't feel safe with him on rivers. I must not feel safe with him in life. What does that mean? Oh my God, oh my God.

Paddy: For the rest of the day, while Katie's leg was swelling, so was her anger with Steve. And after all the chaos, the group finally made it to camp. This would be the time when a relationship guru would suggest speaking calmly to one another, using “I” statements, rather than “you” statements, and cleaning up your side of the street, so to speak, rather than trying to control the other person’s reaction. That is…not what happened.

Katie: That was the night that we really argued. we were doing that like whisper fighting in a tent, like we weren't screaming, you certainly don't want to be those people ever on a backcountry trip who are like arguing in front of people,

And, it was like, why'd you row us into the rock?  I'm like, why, you know, why couldn't you take one more oar stroke? Why did you just, you know, let it happen? Steve was saying  it was your fault, you fell out wrong, and no one else got hurt,

And so we're fighting in that way. And then we fell asleep with it unresolved. It wasn't like there were any apologies,

Paddy (Interview):  Oh that's never good.

Katie:  Never, no apologies. I didn't apologize for blaming him and he didn't apologize for hitting the rock.

Steve Arnold:  I was already the asshole of the trip for flipping in the first 20 minutes we were on the water or whatever. So, there was, an embarrassment aspect, like, Oh, we're only a mile down the river and I flipped the boat. There was an aspect of anger at myself.  I certainly felt like, I'd screwed up. I was anxious and nervous that maybe I was in over my head in terms of the level of the rapids and the rest of the river.

There was a fear of, how is Katie going to be? How bad is her leg hurt?  What are we going to do?

Steve: I'm sure there were things I could have said or done that would have helped her feel better. But I,  I hope I didn't seem like an asshole to her, but I definitely had that feeling of knowing you screwed up.

Paddy: That’s Katie’s husband Steve right there, who said yes to this–his first ever interview.

Steve says that though they were angry and fighting, he did his best to make the rest of the trip down river as comfortable as possible for Katie. He set up and broke down camp each day, he built makeshift foot elevation stations with camp chairs and dry bags, he carried her to use the bathroom and brought her food. But Steve was also dealing with the fallout from the accident in his own way, by getting the space and solitude he needed to take care of himself, mentally, to feel safe. But to Katie, it just looked like he was fishing.

Katie:  I was fucking pissed. I was like there goes my husband, fly fishing

And I felt embarrassed because I was like, you know, you do this comparisons that are totally BS, but in your mind, you're like, you know, so and so got hurt on the river. Her husband would not go fishing. And that is so unhelpful but I was embarrassed and I was self conscious that I was hurt and Steve was like la di da. I'm going fishing.

Paddy: Any semblance of a dream trip had completely vanished. And it felt like it wasn’t just Katie’s leg that was broken.

So the rest of the trip we weren't fighting as much as not speaking, you know, not not speaking, but really not talking about it And we were taking care of ourselves in the way we could because we couldn't take care of each other

Paddy: When they finally made it to the take out, Katie and Steve decided to drive back home to Santa Fe in one shot...all 16 hours of it. And things in the car were, ahem, tense.

Katie: We're disgusting scumbags  in our bathing suits and our wet river clothes. And I'm going to lie in the back cause I have to stretch my leg out and Steve's in the front and I freaking can't even look at him in the rear view because I'm so pissed. And I'm pissed because  like the silence between us,

it was like a combustion, like compress the anger. So now we're in the car together and it's like, uh, it was like fire erupting in the car and we just unloaded everything we'd wanted to say on the river because now we could, no one could hear us.

Paddy: Katie says that she and Steve yelled so loudly and for so long their Paddyices went hoarse.She doubled down on her anger at Steve and his navigation of the river. Steve barked that it was an accident and not intentional. But, something deeper was happening below the surface of what was actually being said.

Paddy (Interview):  arguments in relationships, especially marriage, are never really about the thing you're arguing about. It's not about that the dishes are in the sink, or goddammit, your hair ties are constantly being thrown about the house and if I have to pick up another hair tie I'm going to go  insane. It's not about that, right? It's about I feel underappreciated or I don't feel seen or there's distance or etc, etc, so  what were you guys really arguing about?

