Intrepid

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My nephew, Adlai Owen, was a brave kid. As we noted in his obituary, he started using the word “intrepid” as soon as he learned it, at age one and a half—to describe himself.

There were moments when his bravery flagged, as bravery does when it’s real. One of these was a year ago today, when he and my mom and I went for a hike in Big Cottonwood Canyon, outside of Salt Lake City.

Here’s something about me: I hate bugs. Bugs are drawn to sweat—the repellent DEET works by chemically blocking their ability to smell it—and I am a profuse sweater. One could argue, then, that when everybody is getting mobbed by bugs, I am getting more mobbed by bugs. Bugs are a reliable dealbreaker for me on a hike. I’ll come back in September.

That hike.

But this was July, and in September I would not be there. It was my last day of a short trip to Salt Lake.

Moreover, Adlai was already not sold on the hike—dragging his feet, pouting a little, assessing his options. I knew from an earlier experience that in certain cases my opinion carried extra weight with this kid. We saw each other only a couple of times a year, and we were legends to each other: hearing all the stories, lionizing from a distance, awestruck when meeting in the flesh. Two years earlier, we’d been in the Uinta Mountains, at a reservoir, and Adlai had not wanted to so much as enter a kayak; he’d had a scary experience in one recently. Dad and Grandma were not getting anywhere on persuasion. When I finally talked him into getting in with me, just for a minute and as a favor, he didn’t want to stray far from shore. “We’re not gonna go any deeper,” he told me in a video I have watched and laughed out loud at a hundred times. “You’re just gonna lightly push me in the shallows.” I decided on a judicious and selective disregard of his wishes, paired with diverting conversation. In the end, he loved it.

So on the hike a year ago, I battened down. I wasn’t going to back out. I wasn’t going to complain about the bugs. On the contrary: I hoped Adlai might come away from that day not only having made it to Dog Lake but also primed not to share his uncle’s loathing of bugs—to recognize, instead, their harmlessness and inevitability. Maybe it was a chance for him not to carry forward someone else’s burden. I smiled. I asked him to hold my hand, which he did throughout the hike. We passed through bug hell, and Adlai was none the wiser.

That night in Sugarhouse Park we celebrated with pizza, and I showed him yoga moves. At crow pose he was an instant adept. I never saw him again.

Next Tuesday would be Adlai’s seventh birthday, and between now and then lies an undertaking against which my own bravery sometimes falters. The Ironman slogan is “Anything is possible.” A skeptic will note that “anything” in a full-distance mountain-course Ironman could include (and has included) various undesirable outcomes: injury, illness, DNF (did not finish). In such moments it’s important to remember why you decided to do something. My reason for doing this was that I’d gone from knowing that I couldn’t to not knowing if I could, and I wanted to settle it. I’m not influencing Adlai anymore, but there’s a decent possibility that I wake up on Monday someone who could do it—who did. Certainly I will have tried. If Adlai were here, I’d want him to know about that.

Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram.