Most ultra-runners are also philosophers, and one of the fundamental questions of our sport is…

Why?

I have no definitive answer, but I did start a list a while back [originally published here: My running whys (Pandemic Diary - day 249)]. It’s a draft, and incomplete, but for me it feels like a good and honest start.

1. Good Animal

First be a good animal. There are other interpretations of Emerson’s directive, but I like mine the best…

To be a good human, you must first be a good animal. You must experience and exercise your animal potential, and you must incorporate that into your human existence. And our animal potential, our genetic and spiritual heritage, is first and foremost that of the persistence predator: long distance pursuit, patience through the long-distance grind, regardless of terrain or weather, the optimism that you can outlast your prey, and the possibility that at the end of the pursuit, if you are steadfast, you will feast, and you and your offspring will survive.

(This idea of being a good animal is the heart of my last post: Something Fierce.)

2. Second Sunrise

I want to know who I am at second sunrise.

The symbolism of this arrival — the fact that you’ve been in constant motion through an entire day, an entire night, and into the next day — is powerful, and the results of that journey, the response you get when you say “good morning” to yourself can tell you a lot about that self. [See my post The “second sunrise” why.]

3. Second Sunrise (part two)

Second Sunrise is a good reason, but it only works for the first couple ultras. By now, I’ve been to many second sunrises (and a third sunrise) — I already know who I am there. Maybe I need reassurance that I’m still that person, but I think it’s more likely that I like that person and I want to spend more time with him, get to know him better.

4. Smiling Through

How do I react to a 3-in-the-morning thunderstorm? Do I smile and go out to dance with it — glad for the challenge, or do I break?

This is a variation on the second-sunrise reason, but it’s potentially more intense, and therefore potentially more enlightening. I wrote more about this in Smiling Through at Mile 80 (Eastern States):

The crux of the whole thing is there in that moment, the torrential rain at 3am moment. How do you react, how do you handle yourself, what kind of runner — what kind of human — are you? As I watched, I knew I needed to answer that for myself.

5. Is that all?

Is that all you’ve got? That’s me addressing the mountain, the course, the challenge I’ve just completed.

It’s mainly about finding limits, learning where your personal edges are. It has shades of defiance, like “Shoot me again, I ain’t dead yet,” but there’s also a cautionary side of “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” It’s hard to find the edge without the risk of falling past it.

6. Afterglow

Do you see it? Can you feel it? It’s the best high-on-life you can get, and the only path I’ve found to it is through the adversity of the extended physical and mental effort that gets you through a hundred miles. It comes from going long.

So that’s my list so far. It doesn’t account for everything, and it’s subject to change, but it accounts for a lot. And it was a good exercise, a valuable and important thing to think about.

What are you passionate about? (I hope there’s something, and I hope you think about why.)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rushofitall.substack.com

A dominant primordial beast, eligible to burst forth (I suspect it of you)...

Today, another favorite short piece revisited (with audio). I was about to call the “piece” an “essay”, but that’s probably a stretch… it feels more like maybe a prose poem (I’m not clear on these categories). Whatever it is, I’m happy with it, I think it says what I wanted to say, in the spirit I wanted to say it, and looking back at it now, I don’t think I’d change anything about it. It was originally published in Volume 6 of Eat Clean, Run Dirty Magazine. I’ve added my own photos for this version (and of course the audio is new).

Something Fierce

I learned it first from Jack London and his “dominant primordial beast.” Then I found Walt Whitman’s speculation: “I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth…”

Neither of them named it (perhaps it has no name). London saw it in dogs, as a proxy for what he saw in man. Whitman saw it in the Earth and felt it within himself.

I suspect it of you.

I think you already know it’s there. I think you’ve felt it (I think I’ve seen it on your face).

Maybe it was in some depleted moment in the woods, wet-cold-tired and miles from sanctuary, when the wind gusted sleet into the numb rawness of your face, and instead of misery it brought you… something powerful that you couldn’t name, something that gripped you and moved you forward and let you feel truly alive for the first time in months, maybe years.

Or maybe it was late in some long and hard race: final miles, final climbs, exhausted, every part of you hurting and wanting only to stop. Until something happened, some spark landed within you and flared into a flame and you accelerated. The pain, the miles, your goals — all of it slipped away, and you were fast and strong and smooth again. It wasn’t that those other things were gone, only that they no longer mattered, and for some period you were unencumbered by anything but the feeling of your body moving well across the land.