Katie:  I'm really saying, why don't you take care of me in the way I need you to? I Don't want, to be this dependent person and yet I want to be cared for. So that is that internal struggle in me. That's really about, that's my issue, but it's, it's easy to feel like to sort of put that anger on someone else.

So it's a, it's a contradiction. But Steve's, you know, also saying like, why don't you trust me? Why do you not think I'm enough? I mean, those were never said those words, but  that's his kind of conflict inside  so we're fighting with words that actually don't really say the exact thing we're upset about.

Steve:  I think one of the challenges we've had in our relationship over the years is, I tend to maybe look at things more analytically and how are we going to get to get through something or get to a goal.

Katie is much more of an emotional feeling person. She had every right and reason to be scared and angry and in a panic or a really bad place about what she saw as her immediate future and her long term prospects of having injured her leg.

I don't grudge Katie for being really upset with me for the situation I put her in.

That said, it was an accident, it wasn't intentional. I Was able to look at it from a perspective that she probably wasn't at the moment that time will heal, you know, time will heal her body and time will heal her anger and resentment towards me.

Paddy: But to Katie something felt deeply off in their marriage, something they had not seen before.

Katie: It really was like a fracture in the marriage that opened on the river  it's like that scene in Superman,  when like there's the fault opens and  Lois Lane's cars like half in it and you can pretty much even see  the molten  magma like spewing out and her car is like falling in.

That's what this felt like. The river accident felt like to me it had opened this fault line that we had not seen. And now we had to go home and figure out what was wrong.

Paddy: After the break, the difference between fixing a broken leg, and fixing a broken marriage.

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Paddy: In the spring of 2016, the brutal knee injury writer and runner Katie Arnold suffered on a river trip with her husband Steve had revealed a fundamental distance in her marriage. When they returned home to Santa Fe, that divide broadened when Katie found out the extent of her injury.

Katie:  I sat there in the surgeon's office alone  and he's like Katie. Have really bad news. He's like you shattered your tibial plateau and he, you know, with very little bedside manner, explained how bad it was. And, just looked at me, with no, Remorse or compassion, it seemed. And he was like,  if I were you, I would never run again.

I just felt like I'd been punched.

Paddy: Katie needed surgery. The doc would rebreak bones, set her leg in a cast. Katie would need crutches for 15 weeks and need to be dePaddyted to physical therapy, twice a week appointments and daily at-home exercises. Recovery would take a year. That was daunting enough. But the prognosis, and how it was delivered, caused an emotional domino effect.

Katie:  my fury was boundless in that moment that first of all, the doctor could be so cavalier with just his prognosis. Like, you know, if I were you, I would never run again, find a new hobby. He seemed to represent that sort of,  male authority, kind of mansplaining, patriarchal, whatever overlay. I was pissed at him for not seeing that running was more to me, than a hobby,

When the very thing that's sort of central to how you operate in the world, how to be in the world, right?  It's both self care, but it's also your creative process. And  it's how, you know, I make a living as a writer, writing about running and my relationship to running,  when you hear that news that, oh my gosh, this thing might be taken away from you, or you may not be able to do it any longer, all the thoughts come rushing in.

Who will I be without it? How will I be sane in my life and in my family if I don't have this outlet?

how dare this be taken away from me? And it was coming through the mouth of the doctor, which is why, you know, I felt for him this anger. But I extrapolated it outward to Steve who was rowing the boat

Paddy (Interview):  Do you feel like it threatened your connection with Steve?

Katie: Well, it was like he and the doc were one all of a sudden, like they had merged into this one, like cyber body, you know, and mouthpiece. I conflated  the two of them and that seeped into my feelings of marriage,

Paddy: With this anger boiling, Katie had the surgery and began her PT. And it got off to a slow start.

Katie:  I started with, lying on the PT table and having my physical therapist, like, move My leg tiny increments, right? So it's like you're trying to get range of motion back So it'd be like slide your heel an inch okay, and then like next week slide your heel like an inch and an eighth, right? And so the Progression or improvement is incremental

Paddy (Interview):  literal inches.

