Long after adventurer Aaron Teasdale’s COVID-19 infection, his doctors had neither explanation nor solution for his perpetual exhaustion, dizziness from low blood oxygen, and spontaneous heart palpitations. After building a life and career around skiing mountain gorges, tracking grizzlies, and other wilderness-based exploits, Teasdale wondered how he was supposed to move forward. He recently shared his journey back to life from Long COVID with Sierra magazine. Here is his inspirational story.*

Nothing but questions

Months after his initial COVID infection, Teasdale was still confined to his bed, watching birds and squirrels outside his window. His wife brought him meals on a tray. Used to a life of action, he said, he now “lacked the strength and balance to walk the length of my driveway.”

Like many other Long COVID sufferers, he says, he couldn’t help wondering, “Would I ever get better? Were my affairs in order?”

On good days

In this way, he writes, “Months slipped by, seasons floating away like campfire smoke.” He did have the occasional good day, when he’d be able to “shuffle” to a creek near his house, sit on a rock, and watch the flowing water.

“I pondered the possibilities of peace amid uncertainty—in six months’ time, I could be healed, or dead. I found a measure of solace in knowing that the creek and forest and creatures within would be unconcerned with my absence.”

Reflections and resolutions

A year after his infection, on a good day by the creek, Teasdale gathered some covered twigs and slowly built up a fire. “I sat quietly, peeling lichen and watching feeble yet mesmerizing flickers of fire, and resolved that I would direct every iota of my energy into fanning flames, internal and external, no matter how imperfect the fuel,” he says. 

“I decided then that I didn’t want to waste whatever life remained for me on sadness or anger. I wanted to appreciate as deeply as possible my family, my breath, the beauty of this creek and forest.”

Starting anew

He continued making small fires on good days, and began learning about Long COVID, about neuroplasticity, and the brain’s ability to heal. He started practicing qigong, meditation, and breathwork; taking cold showers; and trying various other techniques to retrain his brain, regain function, and regulate his nervous system. 

Importantly, he also started taking short walks into the hills behind his house, going further as his strength grew. One day he got up the courage to put on his skis again, and was rewarded. 

“Those first euphoric downhill turns and jubilant encounters with harrier hawks and fresh lion tracks flooded my brain with healing, restorative neurochemicals,” he remembers. “By June, I was skiing with wolverines in the highest reaches of greater Yellowstone.”

Teasdale still struggles cognitively, and each exertion is followed by headaches and necessary recovery time, but his focus is on joy and life. “I continue to improve,” he says. “I am more grounded now in each moment, in my breath and in my body, in my appreciation for the artistry that appears in the sky at day’s end and the birds that sing at dawn…as long as my spirit inhabits this functioning body, I will drink deeply.”

*Teasdale, A. (2023, December 25). A Lifelong Adventurer Tries to Come Back From Long Covid. Sierra. https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2023-4-november-december/eyewitness/long-covid-lifelong-adventurer-tries-come-back

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