from here to new jersey.

Lily is quite the stickler for properly situating a bookmark before we cease our reading each evening.  If I forget this step and dare leave the book unmarked, she chastises me sternly.

Rightfully so, she wants to cover new ground when we settle in the following night.  There isn't time in her young life, I suppose, for backtracking.

Sooner or later, she's going to start cracking open my books and I'm afraid they're going to drive her crazy, as I fold down the corner of any and every page that contains a paragraph of interest, an eye-catching photo or even just a single stunning sentence.  For me, these marks aren't intended to denote stopping points from which to begin again, but, rather, as places to which I'd like to return and linger.

Having put Lil to bed the other evening after receiving yet another scolding (I'm forgetful, you see), I revisited my own shelves and pulled down a few random books to see what I'd find.  Pressed leaves tumbled off of or clung courageously to many pages, revealing another obsession for which I'll likely have to explain myself once the girls start greater exploration into my library.  A couple of stray feathers hid there too and I resolved to make certain that Lily and Piper both got a peek at these artifacts before they are damaged or lost entirely.

On some pages I couldn't determine exactly what it was that had led to the original folding of the corner, but even this was a warm reminder of why revisiting beloved books with the always changing perspective of "real" life brings rekindled appreciation and new revelations.

I'd read From Here to Eternity by James Jones years and years ago, so long ago, in fact, I was somewhat surprised to find that I'd done anything more than store pretty leaves within its pages.  I do not remember much about the book, sadly, but a 20-something me had found reason to call out a specific passage that has taken on new meaning with the tests of ultra running.  The following words were especially timely from the vantage point of my experiences at this past weekend's Febapple Frozen 50, a 50-mile race that I was blessed to complete despite the fact that more than half of the starters failed to finish due to treacherous footing and hypothermia-inducing weather conditions:

“He knew how to handle pain. You had to lie down with pain, not draw back away from it. You let yourself sort of move around the outside edge of pain like with cold water until you finally got up your nerve to take yourself in hand. Then you took a deep breath and dove in and let yourself sink down it clear to the bottom. And after you had been down inside pain a while you found that like with cold water it was not nearly as cold as you had thought it was when your muscles were cringing themselves away from the outside edge of it as you moved around it trying to get up your nerve. He knew pain.”

My interests all prove wedded in the end.  The music that speaks to me, the words that move me, the movement that sings to me all overlap and intertwine until I can't distinguish one from the other.  And I adore that.

I think little of graves or tombstones.  Infrequently do I ponder how I'd like to be remembered.  But, should my family decide it imperative that a marker be erected in my memory upon my slipping from this earth, I think I could live (ha!) with

"He knew how to handle pain."

Better yet, save the real estate and whatever materials were to be used for the marker and fold a corner or two in my honor when something strikes you as worthy of a return visit.

do glad.

Today not tomorrow, that's what I've been saying.

So, when my wife's busy work/school schedule found her observing in an operating room for the day, babysitting options weren't available and I needed to skip out on work to watch Piper, I made the most of my time out of the office by dropping the car off for a much needed repair and heading to a nearby diner to enjoy a rare Daddy-and-daughter-and-nobody-else breakfast.

Piper Bea settled happily into her pancake, a pickle and a tall cup of chocolate milk.

I sipped coffee and listened to her tell me about whatever popped into her about-to-be-4-year old head.  Sipped, listened and smiled.  Taking full advantage of not being interrupted by her verbose big sister, Piper covered a lot of topics while we sat in our little booth-for-two.  She didn't make me swear to secrecy, but, all the same, I think I'll not share the details as it makes me feel like I alone was invited "in".

As we neared the end of our meals, the television monitor perched in the corner of the room showed the portrait of a woman celebrating her 108th birthday.  My not-what-they-once-were eyes couldn't read her name in the captioning and the sound of the TV was drowned out by our conversation and the crooning of oldies drifting from the overhead speakers...which was fine by me.

One hundred and eight years old.

Can you imagine?  You can't.  I can't.

Trying to imagine brings "today not tomorrow" right back into the discussion.  Perhaps if you make it the whole way to 108 you start believing that you'll never stop ticking and the days'll just go on and on forever.  Maybe that's the fear.