Maybe at the end of some adventure, you looked back at the mountain and asked (of the mountain, not of yourself, and with no conscious hubris) “Is that all you’ve got?”

It doesn’t come from the gel you just ate. It’s not the music in your head or the thought of meeting some arbitrary time goal. It’s not even your competitive nature reacting to the sight of the runner ahead of you (the one you will now catch and pass). It’s not a thought at all, and it’s not motivated by any kind of thought-based calculus you might try to apply to it (or use to access it). It is some weird blending of anger and joy and strength and pain, and it’s none of those things, exactly, but it has all of their various properties and powers.

Does a hawk revel in its hawkishness as it plunges, sky to grass, to fill its talons with the living flesh of a dying rabbit? It has no conscious goals, it’s mainly stimulus and response. If it feels pleasure in its actions, it’s only the pleasure of inhabiting its hawk body with its hawk nature, the “pleasure” of being a proper hawk.

But pleasure is the wrong word, isn’t it? If it feels anything that we could recognize, I think it must feel “rightness.” And I guess we’re mainly stimulus and response, too, and maybe “right” is as close as we’ll get to describing the way we feel when this “unnamable fierce something” bursts forth and carries us along.

Maybe I’m wrong (about you already knowing). Maybe you don’t suspect your own fierce something, haven’t met it yet.

Maybe it’s nascent, an embryo yet to be birthed. Maybe it’s just undiscovered. Maybe it is a fierceness suppressed (consciously or not), or a fierceness denied (maybe you must be dragged kicking and screaming into the light of your own wild nature).

Regardless, I believe it is eligible within you, within everyone. I think you are eligible.

I think it’s a gift, a precious, primal relic from our animal past and an elemental fire of the soul. I doubt we can understand it (we can’t even name it), and I’m pretty sure we can’t summon it at will. But we can learn to recognize it, we can intentionally enter its realm, seek it out and be open to it.

And when we find it, in those brief moments of clarity and animal glory: honor it, embrace it, and ride it for all it’s worth.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rushofitall.substack.com

I move by force of will, he moves by force of wonder. (Running with a childe, pulling yourself forward into the wind, looking out.)

I’m feeling nostalgic today, so I’m revisiting an essay I wrote for Runner’s World way back in 1999. They didn’t publish it, but I still like it (maybe more now than I did then — I think it’s aged well). I hope you will, too.

A Running Start

Written March 22, 1999.

I crave the solitude of running alone, the private battles and private joy. But two years ago I became a father, and solitude became scarce. It also became less important, because my son is now my running partner.

Lucas was three months old on our first run, a two-miler on the local rail-trail. He was so small, engulfed by the generous seat of the jogging stroller. But he grabbed the side-bars and pulled himself forward so he could see out beyond the purple nylon. That first day, I knew he was hooked. We both were, and after hundreds of miles together, we still are.

When we run, he's not just “looking at,” he's "moving through". And our trail is a good place to move through. It's nature-rich, with steep, wooded banks, lots of boulders and laurel, a wide rocky river at the side, and wildlife. This is where he saw his first deer and wild turkeys, where he flushed his first grouse. When a train roars by on the other side of the river, he twists himself around to watch until it's completely gone around the bend. He points out the butterflies and songbirds to me, and he waves to the cows on the farm we pass.

He embraces the weather — all of it. If the sun is bright, he pulls the brim of his little blue hat down. He giggles when it rains. He tries to catch snowflakes in his hand. He turns his head and squints his eyes and smiles when the wind turns the stroller into a sail. On a misty-black night run, he's completely silent.

Sometimes I talk to him, or sing. Sometimes he talks and sings back. Occasionally he gets bored with the whole thing, and he reaches his hand out to touch the spinning tires, or gives voice to the discomfort that we're both feeling. I point out new things, or I grab a leaf from an overhanging branch or a goldenrod or daisy for him to hold. Mostly we're very quiet, though. The beat of my feet on the soft trail and the faint crunchy sound of the tires on cinder and sand is hypnotic. Sometimes he sleeps, lulled by those rhythms, and the monotonous beauty of it all. But usually he just sits there and takes it all in, watching the world go by, working on the most sublime look of contentment.

