Training Log #2, 12/17/20, Blodgett Canyon

Tim at the Second Waterfall

Sometimes the challenging things in life just seem like they won’t stop coming. Other times it feels like I’m cruising down soft snow. Either way you’ll catch me running. I’ll be running up the mountains or down in the valleys.

My good friend and Army 2nd Lieutenant, Tim Lenihan, agreed to see how far we could run up Blodgett Canyon a week prior to actually going. At first when I called him about the idea, the sun was shining, but that weekend we had received inches of snow. The outdoors had become a cold and wet place. I sent him a text the day before to see if he was crazy enough to still go. I was ready to back down from the trip the moment he decided it wasn’t a good or safe idea to run endless miles up a canyon packed with snow. He responded to my question asking if he still wanted to go with, “Yeah!”

We hit the trail an hour before noon and I knew we were in for a long uphill trek. Lucky for us, Tim brought a running soundtrack. Nothing is more inspiring to me than the song “Hearts on Fire” from Rocky IV when things really start to get tough. I can picture Rocky running up a snow-capped mountain in the middle of the Russian wilderness before he takes on the infamous Ivan Drago. This image takes away all fear I have of pain to come and enables me to believe that the challenges I face can be conquered. The Rocky themed soundtrack played through all of the classics that have inspired so many and after each song I felt better and stronger. I needed this for what laid ahead of us.

While Tim and I were getting pumped with pure inspiration, we both were waiting for a thick cloud of snow that was edging toward us as we ran towards it. The first few sky crystals that landed and melted onto my face were a gentle touch compared to what came a few minutes afterward. Abruptly, Tim and I were being pounded with almost blinding white dust. It was such a ridiculous heavy amount of snow that it was in a way amazingly fun to be forced to charge through it. What it did make me think about however, was how far we wanted to go. Our pace slowed, and the trail seemed longer than I had remembered it was from a previous hike I had done here. The snow was getting deeper and the soundtrack came to an end.

A friend had told me on the previous hike of a waterfall that was only five to six miles into the canyon. On that hike we had apparently stopped just short of it before turning around, so I knew once Tim and I reached a certain bridge crossing we were close. It would make a satisfying and scenic turning point. The only other significant spot would be the Idaho and Montana border, but that could have been ten plus more miles of doing high knees through piled up snow as far as I knew. The waterfall would work just fine.

As we neared the bridge crossing, the snow began to let up. We had run through the storm. The sun was shining again as if it had been all along. All we had to face now were fallen trees, deep snow, and small water pockets in the trail we would have to maneuver.

We crossed over the snow-covered bridge and my morale burst open. Something about knowing the end is near gives you back all the strength you thought you had lost. I remember at the end of wrestling practice in high school my coach would have the team perform an exercise called six inches. You lay flat on your back with your legs together and hold your feet six inches up in the air. Most people can hold a minimum of thirty seconds, but like most exercises it grows exponentially harder. What made this exercise particularly difficult in the wrestling room is our coach hardly ever told us how long we were to hold our feet up. We just had to keep holding them till he told us we could drop. Not knowing the end made me want to give up after the first thirty seconds even though I knew I could go for at least two minutes at the time. I didn’t know how long the pain was going to last, so I didn’t want to endure it. Sometimes I would, trusting that I could make it. Other times the first thirty seconds got the better of me only for me to realize later that I just had to hold the position for two minutes. Knowing a future end makes the present pain endurable.

Soon we reached the first waterfall. I say the first, because we didn’t recognize it when we passed by. You could only hear it from the trail, and I didn’t trust walking to the cliff edge on untrustworthy snow to take a look. A mile or two farther down the trail we reached the second waterfall. Water fell behind a wall of ice and then glided over smooth rocks making an attractive slide if it wasn’t so cold. Tim and I spent about five minutes at the second waterfall and started on the long way back.

We practically skied over the snow on the way back only having to lift our feet to slide down snow covered rocks. If there was any sort of animal ahead of us on the trail, we could have caught up with it and grabbed it with our bare hands. Once the amount of snow lessened as we came closer and closer to the trailhead, we had to revert back to actually running. It is now one out of two times that I have gotten tired running downhill. Again, the trail just seemed to keep going each time I thought we were getting close to the end. I knew that I would be able to make it, because there is no way I would ever quit on a downhill, but the question remained, “Where’s the end?”, because at that moment it seemed so far away.

In John chapter eleven, Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died from a sickness. His sisters, Mary and Martha were filled with sorrow and mourning for him. Jesus came to the gravesite and had told his disciples before they left for the tomb, “Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it happened for the glory of God so that the Son of God will receive glory from this.” Jesus knew what the end would be and Martha even trusted Jesus’ claim that he is the resurrection and the life, but it didn’t stop them from telling Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Then in John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” Knowing the end didn’t take away the pain of the present. Jesus doesn’t brush over your pain and tell you to get over it. Jesus runs through snowstorms with you and at the right time he tells the sun to shine again. After the moment of sorrow, Jesus stood at the entrance of Lazarus’s tomb with the stone rolled away and shouted, “Lazarus, come out!”, then the gospel writer and Jesus disciple, John, records the dead man Lazarus walking out of the tomb wrapped in graveclothes. Jesus then said, “Unwrap him and let him go!” Jesus is with us in our sorrow and pain, and even better he doesn’t leave us there. Jesus is the resurrection and the life having power over death itself, so that for every believer death is not the end. How crazy good is that! We no longer have to fear death and Jesus explains why. Jesus said to a pharisee named Nicodemus in John 3:16, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Tim and I both made our way back to the trailhead finishing tired and strong. Both of us were cold, wet, and filled with happiness. Life has its fill of mountains and valleys and I’m learning to appreciate both, because God can be found in both the storms and the waterfalls.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, it really does mean a lot to me!

If this story had an impact on you or you would like to know how to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, please contact me on Facebook, message me using the contact page on this site or email me at calebforsberg@gmail.com. To help my brother Garin with expenses as he battles brain cancer check out the GoFundMe link on my Facebook info page or follow the link in my bio on my linked Instagram account.