Or the hope.

Or maybe every day feels certain to be the last.

Who knows?  Not you and not me.

I silently wished that woman well and hoped that she was better able than me to make sense of the dizzying ways in which the world has evolved.

In that very same diner, two older (suddenly, mid-70's didn't seem all that old) gentlemen sat poring over a road map.  

Remember those?

I do and you do too.

But, maybe just maybe, our kids won't or at least not outside the context of museums and quaint postcards.  Of course, museums and postcards might not be long for this world either with any and all information available at our fingertips and the mail system, our modern day pony express, likely going the way of, well, the pony express.

I marvel at how much has changed in my lifetime.  Can't even begin to wrap my head around it, actually.  And, despite what my children believe, I haven't been alive all that long.

Here are a couple of the significant events that occurred in the year 1905, the year today's birthday girl was born.  The first forest fire lookout tower went into operation in Greenville, Maine.  Ty Cobb made his professional baseball debut.  A physics journal published the article that unveiled Albert Einstein's E=mc2 equation.  The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the US was founded (it wouldn't officially become the NCAA until 5 years later).

One year earlier work began on Grand Central Station, the Wright brothers took their initial flight, fingerprinting was first introduced as a way to investigate crime and the ice cream cone was invented.  The ice cream cone was invented!

CAN YOU IMAGINE?  You can't and I could drive myself mad trying to...today not yesterday, today not tomorrow.

Piper Bea and I left the diner, she with cookie in hand, and we found the car repaired and waiting for us.

As we drove home, we passed by a beautiful restored farmhouse that I recalled residing in a different location just a few years earlier.  A construction/restoration group had plucked the once ailing structure from the ground, ratcheted it up onto a wheeled platform and towed it to a new, more idyllic, perch a few miles down the road.

I CAN imagine, but only because I saw it with my very own stunned eyes.  Amazing and certainly unthinkable not all that long ago.  I'm betting an undertaking such as this would have qualified as science-fiction back in 1905.

And I'm guessing "science-fiction' was hardly a household term at the time.  I should visit a museum to find out for sure.  Or, wait, I could just ask my phone...yes, I could actually speak into my phone and just wait one second for the answer.

Geez.

I have a 50-mile race coming up on Saturday, the FebApple Frozen 50 in Maplewood, New Jersey.  It seems a daunting undertaking this early in the year, especially with sickness and subsequent inactivity not too far behind me.

However, it doesn't seem nearly so daunting when held up against waking, rising and making one's way through the day, every damn day, for 108 years.

The woman in that photo was smiling and it was a beautiful, happy-to-be-alive smile.  Could've been taken a few years ago, of course, but that hardly tarnishes the message if she was, what, 105?

And maybe it was that smile that jarred something in my holes-punched-in-it memory about the number 108.  I did a little digging (you bet I employed my phone) and discovered that it is a Harshad number, an integer that is divisible by the sum of its digits (1 + 0 + 8 = 9 and 108 divided by 9 is 12).  That's a curiosity but what I found more interesting was the fact the "Harshad" is derived from two Sanskrit words, harsa and da.  Harsa means "joy" and da means "give".

Joy giver?

Seems too good to be true for the sake of this story, but it goes a long way toward explaining that lovely smile and the unmistakable happiness I felt in seeing it.

So, 50 miles?  A hundred?  No problem.  A blink of the eye really.  A joy.

Glancing at Facebook upon arriving home, I discovered a typo in a friend's status update.  She was sharing her relief at sneaking in a run before expected freezing rain began to fall.  "So glad" was accidentally replaced with "Do glad".

DO GLAD!

I love it.

I turn 39 this year.  Piper Bea will be 4 in April and her sister turns 6 just two weeks later.  People are celebrating 108 years on this planet.

What a gift.

How could you not do glad?  You can't.  I can't.

Do glad and do it today...AND tomorrow.

gone workin'.

Little time for writing at the present, sadly, as January and February always mark the busiest of seasons in my work year, a juggling act of deadlines and demands.  It all pays off as said deadlines are met (somehow) and said demands diminish with each accomplished task.

