Women Writing the West®: Chasing Bierstadt, Stegner, and Abbey

Women Writing the West®: Chasing Bierstadt, Stegner, and Abbey: by Kristen Lodge After finishing college in New Hampshire, in 1999 I moved to my first mountain town near Bethel, Maine. I started writin...

Triple Threat Triathlon: Winter Training in Tucson

Triple Threat Triathlon: Winter Training in Tucson: Arizona is a popular training location for triathletes, especially during the frozen tundra experienced in other states. Tucson is the winte...

2013 Swim Bike Run Totals

Swimming: 62 Miles

Biking: 3,268 Miles

Running: 901 Miles

2014 Goals:

• Swim: 75 Miles
• Bike: 5,000 Miles
• Run: 1,500 Miles

The Fallen Sky and Obsessions

I am reading The Fallen Sky An Intimate History of Shooting Stars. And while, I am no scientist and I know nothing about meteors and meteorites, it is a really interesting book. What hooks me is how the author personalizes a story about the people who are obsessed with meteorites. The author, Christopher Cokinos, is searching for those who are searching for meteors; he is hunting the obsessive types.

I know that type well.

For I am obsessed with triathlon.

I am endlessly fascinated by fellow-obsessed triathletes. I want to know what drives them, what makes them get up in the morning and train, then go to work, and train again. But I’m also obsessed with the west and western writers and people who chose to live in the west.

Maybe my next book needs to be about obsessed nature writers who are triathletes and live in the west.

I am reading five books right now and The Fallen Sky is my number one. I can’t seem to put it down. This is my favorite passage so far. As you read it think of what you are searching for, the journeys you have been on and what you found, and the people you met:

“Whether someone wishes to possess a meteorite to sell it or to crack one open in a laboratory for discovery, the meteorite must first be found or hunted. Which often means you have to be willing to go where the meteorites are ….such journeys have impressed on me that wonder-whether from discovering a geological rarity or tracking down a hidden history or finding a lover – is not as pristine a feeling as some would think. I found that mine was a journey into wonder and its costs. Along the way, I bore changes in my life and realized that I was hunting the lives of the meteorite hunters – not just the stones themselves-and I began to understand these strangers’ lives better when I accepted my own. Quests, after all, can come at a very high price….As to the meteorite clan, they’re a complicated, colorful lot.” (4)

Yes, quests come at a cost and triathletes sure are a colorful bunch.

It’s like the osprey folks. They are obsessed about finding osprey. The obsessed are everywhere.

I’m going to keep reading The Fallen Sky and learn about shooting stars and crazy people who are endlessly fascinated by them, to understand my own obsessions.

Happy New Year.