Katie  Yeah, literal inches.  I, am feeling like my whole spirit just saggy, sad,  right. With all the bleak anticipation of like never running again. And,  I'm moping around and you know, a horror show to be around. and I was trying to not to be, you know, uh, an awful injured patient, you know, crutching around the house, like yelling at people for leaving, like, you know, their clothes on the floor. We're definitely not doing a postmortem.

We're not digging, delving into it. It's still fresh. It's still unknown if I'll heal enough to run again. So there was too  at risk to kind of peer under the hood again.

Paddy (Interview):  Why?

Katie:  We have life to get to, at this point we have, a six year old and an eight year old, right? So we are in the thick of it.  We have like family and children and, you know, money that needs to be made. And,  my daughters had lice that summer, right? And I'm like, pushing the laundry basket down the hall on my knees, you know, to wash the sheets every day.  And, , that's what we're doing.

We're not, you know,  going to therapy. We're not like, let's figure this out late at night when we're both exhausted.

Like, we're not in couple therapy in our own, you know, bedroom every night. Like, we're just dealing. We're just dealing.

Paddy: Dealing with the day to day of life didn't allow Katie and Steve the ability to discuss the accident, but it did give Katie time to step back and observe and name the thing that was actually bothering her.

Katie: It was like the accident opened this crack that revealed  this sort of unacknowledged slide into very traditional gender roles. this was just exposing that Maybe my only worth in the world was as caretaker,

Paddy: The thing that happens to a lot of couples when they have kids had happened to Katie and Steve. Kids mean more stress, more responsibilities, more strain on all parts of a relationship. In response, many couples look for ways to make the family unit more efficient. Which often means consolidating the roles that each person plays within the family. Breadwinners need to win more bread. Caretakers need to take more care. And that didn’t sit well with Katie.

Katie: Becoming a parent is hard on a marriage regardless of how much you love your kids or your spouse. You get pulled in different directions. And so we had been going in different directions, right? Because of, parenthood and the demands of that.

When the kids came right I was no longer working full time.

I was freelancing and My income went down and  then he's the primary breadwinner And our roles get more and more fixed in that I'm bringing in less and less money. I'm feeling dependent on him financially and

I don't like the way it feels. I'm an independent person, and so what it exposed was that. Not only had our roles become more and more fixed but we had let them go there without conversation or without a mindful awareness of it. We weren't talking about it and, you know, that we weren't talking about it worried me.

Paddy (Interview):  do you feel like you took that fear there  and directed it at Steve?

Katie : I didn't direct it at him, but I was certainly like swimming in it. It was my, inner torment.

Paddy:  Steve says while he was not aware of Katie's feelings about their marriage at the time, he was aware of her anger.

Steve: I know I had to give her a certain amount of room to be angry and to take her anger out on me, that I was the blame.

I certainly felt responsible and still feel responsible for it, but

I wasn't willing to be completely culpable for what happened.

I sort of felt like I couldn't wholeheartedly give into her anger at me. I had to let it be hers and kind of keep going with everything else we needed to do. and I don't know if that's the right way to deal with something like that in a relationship. I'm sure that's part of Katie's having felt like there was a, rift or a fracture in our relationship. was maybe me trying to give her the space to deal with it. And maybe that wasn't the best way to handle it.

I'm sure I could have done it better than I did.  I don't necessarily think that I did, it terribly. I don't think I ignored her feelings completely or was an asshole about it or anything like that. But  I'm sure it could have been done better.

Paddy (Interview)  Did you feel that distance though when you were back at home?

Steve:  I definitely felt like she was, still in pain cave of the accident itself and

I was aware of that idea, like a, resentment that sort of never goes away.  But I don't know if I was aware of the level of her anger and resentment

She might have been in her separate corner and I was as close to the wall towards her as I could be.

I may not have been able to get to her in her corner when she was feeling like her life is drastically and permanently changed, but I wasn't moving away from her. I may not have been able to get to her though.

