Date: 2026-03-07
AO: Eagle’s Nest
Q: Wax On ,
PAX: tin man, Croak, Spike, Fly-boy, Buckshot, Blip, Waterboy, Squash, Slice, Strat, Dovetail, Audit, Wheelie, Wax On, foxtrot FNGs: None
COUNT: 15
TLDR Version: Worked out hard, defeated evil Russians, gravity disrespected Wheelie, choices mater.

The sky above Purple Heart Park is still bruised dark as the PAX gather in the parking lot by the pool. The smell of desert pre-dawn is thick with creosote and dust. Your Q steps forward and lowers his voice.

“Listen up. Three days ago, our contact went silent somewhere in this park. We know he was heading south. We know he had intel — critical intel — hidden at one of five drop points scattered through the park. We have 50 minutes before extraction. The mission: find the intel, neutralize any threats at each location, and get back alive.”

He pauses. “But here’s the thing about this park — every path leads somewhere different. Every decision matters. Some routes are brutal. Some are worse. None are easy. So PAX… choose wisely.”

WARMUP:
20 SSH
15 Moroccan Night Clubs
10 Windmills
10 Don Quixotes
15 Imperial Walkers
10 Merkins

THE THANG:
Mosey to the splash pad
The PAX arrive at the Splash Pad, silent and dry in the early morning. Your contact’s last known position was somewhere south of here. On the concrete edge of the splash basin, you spot a chalk mark — half-erased, but readable: two arrows.

One points east, toward the covered gazebo pavilions where shadows still gather. The other points west, toward the south trail that bends along the park’s lower edge into open desert scrub.

A PAX holds up two fingers. “Q — which way?”

Defeat the Russian ambush:
Pax lines up and holds a squat. One member drops for a burpee, then runs around the pax back to his position, facing the opposite way. Once everybody completes this, drop to a plank. One member does 2 big boy sit ups, runs around PAX, returns to face the other way. Once everybody goes, recover. Wheelie kindly decided to test gravity for us this morning and confirmed that it was still working as intended. We appreciate your diligence to testing my friend.

Buckshot wondered why it was Russians and not Iranians. History lesson time. Because as a child of the cold war, it was always the Russians. Global tension? Russians. Food shortage? Russians. Tooth decay? Russians. They were the bad guys in every video game and movie of the 80’s. So, the war in Iran? Proxy war with Russia. Nothing the internet tells me will convince me it’s not about the Russians.

Choice:
Head East toward the Gazebo – The shadows might be hiding something
Head West – Take the outer perimeter trail south. More ground to cover, more to find.

Pax chose West, to the southern trail.

The south trail is quieter. Just the crunch of gravel and the distant hum of Rita Road beyond the tree line. The PAX spread out along the trail and a Pax calls out low: “Found something.” A strip of orange flagging tape is tied to a bench slat. Under the bench, scratched into the wood: “They’re watching the buildings. Stay outside.”

The contact is leading you around the perimeter. You press on, using the open ground.

Challenge the Russians:
Broad jump about 30 yards to the light pole, mosey back x3
11s Merkins & Squats 30 yard run in between
60s People’s Chair
25 LBC IC

Push southwest toward the Ruins (playground)
Circle back East to the Armory (other playground)

Pax chose southwest toward the Ruins

The south playground sits in a clearing, its bright colors muted in the grey dawn. The swings drift faintly. The monkey bars cast long shadows across the wood chips. One PAX spots a gear bag shoved behind the slide — inside, a burner phone with one voicemail.

You play it on speaker. Your contact’s voice, rasping: “If you’re hearing this — you made the right call. Two things left. Get to the loop. I’ll meet you at the bench by the big mesquite. Don’t stop moving.”

You won’t stop. No PAX left behind.

Defeat the Russian stronghold.
Hang from something – 30s x3
15 IC Derkins
20 IC Step Ups
15 dips oyo
25 IC Flutter kicks
Plank hold 60s

Converge on the southern Loop

The south perimeter path stretches ahead, a wide gravel loop flanked by desert plantings and the occasional bench. This is where your contact said to be. The PAX spreads along the path — no sign of a tail. No sign of a threat.

Then one PAX spots him: sitting on a bench by a large mesquite tree at the south bend. He’s holding a water bottle and grinning. “You made it,” he says. “Now — one more choice. How you finish says everything about who you are.”

He stands, gestures at the loop. “Go hard or go strong?”

