Today Doug opens the container with author and outdoor journalist Katie Arnold.
This episode of Open Container looks at the connection between Zen philosophy and heading outside. Doug opens the show recounting the lessons he learned while backpacking 30 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the oldest Japanese monastery in the US. The lessons he learned along the way helped to remind him of some basic tenants in times of stress: Go outside. See things. And see the world that sees you.
Doug is then joined by author and Zen teacher, Katie Arnold. Katie's new book Brief Flashings In The Phenomenal World is a Zen study but also a memoir of a time of pain and struggle in Katie's life.
Katie and Doug talk about the the essence of flow—a state of being where individuals become one with their activity. Katie also articulates her transformative journey following a life-altering injury, explaining how Zen principles aided her in continuing her passion for running and her relationship with nature.
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Episode Transcript
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:00:00.160 - 00:07:49.104
Today's episode of Open Container is presented by Oboz.
Many of you already know Oboz, that plucky little brand from Bozeman that stood up in 2007 in a crowded footwear space and said, there's room for me too. An upstart outlier with a weird name, roomy toe box and well built offerings for committed hikers.
It's a combination that has attracted a loyal following for 20 years, and we're excited to partner with Oboz because they are committed to shining a light on the core activity to offer all our outdoor pursuits. Hiking. You know, hiking. The thing we all do but no.
One is talking about. We are unified by hiking. Oboz loves hiking and that's something I can get down with.
Over the coming months, we'll be opening the Container and getting on the trail with our friends from Bozeman. Oboz love hiking. Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. I'm a journalist, writer and overall lover of the outdoors.
I fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and I can run a mean chainsaw.
On this podcast, we're going to have an open conversation about culture, conservation, policy, business issues that matter the most to the outdoor community. Let's get some California's Ventana Wilderness is one of the most powerful places you can explore.
To start, the Big Sur coast itself is one of the wildest spots in the ever more crowded state of California, where so much of the seaside is developed. It refuses to be tamed, the roads often washed out or blocked, the bridges feature on the COVID of road atlases.
Giant redwoods survive wildfires, and every time you turn the corner, the ecosystem changes.
In this place, you go from the crashing waves of the Pacific to Manzanita to Madrone forest to oak groves to the presence of those magnificent redwoods, all within the next bend in the trail. It's also a nearly impenetrable place.
The trails disappear or are destroyed by landslides, and the deep forest with its thick underbrush filled with poison oak is extremely difficult to navigate. If you do go off the path, that's what makes it so appealing to me. It's a place that refuses to be easily explored, mapped, conquered.
It's like the mind in that way, deep and always requiring more to access its most important secrets and knowledge.
It's also the home of the Tessahara Zen center, the oldest Japanese Buddhist Zen monastery in the United states, established in 1967 by famed teacher Suzuki Roshi, the author of one of my favorite books, Zen Mind, Beginner's mind. Suzuki Roshi's teaching was quite simple. We are all beginners, or at least we can always see things in new ways, work on our disciplines.
As he once famously said to his students, all of you are perfect just as you are and need a little improvement. A discipline can be anything from skiing and climbing to meditation.
If we approach them every time as if it were the first time, if we enter with curiosity and engage with a mind ready to learn. I enjoy this way of practicing, of.
Being in the world.
One of the things I love about skiing is that no matter how good I get at it, no matter how much I learn, no matter how much I improve my form, there's always so much more to experience. An ocean More Ventana wilderness is also the site of the best backpacking trip I have ever undertaken.
My wife and I were signed up to be working students at the Tassajara Monastery. There's a road that goes from Carmel Valley up to Tassajara, which is the way most people go.
But we decided to do it as a 30 mile backpacking trip from Julia Pfeiffer Burns State park on the Pacific Ocean to the monastery. The trip started out easy enough. We followed the trail to the popular Sykes hot Springs where we soaked in the waters.
But from there it got a little more interesting. The path completely disappeared and we had to find trailblazes on trees that had been consumed by a wildfire years ago.
We had to make our way through poison oak, which luckily doesn't have a huge effect on me. We had to scramble over massive charred redwoods.
Somehow we stayed on the path, which seemed very appropriate for a trip to visit a monastery and the next valley. Things got even weirder.
The trail had been completely destroyed by a landslide and we had to follow a path with a makeshift sign on it that said it was the Boy Scout trail. At points there were what you would call fixed ropes, but they were just laundry line wire to keep you from sliding down into the creek below.
Just before we got to the monastery, we slept in an oak forest and it felt like one of the most peaceful places I've ever been. On this trip I kept thinking about one of my favorite Zen koans. It goes like Ava Kitlo Chivara.
The Buddha of compassion has 1000 arms and on the palm of each hand of each arm 1000 eyes. Which one is the one true eye?
I think this koan, which is a story designed to make you think outside of the ordinary, could drive logical people crazy. Someone who wants an answer wants to know which in fact is the one true eye. Who knows? That's the beauty of it.
And if we look at the world around us, if we experience it, compassion is holding us up and viewing us no matter where we are or where we look, from the most beautiful spots to the most mundane. And likewise, we are looking back at it. We are seeing the world with 1000 arms and 1000 eyes here to care for it.
I think that's a good way for us as humans to interact with the natural world as well as the people around us. It's an important reminder too, in these times when people are filled with such distress. Go outside, see things and see that the world sees you.
That's good medicine for anyone, no matter your beliefs. When we did reach the monastery, it felt as if we were monks wandering in from the dusty desert.
We were already at ease and it was a wonderful week we spent there working in the kitchen, sitting and meditating and enjoying the beauty of that place where the birds come down and eat from your hand and the fish bump their noses into you when you sit in the river. It almost seems too good to be true.
But the magic of the place comes simply from the attitudes of the people who live there and the respect they have for the world around them and each other. We could all use a practice like that. We can all easily engage in it.
