Elite ultrarunner! Katie Arnold, BRIEF FLASHINGS IN THE PHENOMENAL WORLD
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens and I am the host of this podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of The Novel, Blake.
[0:14]I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company,
[0:19]reading retreats, a bookstore, and more. Learn more at ZiviMedia.com or follow me on social
[0:25]at Zivi Owens or join the community at ZiviReaders.
[0:29]Katie Arnold is back on the podcast for her latest book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World.
[0:38]Katie is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Running Home, which is what she came on to
[0:42]talk about last time in 2019. Oh my gosh, she is a contributing editor and former managing editor
[0:48]at Outside Magazine where she worked on staff for 12 years and created the popular,
[0:53]raising rippers column about bringing up adventurous children outside. I obviously could not write
[0:59]her 2018 essay in Outside won a strong kid, encourage play not competition, was nominated for a
[1:05]National Magazine Award in Service Journalism. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street
[1:10]Journal, Travel and Leisure, Runners World, ESPN The Magazine, Elle, and many others.
[1:14]Her long-form profiles have been named Runner Up in the Best American Sports Writing 2008
[1:20]and nominated for a Western Publishing Association Magazine Award. Her essays have been
[1:24]anthologized in Women's Best Friend, Another Mother Runner, and PS What Did I Tell You?
[1:30]She is the editor of the Photography Book Rio Grande and Eagles View, published by Wild Earth
[1:36]Guardians. And actually, I think it's Rio Grande. She is the author of the Photography Book Rio
[1:42]Grand and Eagles View, published by Wild Earth Guardians. Welcome, Katie. Thanks so much for
[1:47]coming back on mom's no-time-dread books as you just reminded me. It was five years ago.
[1:51]My gosh, where is the time now? And the somewhere is brief flashings in the phenomenal world,
[1:57]Zen, and the art of running free. Congratulations. Thanks, Vivi. It's great to be back.
[2:02]Okay, so we met first to talk about running home. Why don't you give the two to three lines
[2:09]to know if this is that? So people know and we get all caught up and then you can delve into this
[2:14]Sure. So running home is a near-life story and just no biggie. Yeah. Running home is about
[2:22]the death of my father and he passed away in 2010 and I had a newborn daughter and I had this crazy
[2:29]intense grief response where I thought I was dying too. And so I started running very long
[2:37]distances in the wilderness as a way to heal myself. I should say that I wasn't going from zero to
[2:42]sixty. I've always been an outdoor athlete and I've always had a running practice, but it was like
[2:49]running. I had to be in nature and I had to go out for extended periods of time because nature
[2:55]was the only thing that gave me solace in the face of this intense anxiety. And so running home
[3:02]is really the story about the story about my relationship with my father and kind of the healing
[3:08]path that brought me to long-distance mountain running. And really, which is one of the places
[3:14]I feel most myself and most at home. And so, and that was beautiful. Love that fact. Thank you.
[3:20]Thank you. So then we come to this book where you start off with a bag with this white one
[3:25]wrapping like disaster. I mean, there's something like opening up a book and like two minutes later,
[3:31]I'm like gripping the side of my chair. Well, that's so funny because I've heard from so many
[3:36]readers that they're like, I can't put it down. It's got me by the throat. And I think, you know,
[3:41]you know, it's a writer. You spend enough time with the story that you sort of lose the force
[3:46]for the trees. And yeah, it is an intense story. Like, and it does open with this very traumatic
[3:54]wilderness accident. And that's kind of the low point. Right? If we're talking like fake cinematic
[4:00]turns, which this book does not follow the most like it. And I come out right at the beginning
[4:06]by saying like, this book is not like others. You need to read this book with your body,
[4:10]not just with your thinking brain because it's trying to do this thing of closing the gap
[4:16]between the experience itself and the story of it. So it's trying to be as immediate and visceral
[4:25]as possible. And so in the intro bit where I write, it's sort of instructions for the reader,
[4:31]like I'm saying, it's not following the normal like three acts in an epiphany. Right? It's more like
[4:37]these, it's where in the flow of a river, right? It moves like a river, time sort of spans forward
[4:43]and back. And I mean, just in your opening when we were like, where did the time go? Like,
[4:48]we had a pandemic. That's what this book is trying to convey that both time is so fast and
[4:55]moving at hyper speed. And yet in the zen tradition, which I've come to sort of see,
[5:01]not as a religion, like I'm certainly not a religious person, but zen to me is more like a way of
[5:07]being in a way of living. And in zen, the idea is that all moments are included in this very moment.
