In Reach
From Dyckknows.com, 2014:
The sound of the train permeates most of this valley. Sometimes the air is so hollow you would think you were standing right next to the tracks. Other times its the faint grind of steel on steel that etches it’s way up the mountainside. Over the years your awareness of it begins to subside, not that the noise becomes unnoticeable, but it becomes part of the backdrop. Mountains sound like this when they are occupied by humans, our awareness of it flutters away with acceptance.
Just outside the Bow Valley is a different matter. Whether up the Smith Dorian or down 93 South, there are so many ways to escape the rail line and be alone with only the wind through the trees, the rain or snow falling through the forest, and the pant of your breath as you step your way through the mountains.
The silence of the forest during a trail run is evidence that something akin to Heaven truly exists here and now. That someone as lowly as me can sense it, can sometimes touch it, is further proof that we don’t need to look to churches and synagogues to commune with a God. I minored in Religion for a reason and although I didn’t know it back then, the reason was because these concepts of salvation and oneness with…well, with everything, were instilled in me even in my youth. My parents tried to raise me a Christian, but all they got was this lousy weekend athlete and spiritualist.
When I was younger this sense of otherworldliness was a source of horror and sadness for me. I spent countless days just trying to understand what it was that I was feeling. I remember starting my day shift at the grocery store one morning, and feeling so completely severed from humanity that I laid down on the floor of a bathroom stall curled up crying. Its amazing the pain that some of our youth will endure, and the worst part is that they have no guidance to help contextualize what they’re going through. Another time I confessed to a friend that the only time I had to look forward to for relief was sleep, and as I was sleeping less and less I was left with fewer and fewer options. Fear.
So as an adult, in lesser or greater forms and unbeknownst to myself until recently, athleticism has been my grace. To put on one’s running shoes at the end of a shitty day and head out the door with the mind turned off is the best therapy. To have in your only thoughts the base function of putting one foot in front of the other is a welcome simplification of what most of us are demanded to do during our days, and it commands a response. To have this to look forward to at the end of your work-a-day life is the feather in your cap. If you can’t do this, if you simply cannot go out your door and place one foot in front of the other, you should seek medical attention.
But when the run is over how to you hold onto it? How do you keep it as fuel to get up in the morning, to go for groceries, to make dinner? All I have now is the moment of the activity, when it’s done, I’m generally done. When the run is over I retreat almost instantly inside of myself with all the worry and concern, the guilt, all those things that for the passed few hours I managed to dodge. When I return home my friends and family haven’t shared that same transcendence and thrill that I just have so they are just themselves, happy or not, and I am their sponge. The dam breaks when I see the truck and I’m flooded back to where I began. This is why I never want the run to end. I don’t generally exercise for health. I know running is bad for my knees, my back, ankles, myriad other body parts of which I’m still ignorant. I exercise so that I can do the things I love for longer, so my mental disappearances might be more and more permanent, for this is where I grow. I don’t lift weights. Why on God’s green earth…why with All of God’s green earth…would I want to sweat indoors? There’s no communion there. I can’t reach down and touch the ground or reach out and grab a leaf or a branch in a gym. But maybe I need to. Maybe that’s where I can continue to drill within when the out of doors is out of reach.
Games are prayers to me.