I'm talking about Zen today because my guest, Katie Arnold, is one of the best Zen teachers I know. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Running Home, published by Random House in 2019.
She's a former managing editor at Outside magazine, where she worked on staff for 12 years and created the popular Raising Rippers column about bringing up adventurous children. She's also a passionate ultra runner and in 2018 she won the Leadville Trail 100.
Her new book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World is a Zen study wrapped in a memoir of destruction and healing written by an elite ultra runner as she struggles to make it to the the other side of a life shattering injury with her sanity and her marriage intact. So let's open the container with Katie Arnold. I am very excited to have someone I've admired for a long time on. The show today, Katie Arnold, who is. The author of the new book Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, Zen and the Art of Running Free.
Really excited to have you on today today, Katie, and great to see you.
Katie Arnold
00:07:49.192 - 00:07:57.500
Thanks, Doug. I'm super excited to see you and chat with you about the book. And yeah, been a big fan of yours too for a while. Thank you.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:07:58.040 - 00:08:00.752
And we have a whole lot of. Difficult questions coming up here.
Katie Arnold
00:08:00.856 - 00:08:03.700
Okay. Hope I'm ready.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:08:04.120 - 00:08:19.250
Obviously, the first, I think something you. Write about a lot and you teach, you run camps having to do with this. I think it's a thread that goes.
Through all of your work. And I wanted to ask you, what is flow?
Katie Arnold
00:08:19.590 - 00:09:56.420
Starting right off with the stumper, of course. Yeah.
So flow state is an experience that you have and you can be doing myriad things, but many people think of it when they are doing athletic pursuits. It's when you become so deeply part of the thing you're doing that your sense of self dissipates. Right. And you become the activity you're doing.
So the borders between you and your sport, or if you're a rock climber, you and the wall, or a trail runner kind of you and the trail dissolve. And so you feel as though you are the thing you're doing. There is a sense of heightened awareness. All your senses become sharper.
You might smell or see more clearly. And there's a feeling that you are at once small within this vaster world and also connected to everything.
And so flow state really is characterized by a sense of ease. Right. It's not that it's easy, but that it's a natural state. And you are challenging yourself, but you are not pushing, if that makes sense.
You are kind of moving with the energy of the world. You're not moving from a desire to gain something or to prove something, but it's a total immersion in both the natural world.
If you're outside, but just in your activity, if that makes sense.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:09:57.160 - 00:10:02.784
It makes a lot of sense, yeah. And do you think it's something that everyone is capable of experiencing?
Katie Arnold
00:10:02.912 - 00:11:30.110
Absolutely. Right. So we hear about it most commonly with professional athletes in pro sports, like we were just talking about, it's often called the zone.
And so we. There's this perception that maybe it's reserved for only the most elite athletes or elite performers among us, musicians, whatnot, artists.
But actually it's a state that I believe that we all have access to and that we actually are all flow within us. Right. Flow is. We're not just trying to reach flow. We're trying to let out our natural flow state.
And that's possible in these tiny little glimmers of moments. That's where I got the name of my book, brief flashings.
So there are these brief flashings that hit us where we feel all at once that we are dissolved and part of everything. And there's no. I don't know if in life I have the saying with my girls, my daughters, like, either you're sticking or you're clicking, right?
And we know that feeling. When things are clicking, things are just sort of lining up. There's serendipity, chance encounters.
And when things are sticking, everything feels harder. And so flow state really is. It's a feeling of ease and naturalness, of a sort of natural momentum you have inside of yourself.
You're not having to push anything or try, but you are just sort of going along with the natural current of energy in the world.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:11:30.230 - 00:11:38.970
I love that. Do you think that most people have experienced it in some way, or do you think most people have been away from it?
Katie Arnold
00:11:39.320 - 00:13:36.560
I think most people have probably experienced it. They might not have known what to call it because, again, I think there's this sort of unfair link or bias toward these elite athletes.
Like, you hear it a lot with Michael Jordan and other pro athletes, where it belongs to this rarefied group of athletes. And really, I think it's anytime you have that little sort of electric connection to yourself in the world, whether it's your own creativity.
I have it a lot as a writer, so not just in my life as an athlete.
Or it might just be when you're walking down the street and you see something that you haven't seen before, and it sparks an idea or it sparks a memory, and it's this feeling of, like, time dissolving. So, and this is where it gets into kind of the discussion of Zen, where, you know, everything's included in this moment. Right?
There's not these firm, fixed boundaries. We are part of everything all at once. And that's really. And so I think people probably have felt it and again, maybe not known what it was.
I was just listening to a podcast today with the Australian writer Charlotte Wood, and she was talking about those little flickering moments, and I was like, oh, the brief flashings, you know, and so they're always there. They're always around us. They're available to us.
But the problem is that so many of us move through the world in a distracted state, you know, and no wonder. The world has a lot to distract us with right now. But we're distracted by our phones, our to do lists, and we're not outside as much.
We're not, you know, flow really happens in nature. That's one of the biggest sort of conduits. And we're just disconnected from our. From the sort of physical, tactile world outside.
And so, yeah, I think that it's always out there.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:13:37.740 - 00:13:55.696
I like that.
Yeah, I think I've probably felt it most, oddly enough, climbing or mountaineering at points where I should have been scared and instead felt this of sense of peace that sort of surprised me. And I'm not even sure if I could make myself go into it, but I felt it.
Katie Arnold
00:13:55.848 - 00:16:14.750
Yeah, I don't think you can make yourself go into it. I mean, I think there are conditions or quality. I call them qualities of being.
And I'm writing my third book is really sort of a field guide to flow state. And there are qualities of being, right? And so to. You might call them mindsets.
I sort of think of them as qualities of being because mindset implies just the way we think about things, but this is really how we live.