Pax chose to go hard.
5 min finisher around the baseball diamond.
Sprint one leg, mosey one leg. Repeat.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
2nd F lunch was yesterday, you already missed it. Sign up to Q.

COT:
Prayed for the defeat of evil, both in our lives, and across the globe. May our soldiers continue to be the tip of the spear, doing what needs done, and that leadership has the will to finish the job. No half measures.

Fun fact, the AI disrespected Wheelie this morning as well. He’s in the original photo behind Spike and Waterboy. See the photo in the thread below.

Coffeteria/Words of Wisdom.
“The man who wrote about snowy woods and roads not taken buried four children—and we’ve been lying about who he really was ever since.”
America loves its poets gentle. We want them wise and grandfatherly, offering soft wisdom about yellow leaves and rural New England. Robert Frost fit that role perfectly—white-haired, twinkly-eyed, reciting at presidential inaugurations. But the real Robert Frost? He was surviving, not strolling.
His father, William Prescott Frost Jr., was an alcoholic who died of tuberculosis when Robert was just eleven, leaving the family broke and broken. His mother, Belle, tried to contact the dead through séances, chasing ghosts instead of stability. Robert grew up sharp, anxious, and already haunted.
By his mid-twenties, he’d buried his first child—three-year-old Elliott, dead from cholera in 1900. It was only the beginning. Over the decades, Frost would bury three more children:

Elinor Bettina, who died as an infant in 1907
Marjorie, who died at 29 from complications after childbirth in 1934 Carol, his only surviving son, who took his own life with a shotgun in 1940

Another daughter, Irma, descended into mental illness and was institutionalized. His wife Elinor—worn down by loss after loss—died in 1938, her heart literally and figuratively broken. Four dead children. A wife consumed by grief. A family tree pruned by tragedy.
Before poetry saved him, Frost failed at nearly everything. Farming? Disaster. Teaching? Frustrating. Journalism? Dead end. He was approaching 40, still unknown, still struggling, watching his children die and his marriage crack under the weight of sorrow that had no outlet.
In 1912, in an act of desperation disguised as courage, he moved his family to England. And there—finally, painfully—the poems came. Not from peace or pastoral contentment, but from sheer survival. From the need to turn unbearable grief into something that could be held, read, maybe understood.
When you read “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” you’re not reading a cozy nature scene. You’re reading a man contemplating how easy it would be to just stop—to lie down in those lovely, dark, and deep woods and let the snow cover everything. “But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep”—that’s not whimsy. That’s the decision to keep walking when walking is agony.
“The Road Not Taken”? It’s not an inspirational poster. It’s grief disguised as choice. It’s about the roads you didn’t take—the children who didn’t live, the versions of yourself that died with them, the unbearable knowledge that every choice kills infinite others.
“Home Burial”? That’s about a couple destroying each other over their dead child, unable to grieve together, only apart. That’s Robert and Elinor’s marriage, barely disguised.
His woods weren’t decoration. They were refuge. They were the only place grief could breathe without being questioned.
By the time Frost stood at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration on January 20, 1961, he was 86 years old. Half-blind. The sun glared off the paper, and he couldn’t read the new poem he’d written for the occasion. A lesser man might have apologized, shuffled off, admitted defeat.
Robert Frost—who had stared down more defeats than most people could survive—didn’t flinch. He set aside the prepared text and recited “The Gift Outright” from memory. Flawlessly. Standing tall in the freezing wind, speaking to a nation about land and belonging, about gifts that cost everything. He didn’t stand there in spite of his wounds.
He stood there because of them.
Because he’d learned something the soft, grandfatherly myth can’t teach: You don’t survive tragedy by pretending it didn’t happen. You survive by walking through it, by turning it into something—words, art, anything—that proves you were here, that it mattered, that even unbearable things can be borne.
Robert Frost wasn’t a cozy old poet offering comforting platitudes about nature. He was a fighter who turned a lifetime of grief into language sharp enough to cut through our comfortable lies. He didn’t promise life would be beautiful. He promised that even when it’s unbearable—when you’ve buried your children and your marriage and your dreams—you can still choose to keep walking. And maybe, just maybe, leave something honest behind.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But Robert Frost kept his promises. He walked his miles.
And the poems he left are not gentle.
They’re survival itself, carved into words.

Tags: Eagle’s Nest, tin man, Croak, Spike, Fly-boy, Buckshot, Blip, Waterboy, Squash, Slice, Strat, Dovetail, Audit, Wheelie, Wax On, foxtrot