[5:14]So like all past moments and all moments that have yet to happen exist right now. And so in the
[5:22]fullness of this moment, and so I tried to convey that like all past and future had to play a
[5:28]role in this book. And in the story, I was telling. And so it was tricky because, you know,
[5:34]just by writing about it, we create this little layer, this little separation between us and it,
[5:40]but I was trying in the opening and I, and judging from what readers have said that it is so gripping
[5:45]that I just brought you right into it. Like the water, like you're on the river and the water's hitting
[5:50]your face and it's cold and like you're holding onto the edge of the boat. Yes. Well, I would,
[5:56]I would venture a guess that most readers like me have not been in that exact situation. Like I've
[6:01]done very, very tame. Yeah, very. And even that, I was terrified beyond belief. But this
[6:08]experience, this is like a life or death moment of, you know, how, what is going to happen? And
[6:15]how is she going to be okay? And is she going to be? And then the only consolation being
[6:19]that the book continues? Yes. That's our alert. Right. Like she must have written the book. Like,
[6:25]we know she's so happy. But even still when you're reading, you're like, but I don't, you know,
[6:30]you just don't know. Well, and I was, I was writing, running home when this accident happened. And
[6:36]so I was like living inside two books at once, which as writers is not uncommon, like our stories
[6:43]are always overlapping. And then there's no meat beginning or end to anything. Right. It's all a
[6:48]continuum. But I, I needed to kind of lit like, I remember when I got home from the river. And I
[6:56]had to finish my book. And I called my, my agent and or my editor and we were talking about running
[7:01]home. And I was like, but, you know, I had this terrible accident. I don't know that if I can
[7:05]write right now. And she's like, and I told her the story of it. And she's like, that, that's a
[7:10]really good story. And I was like, you know, and the writer and me already knew, I was like,
[7:16]I know, I just wish it weren't my story, like a billion percent. There was no part of me that
[7:22]wanted to be living that story just to have then a story to write. And so somehow, and I think
[7:29]it's because I keep notebooks and journals. And I write about that in, in free flashings,
[7:34]all of that river, does river logs. I call them were in my notebooks. And the experience was
[7:41]still fresh after a few years. And so I was able, you know, once I finished running home,
[7:46]I was like, okay, this is, this is the book I'm writing now. And yeah, well, it was,
[7:51]can you share a little more about the story or do you want to leave readers?
[7:55]Yeah, I can share. Yeah, do you have specific questions or do you?
[7:59]Yeah, okay. So you're in the boat. And you're in the boat is, it gets you into
[8:03]dire straits here. And you have to survive. Okay. So I'll just tell you a little bit of background.
[8:09]We had been invited to go on a rafting trip with friends on the middle fork of the salmon,
[8:15]which is like a premier wilderness river, probably only second to the Colorado through the Grand
[8:20]Canyon in terms of like beauty and remoteness and just sort of bucket list, you know, to use that
[8:27]term. And friends of ours had gotten a permit because you have to enter a lottery. And we were
[8:31]invited to go with them. And so it's a private trip. So there's no guides. And my husband, Stephen,
[8:36]I have always been on rivers together. And it's, it's just a favorite place for us to spend time
[8:43]and rivers are such a great teacher of like you have to just move with the current, right? You cannot
[8:48]push the river upstream. And so we have had a lot of experience on rivers. And we went up. So we agreed,
[8:54]you know, this was a trip of a lifetime. And we would drive up to Idaho. And we left our children
[8:59]at home who were younger because the water was much too big. And as I write about in the early
[9:03]chapters right away, it's a six day trip. And we're not even two miles downstream. And the section
[9:10]in the middle fork of the salmon is a hundred miles section of river. And there's a hundred
[9:14]rapids and a hundred miles and a hundred named rapids. So those are a hundred major rapids.
[9:20]And the rapid we flipped on was not even named. And that was big. So that just goes to show you
[9:26]like what was coming up down river. And so as soon as that happens, I know I'm really badly
[9:31]injured as soon as I hit the water or as I'm in the water. And I we make it, I make it to shore,
[9:38]you know, our group, we regroup. It's clear I'm injured. And then we have to make a decision.
[9:43]And do we stay on the river? Or do we get off the river? And, you know, being two miles,
[9:49]so two miles into a hundred mile trip, you'd think like, well, let's just get out. But this is not like,
[9:53]there's no road along the river. There's no path, you know, you're downstream. So like you can't
[10:00]go back upstream.
[10:01]I mean, it's so metaphorical.
[10:03]And so yeah, we decided as a group,
[10:06]because you know, when you're in the wilderness,
[10:07]you have to make decisions as a team
[10:09]that we would stay on the river.