And there's basic things like gratitude and being in a state of curiosity and a state of willingness to experience something that you haven't before, or to drop preconceived ideas and see things differently. Obviously, preparation is a big part of flow state, Right? You need to do the work, so to speak. Right.
So that day that you were on the wall and feeling that flow state, you probably had been practicing the route or climbing a lot. And then another quality is determination. So when things go off the rails, as they all always do. Right.
Flow is not an absence of difficulty or adversity. It's how we respond to that adversity.
And if we sort of resist it or grip against it, that's a, you know, we just sort of slam into the wall, the anti flow wall. And so those are the big qualities. So if you kind of come in. Did I say humility? That's a big one, right.
Realizing that the world, and the natural world especially, is much older and vaster and stronger and more powerful than we are.
And to come in with a certain sense of humility, which I think is what's a lot of what's missing in the outdoor world right now, and has been for a while.
You can hear it in our language, too, when we're like, I'm going to crush the mountain, I bag the pee, you know, and actually, like, when we are in flow, we're realizing that our energy is finite as humans, but the mountain's energy is infinite. And so if we let the mountain carry us up it, we'll get there with a lot less effort and less fatigue.
Whereas if we're just trying to dominate the mountain, you know, that's sort of how I've always run.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:16:15.370 - 00:16:33.138
I like that. I know you like Suzuki Roshi, and it makes me think of Suzuki Roshi. Quote, I Go to practicing yoga or meditation or anything, I think.
And it's try to remove anything extra, you know, extraneous from your practice. Ego is something extra. Get rid of it.
Katie Arnold
00:16:33.194 - 00:17:09.582
Get rid of ego. And remembering, like holding on to past performance is something extra, right?
And that's something that, you know, that's a harder one to let go of because it's not like you want to forget completely what you've done or ignore the success you've had in the past. It's just a matter of holding it lightly, but then going forward into. I'm a huge fan of Suzuki Roshi.
But that beginner's mind, right, that everything new starts now. Like, you may be an expert rock climber or ultra runner, but in each moment you're brand new.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:17:09.686 - 00:17:14.508
Yeah, it's a beautiful way to approach the world too, right? That everybody time you do something, it's.
Katie Arnold
00:17:14.524 - 00:17:44.230
A new experience and it's like, okay, show me. That's always what I go into. It's like I have this invisible switch in my arm that I think of, and it's the receive switch.
And so whenever I go into something new, whether it's a new race or even an interview like we're doing, it's like I imagine like flipping that switch into just receive mode, right? It's like, okay, now, like, I'm here to receive. What is this about? And it might not go the way I want, but I'm receiving nonetheless.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:17:44.570 - 00:17:59.746
I like that a lot. That actually goes right into something I wanted to ask you, which is, when did the big switch flip for you?
When did you first feel you were kind of living the way you truly wanted to be living, that you were within flow? Has that even happened yet?
Katie Arnold
00:17:59.898 - 00:18:41.730
Did that happen? It has happened. Right. But flow state is also. I just want to say to people who are listening, don't despair.
Flow state is not a permanent state of existence. We go in and out of it. The out parts are just as important, right? The eddies are just as important to the flow of the river.
And I use rivers a lot as a big teacher of mine. And that's a lot. You know, a lot of brief flashings in the phenomenal world is centered around rivers and what they can teach us.
But, you know, there's slack water and rivers. There's, you know, eddies where you swirl around with like, all the logs and detritus and, you know, whatever.
And then there's when you're flowing, you know, smoothly and. So what was your question?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:43.230 - 00:18:46.214
When did the big switch flip you? When did you really.
Katie Arnold
00:18:46.302 - 00:18:46.758
When I.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:46.814 - 00:18:48.662
When did you kind of move into something else?
Katie Arnold
00:18:48.726 - 00:20:06.962
Yeah, I think that I've always been experiencing that in my life and been fortunate to be aware of it, if not having the exact sort of language for what it was, that came later. But, I mean, since I was a very young girl, I started experiencing it with my creativity and as a. You know, with my writing and.
And I learned very young. My parents divorced, my mother remarried, and we relocated to New Jersey. And things were complicated and different. Right.
I was part of a new family and new siblings. And it was also the 70s and 80s and parenting was super different. It was like, if you're home by dinner, that's a win for us. Right.
Like, as long as you survive. And so I had a lot of time on my own as kids in that era did. You're sure. One of them.
Especially in the suburbs of New York and New Jersey, you're just free roam, free range, rather. And so I was outside a lot, and I just found totally by accident that. And the first time I really clearly remembered, I was in my backyard.
We had a basketball hoop, you know, and I was just doing. What are those called? Like, layups. What's the little thing where you hit it and then it goes in every time? Yeah, I mean, made shots.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:20:07.026 - 00:20:07.698
Made shots.
Katie Arnold
00:20:07.794 - 00:20:10.414
Back to professional sports. Wow. See, that's flow.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:20:10.462 - 00:20:10.622
Right?
Katie Arnold
00:20:10.646 - 00:21:12.420
Now we're in flow. I would just do that over and over. And I was not a basketball player. I had no illusions of playing basketball.
I didn't even particularly like it, but I loved the repetitive motion and the focus that when my body was doing something physical, the place my mind went, right. It became. It was quieted by the repetitive motion of shooting the basket.
And I would just by accident find myself making up these elaborate stories in my head. And so that's the first time I really connected sort of physical movement or practice with the creative practice and storytelling through movement.
And so I certainly felt it then. And then kind of whenever I would go ride my bike, it was like little sparks, like those little brief flashings would go off.
And this is suburban New Jersey, you know, there's nothing glamorous. There's no big wilderness. I always say that because people are like, do you need epic mountains? You do not need anything like that. You just need.
You need an old bike and streets to ride around.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:21:12.960 - 00:21:13.960
Oh, yes, yes.