Free time is limited and devoted solely to running and sleeping, restorative activities that keep frazzled from evolving into fried.  If I lose the thread of what I'm working on to chase words and build sentences of my own, I just prolong the work process that keeps me from being able to get fully lost in my own creative pursuits. 

So, instead, like Dory in Finding Nemo (as I was reminded by a friend just a run or two ago), I "just keep swimming, just keep swimming", knowing that I'll eventually get where I'm going.  (Listen, if you're saying to yourself right now something along the lines of "Finding Nemo, seriously", you either aren't a parent or, well anyway, trust me you're missing out on one heckuva running mantra by not having watched at least that scene.)

While swimming headphones and music are a nice distraction, however, though even these can get me off track, at least for a moment or two of reflection.  Not that I'm complaining.

"These are secrets a world sung to me truer than the truth."

Can the album Rainbows from Atoms really be 20 years old?  Of course it can.  Anyway, for the uninitiated, Lungfish's Creation Story hardly qualifies as a song and is certainly not representative of the band's full body of work, but it is as fine a collection of words as you could hope to hear in just 3 and a half minutes and, though cryptic, the sentiments of those words are just as timely as they were 2 decades (gasp) ago.

Every single waking day something makes me think of a line or two or ten from this lovely poem.  And, yes, the closing comment is the text that surrounds Lily's newborn footprint on my upper right arm just below her drawing of she and her sister at play that a friend transferred with care to make it apparent that it originated, and could only have originated, from an earnest child's crayon and imagination.

"It was children that crafted a parent and resolved in children we shall live."

Indeed.

And with Spring looming, as predicted or otherwise, there's soon more adventuring to be done and time to be spent NOT in the office.  Together.

To that end and while Lily and Piper sleep blissfully, I must hit "publish" and return to the swimming at hand...with a little daydreaming mixed in for good measure.

yeah, what walt said.

It's the third week of January and that means I've got a plane to catch.

The Salt Palace, Salt Lake City's charmless convention center, as it does twice each year, is again playing host to the outdoor industry as its manufacturers tout the latest and greatest assortment of the latest and greatest in backpacking, climbing, skiing, paddling, running and general outdoor adventuring gear to the retailers who will decide whether the consumer gets in on the action by placing orders to stock shelves six months from now.

There'll be plenty of cool stuff to see, that's for sure. Better be since my livelihood as a head buyer/merchandiser for an outdoor retailer depends on it.  And so I'll have yet another chance to hear the practiced spiels and give my eyes the chance to confirm or refute the validity of those spiels.

Make no mistake about it, I dig gear.  I'm genuinely interested by what "they've" thunk up next and often do believe that some brand new or at least better-than-what-came-before doodad just might make your next outing that much better than the one before.

Funny then that some of my favorite moments at OR (the industry nickname for these Outdoor Retailer trade shows) are the hours spent running in the nearby Wasatch each morning before the show, hours spent far away from the bright lights of the show floor and the rah-rah-rah of those selling and those buying (or not) what's being sold.

While running with friends this past weekend, I grinned at the telling of a whispered-down-the-lane story of someone running Western States several years ago in fresh (at the time) gear only to be passed by an old timer in jeans shorts and a recycled water jug tied to his wrist.  Romanticized and exaggerated?  Maybe, maybe not.  True or not, it's still a great reminder of how we're capable of making even the simplest of acts overly complicated.

There's plenty of stuff you COULD take running.  Plenty.  Or you could leave that stuff behind.

Just being out and running on a cold, beautiful January morning with a couple of like-minded bodies (like-bodied minds?) was fantastic.  Who was wearing what didn't matter because...we'll, because it doesn't.  I'd have parted ways with my fancy schmancy running shoes and the full-of-information reading on my GPS long before giving up the shared movement, the conversation, the time spent together on the trail.

Nothing complicated about that.

Driving home and watching the sky complete its transition from starlight to daylight, I was reminded of a passage from Walt Whitman that I couldn't fully recite on the spot but that I was quick to track down as soon as I got home:

“When I heard the learn’d astronomer; 

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; 

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; 

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the

lecture-room, 

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, 

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”

As gear goes, I've got a soft spot for the "proofs, the figures...the charts and diagrams" but not as soft a spot as I do for wandering off by myself and drinking in that moist night air.