"Someday he'll be pushing me around like this."

That's my standard line for people who comment when we pass. I'm joking — I hope to be self-mobile forever. But the "someday" part is true. Someday I hope he'll be running beside me, or better, out in front, faster than I've ever gone. Someday when he's older, I hope he'll still have the same look of wonderment on his face from time to time. And someday I hope he'll introduce his own child to the world, in his own way.

That's my gift to him. Not the running itself — that's just a means to an end — but the desire to be out in the world, really in it.

And I get a gift, too.

Sometimes after running, we walk through the woods to the edge of the river, and climb out onto the long, low boulders that jut into the flow. On a perfect day, the air is cool, the sun has heated the rocks, and I can lean my tired body against them and soak up the warmth. Lucas splashes in a shallow pool next to me, or plays with driftwood sticks. Or I help him climb down to the current and we watch trout swimming in the deep shadows, or water beetles whirling on the surface.

My gift from him is that curiosity, that embrace of everything. It's that attitude of grabbing the side-bars and pulling yourself forward into the wind so you can see out. I think that's what I chase after every time I run. And he shows me a vision of it and reminds me of a difference I'm trying to remedy: I move by force of will, he moves by force of wonder.

Afterword…

In case you’re curious, the setting for most of that essay is a stretch of the Great Allegheny Passage rail-trail along the Casselman River, between Rockwood and Meyersdale, PA.

By the time we quit these outings (before that, actually), Lucas was quite able to run on his own. Eventually, he beat me in a race (Prowl the Sproul 10k in 2015) and he’s surely much faster than me now (although… my marathon PR is still better than his, and he has yet to run farther than a 50k).

And I’m still fully self-mobile, by the way (no need to be wheeled around yet).

But the main point is that he’s still out there exploring.

As am I.

…and some statistics

(Yes, of course I kept records)

* First stroller run: July 29, 1997 (2.2 rail-trail miles)

* Total miles: 242.1

* 24 runs on the rail-trail near our home in Fairmont, WV

* 24 runs on the Great Allegheny Passage rail-trail in Somerset County, PA

* 1 beach run in Ocean City, MD

* 1 street run in Berlin, PA

* 9 runs here in State College, in the Toftrees gamelands

* Last stroller run: July 28, 2001 (the standard 3-mile loop through the gamelands behind our townhouse in Toftrees)

* He was much larger by then.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rushofitall.substack.com

This essay was originally published as “In the Long Run” in the Fall 2020 issue of Eat Clean, Run Dirty Magazine. I’ve added my own photos for this version.

Intimate Places

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Familiarity…

It’s subtle, this knowing, and it sneaks in.  You settle into a local park or forest that you chose not for its spectacular nature, but for convenience — it fits into the spaces of your life and lets you log your miles while you dream of other places, big-name races and better runs in faraway lands.  Days pass, then years, and at some point between dreams, you notice that you’ve come to rely on this place.

And you know some things about it.

You know the huckleberries on Tussey Mountain are usually ready to eat by the third weekend of June, but it’s mid-August and they’re still not ripe.  And you’ve never seen Sinking Creek stop flowing before (a statement that only has significance if you’ve been watching for at least a decade).

You remember that year when you startled the same bear every time you traversed the side-hill cut on the Tussey descent, and that other year when you saw the mama bear with four (or was it five) cubs over in the Barrens.  You know where the deer will be on a misty fall morning, and this particular trail junction will always be “Porcupine Flats” because it's where you saw your first wild porcupine (it was climbing the — much taller now — white pine that marks the turn).

You learn some of the place’s secrets (and some of its secret places).  You found that mossy spring that’s hidden by rhododendrons (it’s well off the trail, beyond the big hemlock stump, next to the boulder that looks like a bear) and sometimes you go there to hide.

And you know that if you hit that second bend in the trail near the north-east edge of Patton Woods within a half-hour of sunset, the trees will be glowing and it will feel holy.

These seasons and cycles and the flows of the place have become familiar, the growing and blooming and dying.  And more than that — you’ve begun to feel them within yourself.

…Sparks Affection…

Anthropomorphizing terrain is silly, but you do it anyway.  It used to be just another obscure trail.  Now it’s your trail, and you’ve given it a pet name to match its distinctive personality, something like Bugs Bunny or Sledgehammer or Molehill.

