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Blog

 

 

art night. or, map my run.

Carrie Karsgaard

There are few things as anxiety-producing for me as my friends’ Art Nights, where everybody shows up with all assortment of paints and papers and pastels and pencils and print-making materials, and proceed to play. Stories and ideas and impulses take shape into quirky or dark, fanciful or beautiful forms. If I (somehow or other) get talked or (more likely) tricked into attending, I stare nervously around the room, making demonstrations of testing out colors to disguise my lack of productivity. I bide my time, waiting for everyone else’s work to accumulate so I can fall into my groove of seeing ideas and patterns emerge in their work, asking questions about their pieces – rather than creating something of my own (unless, of course, I’m given free range of a kitchen, where I can ignore most of a recipe to the end of keeping my artsier friends well-fuelled – cookies, anyone?).

I think you get the picture. In the visual realm, I’m not much of a creator. But I do have one or two theoretical pieces of art that exist only in my imagination. Here’s one:

Imagine a map. A trail map of a park, say, Knox Mountain (a local favorite; it could be substituted with Okanagan Mountain Park, Rose Valley, or Myra-Bellevue).

As an aside: I love maps. This is something I get from my dad, who would get so distracted reading maps at gas stations (maps I was certain, as a child, were identical to those we had already scrutinized prior to heading out on the road) that my sister and I could sneak extra bags of Hickory Sticks and Nibs into his purchase while he distractedly route-planned through the backwoods of Montana. Now, much to my chagrin, I buy maps – and Google them – and imagine my own routes, deeper into BC, up-and-over mountains. Only for me, I’m usually checking out where I might explore on foot, while my dad loved to hit the road.

Anyhow, back to the trail map of Knox. This map, preferably topographical, traces all the routes I’ve ever taken on Knox, thicker lines appearing in places I have traced and retraced, thinner lines where I've gone off trail only once, whether to scramble somewhere new or because I’ve lost my way. I imagine pulling from my Suunto data, overlaying every route I’ve taken over the past few years, 45-minute jaunts to five-hour endurance runs. Over the map of Knox, I imagine a web will emerge of all the spaces I’ve traced and found and made, a lattice of routines and explorations, the familiar and the one-offs.

Then, somehow – and please, don’t ask me how, I have no idea how – I would layer images on the map that are representative of moments I’ve had along each of these trails. Because, for all the times I’ve run these trails, no two times have been the same.

Some images could be signposts, like the cairns near Kathleen Lake. I’ve hammered up past these cairns on hard workouts, mouth stuffed with Okanagan dust. I’ve stopped still in the middle of a run and stared at my stone friends after months of work-travel and felt from them a silent welcome home!, as they pointed my way with their off-kilter arms along my most comfortable solo trail. Another time, alone on a five-hour run, I cried among the cairns, when, after months of training, it was uncertain whether my running partner would be able to race in the Alps. The stones hold these moments for me – sometimes reminding me from where I’ve come and other times keeping their peace (thank goodness – I’m not a big public crier, and I wouldn’t want it regularly thrown in my face).

Other images would be signals of the changing seasons, the phases of life passed on the same trails. A ridiculous Instagram of my friend throwing snowballs in the air, goofy smile spread on his face, during his first wintertime run. The balsamroot that signaled my #firstkelownaspring: after five years of regular travel, I took my first April spin on Knox and asked my friends – did the city plant these yellow flowers? Where did they come from? – only to find out they are regulars after the snow melts. Selfies with friends during midsummer runs, when Knox is decorated in dogs and dog-walkers in colored tank-tops. Images of glowing green eyes from autumn nighttime runs when the deer herd up, and we slip by as silently as we can, crossing our fingers that they are (in fact) deer, and not coyotes or lynx or bears.

