Sisters Jen, left, and Heidi Kretser agree to an invigorating 10-mile swim in the Colorado River. (Provided photo)

“The next time you have a sore throat, be thankful you’re not a giraffe.” — Trotty Veck

A month ago, Curt Stager, author and professor of natural sciences at Paul Smith’s College, posted a video of ice going out on Akwesasne Lake. As the slushy shore of Lower St. Regis Lake lapped inches from Curt’s boots, I had two thoughts: amor fati and somewhere a Kretser is swimming.

Marcus Aurelius practiced the mantra “embrace your fate,” but it was Nietzsche who first coined it: amor fati. For sisters Jen and Heidi Kretser, saying yes to life is muscle memory.

A few winters ago, I was four blankets deep in a good read when my phone rang. “Are you dressed yet?” Jen said. “It’s almost 6.”

“Why?” I mumbled, wary of her we-are-going-outside-tone.

“Let’s ski into Little Clear. Lots of layers. Pack a sandwich. Wait, no, two.”

I speak Jen: when the adventure is measured by sandwiches, I bring flares, a change of clothes, a headlamp, sleeping bag and a bivy sack.

Ten of us trudged under the flat gray skies over uneven terrain into Little Clear. The breeze rattled pale yellow beech leaves, stubborn in their grip and soft with secrets.

After a few hours of laughing, sweating and falling, Double K huddled over a map from 1993, checked their phones, and squinted at the angle of the setting sun. A lengthy debate followed: exactly what temperature induces hypothermia?

The only way to interrupt two Cornell grads deep in “discussion” is to send more Big Red reinforcements — so we dispatched Nancy Bernstein and Beth Donnelly. The new plan: How about a bushwhack to find a snow covered trail from years past? Wouldn’t the sunset be stunning? It is only four more miles! “Who’s in?” Heidi asked, nodding.

“We might hear an owl!” Jen encouraged us like we were on a kindergarten expedition. There was some shifty eyed glancing and a joke about the Donner party. Yes, let’s do it.

Saying yes to life is not dissolving healthy boundaries or passive acceptance, but the embrace of fate as fuel for growth. (In this case I grew cold extremities and fodder for a newspaper column.) Leaders of the Double K Outing Club, Heidi and Jen are widely respected in the fields of wildlife conservation and climate education. When sweeping federal budget cuts eviscerated key environmental programs, Jen and Heidi lost staff, colleagues, collaborators and the daily momentum that fuels long-term change. Instead of crying in their cups, the Kretser Sisters rented a camper van and whisked their mom, Katrine, away on her first tour of southern Utah seeking solace in the red rock cathedrals guarded by lizards. Amor fati.

–

Farewell, dreams of love

–

Of course, saying yes isn’t always skiing or camping at Arches National park. You also say yes to uncertainty, aging and mental and physical illness.

Saranac Lake pioneered a radical health experiment long before wellness influencers peddled golden milk and cold plunges. Rooted in nourishment, deep rest and nature’s rhythms, patients combated the valedictorian of infectious diseases: tuberculosis. TB sacked pharaohs, felled the Bronts, and is still trending. Today, tuberculosis is completely curable — first, you need six months of medication, a stable home and a functioning and affordable health care system.

When E.L. Trudeau contracted tuberculosis in 1873, instead of folding like a card table, he dug in and headed to the wilds of the Adirondacks. It’s a familiar story. Cold winters and fresh air offered the physician and patient a fragile truce as the “cure” brought respite.

E.L. Trudeau stayed, opening a sanatorium to treat economically disadvantaged patients and building laboratories. Trudeau encouraged medical collaboration, rallying other physicians — all while his own health deteriorated repeatedly. E.L. Trudeau didn’t just endure his fate — he turned it into a blueprint for purpose. That’s amor fati in action.

Collapse and creation are kissing cousins. To counter the despair of quarantine and chronic disease in the 1900s, Saranac Lake employed a holistic style of healing, embracing the arts and human connection as medicine. Amidst the running of midnight trains and repeated relapses, patients wrote plays, staged musicals, printed newspapers and championed the resilient optimism of Trotty Veck. This wasn’t toxic positivity — it was survival.

Examples of amor fati teched in neon. Amor fati stood with the eight musicians on the Titanic, who met doom with song. It is with octogenarian newlyweds. It’s why Zacharia Mutai held Sudan, the last northern white rhino, as he lay dying. The antidote to despair isn’t retreat — it’s engagement.

Jen and Heidi Kretser fly the amor fati banner high. They say yes to bushwhacking, yes (reluctantly) to bureaucratic upheaval, and yes to the raw, imperfect, awe-filled present. E.L. Trudeau didn’t curl up and give up; he showed up for himself first, and then thousands of patients.

Saying yes starts small: take the trip. The little yeses are training. They get you in shape for the big stuff: grief, failure, MRIs. The same voice that crowbars you from delicious flannel sheets, also incessantly chants forward when life turns to mush.

Nietzsche called it amor fati; I call it saying yes with sandwiches.