Because you really like this place.

A distressing mix of parental pride and protectiveness emerges.  Torn between a generosity that wants to share with the world, and the fear that sharing it will ruin it, you worry: Will they love and respect it the way I do?  (Know that if I invite you into one of “my” places, I’ve judged you worthy and decided to trust you, because you “get it” and are likely to get this place.)

Perhaps there’s misplaced possessiveness, too, as you suffer through pandemic tourists and day-tripping deer hunters out for their once-a-year visit to the woods.  All these intruders, tromping through your home!

(But you still own the night — you’ll always own the night.)

You might pick up a superstition or two.  Maybe you require a ceremonial running of a specific local route before you head off to one of those destination races, or a welcome-home loop when you return (victorious or defeated).  Maybe you carry a physical fragment of your place as a talisman when you venture out into the wider world.

Because it’s no longer just a place, it’s become a symbol and an anchor against all the turbulence.

…Becomes Intimacy

It’s different for each person and each location, but there will come a time when affection progresses to intimacy.  This is no longer just your place, and it’s more than a symbol.

It’s a trusted friend.

You’ve seen its best and its worst, the freshness of its springtime, the sweltering and pestilent heat of its summer, its sunsets and icy darknesses, the glory of its edge times.

Likewise, it's seen you at your best (and you might imagine it shared your joy or exhilaration), and your worst (it was there to console you when no one else was, to help you through some period of tragedy or heartbreak as one bit of comfort and reliability in a chaotic world).

And not only have you seen each other, you’ve moved through this time together.

It’s a gift, and a mystery that requires imagination, to love a place and feel that it loves you back the way a dog might.  You speak different languages, and there are things you’ll never be capable of understanding about each other.  Yet there’s some undeniable reciprocation of feelings, a secret, sacred empathy between you and this piece of land.

If you’re like me, you might come to realize that you can’t imagine a better exit from this world than during a run (someday, in the distant future) here in this place you know so well.  Maybe it’s near the summit of your favorite climb, familiar trees standing guard, your heart pounding, legs aching, sweat (and maybe a spiderweb) in your eyes, a smile on your face (and in your soul).

Maybe you’ve even found a final resting place.

Go out to spectacular destinations and do amazing, life-list things — we’re built for exploring.  But do come home from all that — I suspect that our places still have some lessons for us, and some secrets.

The accumulated intimacy of years in a place is priceless and irreplaceable, better than any buckle.  And you only earn it by spending quality time in a committed, long-term relationship with that place: bleed in it, laugh and cry with it, grow old with it.

By being there and paying attention, you become part of it and it becomes part of you.

If you’re interested in origins and want to see the difference between a raw idea and a finished product, you can see how this one started out here: Query [Pandemic Diary day 173].

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rushofitall.substack.com

The look in the eye, the set of the body — you’re gazing upon something fundamental to our nature, something fundamentally powerful and good. Restoring my faith in the basic soundness of our species...

I talked last time (There I was…) about the importance of telling stories. There are many ways to do that, but sometimes the very best stories have no words. Sometimes the best story is on the face of an athlete.

This excerpt is from an old photo essay I published back in 2010 when my son was deep into soccer:

Sometimes I need to restore my faith in the basic soundness of our species, because sometimes I see and hear too much that takes me in the opposite direction. So I watch for examples of our better nature. I look for displays of people at their best, in moments of earnest engagement when they are so involved in doing something they love that they forget to pose, when they lower their defenses and let go of their cynicism and sarcasm and pretension and become pure.

One place I can reliably find this is on the faces of athletes engaged in their sport. Since my son’s a soccer player, and since I’m not a very good spectator, I spend my time at his games target shooting for those moments with my camera. And regardless of the season or the age or whether it’s boys or girls, it’s a target-rich environment.

Out on the field, in head-to-head competition, those sparks of authenticity follow the ball back and forth across the field and flow with the tides of the game. But it’s not really about the game. The game, the score, the stats, winning and losing — it’s all just a vehicle (or an excuse) for getting to those moments of maximal effort when nothing’s held back.

It’s striking in its purity because in those moments at the peak of the action, in those brief seconds of total concentration and full engagement, there’s no room in the mind for anything else. That animal focus on a physical act of athleticism drowns out all the noise, the social anxiety and the complexities of life.

