out of doors.

As promised, Brian and Eric were waiting for me (and Sugar Pie) at the Dauphin Boro/Stony Creek exit off of 322.  The sun hadn't been below the horizon for all that long, but the darkness after we passed through the town of Dauphin and proceeded into the valley between Second and Stony Mountains had the deep quality of a much later hour.

The road we followed would only remain paved for a few miles before transitioning to dirt pocked and grooved from an unforgiving winter and a lack of maintenance.  Neither the dark nor the broken track fazed us much and it surely didn't dissuade the sizable black bear that rose up in the glow of our headlights from continuing on its search for easy-to-be-had scraps in the trash cans that accompanied the few houses colonizing the western end of State Game Lands #211.  Suge seemed to sense the bear's presence without actually casting eyes upon it, perhaps having caught its scent through the window I had cracked to let the night air creep in to acclimate us to the cold.

After weeks, months, seemingly years of winter, the day had actually been surprisingly moderate, but relatively clear skies had let the fleeting warmth escape back into the atmosphere.  Having reached the end of the road, the closed gate that marks the start of the Stony Valley Rail-Trail, a recreational re-purposing of the long abandoned Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad line, we stepped out into temperatures hovering right around the freezing mark.  Cold, yes, but, without the determined wind that had seethed most of the preceding week, it was brisk without being bracing.

Rattling Run Road in the light of day - Photo courtesy of John A Kilmer

Rather than progressing along the remote but flat rail trail, we were headed up, up, up along the Rattling Run Trail which begins as a smooth, runnable (but not without work) uphill grade until nearing the top of Stony Mountain and bending off to the north east and rolling across the top of the ridge for several miles.

I'd run with Brian and a few other friends the weekend before and it had been one of those days that my body just didn't have any interest in cooperating.  This night felt very different and it was a joy to run steadily along, gaining ground all the way while, as is always my want, laughing and chattering the entire time.  My legs felt much more responsive after the relatively low key week of running and climbing that had followed the aforementioned disheartening performance.

It wasn't until we topped out and transitioned from the broader jeep road to gone-to-wild double track that we encountered snow, ice and the muck that lurked beneath the two.  Though it slowed our progress...what, oh...right, it didn't slow Sugar Pie's progress in the slightest...anyway, though it slowed our progress, the messy conditions didn't dampen our spirits as the relative stillness and the moonglow off of the snow added to the captivating beauty of the night we'd wandered into.

We passed various trail intersections and tried to piece together the topography from differing memories of past visits to paths in the valley that may or may not have overlapped with one another. I don't think we actually drew any solid conclusions and our mental maps remained full of question marks.

The footing became a bit more treacherous as the trail headed downward and the terrain, more sheltered from the sun than what we'd already encountered, stubbornly clung to a blanket of polished ice.  Our slipping and sliding eventually delivered us to the place where the Horseshoe Trail collides with (or departs from, depending on the direction you are traveling) the Rattling Run Trail.

This intersection lies just below the Devil's Race Ground, a long boulder field that shelters the headwaters of Rattling Run beneath it.  You can literally hear the rushing of the invisible river under your feet but are unable to catch a glimpse of the water itself despite endless cracks and openings between the pile up of thousands of tons of rock.  I attempted to capture an audio recording of the stirring music, a music that early settlers feared was emitted from the devil himself, but, I did so in vain.

Sugar Pie whined her plea to move, move, MOVE along and we fell in line behind her as she led us down the shared route of the Horseshoe and Rattling Run Trails as they descended to the rail trail that had paralleled the course we'd traveled.  Along the way, we passed the cool old historical marker I hadn't seen since running the first (or last) 34 miles of the Horseshoe Trail on my birthday two-and-a-half years earlier.

My imagination likes to picture the hearty individuals who stood there on that October day back in 1934 being the very "interested" people who still returned each year to pay tribute.  It's a cruel math that makes that improbable and so my leaning-to-the-left brain did what it tends to do and left the arithmetic undone.

A 90-degree turn had us reoriented to the southwest.  Persistent tree cover, a resting point in the shadow of Second Mountain, and the ever present moisture of Stony Creek just a few yards away made the rail trail a rather nasty sheet of unsure footing that required a subtle but constant focus and consistent, tiring auto correcting to remain upright.  I don't believe any of us took a legitimate fall but the threat was persistent and our pace definitely suffered, making the 2-3 mile straight line feel like twice that.

Our only diversion was a quick visit to the creek itself at the point where the Horseshoe Trail breaks ways with the rail trail and crosses water to begin its climb up Second Mountain.  We gave Sugar Pie time to hydrate while we enjoyed a momentary respite from skating.

That break didn't last long, as another round of whimpering signaled that we had dallied long enough and it was time to get back to work.

We had another mile to go before we could put the rail trail behind us once and for all.  Not that doing so meant any relief, as our escape route was the Water Tank Trail, a relatively short pitch of mangled singletrack that mirrors the route of an old lumber incline that had one intention which was to get from the top of the ridge to the valley below as directly as possible.  Switchbacks are nowhere to be found.  Rocks, roots, downed limbs and runoff gouges are prevalent and the sustained grade is not even remotely runnable.  Hell, it's barely hikeable. On the bright side of things, it was free of ice and snow.  Had it not been, it may very well have been completely impassible.  Regardless, it was a punishing climb and I felt the first tinges of leg cramps well before the top and wondered how much more climbing we'd need to do and how interesting things would get if the severity of the cramps progressed.  I knocked back a couple of salt tabs, knowing full well that it was too little too late.