Katie Arnold
00:21:14.040 - 00:23:51.300
So I felt it then. And then I've been, you know, really feeling it on and on. I mean, I've been exploring that my whole life, because again, no one told Me this.
You know, no one was like, when you go outside and do something, you'll get ideas. And so it was like my little private personal joy and practice that I did.
But I would say, really, you know, in my 30s, 20s, and 30s, once I moved to Santa Fe and was writing and an actress, athlete, I felt that the interconnection between movement and the imagination, and that's really a flow state that's like being reinforced by both sides, right? You're not just trying to sit at your desk and find flow. Like, a deep part of my writing practice is movement. And same thing when I'm out.
I'm not just out as an athlete on my watch, like, grinding out the miles, like the tempo, the workout to, you know, movement is really serving my writing. So all of that was just building.
And then I will say, really, after my accident that I write about in brief flashings, I was in this really bad wilderness river accident on the middle fork of the salmon and broke my leg and was told I should never run again. And it was in the aftermath of that that I really turned to Zen to sort of deepen my understanding of what flow is.
Because just another word for flow is presence, right? It's being present in the moment. And.
And so that's when it all came together, and that's when it sort of really seeped into my running and changed the way I ran. I'd always been a different kind of athlete where I never really did workouts or trainings.
I would just run for the feeling again, I think, because a lot of it was the running with serving my writing. And you have to be careful when that's happening, because if you make it too much of a grind or too, you know, where there's too.
You're too focused on the outcome, you lose that flow state, right? You lose that creative flow. And so I was always walking this very delicate line.
Like, if I went too deep into sort of, you know, today's training schedule, I would just, you know, it's like drain out all my flow. Like, you might as well just pour it out.
And so, yeah, it was really in the aftermath of that accident and kind of healing and coming back and realizing that if I was going to run again, I would need to run very differently than I had that I. And I was practicing meditation more and reading a lot more Zen that I. That sort of everything started to click.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:23:52.120 - 00:24:00.400
And, you know, did you ever go back and tell the person that told you you were never gonna run again that you went on to go win Light bill.
Katie Arnold
00:24:00.440 - 00:24:35.434
After that, I did not tell the surgeon. However, I did thank him in my acknowledgments and brief flashings. He did an excellent job. He just.
Yeah, he put a story on me that I was not ready to have, you know, to claim as my own.
And that was a really important part of the healing, is to realize that just because someone's in a white coat and telling us how it's going to be does not mean that is so. And we have the power to really take charge of our healing.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:24:35.562 - 00:24:52.692
And this is. I mean, this is kind of. If anyone needs proof that this works, right, you can say, yeah.
I mean, if people don't know you went and, you know, won, probably the hardest, most competitive one of them, at least ultra ultras there is. So you really put it into action as well.
Katie Arnold
00:24:52.876 - 00:26:29.260
Yeah, I certainly applied it to Leadville. And I think if there was that sort of, like, ah, moment, you know, where it's like the symbols and like, you know, it's the climax of the movie.
Right. If this were a movie, it's where everything comes together. That's certainly the Leadville finish line.
When I won that race in a historically fast time, um, and I felt as though I was in flow state the whole time. And I had a plan going in where I was like, okay, I'm just going to try to be in flow as long as I can.
Cause I'd felt that right in my preparation for the race, and I. I felt what. That how I wanted to feel on race day. And. But I thought, you know, I'm bound to pop out. It's a hundred miles.
I'd never run 100 miles before. And it was just like, okay, when I come out of flow, when I pop out of flow, I'm just gonna have to hold on for the rest.
And, you know, I crossed that finish line and like, I hadn't. I'd been in flow the whole way, which is to say it was easy, Right. But it had that fluidity, that effortless feeling, that sense of rightness.
I think a better word is naturalness. Right. That's a big word in Zen naturalness. And it just. It felt like. And I think this really is what flow is. Like a purest, pure expression of.
Of who I really am.
And when you're really aligned with kind of sort of who you are in the deepest part of you and you're doing that, that is, you know, and there's no gap. Again, that's this Zen idea of no gap between you and what you're doing. That's. That is deep flow state.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:26:29.880 - 00:26:51.066
I love that. But I think it's also important, right, that you would never tell someone that, like, you shouldn't meditate or you shouldn't practice flow.
You shouldn't practice to get the win, right? To get the job. Like, that's not the point of meditation if you're meditating, is it?
Someone says, like, you know, if you're meditating to get the win as an end result, that's not what you should be doing.
Katie Arnold
00:26:51.138 - 00:28:29.160
Right? And that's really what I was studying a lot that year when I wasn't sure if I would ever run again or run well or run the same way.
And, you know, it's that letting go of the result or the outcome and just being completely present to. Again, I'm using this word preparation, right?
So preparation for me was not necessarily like preparing to win Leadville, but it was preparing to do my best in each moment. And so you're, you know, you're making preparation.
But I never once, and this is completely true, and I write about it in my book, I never once, in all the months leading up to Leadville or when I was healing my leg before I knew I would run Leadville, ever thought I would win Leadville. You know, plan my training around winning Leadville. Right? And that gives you that total freedom.
And that's, you know, the freedom in the title Zen and the Art of Running Free. That gives you freedom versus if you're clutching really hard to, you know, a result.
I want to, you know, run it in this time, or I want to win it, or, you know, if you're, say, with meditation, I want to have no thoughts, right.
That, you know, to work with the result in mind is to undercut your efforts rather than just being present and say, I'm going to make my best effort in this moment and see where it takes me. That's, again, that receiving mindset of like, okay, I'm open. If I make my best true effort, where will it lead me?
It won't always lead you to the finish line, but it will always lead you somewhere valuable and good.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:28:29.620 - 00:28:51.340
Oh, that's great. Yeah. So I think that brings us to the big question, the big scary question, right? Which is, what is Zen? And I think, right.