Something primal comes through — the look in the eye, the set of the body, the physicality and the energy — and you can’t help but feel you’re gazing upon something fundamental to our nature. And it’s something fundamentally powerful and good.

…

(The full essay with all the photos is here: The Rush of it All: Soccer Faces)

When I started shooting trail races, I saw exactly the same things.

Sometimes there is earnest focus…

…which is often accompanied by some pain.

Sometimes there are smiles…

… and sometimes the biggest story is on the faces of the crew…

It is all there on the faces: focus, struggle, pain, joy, pride… it’s universal and elemental. It is us at our best, unencumbered.

And it can make a really good story.

You can find more of my photos here:

* Running: TROIA Photos - Running

* Soccer: TROIA Photos - Team Sports

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Post-race running stories fill me up. In the army we call them there-I-was..., but they're only stories if you tell them... Tell your story!...

Post-race running stories fill me up.

They come in a frantic, exuberant flurry after a race — at the finish line, on the way home, on social media in the weeks afterward. The best of them stay with us for years.

They remind me of my own stories, or else they make me wonder what my story will be when I eventually face what they faced. And I love those moments of recognition when I know exactly what they are saying, because I’ve been there, felt exactly that.

This communal review and celebration of a race or a run is integral to the experience. We immerse ourselves in emotional retellings, strengthen our tribal bonds by revisiting shared hardships, shared victories and defeats. It fills me up in a way that nothing else can.

In the army we call these “there-I-was“ stories…

…as in: “There I was, [insert daunting challenge], and then I [insert heroic actions in the face of that challenge].”

The name is a mocking but affectionate recognition that there might be some melodrama involved. The story starts with a fact or a basic emotion, then adds narrative that highlights some elements and downplays others, all in the interest of making a point. It’s not journalism or fiction, and embellishment does not negate the story, it elevates it. At the core, it’s about communicating some truth beyond pure facts, perhaps something that touches the universal.

Each story is new, yet also very old, a contemporary illustration of ancient truths, fuel for the fire of our ever-evolving future mythologies.

Stories are only stories if you tell them.

So, stories are important, you probably have some you haven’t shared, and your story is part of our story. But we can only learn from it or be inspired or entertained by it if you put it out for us to see.

It’s a basic tenant I learned as a young scout platoon leader, the core of our cavalry mission: gain and maintain contact with the enemy, develop the situation, continue to report. Report! Tell the story, paint the picture — no matter what you’ve seen, it can’t help the rest of the squadron if they don’t know about it.

On my homepage I have the same idea told a different way by Mary Oliver: “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

So tell your story.

What are your there-I-was moments? Tell us a story.

It can be big or little, a sweeping epic of group struggle, or a small and personal battle, how you managed to make it to the top of that last climb, how clear the sky was and how perfect the sunset when you got there.

Tell it for the stranger who will stumble across it (they might become your friend).

Tell it for your great-great grandchildren (wouldn’t you be glad to have a similar relic from your own ancestors?).

Tell it because it might inspire someone or teach them, it might reinforce something they already know, or it might help them look at the world in a new way.

Use your own voice, or pretend you were someone else, change the names to protect the innocent (and “there I was” can be “there we were”). Tell us what you saw and did, or how you wish it had gone instead.

Tell it where you’re comfortable, or (maybe better) where you’re not so comfortable. Tell it to people you know will like it, or to the entire world. Post it on social media. Add it as a comment on someone else’s post. Write an email or an old-fashioned paper letter. Build a website, start a Substack newsletter (like this one), or start a blog and tell all the stories. Journal it, dear-diary it, draw pictures or add photos or make it a poem or a song. Write it in the trailhead logbook.

Or save it for just the right time, with just the right group of people around just the right campfire.

Tell it anyway.

Think your story has already been told? You’re probably right — we’re a storytelling species, and more than 100 billion of us have ridden this planet around the sun in the past 200 thousand years or so. Every story has already been told. But think of a favorite song… how many times have you listened to it, played it on repeat, sung along with it, pulled up the live version and the studio version and someone’s cover version?

The truth is we crave repetition, and we need to hear old things in new ways. A hundred billion of us or not, you are unique, your story is new to you, and even though it’s just another variation on a theme — tell it anyway.

