Tatum Monod is one of the pro athletes presenting at the opening nightfor this weekend’s Raven Backcountry Festival.

I sat down with Tatum last week to craft her bio for her new sponsor Arc’teryx, and followed that up by watching this cringe-inducing short film she made in response to a traumatic knee injury. (Cringe-inducing because I was clearly never meant to be a surgeon.)

In “Back and Forth,” she describes some of what it took to return to form.

Injury is something a lot of people in this community navigate… so I appreciate Tatum’s candour in admitting that the mental side of recovery was a huge challenge. Even with the best physiotherapists at her disposal, there was a component to healing that wasn’t about tissue and ligament. The hard work didn’t just involve sweating.

It’s important that we acknowledge that we’re organic beings, and we’re psychic beings – we’re made up of marvellous connections of tissue, blood and bone, but also of memories, of information, of feelings, of trauma, of hopes and fears, chemicals and electricity… and the body contains it all. Hard days happen. And hard days end when the sun goes down. Back and forth, up and down, round and round… keep breathing.

Tickets to the Raven Backcountry Festival are available online and will support the Lisa Korthals Memorial Bursary.