Running through time

Running through time

 

Running the trail from the Boatyard to Paihia and I started remembering runs I’ve taken in the past.  It was a sort of blur at first, a melding together of image and image.  After all, most runs have a good deal in common: single-track, some sort of dirt and rock, often trees and foliage hanging and dangling about the trail.  Trails go up and then down again, they bend around hillsides and curve through ravines, they follow cliffs and beaches and mountain ridges and river courses.

I remembered the first runs of cross country, quiet runs in the south, under pines, feet padding on soft needles and humusy soil.  But as I came around the corner I found myself on the Cumberland Plateau, Sewanee was above me, hanging on those great sandstone bluffs, the hardwood stands shading the rocky, windy trail, and miles and miles it went on and on; until it opened into a clearing in the golden grass above Jackson WY—it was the Putt Putt trail in Cache Creek, south-east of Jackson.   Widge was running ahead, checking out to see what was around the bend.  Jackson was below and the Tetons owned the western horizon, the Gros Ventre lay behind to the east.  Down, down, down wonderful dusty trail in the twilight of the fall day.  As the light faded and the terrain planed out, I entered the Ponderosa pine and Doug fir forests of Sawmill Gulch.  The snow hadn’t yet fallen in Missoula, but the air was brisk and laden with mist.  The rocks were granitic and the meadow seemed poised for the deer and elk that were lurking in the woods, awaiting the dusk, and my departure, to venture forth and feed.

There were never any other folk in Sawmill Gulch.  The trail runs from the meadow up a ridgeline with forest service roads.  I looked down and found myself on Waterworks hill above Missoula.  I can see the M and the L on the adjacent mountains.  I can see all the lights from Lolo and the South Hills turning on.  I can watch a train in the distance start the long crawl to a stop, just before my little house.

In a blink I was in the desert, Valley of the Gods, UT, then, another flash, and it was the Isle of Skye, Scotland; from there an uphill turn and I was hauling in AK on an endless, endless uphill slog, and then the wonderous downhills of the AT.

Yosemite Falls trail, The Tri-Feca Race, The Sequoias, night runs in the Rattlesnake, Lake Superior Trail.

 

No matter how bad a day has been, if I can go for a run, and it is a good run, then I consider it a fine day.  No, it is a fine day.  And for good reason.  For all the things I forget—I can see all those runs like it was this very afternoon, like I am now running that very same trail.  I could be.  For all else that fades, these memories are indelible.   Why?  Why running of all things?

I don’t have an answer.  There is a singularity to it, a sort of focus that places you distinctly in time and place.  If I am upset a run will calm me, if I am confused it will clear my head.  Without running regularly I eventually fall out of balance and into poor health.  I haven’t found another mode of daily exercise as accessible and versatile. 

I have come to understand how important running is to my health, and I have known that it provides me peace and pleasure, but until recently, I hadn’t noticed that running had provided my memory with such a wealth of images and experiences.