Think it’s not enough? Think you’re not fast enough, you didn’t go far enough, or have some other “not enough” measure you come up short on? So what? Most of us are somewhere in the middle, and “enough” is both relative and subjective. Tell it anyway.

Think it’s too much? Don’t want to brag that you went so fast, or so far, hurt so much, acted so heroically? Then don’t brag — just tell your story. You worked hard, or you got lucky (probably both), and you did this thing. If your story offends the sensibilities of some, it will surely inspire others. Tell it anyway.

Think you don’t have the words for it? Think your grammar is poor or your creativity is lacking and you can’t come up with anything better than “awesome” or “pain cave”? So what? Stories are bigger than the words you use to tell them, and unless you’re going pro, nobody really cares. The story will come through — you will come through — and we’ll hear you and know what you’re trying to say. Tell it anyway.

Afraid no one will read or understand it? Or worse, think no one will care? You might be right. Your story is not going to change the world. At best you might get the brief attention of some tiny fragment of the world for a few seconds. And some small subset of that tiny fragment might remember some part of your story for a bit longer.

So what? Suppose you tell all of your stories, over and over again, and just once, a single person finds it at just the right moment, and it makes a difference. Do you really need to change the world? Maybe instead you are meant to reach that one particular person with your particular story at the one particular moment they need to hear what you have to say. Do you really need more than that?

Tell it anyway.

That’s it — just tell your story. We’ll read it or we won’t. It will reach us, teach us, inspire us, or it won’t. As Seth Godin says, “Our work is about throwing. The catching can take care of itself.” None of it really matters, and yet at the same time it matters deeply. Tell your story, fill us up.

Here’s a prompt:There I was…

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As I approach my 10th (and final) Hyner 50k, I'm thinking about margins and frontiers, and conscious decisions about deliberate transitions...

Transitions

I’m interested in margins and frontiers, in boundaries, borders, transition zones and phases; the interface between here and there, before and after, old and new; the indistinct liminal spaces around edges and borders, and the gradual subtle changes that roll across the land and through our lives.

Those changes come in different flavors. Some are dramatic or even traumatic, they’re “the nexus of the crisis, and the origin of storms” (extra credit if you recognize that phrase from Astronomy by B.O.C.). Others are subtle, non-storm and without drama, just a slow drifting-away (that’s matched in the best case by a reciprocal drifting-towards).

They all draw my attention, at least partly because I want to understand my own liminal spaces, my own passages and margins, the ebb and flow of my interests, abilities, options, and obligations.

Because while some transitions are thrust upon you abruptly, often the signs of a coming change are there far ahead of time. And if you’re watching, you can recognize them and get ahead of them, so you can make conscious decisions around them, devise a strategy for them, make the transition on your own terms, so that what you are leaving behind and what you are moving towards can all be a coherent part of the body of work that is your life.

I’m thinking and writing about this now because I’m approaching a milestone and a transition in my running life. In 2011 I ran my first trail race, the Hyner Trail Challenge 25k. A year later, I ran my first ultra at the inaugural Hyner 50k. I’ve run it every year since, and it’s been a touchstone for my life through this period. So my decision that my tenth repetition (next month) will be my final Hyner, and probably my last short race of any sort, feels personally momentous.

I like the symbolism of ten, the feeling of it. But it’s a marker for a transition that has been happening for years. It’s a drifting-away, and I welcome it.

I’ve not lost my love of trailrunning — if anything, that feeling is deeper and more nuanced with each outing.

And I’m not finished with the long races. At some point I’ll probably move on from them in the same way, but for now they still intrigue me and challenge me in ways that I’m not done exploring.

It’s not about age, either. At not quite 57, I’m still on the upside of that curve in many ways, still in an “older, faster, stronger” phase, and my last two races (a 100k and a 100-miler) were both personal bests.

It’s more about having done this thing (the short races) long enough to be sated, about having nothing left to prove on this front. The image that comes to me as I write this is that misty scene from late in “The Return of the King” (from The Lord of the Rings) when the elves are leaving Middle Earth — their time (my time) was passing, and to stay longer would be to fade away.

Anyway, I’m working on a ten-year retrospective “adventure report” about my Hyner years that will have some details and remembrances (and maybe some lessons) from the race — you’ll be able to read that sometime next month on my website.