[10:11]And there's so many reasons why,
[10:14]but, and I share this,
[10:15]and I'll share this now
[10:16]because it sort of alludes to kind of what will come.
[10:19]It's like opening up this crack in my marriage with Steve
[10:23]was that I didn't wanna leave Steve on the river.
[10:26]You know, and I didn't wanna go out alone.
[10:29]Like, because there were a couple places
[10:30]we could have had an emergency bush plane come in and land.
[10:34]But I was so deeply loyal and connected to Steve.
[10:38]At the same time, I was in, you know,
[10:41]we were in this traumatic state after the accident
[10:45]where I'm so angry at what has happened.
[10:48]And you know, it's an accident, but that anger,
[10:51]you can't decide, oh, okay, I'm not gonna be angry, right?
[10:54]It kind of just came up and the fracture, you know,
[10:59]that I experienced in my body was also a fracture in our marriage.
[11:03]And it exposed kind of all that stuff underneath in a marriage
[11:07]that might be going on for a while,
[11:08]much of which you're unaware of,
[11:11]and a lot of which is not our own,
[11:13]but it's sort of like cultural overlay,
[11:16]generational overlay.
[11:18]And my husband and I, like I fell in love with him at first sight,
[11:22]and I write about this in the book.
[11:23]And so I knew I would always be with him from the moment
[11:25]I saw him, but that did not stop
[11:28]this accident from being a real, like, seismic shift for us.
[11:33]And we always knew we were going to be unconventional together.
[11:36]We were the only ones in both of our families who,
[11:39]you know, we were both raised on the East Coast.
[11:40]We moved out west, right?
[11:42]We're the youngest, each of us are the youngest.
[11:44]And we didn't want a normal marriage,
[11:46]but, you know, 10 years in and a couple of kids in,
[11:50]you wake up and you're like, oh my God,
[11:52]I have someone else's marriage.
[11:54]And so the accident was like a crack.
[11:58]It was like that, you know, rift in the land,
[12:01]you know, like in Superman, the movie,
[12:02]when like that crack opens up, you're like,
[12:04]oh my God, what's inside.
[12:06]And so the healing that has to happen in the aftermath of the accident
[12:10]is not just to my body nor to my spirit of, you know,
[12:16]because I'm told I should never run again, you know,
[12:19]and running is not just a sport from me.
[12:21]It's also as, it's my creative practice.
[12:23]It's how I write.
[12:25]So it's been at a lifelong love and practice for me.
[12:28]And when you hear that news from a doctor who's like,
[12:30]oh, you should never run again.
[12:32]So easy to believe that, isn't it?
[12:34]Yes. They have that authority.
[12:36]It's like they're in the white coat.
[12:38]You're in the room alone.
[12:40]And, you know, if this were that sort of fake movie,
[12:43]you know, like the river accident is the drama.
[12:46]And then this is that like clanging, like,
[12:49]doomsday symbols in the middle where he's like,
[12:51]you should never run again again again.
[12:53]You know, it's like the villain's voice.
[12:56]And so I have to hear my body, my spirit,
[13:00]and now my marriage.
[13:03]And the book really tells the story of how that happens.
[13:08]Amazing.
[13:09]I mean, I don't know if people can listen to that
[13:11]and not want to read the book, right?
[13:14]And you write beautifully.
[13:15]Let me read like a passage we would have done here.
[13:18]I mean, this is sort of what you were saying about Zen already,
[13:20]but I really liked this.
[13:22]When you said it didn't matter if it was skydiving or capoeira,
[13:25]writing, running, or Zen,
[13:27]when you understand, quote, one thing through and through,
[13:29]you understand everything.
[13:30]The accident had upended everything and made me a beginner
[13:33]all over again.
[13:34]It was unclear if my body or my marriage would come through intact
[13:37]or if I would ever run again.
[13:38]If I did, I would never run the same as I once had,
[13:41]just as I would never be the same.
[13:43]Even then, part of me understood that this was a good thing,
[13:46]maybe the very best thing.
[13:48]So good.
[13:50]Thank you.
[13:50]We don't want to go through those moments, right?
[13:52]And I really don't want to underplay like the despair
[13:58]and that sort of like just trauma in the aftermath
[14:02]because I don't want to just put a happy face and be like,
[14:04]you know, everything's an opportunity.
[14:06]You have to suffer for it and you and Zen
[14:09]and which I really discovered in the aftermath of the accident.
[14:14]Again, not as this religious doctrine,
[14:16]but as like a way of being,
[14:19]you just have to meet what is, right?
[14:21]So Zen at its most basic is just seeing the truth
[14:25]of the way things really are.
