No matter what you’re dealing with, nature is good for what ails you

I was sitting down near the May River the other afternoon, just staring at the water and enjoying the late afternoon sea breeze when out of nowhere, I had an epiphany.

I think I know what prompted this mind flash, because all day long my back had been giving me fits and I was experiencing a mixture of feeling sorry for myself and, at the same time, feeling mad and frustrated because my back problems were robbing me of the ability to do many of the things that I love the most.

I know I am not the only person around that has been the victim of a life-changing event, but dealing with the consequences of such an event is a real roller-coaster ride.

For those that read my column, I often talk about my back, but maybe you don’t know what happened to me.

I was driving along with a blue bird on my shoulder. Life was good and in the time it took a gentleman to run a stop sign, t-bone me and roll my car down the highway, my life changed completely.

I went from being a runaway freight train to the Little Train That Could, chanting “I think I can, I think I can” as I tried to do the simplest tasks. Before this, I had always found a way to bounce back from traumas, but after about the third or fourth operation, I knew for a fact that things were never going to be the same.

For someone like me, that is one hard pill to swallow.

The grand plan for my life went back to the day my second child, Logan, was born. I decided that just as soon as Logan graduated from college, I was going to bag thirty stressful years of advertising and design and spend the rest of my life doing what I like best… fishing.

Unfortunately, that two-ton curve ball knocked my dream right out of the ballpark.

For those of you that read my column with any regularity, I can only imagine what you are thinking.

No doubt it goes something like this; “man oh man, this guy has the life! He gets to fish all day, every day and what about all the things he gets to do and see! What a lucky stiff.”

The fact is I don’t fish every day. For every one day that I fish, I spend about two to three days recuperating.

Even on a day when the winds are calm and the sea is as flat as a pancake, I pay dearly for my hours on the water. I guess the big question has to be “is it worth it?”

The answer to that question usually strikes me just about the time my doctor shoves a foot long needle down my spinal column. At that particular moment I would probably say, or rather scream, “No!”

But once the meds kick in and my back begins to relax a bit, I think back to the highlights of my excursion and a smile rises up out of the pain. It may have been the time that right whale that came up next to the boat with a dinner plate size eye that looked straight through to my soul. Or the massive manta ray I hooked by accident, a good twenty feet wing tip to wing tip, that stole my pain and replaced it with awe.

These are the sights and experiences that make it all worthwhile.

My pain never goes away. It is there every moment of the day and night with the only unknown being what degree of pain will I wake up to any given day. That’s the part that really throws a monkey wrench into the works.

Take this scenario for instance.

I had been preparing for weeks for a trip offshore only to wake that particular morning to pain that bordered on indescribable. It’s days like that when I have to suck it up, put on my back brace and play pretend so my fishing buddies think I’m 100 percent and raring to go.

Luckily, most of these buddies are understanding and excuse me from doing chores like net throwing and anchor pulling.

Now, here’s a fact about me that I’ll bet you would never guess. I haven’t reeled in a big fish in years. That’s right. If I hook a big fish I hand the rod off to the person standing closest to me. I call it adapting.

Ironically, as you sit and read this, I was in the Gulf Stream for nearly 14 hours yesterday fishing in Wexford Plantation’s “Run For The Bulls” dolphin tournament and right about now I am no doubt sitting in an ice bath. Talk about a wake-up call, holy camole!

For me, it is my back. For others it is simply old age or some physical ailment that puts the skids on your passions. And therein lies the epiphany that I experienced as I sat beside the river. Everyone at some time in his or her life is going to be dealt a bad hand.

Unfortunately, mine is permanent so I have to learn from it, adapt and accept it for what it is.

It can be extremely depressing, but after fighting that depression for years, I have come to the conclusion that nature, and for me the wide-open ocean, is life’s very best medicine.

This story was originally published June 7, 2018 at 4:46 PM with the headline "No matter what you’re dealing with, nature is good for what ails you."