Not all images need be particular to me. I couldn’t help but pop into my piece of art the view from the gazebo at the top of Apex trail or the bench high above Paul’s Tomb. Runner after runner has taken photo after photo of these locations, but who can blame them? A couple of weeks ago, I took out a new trail runner for his first spin on Knox, and he apologized for taking so many photos of what (he assumed) must be (to me) mundane vistas. I don’t think he believed me when I told him that I have dozens of photos of the same spaces – in different lights, with different people, from silly selfies and artsy snaps, most accompanied (at the time) with some version of: I can’t believe I live here.

There are more – but suffice it to say that this map could have layers and loads of images that snapshot my inhabitance of Knox. An artist could make it look striking, these layers and lines, but for now it is just my own imagining of how my random and resolute ramblings on Knox have rooted me in this place – and how I, somehow, have made Knox: well, Knox – a place to be found and run and explored. Fancier philosophers than I (aka: Certeau) have said before that “space is a practiced place,” and “like cartographers translating physical places into graphic spaces [for my dad to peruse at gas stations], we participate in the human mapping of territories by transforming places into experiences (cred: Busque). Don’t ask me how to do the graphic work of capturing this experience through pastels or paints – I’ll leave that up to my Art Night friends, with all of their ease in the visual territory – but I will continue to build in my imagination the web of my wanderings on Knox as I run and run again. 

Cairns.

Cairns.

Balsamroot in #firstkelownaspring

Balsamroot in #firstkelownaspring

I hate winter. or, how i found koselig.

Carrie Karsgaard

I hate winter.

Throughout the fall, my ski friends puff their breath into the cold air, hoping to see wisps of white. They whoop over the first snowy run, prematurely wax their skis (and mine), pull out their woolly layers and dust off their down jackets. They buy early-bird ski passes and new socks, scheduling weekends at wood-fired cabins and in the backcountry with thermoses. Meanwhile, I soak up every active moment outside that I’m not shivering, stuffing my hydration hose down my armpit to thaw, breaking my teeth on frozen granola bars and spending my ice cream money on Hot Shots.

Last winter, over a coffee and perhaps a bit too much Bailey’s, my mom and I made a list of the Top 10 Worst Things About Winter. It included what you’d imagine: cold, darkness, seasonal weight gain, Netflix addition, antisocial behavior, icy streets, slippery sidewalks, car-scraping and block heaters. We got a bit more imaginative, too: no local, seasonal produce (hello, imported grapefruits and watery hot house cucumbers), the inability to sit on a patio, and the high cost of vitamin D supplements. Not wanting to be full-on winter Debbie Downers, we tried to think of some positives (Christmas lights? A new friendship with the local librarian? Extra time to be introverted?), but we didn’t get much past three or four.

I’m not sure when my loathing of winter began. I grew up in Edmonton, not thinking twice about wearing mis-matched mitts and my dad’s old toque from the catch-all in our front entryway, waiting at the bus stop in all get-up just to keep warm, freezing my eyelashes shut on toboggan runs, having extra pairs of Sorels in the car and the house and my locker at school, and saving money on the cheap entertainment of skating in my friends’ frozen backyards. Winter was a way of life, not something to be questioned.

Until I moved to Vancouver. Vancouverites love to address folks from any other part of Canada with exactly this line: “You’re from <<any Canadian city other than Vancouver>>?!? How could you ever live there?!?” It was in Vancouver that I learned that Edmonton was cold. And I grew to hate winter, pretending instead that I loved a soaking run in my Gore-tex jacket (and, for that matter, Gore-tex pants, shoes, gloves, socks, and headband) or that the donning of trendy Hunter gumboots was somehow preferable to tugging on my beefy Sorels.

Brief aside: I’ll save rain and seasonal affective disorder for another blog post about Vancouver.

Now that I live in Kelowna, I live in the in-between-land of winter-but-not-quite-winter, where we have snow and cold days and pervasive cloudiness, but enough warm, melty days that we resent anything below minus two and start crying for spring in early March when it doesn’t come until June. In Kelowna, as the days get shorter throughout the fall, I feel the dread of winter, of the Top Ten.