Looking forward to enjoying a little of each over the next couple of days.

new years solutions.

"While the fates permit, live happily; life speeds on with hurried step, and with winged days the wheel of the headlong year is turned."

- the Roman philosopher Seneca the Stoic

Another round of ceremonial balls has dropped, fireworks have fired and "first kisses" have been planted with wandering eyes peeking expectantly at the shrouded days ahead, all signals of the rearrival of the time for life altering affirmations.

When and why it was decided that the first of the year is when this should occur, I often wonder.

And, since we're bothering to pose questions, has any New Years resolution ever seen the month of May?  If so, wasn't it far more than that to begin with and, as such, due just action prior to the prompting of a new calendar being tacked to the wall?

I'll say this (try and stop me), whatever the impetus, change for the better is better than NOT changing and doing so (not doing so?) for the worse.  I'm all for finding what it is that drives you and, well, letting it drive you.

One need not be a runner (or about to be one) to be someone who makes resolutions, but it does seem that the two classifications are often one and the same.

This will be the year to run faster, to get stronger.  A year to go farther.  Run smarter.

It's time to slim down.  To bulk up.  To lose weight, lift weights.  To amass muscle.

A time to diet.  To change one's diet.  To eat less red meat.  Eat no meat.  Load carbs, avoid carbs, be free of fat, of cholesterol, of gluten.  To be free.

This year speed work will be incorporated.  More hills will be repeated.  Intervals will happen.  Fartleks?  Laps at the track?  Negative splits?  Back-to-backs?  Check.

Gonna finally run a 5K, a half, a full, an ultra, a whatever comes after that.  Gotta up the mileage.  Road miles, trail miles, mixed miles.  Miles and miles and miles.

Miles that lead to PRs, to age group awards, to podiums, perhaps.

In keeping with our bee-buzzing culture, all this game planning over a fresh clean calendar demands that we fill all that blank space.  There it sits...blankly.  If the calendar isn't filled, what's the point of all these new resolutions?  Fill it.

Must.  Fill.  It.

Well, honestly, I've got nothing.

Or maybe I'm foolish enough to think I've got everything.  Or something close to it.

I'm no different than any other ultrarunner.  I already had my calendar and had even penciled in a few preliminary races.  With others that I'd like to do in mind, if not on paper.  Races that I  still may do some day.

Or not.

It really doesn't matter to me.  Not as much as I sense others think it should. But motivation is mine to find just as it is for them. I have and always will root for others to meet their goals whether those goals are similar or dissimilar to my own.

But, me, I picked up that pencil, spun it around and erased the few entries that inhabited given spaces on the calendar.  After "unfilling" my calendar, I wrote three letters in the box reserved for January 1st.

TNT.

I wrote it again on the 2nd, the 3rd and each day thereafter in January before flipping the page and the next page and the next until there were no more open dates.  Those races to which I'd already committed were added back but only in small print at the very bottom of each of their corresponding compartments.

No, I don't have any explosive intentions for ANY day much less the entire year.  I too couldn't live with an empty calendar but I'm convinced that the most important goals for me, personally, have nothing to do with speed, with specific distances or any particular badge of honor event.

Not really.

Instead of always prepping for upcoming challenges, training for the next race, being excited for something that WILL happen, I simply want to continue to embrace every moment WHILE it is happening.  Racing can and will be part of those many moments but, in no way, is it, has it been or ever will it be the sole definer of who I am or how fulfilling life is.

And, in the end, the clock's report just doesn't matter.  Not to me.

I think I may have thought it did.  Until I really stopped to think about it.  And then I realized that it doesn't and that I was wrong.

It really doesn't matter at all.

The most rewarding of race days, for me, have had nothing to do with the final time.  The races that really demanded endurance, the overcoming of obstacles, physical or mental, stand out even though the finish lines weren't reached until many, many other runners had crossed there first.  Days of failure, from a competitive standpoint, are anything but failings if bonds were formed and strengthened, if laughter was shared.