And I think a lot of people have misconceptions about it.
They love to say that, oh, something's so Zen, someone so Zen, and that makes them think it's just someone who sits there and is it affected by anything in this guy? Right? Yes, Right.
Katie Arnold
00:28:51.460 - 00:28:51.788
Right.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:28:51.844 - 00:28:52.780
We're making faces here.
Katie Arnold
00:28:52.820 - 00:31:55.450
Yeah, yeah, we're all, like, Zenned out or like Zen is like a decor or something, like, ye. And so, yeah, Zen.
And I have a funny scene in the very beginning of the book where I'm going to give a dharma talk, which is Zen, you know, a talk that usually starts a meditation period at a Zen center. And I've been invited to give a dharma talk about running and Zen or the Zen of running.
And at this point, this was 2018, and, you know, I've been studying Zen and reading Zen and sort of not really like just studying with my brain, but absorbing it into my body. And so I have a deep. I've absorbed it and I've run with it and all that.
And still, you know, a few weeks before this dharma talk and I write about this, I was like, what is Zen? You know, I felt like I needed to have that definition. But Zen by its very, you know, character and definition is often beyond definition.
So what I will say is very simply, the way I understand it is Zen is meeting the world as it is in that moment. And so it's facing squarely into the dharma, which also can be defined or described as the truth of the way things really are.
So it's not, you know, it's not seeing the world as we want it or as it used to be or we wish it were, but right now in this moment. And so that's meeting all things as they are. So again, just going back to those misconceptions, it's not always a blissed out state.
It's like facing into the fact I'm really angry right now and seeing your anger. Right. And that may be especially pertinent right now. Like, I'm facing into my anger or I'm facing into my pain or my fear.
And it's not pushing things away thinking, oh, I need to be this serene person, right? I need to try to get serene again.
Like, that's trying to reach an outcome, but finding when you meet the world as it is, exactly as it is, it can bring you some serenity. This feeling of, okay, this is what we've got, right? And acceptance.
And that's not to say it's, you know, I think another misperception is that Zen is very passive, that people just kind of hang out with no ambition and no goals and kind of just watch the world do what it it does. And that's not it at all. Another way I think about it is Zen is making true effort with your spirit in each moment.
And so it's being who you really are with great determination every moment. And that's hard work, right? To let go of kind of ego and what we want to happen, to just make true effort in each moment.
I think that's actually possibly harder than moving toward a goal. But when I strongly believe, just from my own experience, that when you do live that way, you'll oftentimes reach or exceed that goal.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:31:56.910 - 00:31:58.294
You can still have goals.
Katie Arnold
00:31:58.422 - 00:32:58.500
You can still have goals, but you're like, okay, so just to use my example of Leadville, I had the goal. I knew that on August 18th or whatever, I was going to be running this race. And that I really. My only goal really, was to try to finish.
And so I could hold it out here, but just lightly, like, there it is. And then, okay, what's today? Today I'm going to go run five miles.
Today I'm going to go up the mountain, or today I'm going to walk my daughters to school and spend a lot of time on my feet. Right.
So it's not that you have your head in the sand or you're unambitious, but it's just that you're very disciplined or about staying in the moment and staying in this moment rather than jumping ahead.
Because I think if you just jump ahead to the outcome, A, you might miss a lot of the detours that are really the path along the way, and B, if you don't reach that specific outcome, you might be really disappointed and not see actually that there were all these more important things that you were meant to learn from it.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:32:59.200 - 00:33:15.690
My wife Radha, who's a practices Buddhism and studies Buddhism and is also a poet, wanted me to ask you this question in particular, which is, is Zen a physical practice as well as a mental and spiritual practice? How is that?
Katie Arnold
00:33:15.730 - 00:35:46.094
So my Zen practice is deeply physical, just like my writing practice is deeply physical. Right. We think of writing as just sitting at your desk typing away.
But actually, a lot of my writing happens when I'm riding my bike or walking my dogs. You know, it's in my head. It's the movement of ideas. And same thing.
I think people think of Zen as this very still, static practice of sitting meditation, which is certainly important. And I have a sitting practice.
And just today I ran up the mountain and then I sat for about 10 minutes, and as I was sitting, I was like, oh, I just felt my body like drinking in the stillness and how important that is. Right. So you need both. I think that the physical practice of Zen is like, for example, I might Start my day with a meditation.
But I might read a little first. Like I might read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind or whatever Zen book I kind of have at hand.
And when you read and then you sit with the readings, like some people sit with koans, which are Zen stories of awakening, they kind of go into your body when you sit. But then my extra step is to then go run or move it into my body.
So like I'll sit, you know, I'll read the koan and then I'll sit with it five or 10 minutes. I don't do like long meditations, sitting meditations, that is.
And then when I go run, it's like the movement of my body or if I'm riding my bike or whatnot, it's kind of jiggling it all through like the Zen stories. And I'm not consciously trying to solve it with my brain. My body's working on it.
My body has a knowing and our bodies have these knowings that kind of sort of process it while I'm running. So that when I'm moving or riding my bike, I might be more attuned, you know, to.
I might be able to have a different perspective on the story that you know, hours before I read it and was like, what? You know, because that's the other thing about Zen. If you just try to understand it analytically, right? It's like, huh.
But if you read it with that sense of just letting it wash over you or thinking of like absorbing it again, letting go of this idea of a result, like I have to understand this. Then you go running or moving or swimming or whatever it is you do physical practice and it just helps your body take it in.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:35:46.182 - 00:35:47.102
I like that.
Katie Arnold
00:35:47.206 - 00:35:50.050
So that's my physical practice of Zen.
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Doug Schnitzspahn
00:37:25.520 - 00:37:38.540
Let'S take a moment now to talk about the book, right, your latest book, Brief Flashings of the Phenomenal World, Zen and the Art of Running Free. What does that mean? How would you describe that to someone? What is the phenomenal world? I think you've talked a little bit about the flashing.