But this fall, I read an article about the Norwegian word koselig, which is how our friends in Europe's northern climes cope with winter. Koselig (from what I understand, never – lamentably – having ever been to Norway) captures all things cozy, on a much deeper level than we understand coziness here in Canada. It evokes good conversation and candles and home décor, friendship and comfort and fine spirits (in all forms of the word). A Norwegian blogger defined it more as comfort than as coziness: “basically anything can (and should) be koselig: a house, a conversation, a dinner, a person. It defines something/someone /an atmosphere that makes you feel a sense of warmth very deep inside in a way that all things should be: simple and comforting.” Thinking my country was lacking somehow in the winter survival department (how, after all, could I live in Kelowna – much less Edmonton, like my mom), I decided to embrace koselig.

My first fall in Kelowna, in a new job that no longer required I spend October and November gallivanting around Canada, I dove into koselig whole hog. I became obsessed with holiday décor, even Pinteresting candles and pillows and lights for the first time (don’t judge). My obsession even extended to a lengthy saga of getting a black, metal, pointy (read: razor sharp), 4-foot star through the Toronto airport to decorate my home (success!). I’ve experimented with candles and drinking chocolates, raclette cheeses and woollen socks, Goodreads and big batch soups, brought homemade snacks to ski shacks, pretended to love skiing until I truly began to love it, worn earmuffs on the trails, and ooh’d and ahh’d over opening our homemade canned goods from the fall. I’ve had mochas – long, toasty mochas – with friends, shared drinks and shared life, with time to look people in the eye while we chatted. Koselig.

Is it working?

Well, the days are already getting longer (how'd that happen so fast?). I flee my office at 4:30, headlamp in hand, for the running or ski trails, followed by some leftover soup. And we’re planning a trip to Montreal in February.

Montreal? How could anybody ever live there?

Koselig at home... 

Koselig at home... 

adversity, and all that (AAAT)

Carrie Karsgaard

Written October 15, 2015...

Even though it’s been a month now, the Goretex Transalpine Run (TAR) still comes up in conversation. Today, in one of those catch-up conversations where lifetimes become shrugs and single sentences, I summarized in brief this year’s challenges – injuries, unachieved goals, running without a partner – and was met with an equally abbreviated response: well, you got a chance to overcome adversity and all that. And the conversation moved forward as casually as a Starbucks line.

A month ago, I may have waved my hands dramatically: no, you don’t get it. It’s more than just that. You have no idea. Then, I’d try to make him get the picture, sharing bits and pieces of the arsenal we secretly hashtagged #therealTAR, but never posted to social media. Tears over injuries and those tough conversations with my running partner where we stared each other down and swore that our friendship meant more than finishing any stage. Hyperventilating on a mountainside with an unwanted stranger masquerading as my partner, kindly offering me gummies when all I wanted was my buddy back on the trails. Legs so puffed and pained on the downhills that my Marilyn Monroe-ing, mint gelato running skirt wasn’t even enough to make me smile. Oh, if somebody needed stories of adversity, I could deal out Big Drama.

Perhaps my friend today understood the situation – and me – more than I realized. Because today, the reduction of my Big Drama to adversity and all that (AAAT) evoked nothing more in me than an agreeable shrug. It took me longer to get here than I’d like to admit. My struggle with the challenges of TAR got in my head, and I had to confront in myself a(n albeit small) hitch in my usual state of relative buoyancy. This year, there was no snapping myself out of it, and it was more the hope of gelato at the finish line and a need to justify the vibrancy of our accordion running skirts that kept me rolling, than any kind of inner strength or resiliency.

That being said, the race got done. My friendship with Rene is stronger, as much due to our ability to just wait it out together as our imagination in supporting one another. And, despite the noggin fog that AAAT caused, I have a memories of those small things that make up why I love spending hours in the mountains: feeling my feet make their way along the rocks to the sounds of super (hear zzzzzuperrrr!) and phantastisch in Germany to belle! and bravo! in Italy, cowbells playing percussion the whole way.