[14:27]And so the truth of the way things really were in the aftermath
[14:29]of the accident was that I was pissed as hell at my husband.
[14:33]I was so mad.
[14:35]I was in total despair that I would never run again.
[14:38]And Zen says like just be in that.
[14:41]It's like if you push it away, it gets,
[14:44]we know that it gets worse, right?
[14:47]Or if you put that Pollyanna thing like, well, it's,
[14:49]you know, lemonade, you know, the lemonade will come, right?
[14:53]And that's sort of where I write a lot in the aftermath
[14:57]of the accident about really training my mind
[15:00]to, I won't say to like be radically positive,
[15:04]but to see the possibilities.
[15:07]Do you know what I mean?
[15:08]Like I don't believe in just like fake it
[15:11]so you make it, like you have to believe it.
[15:13]And so I just had to get radically open to possibilities, right?
[15:19]Which one of the possibilities was that my doctor was completely wrong
[15:22]and not only would I run again, but I would run better than I ever had.
[15:25]And no one was saying that to me.
[15:27]Like I had to pull that out of like the depths of my brokenness
[15:31]and like see that that might be a story.
[15:33]Because it's all, you know, when you go through this in injury,
[15:37]illness, someone tells us something like makes a pronouncement
[15:41]and they have this air of authority.
[15:44]And God, we just like, we just go for it.
[15:48]We believe it.
[15:49]And that's nothing like that's not a comment on us
[15:51]and that we're like somehow weak or limited in our imagination.
[15:55]It's just, it's like this paradigm.
[15:57]And I think part of, you know, what makes this book so meaningful to me
[16:02]and I'm hearing from readers is that it's showing that we can actually rewrite the narrative.
[16:07]And now I'm being fake or pushing away our pain,
[16:11]but by like going deep into it.
[16:13]Well, I mean, people like I aspire to live like you.
[16:18]Like this is such a healthy attitude.
[16:20]Yeah.
[16:21]I know it's hard one hard one, but so healthy.
[16:24]I really love to be a beginner.
[16:26]And that's one of the big mindsets with that I learned from Zen in the wake of the accident.
[16:31]So I'll just tell you quickly a really dear friend of mine,
[16:34]like a few months after my my injury.
[16:36]When I wasn't even sure I was running again,
[16:38]brought me a book and the book was called Zen Mine Beginners Mine,
[16:41]which is a classic Zen text.
[16:44]And it was written as compiled series of Dharma talks
[16:48]that this late Zen month gave in the late 60s.
[16:51]And my friend Natalie gave it to me and she's like, you know,
[16:54]you've probably not going to understand it.
[16:55]And she did not mean that dismissively or like as a comment on my intellect more
[17:00]that like Zen can be very enigmatic and hard to understand.
[17:04]And so I started reading it and as soon as I started reading it,
[17:08]I understood it like completely.
[17:10]And I understood it because I understood running and Zen in running and Zen in cooking
[17:16]and Zen and you know, like anything are the same thing.
[17:20]It's like showing up for a practice, letting go of it,
[17:24]needing to be a certain way and coming at it fresh every day
[17:28]with what is called beginner's mind.
[17:30]And so beginner's mind like is such freedom.
[17:33]And that's where the subtitle comes in.
[17:35]Like if we can be in that state of beginner's mind,
[17:37]which is like, oh my god, I've been running for 12 years
[17:40]or you've been doing your podcast for X long,
[17:42]but you sit down at your desk and you're like,
[17:44]I'm a beginner today, like anything can happen.
[17:47]And that means also anything, you know,
[17:51]transcendent can happen.
[17:52]Like you may have some epiphany or some big leap in your podcast practice.
[17:58]Do you know what I mean?
[17:59]And I think we resist beginner's mind because we,
[18:03]it makes us look like we don't know things.
[18:05]And in our culture, we're supposed to know everything.
[18:08]We're in Zen not knowing is actually a form of like enlightened state.
[18:12]You know, it's in a wake and state to be in that position of like,
[18:16]I don't know because when you don't know so much more as possible,
[18:21]right? Like thank goodness, we can't imagine all the possibilities in the world.
[18:24]Like our imaginations are far too limited and that's a good thing.
[18:27]Yeah. I mean, without enough inputs,
[18:30]you can't like take them in, rearrange them, make meaning and have any sort of
[18:34]output of any value.
[18:36]Right. And so just going into each day being like,
[18:39]okay, show me what like I'm a beginner,
[18:41]which isn't to say like your it's false modesty or you're not honoring your experience
[18:47]or your past, but it's carrying those with you and then being like,
[18:51]whoa, what's show me today? Like what am I supposed to learn?
