every leaf a miracle.

To state the obvious, I really love the outdoors.

I also greatly adore the act of running and the benefit, in moving faster, of getting to see more of the beloved outdoors in a days time than would be possible at a slower pace.  Not that I don't enjoy hiking, walking or even just sitting beneath a canopy of open sky.  I do, but, it is while travelling more swiftly that I find my greatest solitary joy.  A perfect blending of the release that is physical exertion and the inspiring exhibition of natural, remote settings, trail running makes me infinitely more capable of filtering out those things that might normally distract me from a full appreciation of how miraculous life can be.

Between science and all its explanations, the facts and figures that dwell within the phones and computers that have become appendages of our everyday, a globe that acknowledges having been explored, mapped and demystified, it has become all too easy to shrug off the miracles.

But they do exist.  Not just out on the trails, but everywhere.

I know it in my heart and all five of my senses confirm their existence if I heed the data those senses collect.

Feebly, I am unable to prove it or convey it to others.

Walt Whitman, the grand old poet who died on this very day back in 1892, was not so feeble.

As a teenager, I can remember reading his works and trying to fathom the scope and grandeur they evoked.  I couldn't.  Filled with flourishes and exclamations, his poetry refused to NOT acknowledge the wonder in all things, physical, spiritual, natural or man-made.

He praised action, physicality, movement, mountains, prairies, forests and oceans, but, within capacious musings, he cast light not just on athletic feats or the most fetching landscapes, but also upon the seemingly mundane, the otherwise shadowed or overlooked.

All things.

So on this day, in remembrance of an icon's passing but even more so in honor of his having lived and done so on such a grand, celebratory scale, I set my own sights on becoming ever more receptive to the joy of all things.

Rest well, Walt, and thank you for the prompting that ever leaf, every blade of grass is indeed a miracle.

Miracles

WHY! who makes much of a miracle?

As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the

water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with

any one I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet

and bright,

Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;

Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best--

mechanics, boatmen, farmers,

Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera,

Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,

Or behold children at their sports,

Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old

woman,

Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,

Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;

These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring--yet each distinct, and in its place.

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the

same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;

Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,

and all that concerns them,

All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

To me the sea is a continual miracle;

The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships,

with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there? 

snow daze.

Nearly a foot of snow had fallen and my own two feet were restless to explore.  A lull in the weather, a predicted gap between the first round of the storm and its second appearance as a separate front pushed it back our way, left the roads surprisingly navigable.

Few motorists expected that to be the case or they were simply too busy digging out to venture onto the roadways.  Whatever the reason, traffic was sparse for the 10 mile commute from my driveway to the Horseshoe Trail at the intersection of Pumping Station Road and Route 322.

As expected, the parking lot at Pumping Station was unplowed except for a few vanishing tracks left by a vehicle or two that had apparently earlier used the lot to turn around and head the other direction.  I followed one of those paths, backing my car into a position I prayed could be escaped from a few hours later.

Most of this winter has been spent in Kahtoola MICROspikes, but they seemed in over their heads for the conditions lurking in the woods.  Besides, there are too few opportunities to dust off the snowshoes and this one wouldn't be missed.

My Crescent Moon Gold 9's are built specifically for running, but, to be fair, they also anticipate packed snow, not the deep powder to which they were about to be exposed.  Oh well.  It's been a year of resistance training thus far and this would just be more of the same.

The Horseshoe was buried, absolutely buried, and there wasn't any sign to suggest that anyone had been out on the trail since the snow had begun falling the night before.  Trail breaking would be required the entire way and the going would likely be slow.

Bearing left off the Horseshoe allowed me to gain high ground more quickly and I was immediately glad to have my Black Diamond Z-Poles as the depth of the snow stacked along the edge of the ridge the trail skirts made for some false footing that kicked powder down into the ravine below.

Reaching the top of the ridge, crossing the power line and ducking back into the trees, I began to establish a pace a bit more recognizable as running though the degree of difficulty had my heart pounding and my temperature rising beneath the warm layers donned to ward off the cold.  Throttling down just a bit to keep from sweating out, I pondered which way to turn as a number of trail intersections approached.

Following the Big Timber trail kept me off of some of the wider paths and had me ducking under limbs bent low from their cargo loads of white.  Other than my own breathing, the crunching of snowshoes and the occasional trekking pole clack, there were few sounds to be heard.  Exceptions were the melodic whew-whew-hews of titmice and the namesake chirping of chickadees.

There were few tracks to be seen, confirming that most animals had the sensibility to hole up and ride out the storm.  One rogue set of tracks in a tight one-hoof-directly-in-place-of-the-last stride seemed to indicate that a deer had been out for a rather casual mid-storm stroll.  Stray appear-disappear-reappear squirrel tracks were there to be found but even they seemed more scarce than usual.

I did also happen upon the work site of a hearty woodpecker that had clearly been rat-a-tat-tapping away recently enough to have left its wood scraps strewn about atop the snow.

