Getting inspiration from “Almost Over the Hill”

“All you have to do is crawl. And you’ll make it to the top.”

That’s the main message I took from a documentary short called Almost Over the Hill that came across my feed the other day. My friend Julia Creet — who has blogged about riding solo in Cape Breton here and here — recently created a short film exploring what it takes to ride a bike up a hill.

The film features four cyclists sharing their stories of the strenuous climbs they’ve learned to make friends with, including a 200 km MTB trail, an 11 km high altitude climb, a short but steady hill in an urban neighbourhood, and Julia’s solo adventure on the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton.

Julia told me that what she likes most about the film is “the encouragement it provides to older athletes. We may have to adjust how we ride, but we can keep riding much longer than we might think. And, making it was so much fun. I love my little cycling group and the support we offer each other. Building community through sports is as important as the joy we get from the sport itself.”

She added, “Some things take a long time to accomplish. Climbing a hill is like many other hard things in life; you just have to put one foot in front of the other and trust that you will finish the task. Cycling, in all its aspects, demands that we stay in the present for every pedal stroke. That alone is a lesson for life.”

It was the “lesson for life” aspect of the film that really stuck with me. I happened to luck into it the day after the US election, and three messages have been going through my head since:

• Age and experience help us learn to do hard things
• Take every hill at the easiest possible pace so you don’t blow yourself out
• If you roll into a hill thinking it’s going to be the most terrible thing ever, you’ve already defeated yourself

I’ve had a lot of conversations over the past week that circle around the question “where do we find resilience?” I think this film points us once again to the wisdom we carry when we guide our bodies do hard things. Go slowly. Trust your experience and knowledge. Embrace the truth of the hard, knowing that you can do it.

Catherine, one of the cyclists in the film, says “zone 2 climbing flattens out the terrain.” I have been holding that close. As a queer, female bodied person with almost six decades of life behind me, I’ve been in the place many times before of having my needs and rights shunted aside, of having people I work with every day tell me to my face that they don’t think I deserve basic human rights, of having people literally tell me — misreading my reality significantly — that “homosexuals do not deserve to live.” When I was younger, I tackled these forces with zone 4 or 5 energy — throwing my whole self into protest, activism, fury, into the shared affirmation of outraged communities. Lots of shouting and marching, one memorable moment in 1994, encircling the Ontario legislature building with a giant pink ribbon.

Now, I’m a little more wary of outraged communities, no matter how creative or how much I agree with the values at the core. I see the impact of polarization, the futility of trying to shout each other into submission. One side wins and pins down the other, the weight ratio shifts, the wrestling continues. Burning each other out.

Hills are always going to be part of our terrain. Rolling hills I’m on for the long haul, not one long push to a top followed by a glorious descent. I reorient myself toward that slow crawl: teaching human-centred leadership, teaching dialogic practices, creating group processes where people can learn to hear each other, coaching people on finding their full, thoughtful voices. Appreciating music and art. Loving my people. I write emails when I think it might help, donate money. Lean into practices that might bridge some of that anger. Zone 2. Steady.

Julia’s film is making the festival rounds and isn’t available for public viewing yet. But I’m very grateful it came my way on a week when I really needed it. I’ll keep the blog community posted on when you can all view it.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who lives in Tkaranto and is happy to talk to anyone about dialogic practices.

Julia Creet is an aging jock who still likes to play hard as much as possible. She is also an English Prof. at York University. “Almost Over the Hill” is her third documentary. juliacreet.com