Boundaries

The other project I’m working on now is an article that’s closely related to that idea of transitions. I’m looking at the magazine’s theme of “Access” from the standpoint of boundaries, and the selective filters we use at the various physical and topical and temporal boundaries in our lives and our world.

I haven’t fully worked this out yet, but I’m intrigued by three aspects of it.

First, the concept of boundaries. An edge may look clear and sharply defined, a linear transition that happens precisely here. But move in for a closer look and you might see that what looked precise is actually hazy, that there is an emerging smudge of pixellated darkness that is faint at first but that gains density as you move towards the line, and perhaps lingers a bit on the other side of the line. We’re back into margins and liminality again.

Second, our boundary filters. How do we decide what (and who) to let through, and what (and who) to keep out?

We filter objects and physical passage (like: you aren’t allowed to run here, or you physically can’t run here, or you aren’t allowed to cross this border… access to a trail, access to a country, citizenship, ownership, rights of access and rights of exclusion)…

…and we filter activities and interests and desires and ambitions (like: the old plan you had for your life, and your new plan, the adjustments you’ve made on your trajectory, the phases of your life and the transitions from one to the next)…

And third, the contrasts. For there to be a boundary or a transition there must be a “this side” and a “that side.” The difference might be physical, like at this point the trail is too steep to go on, or there might be some cultural contrivance like a legal boundary or a convention that says that people like you just don’t (or can’t, or aren’t allowed to) go to a place like this.

But whether the difference is natural or invented, it’s the difference, the contrast, that draws our interest and attention — that’s where the story is, where the challenges occur and where the growth (or decline) happens.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten on that, but I’m still working, and I’ll share more of it when I’ve figured it out.

In the meantime, thanks for reading (and please stay tuned).

Jeff

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Thoughts on the Ukraine invasion (and Apollo-Soyuz) from an old Cold War soldier...

When I heard about the Russian invasion of Ukraine this morning and started seeing photos of tanks and personnel carriers, it took me back more than three decades.

When I arrived in West Germany in 1988, my first task as a tank platoon leader was to learn our role in the NATO General Defense Plan. Our cavalry squadron was to defend the Hof Corridor, a potential avenue of approach for a Soviet-led invasion from the east. In a carefully-orchestrated defense in depth, to be fought in a series of engagement areas between the border and a final squadron engagement area 35 miles southwest, on the edge of the escarpment near our home station north of Bayreuth, we were to delay Warsaw Pact forces long enough for our tank divisions to prepare a counterattack.

That fall, we participated in Reforger (“Return of Forces to Germany”), a massive recurrent exercise designed to practice — and advertise — our ability and intent to support NATO against attack. This was the first time I was a part of a large armored formation maneuvering across extensive areas of countryside. For a 23-year-old soldier, it was a buzz — impressive and exciting. But it was also incredibly sobering to think of what it represented, the violent potential of it.

The threat was real, the enemy was strong, and we took it very seriously.

I’m not suggesting that this is that. It was a different time and place, and though closely related, a different enemy.

But that’s what I thought about this morning.

I thought about what a mass formations of tanks looks and feels like as it moves across European terrain, thought about one particular movement we did during that Reforger exercise, an entire cavalry troop on-line, assaulting at full speed across an open field, an irresistible force.

I thought about what tanking and soldiering during European winter can be like (it’s not pleasant, and I’m sure it’s a lot less pleasant when it’s an open-ended live conflict).

And I thought about more recent experiences. I remembered Ukrainian students in classes I was teaching many years later at the NATO school in Germany, about the bright young officers and the bright future they anticipated as they embraced the west, and I’m wondering if they are still in the Ukrainian army and what role they might be playing in this conflict.

And that song (Peter Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers”)… I’m not certain why it came to me, but it did, and I looked it up and played it and watched the video, and even though it’s cryptic and the references are obscure, it felt right, it captured my mood and gave me a title for this entry. Jeux Sans Frontières… “games without frontiers, war without tears”. (The Wikipedia entry has some interesting background information.)

I was going to end with that, but I realized that the Cold War duck-and-cover drills in the video tied to something else I’m working on. A friend recently sent me a post he wrote as an answer to a question about formative early memories (read it here: “What If? in El Cuervo Viejo). His formative memory was from the Cuban missile crisis, when he was ten, of being told when they left school that day that there might not be school the next day because “the world we knew may be no more”.