Recollections of the small handful of races that resulted in finishes closer to the front of the pack are faint.  In fact, while running alone the other morning and beginning to put these thoughts together I recognized fondly that I can't actually recall what my fastest times are at any given distance.  And I hope that doesn't change even if my efficiency or performance should improve.  It's just not of importance to me and I can't and won't try and convince myself otherwise.

I'm not abandoning racing or attempting to rain on anyone else's competitive parade, but the closer I pay attention to what motivates and makes me feel alive, the more inspired I am by the things that often go overlooked, that take place without the fanfare of a starting gun or a bag full of swag.  Adventure lurks everywhere and quiet bolsters the spirit as much as cheers.  Solitude is so precious, so miraculous.  It balances and in turn makes me that much more appreciative of the opportunities to spend time with friends, encouraging and being encouraged.  THAT is what keeps "racing" interesting not the competition to see who's done what and how.

At pissing contests, I'd just as soon be the guy with the empty bladder.

Call it my resolution or, as I prefer, a philosophy that I've slowly carved out and to which I have fully subscribed.  I will continue to seek and find the adventure in the everyday.  To relish quiet whenever and wherever it can be found.  And all the while to cherish and nurture friendships.

Every day.  Every TODAY.

Today, not tomorrow.

Today.

Not.

Tomorrow.

TNT.

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.

but the music pervades.

The kids had nabbed my phone, their two little heads fighting for best position as they huddled around the 2" x 3" screen.  I knew what they were up to immediately.

I don't have any games loaded onto my phone, but I do use the maddening little device to snap photos and handily capture the movements of my children that I want so desperately to be able to view whenever the mood strikes.

As it often does.

The girls too like to revisit their adventures, the mysterious sounds of chirping voices that they refuse to believe as their own.  I know just how they feel.  To hear your own mutterings cast back from a recorder instead of filtered solely through your own skull is to know distortion.  Lily and Piper are truly mystified by this disconnection and I, after nearly 4 decades of pondering, still often wonder what I "really" sound like.

And so they giggled as they replayed over and over a short clip of the two of them darting about a nearby park earlier in the year.

I asked them, for the thousandth time, if they enjoyed running and they dutifully recited the "yes" that they expect I want to hear.

Later Lily asked me, also for the thousandth time, why I like to run so much and I stumbled through the clumsy responses that I have offered her before but that always fall short of fully conveying ALL of my reasons and by doing so fail to actually answer the question.  

Regardless, I know Lily doesn't actually doubt that I love running, instead, as with everything she encounters, she simply seeks a thorough explanation and a deeper comprehension.

Her follow up question was a puzzling beauty.

"Daddy, what does if FEEL like to run so much?"

There are so many words in our confounding language and endless, truly endless, combinations in which those words can be positioned, making it that much more aggravating to be unable to select the right words and/or juggle them into the appropriate order to properly express something you know so intimately.

I tried.  I really did.  But, the knit brow and pursed lips were giveaways that Lily hadn't been brought any closer to understanding.

And then I heard the answer.

And that answer answered another lingering question.

Music.

Our entire household is captivated by the music of Iceland's Sigur Ros.  Their music had helped me make sense of my existence, or at least cope with not being able to make sense of my existence, through my father's accident and eventual death as well as the subsequent slow dissolve of my first marriage.  Years later, a recording of the band had served as musical accompaniment as Lindsay progressed down the aisle to an anxious-to-marry-her me.  The odd soundscapes have proven for me to be the only lullabies capable of delivering restful sleep on long continental flights.

The music infiltrates, brings tears, cleanses and in the end elicits smiles, even inexplicable but welcome laughter.

And late in long runs, certainly in the final hours and minutes of races that have truly tested my endurance, I hear this music.

I FEEL it.

As do my daughters.

Learning that by closing her eyes and REALLY listening to the notes of Olsen Olsen she could experience what it feels like to run so much, Lily unfurrowed her brow and a smile spread across her face.  She even flushed a bit.

She felt it.

She's loved Sigur Ros from the first time that we played them for her, but she's always asked why we like it.  The dilemma is that there aren't words to explain why, only feelings, only emotional reactions not describable, not really, in words.

There is just the music.

And there is movement.

Euphoria.

Joy. 

The same joy that I experience while watching my girls run.  And smile, And laugh.

And be.