Paddy: While she was feeling all this anger and fear, Katie focused on her PT. She went to every appointment and had no setbacks with them or the at-home workout regime. Additionally, Steve set up her bike on a training stand in their backyard, and she peddled constantly. Steve walked with Katie as she crutched the dirt path behind their house. He also cooked all the meals, did all the dishes, made sure the kids got to school and sports practices. They even went camping together as a family. And it all began to start adding up.

Katie:  Even though we're not like talking about it, right. It's like, what's your love language? It's like service.  And that's definitely Steve's service, like acts of love, right? So he's showing his love and his care for me in a different way.

So again, we're not like, Doing our own couple therapy we're just living, we're trying to get through it.

As I'm getting stronger,  I am able to come out of that doomsday place in my mind, and I'm able to see that, you know. Okay, I am healing and I literally took it one day at a time. It was like every day was one day closer to healing completely and one day farther from surgery. And so it was an accrual of days  As you do that,  the anger does sort of start to. It's like a scar tissue, right? It starts to loosen. It's still there. You can still see the scar, but it's not so like red, hot,

Paddy: If this were a Rom Com, right now is when one brilliant moment or outrageous act of love would occur that bridged the gap in their marriage and reminded them how much they loved each other. But life doesn't work that way. For Katie and Steve, what helped the fissures in their marriage close were tiny, seemingly insignificant experiences that reminded them of the beauty of their relationship. Like when Katie, sitting with her cast in a camp chair, watched Steve play ultimate frisbee.

Katie: I just sat on the sidelines and I was like, this is so easy to do.

To like come here and cheer for Steve and to like love my husband in this way. , and afterwards,  as we're driving home, it's beautiful. Like it feels like it's going to rain. And I'm like, don't take me home just yet. I'd been missing that range of  being out and seeing the mountains. And so he just took us the long way home up roads.

I've never been on and we were just looking and  the window was open and it smelled like rain and like I hadn't been up this road before and Steve's driving and we're not saying anything, but it's that like beautiful feeling of togetherness without words.

It's those moments. It’s those ordinary moments that in a marriage, the ones that are you know sweet and shared, like they do add up, right? That is like the physical therapy that's happening in little steps.

And some days you can't see it because you're focused on the wrong thing. You're focused on the anger, you're focused on the doctor's words. Like, you know, you'll never run again, again, again, you know, but it's happening. And I think that's what my instinct told me is that I have to be patient. And that's what I think I knew when like my friends would be like, just forgive him.

You know, they'd like might as well just snap their fingers. And it's like, I actually know myself and Steve well enough to know that that would be untrue. That it happens in real moments over time and it takes time and patience.

Paddy: If this all sounds very Zen, well,it’s because it is.  Early in her recovery, Katie started practicing Zen Buddhism. At the urging of a friend, as she began to heal, Katie read  a book called Zen Mind Beginner's Mind.

Katie: It was disguised as this meditation manual but I  began to read the book, with that mindset of showing me how to live through this devastating accident and to heal.  As soon as I started reading it,  I understood it. And I understood it not in my brain, but in my body. And I understood Zen because I understand running they're the same practice. It's showing up to do something fully with true determination regardless of what the outcome is.

Little by little, like I'm healing my body I'm doing all the things I'm going to PT.

I'm doing my exercises. I'm doing a lot of writing, imagining myself in a healed way. And so I am open to possibilities of healing.

Paddy: And those possibilities include forgiveness and acceptance of your spouse.

Katie: I saw that the lessons that I was applying to running and healing, tolerating uncertainty, not knowing what lies ahead, being open to all possibilities, this deep interconnection between all beings, actually was a secret and a guide to being married, and so Zen is being present to what is and inhabiting your life moment by moment fully. And not imagining life to be something different, or ruminating on what it was.

It's like you have to let go of expectation and a need for results we are open to all possibilities, the bad, the good, the ones we can't even imagine.

So it's not sort of like, all happy go lucky, like nothing bad will ever happen. But rather, whatever happens, you will be able to handle.

Paddy (Interview):  I mean, that sounds like marriage advice.