[18:55]And it's a really fresh way of being and then some days our ego gets in the way.
[18:59]A lot of days, you know, like I need to be the expert or, you know, like,
[19:02]who do they think, you know, don't they know who I am or whatever?
[19:05]But if we can keep trying to come back to that beginner's mindset,
[19:09]we're capable of so much more than we thought ever possible.
[19:14]And so how is your body feeling now and what is your relationship to running like now?
[19:18]Yeah. I mean, my body's feeling good. It's like it's older.
[19:22]It's a few years older, but I'm running still a lot.
[19:26]And I'm out every day. Like really, for me, it's about having a relationship with my body
[19:33]and my mind because you can really see your imagination when you're out moving and with the natural
[19:38]world. And so I'm out every day. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So we have trails and mountains
[19:45]right out the door, but we also have just, you know, town sidewalks and it's lilax season in
[19:51]Santa Fe, which like, I just keep saying to my daughter, I'm like, when my time comes,
[19:55]bearing me under a lilax, like no better thing exists for me.
[20:00]Because, you know, so you can have that relationship,
[20:03]you don't need big mountains or wilderness or like this epic river
[20:06]canyon, you know, you can find it out your door.
[20:08]And so one of my favorite things right now is just to take my two
[20:11]dogs for a walk in the evening.
[20:13]And literally we stop and smell every lilac.
[20:18]Again, it's all just so visual.
[20:19]Yeah.
[20:20]Everything, the way you talk, the way you write, it's like,
[20:23]you just, you know, the transportative quality.
[20:27]Yeah, no word, trends, something, anywhere.
[20:29]Transporter, maybe.
[20:30]Transporter, it's like, and I think that's kind of the message is like,
[20:34]we're alive right now in our bodies in this world in this moment.
[20:39]And like, let's live in it, you know,
[20:43]let's go out in the world and, and it gets increasingly hard for
[20:46]all of us because we live like in a digital world too.
[20:50]And, but just, and this speaks to the title of the book,
[20:54]these brief flashings in the phenomenal world are always happening.
[20:57]They're like, little sparks going off that you're like, oh, my God,
[21:00]I'm connected, you know, I'm part of everything.
[21:03]The like, I'm alive.
[21:05]It can be as simple as that.
[21:06]And it could just be like the lilac, you know, tree and bloom,
[21:10]or, you know, the way the lights coming in through a window.
[21:14]It can be a peak experience too.
[21:16]But it oftentimes these flashings are just beautiful ordinary moments
[21:19]that we are too busy to miss.
[21:21]Oh my gosh, I love it.
[21:23]Okay, parting advice for aspiring authors.
[21:26]Oh, let's see.
[21:27]I have, I have many, but I would say keep notebooks.
[21:30]Just keep a notebook.
[21:31]I know people like to write on tablets now and computers,
[21:35]but there's something you were talking about the physicality.
[21:38]And this book is a very physical book and it even says on the back,
[21:41]read this book with your body, like bring your body to it,
[21:44]not just your thinking brain, writing by hand in a notebook,
[21:47]not only does it not require batteries, a plug in, WiFi or anything.
[21:52]But it's a physical act.
[21:54]Like it's your hand moving on the paper.
[21:57]You can take your notebook, cram it in your back pocket or whatever
[22:01]and go out for a walk and like sit somewhere pretty for five minutes
[22:05]and put your notebook on your lap.
[22:07]That's my advice.
[22:08]And just write down what you see and also like put zero pressure
[22:11]on yourself to put anything of value in the notebook.
[22:14]Because when you release that pressure to write great things,
[22:17]you just write what's real.
[22:19]And that is the greatest thing.
[22:21]Amazing.
[22:22]There's way.
[22:23]I'm going to take your advice.
[22:24]I'm going to get there.
[22:26]Get out there.
[22:26]Look, there's so many kinds.
[22:28]You can have fancy moleskins.
[22:30]Oh, I even said you want to take that out.
[22:33]You're right.
[22:33]You did.
[22:34]Right.
[22:35]And it says for free flashing.
[22:36]Yeah.
[22:37]And you can just keep a little notebook and write down your free flashings.
[22:40]Because they're always all around us.
[22:41]And they don't have to be, you know, epic or monumental.
[22:44]Okay.
[22:45]I'll do it.
[22:46]Katie.
[22:46]Thank you very much.
[22:47]And so glad to be here.
[22:48]Okay.
[22:49]Yeah.
[22:50]Thank you for taking your time.
[22:51]Okay.
[22:52]Thank you.
[22:53]Bye.
[22:57]Thanks for listening.
[22:58]Two moms don't have time to read books.
[22:59]If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at
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