Katie Arnold
00:37:39.370 - 00:39:01.390
So the phenomenal world is the tactile world, the physical world before us, right? And it's the trees outside, it's the wind blowing. It's this world that we're living in right now.
And so these brief flashings kind of crack us open to this world of phenomena. So wind, sun, sky, relationships. It's the world we inhabit.
And again, as we were saying earlier, these flashings are always happening and we just kind of need to train ourselves or just open ourselves to start seeing them.
And that's really kind of what, you know, when I was thinking about this book, I was like, it's definitely a told through this river accident and kind of a return to running, but it's much more than that. It's about a way of living more awake and and more just fully inhabiting your life every day and seeing the flashings.
And you don't have to be a writer or an artist or an athlete to see them or to benefit from them. It's that feeling of like, oh my gosh, I'm part of something. I'm here. Do you know that we sometimes forget we're alive, right?
And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I'm alive. I'm in this world and don't squander it.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:39:03.920 - 00:39:13.560
So what was your impetus for writing this particular book? What was the story you wanted to tell? And most of all, who did you really want to reach with it? Who do you want to read this. Book and be affected by it.
Katie Arnold
00:39:13.680 - 00:39:52.068
Oh, gosh. The impetus really was that river accident that I've talked about.
That was the summer of 2016, and my husband and I have spent a ton of time on whitewater rivers. We've taken our daughters on into the wilderness since they were babies, literally.
Rivers are very much like our family's special place, and we'd always wanted to go in the middle Fork. Our girls were very young, and so of course, we didn't bring them. It was, you know, too high consequence. And we're.
You know, though some people might laugh at this, we're really conservative with our kids on. On rivers, and so we left them home.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:39:52.124 - 00:39:55.460
I'm not laughing. Yeah, that's smart. That's smart.
Katie Arnold
00:39:55.540 - 00:44:23.434
But some people will be like, you took a baby down the San Juan. That's not conservative. Right. And.
And so we left our kids behind, and this was a private trip, so we were rowing our own boat, and my husband was on the oars, and he has a ton of experience. And we just had a fluke accident where we wrapped on a rock and got pinned. And then eventually the raft flipped, and I went in the water.
And as soon as I landed in the water, I knew that I was. I seriously hurt my leg. But then we had to make this decision as a group, whether or not we stay on the river or try to get me off.
And it was the first day, right? It was the first 30 minutes of the trip. And so people are like, why don't you bash your way upstream in the banks and get out?
And that's such a compliment. There's so many different answers for that. Right.
It's a deeply complex question that I've asked myself many times, But I think ultimately I just wanted to stay with my husband, and he had to stay with our boat. We had no way else to get it down. And so I stayed on the river. And I stayed on the river for six days with what turned out.
I didn't know my leg was broken, but it turned out that I shattered my tibial plateau, which is right below the knee. And so that really.
That experience of having to stay on the river and be in the state of, like, a deeply concentrated state where there's 100 rapids in 100 miles on that river. And I think we flipped on, like, at mile three. Right? So we had 97 more miles and 97 rapids, and the one we flipped on wasn't even named.
And so that itself was a Zen practice. Right. There was so much to worry about. Downstream, like, all the rapids. I couldn't fall out of the raft again.
I knew that, how are we going to get down? I. I was in a lot of pain and afraid. And so I had to just focus on the exact rapid we were on, right?
And that became this great teacher of, there's so much to worry about, but just be on the rapid you're on.
And so when I got home and went to the doctor and was shocked to find out I'd broken my leg and needed surgery and would be, I was like, I knew I have a high pain threshold, but this was ridiculous even for me. And you know, and to realize, like, I was beyond crutches for 14 weeks. And, you know, he was like, you should never run again.
That I knew, you know, as a journalist. I've been a journalist for 30 years. Like, you know, that's a good story. Even though it's not the story I wanted to tell for myself.
Like, I didn't want that story. And so that just that very, you know, dramatic. It was a, you know, a real shift in our marriage. It sort of became this fault line in our marriage.
And the book talks a lot about marriage, especially among two adventurous people and having sort of that adventurous marriage. What does that mean with risk and when someone gets hurt? And so it was just this huge, you know, fault line. I think of it like the movie Superman.
You know, that scene when Lois Lane's car falls into the San Andreas vault and it's got. Moving underneath, you can't. Magma bubbling up and Superman. That's what it felt like.
Our marriage and our relationship had just been going along, and all of a sudden this fault line opened up that we did not know was there. And so it was. You know, the story's about Zen and running, but it's really about, like, marriage and love.
And I joke, the publisher loves to put on a subtitle and Zen and the Art of Running Free is exactly right. But I joke that it could also be like Zen and the Art of Staying Married, because that was really tested.
But spoiler alert, things are good, we're fine. But not. Yeah, we had a lot. It was just I had to heal my leg and I had to heal our, you know, how we were together in our marriage.
And yeah, it was a lot.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:44:23.522 - 00:44:51.570
There's this quote I really love at the beginning of the book when you say, the mind, like, time isn't linear. It jumps from now to then and back again. It bends and braids like a river, rising and falling like the shape of mountains. In the space of a breath.
I think that's just beautiful. It also seems very true to me when it comes to the way we tell our own stories. Right. Especially in regards to outdoor experiences.
So how is your story not linear? And how have you learned to tell it in some way that is?
Katie Arnold
00:44:53.070 - 00:47:10.250
There's a chapter in the book called Stories, which I really love because it is sort of acknowledges that head on. Like, as a writer, I've always kept notebooks and I fill like one a month with whatever I'm thinking about or, you know, like it's like a journal.
But I have notebooks from the last probably 15 years. And I kept one on the river that day, that week that we were in Idaho.