Katie: And ultimately that is what Zen is and taught me is that we see the world as it is, not as we want it to be. And that includes its imperfections. So that includes our partner's imperfections and our own.  So in order to learn to love someone for exactly who they are,  included in that is the resistance and recognizing like, Oh, that part of them, like, I don't love that. But you know what? Like,  I'm gonna love them as they are. Like, Steve is Steve and, he can, he loves me in his way

Paddy: Katie credits Zen with the healing of both her body and her marriage. It took a year for her to feel physically healthy and two to feel that she and Steve had come back to one another. To heal deeply you have to go deep, and that takes time.

Katie: I think that's why ultimately this is a love story because right. Like we, grow together. We learn these things over time and you stick it out with the person you love the most in the world, even in the hellscape of something like this because you love them. Never any question that I love Steve, but I was fucking pissed at him for a long time and people are like, you need to forgive him. You know, accidents happen.

It means you're living the life. You're a real adventure, all those things. And I knew that was true.  I also knew that it would take the time it took for me to work through this in myself. Never once was I like, this is it for Steve and me. It was just like,  frickin A, I'm mad. You know, and I, I have to work this through my body.

Paddy: In May of 2018, Katie felt that the anger had finally lifted.

Katie (Reading): I wake up and I know we are through it. I don't know how I know this, I just do.

Paddy: This is Katie reading from her new book that recounts the accident and her healing process, it's called "Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free."

Katie (Reading): Maybe it's the way the sun slants through the French doors in our bedroom, through the half parted curtains we never close. There's more space in the room, or the space that is there is brighter, as though a clearing away has happened.

Nothing has been said, but I can feel it. Steve rolls over and gets up first to make the coffee. I lie in bed staring at the wooden beams of the ceiling, sensing the change. Something has burned off. The anger. It had been lodged inside of me very deep and now it has lifted.  I ask Steve if he wants to go for a run.

Paddy: With her body and marriage healed, Katie began training for her return to competitive running, the culmination of which was the Leadville 100 ultramarathon. Leadville is a brutal out and back race, one of the oldest and most storied endurance events in the world.: steep climbs, high-altitude passes, technical rocky terrain, 18,000 feet of elevation gain... and, ya know, running all frickin' day between 10 and 12,000 feet for a total of 100 frickin 'miles.

That is probably why I choke up every time I read the passage where Katie is feverishly running toward the finish line and Steve is there.

Katie (Reading):  Ahead, down a hill, the finish chute, lights, friends, family, everything, the whole of life. Legs wheeling, steve is a stilted shadow on the side of the road, a hundred feet before the finish line, waiting for me. Steve. He holds out his hands. He is yelling my name. I put my hands on his and then keep going, flying now. Above the finish line, a shooting star streaks through a small hole in the clouds, a brief flash in the dark, just the narrowest of openings in the black, wet sky.  I Am running for the tape and then I am breaking it, running into the outstretched arms of my girls, my friends, bringing everything above me, around me. Behind me, ahead of me, with me.

Paddy:  Leadville was Katie's first 100 mile race. And she won it. She finished under 20 hours, something only a handful of female Leadville runners have ever done. It's an unbelievable accomplishment. And it also signified the completion of how far Katie and Steve had come, how all these tiny moments had brought them back together.

Katie (Reading):  Life is a series of flickerings, like lightning bugs pulsing in a meadow or street lamps blinking randomly in the blackness. Tiny items of astonishment on the tick list of existence. At first glance, they might not look like much. Look again.

Peter: Katie Arnold is the author of Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free. She is also an ���ϳԹ��� contributing editor and writes the Raising Rippers column, about parenting.

Paddy O’Connell is a frequent contributor to the podcast and the host of Paddy O Sucks At, on ���ϳԹ���TV.

This episode was written and produced by Paddy, with editing by me, Peter Frick-Wright.

Music and sound design by Robbie Carver.

The ���ϳԹ��� Podcast is made possible by our ���ϳԹ��� Plus members. Learn more about all the benefits of membership at outsideonline.com/podplus.