In spite of not having seen any human visitors, the trails made themselves known by a dimpled, undulating surface that resembled the cartoon tunneling of Bugs Bunny on his way from that wrong turn in Albuquerque.  I have seen this phenomenon before and it has bailed me out a time or two out in the forest without a headlamp after the light has failed (unless provided by a man-made appliance, can light really "fail"?).

Here and there, fallen leaves skittered lightly across the snow or rested stoicly in the shallow berths that their last inherent warmth had carved, a defiant final proof of having ever really been alive.  If you look close, the leaves have often oozed the slightest stain of their brown and yellow hues into the snow itself, a natural farewell tagging that strikes me as both a sad and beautiful plea for remembrance.

Fatigue snuck up on me until all at once I was gassed.  The sign indicating the broad, smooth Explorer Lodge Road offered an escape route temptation but I was determined to take in the view atop Eagle Rock.

It may not be more than a half mile from there to Eagle Rock but my tired legs felt as though it was a three mile stretch.  A mix of sleet, freezing rain and actual rain was adding weight to what had been deep, but feathery powder.

Earlier in the week, on the ridge line just to the south and west of the one I was then traversing, I had noted quite a bit of damage from the ice storm that had swept the area several days prior.  Broken limbs, downed trees and brush that had collapsed beneath its own weight had cluttered the trails and in some cases made them nearly impassable.  I worried that similar debris was likely on the final approach to Eagle Rock but, other than a lot of snow, it was clear.

Even though visibility was a fraction of what it normally is, the view from Eagle Rock was really stunning.  The blanket of white triggered contrasts and highlights in the forest that otherwise often blend into a uniform sea of browns and greens.  Clouds socked in the next ridge and further muffled any audible evidence of a world beyond these woods.

Brisk winds took advantage of the exposure to whip swirling moisture into my eyes and sent cold air seeking any vulnerabilities in the clothes I was wearing.  Exhausted and concerned I might not be able to stave off the cold as easily as I normally do, I clambered down off the rock and moved on.

As soon as I turned away from the vista and stepped back into the trees, the wind fell away and with it any chill that had crept in.  It was, quite literally, all downhill from there to the car and I took advantage of that trajectory to settle back into an actual run.  Snow took some of the physical punishment out of this stretch of trail by padding the usually rocky footing and allowing me to move along briskly, sometimes running, sometimes glissading.

I paused just long enough to snap one last intersection photo and then barreled the rest of the way down the Horseshoe Trail toward Hammer Creek and the final approach to where the car awaited my return.

I can't say how far I traveled, as my GPS was still sitting at home wondering why it hadn't made the trip.  Suffice to say, the mileage wasn't as far as my body was suggesting.

There's no device known to me that can measure how much ground the mind covers. I don't ever set out with a specific distance goal for my thoughts, but I can tell when a given workout has been a good one for my body AND my mind.

The legs are done in, the quads quiver.  The brain?  It's smiling.

I settled into the driver's seat, turned the key and, as the car freed itself from the lot and powered back onto 322, my body ached and the smile in my mind  grew wide.

i shall not NOT be moved.

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

- William Blake

Let me never be so without imagination that I am not moved by the beauty of the forest or by the solemn significance of any single tree, the dancing song of its wavering leaves, the storytelling texture of its bark.

Humans may be able to shut down parks and limit public access, but, thankfully, their vanity, budgeting and politicking can't "close" nature.

four walls too many.

Churches confound me.

Nowhere does the memory of my deceased father come so close to solidity.  The personal joy that his faith brought him, a Grace Brethren minister come to religion only in adulthood, seems to swirl about the room, threatening to take physical form in the body that I watched in its broken and withered state for the weeks and months before we laid that body to rest.

But it isn't a joy that finds its way into my own body and, otherwise, these rooms, filled with gathered worshippers, are without a warmth that I can discern, despite smiles and verbiage that profess to its existence.

I'm not sure why I question the fervor of strangers (I shouldn't), but I do, especially in an environment that speaks not to me.

If there is a higher power and we believe that that higher power is for some reason reaching out specifically to "us", why do we close ourselves away from the natural world that we espouse as "his" perfect creation?  Why would we construct walls with doors to pass through and close behind us before uttering praise?  It defies all logic and seems to add a "yeah, but" asterisk to those perfection proclamations.

God created the world in all its splendor but, oops, forgot to erect structures within which proper homage could be paid for that most miraculous of miracles?

I too have wanted to raise my arms skyward in exaltation, but not indoors.

Never there.

From the tops of high peaks, under the canopy of solemn trees, while knee deep in the rush of spring runoff, shadowed beneath towering canyon walls, yes, but never indoors.

Walls, with the aid of roofs, protect and shelter, but they also block vision, muffle nature's music and cloak beauty that cannot be improved upon.

Even amidst a civilization endowed with infinite capacity to manufacture fear, I welcome the darkness of night, the punishing glare of sunlight, the whipping of the wind and weather's bombardment over the stale suffocation of enclosure.