And it's interesting because your mind, you know, when I was set out to write the story of what was happening in Idaho, I found that even in the moment, I could not write it linearly, right? I was like, I was in an accident today. And then my mind, that was too much for my mind to handle.
And so I jumped back to something, you know, that had happened three weeks earlier.
And so I could see it, you know, when I went back, when I first started writing Brief Flashing, I found that notebook, you know, it was the red one with the dirt smudges, the mud smudges on it. And I saw that the story jumped forward and back weeks and weeks at a time because it was too painful to tell it all in a straight line.
And I think that's really true for our lives and the way our minds work. You know, we might sit down and think we're writing about, you know, I don't know, whatever.
And we'll find ourselves writing about our grandmother's hands, you know, our memories that come up. And that's really, that's really how I write.
It's kind of this, I don't know, I think of it as like wild writing or like just letting yourself go into the memory that's presenting itself and following all leads, right? And that, that is a flow state for me versus coming in. It's just like with a sport, if you come in and you're like, I'm going to boss this around.
I'm going to run six minute miles for five miles. I mean, I think that's great and that works, but you're also closed off to other stories or experiences.
Rather than when you sit down, you're like, okay, I'm going to see where this takes me. Which is not to say that later you don't want to edit, right? You do But I never want to edit it or control it so much that it. The story dies.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:47:11.070 - 00:47:11.686
Yeah. Yeah.
Katie Arnold
00:47:11.718 - 00:47:13.574
It has to be a little wild.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:47:13.702 - 00:47:41.986
I think about your first book, Running Home. You know, you deal with the death of your dad to cancer. I recently lost my dad to cancer. Yeah.
But I think when we think about, I think, loss and that kind of grief and, you know, especially the really powerful losses in our lives make us kind of rethink the way time works even. Right. What is. You know, linear time is almost impossible to deal with because we're all gone. Right.
But in this way, we continue to relive in these experiences as they go around.
Katie Arnold
00:47:42.138 - 00:49:41.060
Yeah. And I think that was something that I first learned after my father died, you know, and as you're experiencing. Right.
There's not like people say, oh, like the first year. Like, there's this timeline of grief, but it's not like that at all. It's very much like two steps up, one step back, you know, sideways, diagonally.
And that's kind of the beauty of it, because that's how the person that we've loved and lost stays with us. And it's such a gift when those little flashes come to us or through our dreams or just a memory we had. And so I learned that then.
And then just knowing about Zen and reading and kind of moving with Zen mind, it's. You know, there's this idea in Zen that all moments are included in this moment.
And that comes from the 12th century Japanese Zen master, Dogen in his essay called Uji, or time, where everything that has ever been or will ever be is right now. And when I read that, I totally didn't understand it. It was one of those mornings I was sitting meditation outside.
I read it and I was like, whatever. And then I ran. I went for a long run up on the mountain, and I just ran my way into understanding. And I just remember I saw a man on the trail.
He had a dog. And then we passed each other. And like 15 minutes later, I was like, the man is still in this moment with me. And then extrapolating that, I was like.
And my dad, who'd been dead for 10 years, was in that moment. And so it was just this fullness of understanding that I didn't understand with my brain. You know, it was in my body. And.
And that's why I love, like, what, you know, the tagline on this book is, read this book with your body. There you go. Read this with your body, not with that mind. That's like, what the hell is in or, you know.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:49:41.100 - 00:49:41.828
Yeah.
Katie Arnold
00:49:42.004 - 00:49:55.700
Or like they people. I think another misperception, just to go back to that, is that it's a religion that, like, it's telling you like a dogma or doctrine. And it's not.
It's just really like a way of living.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:49:56.760 - 00:50:20.100
Well, there is one. You know, I'd like to talk to you since I have you on here, someone who also enjoys Zen.
There's one of my favorite Zen coans that I want to kind of talk with you about and see what your interpretation is of it. And it goes like this. It's Avlo kichavara, the Buddha of compassion has 1000 arms, each with an eye on the palm, which is the one true eye.
Katie Arnold
00:50:21.580 - 00:50:36.644
Oh, my gosh. I've not heard of that one. Which is the one. So he's got a thousand arms with a thousand eyes. Oh, my gosh. I'm gonna have to sit with that one.
What do you think? What do you think? Have you been reading it a lot or studying, working with it?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:50:36.732 - 00:50:51.632
Yeah, yeah. And I think one of the interpretations, and I think this goes to some of your idea of Zen too, is it's right. There is no one true I. Right.
Is the simplest way to say it. Right. That. That compassion. That. That compassion from the world is all around us everywhere.
Katie Arnold
00:50:51.696 - 00:50:52.700
Right, Right.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:50:53.480 - 00:50:55.680
Yeah. Especially we feel that in nature.
Katie Arnold
00:50:55.840 - 00:50:57.980
Yeah. We are all the. I too.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:50:58.440 - 00:50:59.456
Oh, I like that.
Katie Arnold
00:50:59.528 - 00:51:11.488
That's the way I would think of it, too, is that. Yeah. There's not one true I, and yet we are an I. I don't know. That's a beautiful one. That's a beautiful.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:51:11.504 - 00:51:13.008
I like that interpret. Yeah. Yeah.
Katie Arnold
00:51:13.184 - 00:51:28.180
The one I really love, too, that I think about all the time is that. And I can't remember. It was two monks talking, and I can't remember which ones right now.
And one monk asked the other, what was your original face before even your parents were born?
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:51:28.520 - 00:51:29.520
Oh, wow.
Katie Arnold
00:51:29.680 - 00:51:47.862
And I love that because it's asking, like, what is your essence? Like, what was your original face? And what is your original face before they were born? So, like, who is your deepest self?