In searching for my own equivalent formative memory I realized that by the time I was the age he was for his memory, the Cold War had cooled down a bit. We were no longer doing the duck-and-cover drills, and my first memory of the Soviet Union is Apollo-Soyuz, the first crewed international space mission. It’s a symbolically bright memory that I suppose was probably formative for me in some important ways.

I’m not sure exactly how that relates to the events of today, and I don’t know what any of this means. I guess it might be that this is all confusing and frustrating and maddening and disappointing, and there will be violence and death and hardship for some people, merely angst for others, and the world will go on with it’s predictable mix of darkness and light.

And maybe we’re all just playing at games without frontiers.

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A practical cycle of activity, and the how-to core of a philosophy I try to live by (pay attention, tell about it, keep moving forward)...

The rhythm of my days, of my life, is much simpler now than it once was.

When I retired from the Army, I traded a rewarding but highly disruptive career for something much more stable and predictable. I’m still navigating that transition, but as time passes I’m settling into the kind of unfragmented pattern of living that I’ve craved for a very long time. Most of my days now follow a simple cycle that I love, and that is good for my soul: I read, I write, I run, and I repeat.

On the surface it’s a practical cycle of activity that concisely describes (and directs) how I spend my time.

At a deeper level, if I interpret more broadly and metaphorically, “Read, Write, Run, Repeat” is the how-to core of the philosophy I try to live by.

Let’s have a look.

Read

Reading is the intake phase. It’s about inputs, fuel.

Read written words (all those second-hand observations), yes. But also, read in a broader sense, get your own first-hand observations: actively seek input in all forms from the world around you. It’s active, not passive. Look with intent to see, see with intent to understand. Receive the messages and look for more.

Pay Attention!

Write

Writing is the output phase. It’s about digestion, synthesis, and creation.

Take all those inputs and play with them. Stir them, let them ferment/gestate/incubate. Change angles, ask questions, look for differences and connections. Reconfigure them into a form that is more comprehensible or that adds context and understanding.

Your primary product is personal insight and understanding, and you decide whether to keep that in your mind, or to capture it in words (on paper or screen or audio).

Do it for yourself first. But please consider sharing — your creative products become the next round of inputs, for yourself and for others.

Tell about it.

Run

Running is about being a good animal.

Body and mind are inseparable, and the health of each is integral to the health of the other. Physical movement through a physical environment under your own power exercises your body and mind in an animal way. It brings balance, enables broad-sense reading and writing, and brings you contact with the world.

Keep moving forward.

Repeat

Repetition is about the process and your decision to trust it.

Repetition acknowledges that we’re on a journey. It recognizes that, on this long trail without a finish line, the journey is the reward. It celebrates the products that flow from the cycles of that journey, the insights and the new questions.

Choose your process, make a conscious commitment to it, and trust the belief system behind it. And then ride that cycle as long and as well as you possibly can. If you do it right, it gets better with use, reinforces and improves itself, becomes second nature, becomes who you are and what you do.

I couldn’t ask for much more than that.

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I want to be like Scotia.

I want to pause in the woods on a cold night and stand at the edge of the darkness, sensing forward with my whole body. I want to see-hear-smell-taste-feel every nuance of the night, its mystery and promise.

(Can anything be more alive than a dog is in that moment?)

I want to run with her when this pregnant and sensing pause becomes an exuberant charge forward. No fear or questions, no careful pacing or holding back for later, no hierarchy of goals, no calculations or considerations or implications, no past or future or any awareness of time beyond the simple now.

Only the perfect bright clarity of movement.

I want to forget (just for a moment, only every so often), that we aren’t dogs, forget this blessing and curse of memory and imagination, of warranted fears and our constant need to plan and prepare and improve.

I want to lie down panting at the end of an outing, exhausted and content, and feel no urge to analyze this effort or contemplate the next.

I want my legs to twitch and my tail to wag as I sleep.

And when I waken back into my humanity, I want to be better for the sojourn — I want to bring some element of vital caninity back with me. I want lasting and useful connection with my native dog-heart.

I wish that for all of us.

Did you like the audio version? Was it a distraction? Should I do it again? Comment below to let me know — thanks.

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