(Memoir, 2024)
By Elizabeth Graves
The impetus for ultrarunner Katie Arnold’s latest memoir, “Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World,” is a rafting accident in June 2016 when she is thrown from her raft and breaks her leg. No longer able to run, Arnold must learn to appreciate the power in stillness. What follows is both an adventure comeback story and an introduction to Zen Meditation.
Arnold’s memoir jumps forward and backward in time, which creates suspense and reminds readers that each part of any journey serves a purpose: “Each action, no matter how mundane, affects another, on and on down the line, forever.” From stories of rafting trips, running Rim to Rim to Rim of the Grand Canyon with a fever, to the practice of Zen Meditation (sitting in stillness) and the inner work that must be done to heal, Arnold shows readers that no moment is wasted, teaching that it is in the moments of stillness, when our bodies and minds are quiet, that we are perhaps most able to connect with ourselves and the world around us.
The book is organized into four parts: Rivers, Canyons, Mountains, and Sky. In each section, Arnold shares stories that correspond to the section header, but the deeper meaning is expressed through metaphor as Arnold discovers how her marriage, motherhood, training, writing, and recovery are all intimately linked to the landscape and the essence of nature.
“Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World” concludes two years after Arnold breaks her leg when she puts her physical, mental, and emotional healing to the test by racing The Leadville Trail 100, a one-hundred-mile ultramarathon that traverses the Collegiate Range outside of Leadville, Colorado. I won’t spoil the outcome of the race. However, I will say that after this read, I’m convinced that there may be something to this whole “Zen thing” after all.