And I feel my original face when I'm in the mountains.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:51:48.006 - 00:51:59.250
That's just what I was going to ask you. I mean, I guess it's not necessary to be outside or be in the wild or nature to study Zen. Right. But somehow it's more powerful.
You can access it easier out there.
Katie Arnold
00:51:59.630 - 00:53:45.680
I think it's a great teacher because it's so much bigger than just our small selves and being in nature. Yeah. We we see teachers everywhere, lessons, metaphors.
You know, I was just on this flow camp that I led in the desert, and we found on one of our runs, we found this was down in Big Bend, what's called a decoy nest. So it's this nest built inside a cholla. And so it's really prickly. And the nest is fake. Right.
These birds who built it, I'm spacing on what they were right now. I should have brushed up on this. The birds that built it built a decoy because their true nest was somewhere else.
And like, the effort required to build a fake nest to protect their young. And it just. There's so many lessons there because it's also, like, what are our own decoy nests? Like, where are we hiding things? And.
Yeah, like, where's our truest self? And what are we presenting to the world? And what are we hiding? And. Yeah, so I think nature just has all of that. That all the time.
And again, it doesn't take anything special. You don't have to run. You don't have to run fast. You can walk. You know, I.
On another FLO camp I lead in Colorado, we go out and we have a conversation with a tree. Sounds so hokey when I say it, but actually, like, there's a science. When you put your forehead or the top of your head against.
There's some nerve up there. Like, is it your vagus nerve or something? It goes against the bark of the tree.
And yeah, I had this just really illuminating, beautiful conversation with the tree, and now I sound nuts.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:53:46.500 - 00:53:50.524
No, I don't think so. I've got trees probably have better conversations than most people I know.
Katie Arnold
00:53:50.692 - 00:53:54.956
I mean, yeah, the tree talk back. And I wrote it down. It's going in my next book.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:53:55.108 - 00:53:56.748
I'd love that. That'll be something to read.
Katie Arnold
00:53:56.804 - 00:53:57.440
Yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:53:58.420 - 00:54:10.982
Well, unfortunately, we're getting near the end of our time, and I wanted to ask you the one question I ask everyone at the end of this show, and that is, what gives you hope?
Katie Arnold
00:54:11.166 - 00:55:02.870
Oh, what gives me hope? Nature.
Being outside in wild places and feeling small in the wild and just seeing that things are so much older and more powerful than we are and practicing that feeling of humility that we, you know, we feel in nature, you know, that really is a wonderful gift. When we are in a humble place and it's something like a muscle. I think we all need to practice. But, yeah, just being in nature gives me hope.
I mean, and nature, you know, it's hard because there's so much. Right? There's so. It's at risk.
But I still find that I'm my truest self outside, and it's where I can disconnect and just feel part of something much bigger than myself. And that's. That's really freeing.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:55:03.930 - 00:55:11.850
I love that. And I think I'm going to thank. Keep thinking about that idea of the face before you were born and how you put it out there. Huh?
Katie Arnold
00:55:12.990 - 00:55:26.250
What is your original face before even your parents were born. And I love that even, like even them.
And you could even extrapolate before even their parents were born, that sense of that sort of deepest, truest self.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:55:26.910 - 00:55:28.310
And we feel that out there.
Katie Arnold
00:55:28.430 - 00:55:54.870
Yeah, right. You feel that. And even though, you know we're changing all the time. Right. That's such a big idea in Zen is impermanence. Right. We can't.
I can't hold onto anything.
And we're not the same bodies we were 15 or 20 years ago, but when I'm out there, just yesterday we hiked down to the Rio Grande and it was like I just felt like I've always felt. I felt like I could have been 7 or 14 or 25.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:55:54.990 - 00:55:56.486
Yes. Yes.
Katie Arnold
00:55:56.678 - 00:56:08.000
And that gives me hope that there's so much work to do and so many stories to tell. And that's my deepest passion, is to tell those stories.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:56:09.220 - 00:56:25.004
I love that. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you.
And when it comes to telling stories, can you let people know the best way to find your newest book, the best way to follow you, and the. Best way to contact you for your camps?
Katie Arnold
00:56:25.132 - 00:58:05.960
Yes. Great.
So the best way to learn about me and my camps and you can find my book there is on my website, which is just katyanold.net I have all the information about upcoming Flo camps, and those are really special because I've worked for 30 years as a journalist and a travel writer. So I'm like, part of that.
My passion for travel is to find these really special places where we can be most connected to ourselves and our imagination and the natural world. So. So I sort of am constantly on the lookout for those really special real places. So you can find out about FLO camp there.
Buy copies of Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World or my first book Running Home there. Of course, they're for sale online as well. Bookshop.org helps you support your favorite local bookshop. There's other places, too.
It was just released on audio, so if you love to listen to audiobooks when you're outside or doing chores or commuting, you can find that on Audible as well. And I'm on Instagram. I'm really most active there and it's just atyarnold.
And I'm also on Substack where I publish weekly a newsletter called Work in Process, which is looking at the process behind all the creative work we do, and that includes running and adventure. And being outside is a form of creativity. So subscribe there.
You can subscribe for free or for for a small cost that supports working human artists like me and Doug.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:58:07.580 - 00:58:12.100
Katie Arnaud, thank you so much. I can't wait until the next time I get the chance to talk to you.
Katie Arnold
00:58:12.140 - 00:58:14.320
This is a real honor. Thank you so much.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:58:15.740 - 00:58:47.550
Thanks for imbibing Open Container, a production of Rockvite llc.
You can pre order brief flashings in the phenomenal world@bookshop.org learn more about keeping Katie Arnold and her flow camps@katyarnold.net Please take a second to follow our show on whatever podcast app you're listening to us on, and send your emails and feedback to myrockfightmail.com our producers today were David Karstad and Colin True. Art direction provided by Sarah Gensert. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. Get some thanks for listening.