One of these times, she's going to hurt
herself with these antics. In her unbridled excitement, she's going
to forget to look ahead in between joyful barks and bounces in my
direction. An oversize root, a misplaced rock, a snake – something
– is not going to get out of her way.
I'm referring, of course, to Dorri, my
parents' three-year old golden retriever, who served as my regular
trail running companion during the nine months which I spent living
back home in Amherst, Mass. It was a triply beneficial partnership:
we both got the exercise and woods time we craved while my mom and
dad were relieved of the stir-crazy, attention-hogging young golden she had too often resembled, instead coming home to find a dog
mellowed by the exertion of charging through the hills of the Holyoke
Range. Of course, our adventures would hardly have seemed routine
based on the boundless delight she exuded at the start of each.
A week ago, however, Dorri and I took
our last run up Rattlesnake Knob for a while, at least until I return
home from Colorado for a few frantic days in August and prepare for
my autumnal relocation to Madison, Wis. I almost offered to bring her
along on my current adventure, but the truth is that I'm going to
need some time alone during this journey, time without a 60-pound
bundle of straw-colored vitality bouncing toward my face.
 |
| On top of Grays Peak with some old Ranger-types. |
The trip is off to a fast start, to say
the least. After stops in Ann Arbor, Mich. and Kansas City, the
Silver Bullet and I pulled into Denver on Monday evening, just in
time to help lay the cement down for the lower floor of my brother
and sister-in-law's new house. Two hours later, I was zigzagging the
little hatchback up the ruts and rocks of a Summit County backroad,
headed for a late-night rendezvous with some old friends from my
Ranger days at Philmont Scout Ranch. Yesterday, three days after waking up at
sea level in Boston, I was fending off altitude sickness as we
climbed Grays and Torreys Peaks, topping out at 14,270 feet of
elevation. Not a bad way to start a vacation.
Yet as I enjoy my recovery day, I'm
thinking not of friends or 14ers, but of trail runs with Dorri and
the importance of routines. My life will be intentionally unfettered
for the next month – and perhaps much longer, depending on the
progress of the Great Madison Job Hunt. One of my primary goals for
this chapter is to bring writing to the forefront, to make space for
it on my list of crucial routines.
In the fall of 2011, I found myself
starved for exercise as I began my first job out of college at an
Outdoor Education Center in Texas. For the first extended period of
my life, I was not playing an organized sport, and while I did plenty
of walking in my new job and occasionally talked co-workers into a
game of ultimate frisbee, the routine of strenuous aerobic activity
was gone without a team's structure. I had battled for years with
running on my own, never reaching the point where the question turned
from if I was going to run that week to when. But as I felt my love
handles growing flabbier in the East Texas heat, I finally got past
the initial disruption which accompanies any change in personal
habits. I started running a few miles around the adjacent
neighborhood two, three, sometimes four times a week. Come April, I
had completed my first half marathon. The routine was established and
its strength gave me the same confidence as my legs'.
When I returned to Amherst last fall
for my new job in sports information, I kept running, but gone was
the regular exposure to nature my work in Texas had afforded. Between
publishing game programs, writing press releases, and staffing 27
teams' worth of events, there was no time for hiking or rock
climbing. I was lucky if I got out for a 20-minute walk to admire the
beaver pond and the oak woods behind my parents' house. Through trail
running with Dorri, however, I started killing two birds with one
stone. While one's appreciation for a wild area's minutiae is
inversely proportional to the speed at which one moves through it,
running along the ridges and creek beds of my ancient hometown hills
was a much-needed break from the high-strung personalities and
landscaped fields of collegiate athletics. I had added a new layer to
the routine of running, and it had become all the more rewarding.
So now it's time to bring to my writing
that same discipline that got me off my butt and onto the trail. As I
wind my way through the undetermined months ahead, with professional
possibilities ranging everywhere from another full-time job in
communications to substitute teaching and freelancing, I intend to
pursue my personal written work with new vigilance. The results of
those efforts may often appear here, and I am grateful already for
all of your continued reading and support.
At this point, you'd be right to wonder
just what I'll be writing about. I wish I knew too. There will
probably be a few rants about sports and climate change as the
baseball and wildfire seasons move on and I fend off the hypocrite's guilt of someone who hates fossil fuels but loves roadtrips and the
bright lights of a summer night ballpark. There may be a crappy poem
or two. There will certainly be stories and snapshots from the many
adventures, outdoor and otherwise, which await.
And on that note, I'll take you back to
Saturday, when this current western jaunt of mine began. After a
proper Friday night sendoff with friends in Boston, the next evening
found the Bullet and me crossing southern Ontario at 120 km/hr,
windows halfway down as rushing air accompanied a Neil Young serenade
(one of my favorite roadtrip traditions is listening to music from or
about an area as I drive through it). Once we escaped the sprawl of
the Niagara-to-Toronto corridor, rural beauty enveloped us as farms,
rivers, and forest stretched to the north and south, a long and golden sunset
dead ahead. As Neil sung of his Ontario roots in “Helpless,” I
felt the pull of those rivers, the longing to follow them north until
the oaks and maples hugging their banks gave way to a wall of
conifers and the towns grew smaller and fewer.
This was my first trip across the
province in several years. Barring long waits at the borders, it's a
quicker route between home in Amherst and my brother in Ann Arbor
than following I-90 around the bulge of Lake Erie. After one
particularly brutal backup on the Blue Water Bridge into Michigan,
however, I had opted for the American side during recent trips.
Recalling the scenic calm of those provincial highway stretches,
however, not to mention an unexpectedly good sandwich at Tim
Horton's, I'd say the crossing is almost worth going out of one's way
for.
Perhaps I can find a metaphor for
writing in the allure of Canada. It starts with the monotony of the
familiar, the tendency of schedules and sluggishness to prevent us
from venturing into new places both mentally and physically. Yet
Canada is there for the exploring, with vast tracts of wilderness to
which we have no equal in the lower 48. If the mental barrier of
unfamiliarity can be overcome, the potential for greater and more frequent writing is
just as attainable.
If I am venturing into the Canada of my
writer's path, then, I do so knowing that a few well-chosen routines
must still accompany me. I will keep pulling on my running shoes,
keep finding time for the wild, and will try to keep the words
flowing like rivers in between.
Of course, if this new routine gets
too, well, routine – if the threshold of boredom is approaching,
it'll be time to adjust and rethink my critical habits. Alaska,
anyone?