As is always the case (I always tell myself to remember this, but sometimes it's harder than other times), the grade did finally relax, announcing our arrival at the top of the ridge.  A sharp left returned us to the Rattling Ridge Trail we'd been on an hour or two earlier and we began again to navigate the mixed bag of snow, ice and mud.

Brian, having vowed to take things easy ahead of the Terrapin Mountain 50K a week later, was not taking things easy, at least not comparative to Eric and me.  I kid, but, well, no not really.  Thankfully, his cool badass-meets-kind-heart personality convinced him to check in with us now and again as we crept across the ridge.  I chased the salt tabs with the last of the water I was carrying and throttled back from running to hiking whenever the cramps threatened to intensify.

Our little group reassembled at the western edge of the ridge and together we tackled the downhill plunge to the parked cars waiting below.

We had covered 16.5+ miles and those 4 hours had passed by in what in hindsight felt like half that EVEN with the slogging that had happened on the rail trail and the Water Tank.

That disconnect from the clock is one of my favorite magical aspects of running "out of doors" at night.  The minutes pass imperceptibly when there aren't any pending appointments, shift starts/ends, or television show airings that demand to be adhered.

With my fitness not yet where it will be after months and miles of glorified hiking but little real running, I was definitely fatigued and happy to be done, but my mind was already plotting a return to Stony Valley and further exploration of its network of trails.  After a long drive home and a couple hours of sleep, that hadn't changed one bit and I decided to do a little multitasking at breakfast.

all ears.

Five years ago today, I handed my camera over to an accommodating intern for Live! with Regis and Kelly just outside of the show's green room and she snapped the photo above.

A few hours earlier on that Monday morning, I'd driven through the Lincoln Tunnel, found a parking spot that would provide quick escape later in the day, and then walked 20-some blocks through a strangely vacant predawn Times Square and up Broadway to the ABC studios building located just west of Central Park.

The entire weekend had been a blur of non-stop laughter, drinking and, well, mayhem.  I had been joined by 5 friends on Saturday morning for the drive to Brooklyn where we met up with two more friends for a bit of pre-gaming before the 2009 NYC Beard & Moustache Championships.

That would be my second beard competition and the attention it garnered was a study in contrast from the relaxed, informal family affair experienced at the first competition I attended.  Actually, I had an absolute blast at both events , but the two were strikingly different. If you love live music, it's a lot like trying to compare a great no-expenses-spared stadium production to an intimate performance in a small club.

Long story short, that night in Brooklyn was full of pyrotechnics and the invitation to be a guest of Regis two days later was just one more strange but beautiful explosion in a night full of awesome fireworks.

By Monday morning, I had driven back-and-forth between home and New York City twice, logged about 8 total hours of sleep, and was still trying to wrap my head around all that had happened.  There's a lot I don't remember about that weekend (and much I don't dare put into print) or that surreal visit with Mr. Philbin and Ms. Ripa (and Drew Carey who warmly met us three beardos as we exited the stage), but I vividly remember the comaraderie and the many last-forever friendships that were forged in fleeting moments and short periods of too little shared time.

Which, at last, brings me to how and why this post is appearing in a blog for-the-most-part devoted to running.

I ran and finished my first ultra, the New River 50K, in October of that very same year.

When Jefferson and I had ventured to Oil City for the WPBMA beard championships back in the Fall of 2008, I knew no one in the world of "bearding" and had little idea of what to expect at a beard competition.  That same story held true when I picked up my bib and headed to the starting line of that first 50K.  I had run my fair share of 5Ks, 5-milers and 10K races, but nothing longer than that and I didn't know (or didn't know that I knew) anyone who had run any distance longer than 26.2 miles.  Not off road, that's for sure.

Well, what I discovered is that the people growing out their beards and thinking up works of art constructed from what they'd grown were just as welcoming as the loonies who weren't interested in going out for a run unless it was longer, sometimes MUCH longer, than the marathon distance that the rest of the world seemed to hold up as the ultimate test of endurance.

So, both bearders and ultrarunners are crazy, right?

Maybe.

And while crazy is a tag rather eagerly embraced by both parties, I'd argue that once you pitch aside the most obvious and arguably eccentric source of expression for either, the participants are as diverse a mix of sane or nearly sane people as any other group.

Both subcultures are fond of group shots, that's for sure.

Photo courtesy of Fayetta Schwanger

Or maybe they aren't.  I certainly am and, having been absorbed wholly into both cultures, perhaps I have just had good luck in coercing my pals into smiling for the camera.

I'm ok with that and send belated thanks for the humoring.

I love these team photos not because I am much of a "joiner".  I'm not.  But, I sure do love having documents to evidence shared company while doing some of the activities I enjoy most, especially when those happenings forged so many new friendships and further strengthened those friendships that already existed.

Were it just about the activities and not the relationships built around those activities, I may have drifted on to other things.  Novelty can wear off in time.

The fact that someone let his (or her) facial hair grow untamed can be a surprisingly effective icebreaker and, in certain circles, it basically ensures immediate acceptance.  It's a pretty flimsy foundation for a long-term relationship, however, and let the conversation stray from beards and you may soon find that you and your new aquaintance have got one and only one thing in common and it isn't going to prove to be a tie that binds.  Or shouldn't be.

Same with running.

If I spend a few hours running with someone and the topic of conversation never strays from race results, training tips and the upcoming ultra events calendar, I start daydreaming about how much I like running alone.

I hear people talk all the time about "all" ultrarunners this and "everyone" in the bearded community that and, frankly, it makes me cringe.  I've been guilty of it myself and wish that were not the case.  I love black-and-white photos, but only because they aren't actually black-and-white at all, but endless shades of grey enhanced with beautiful brushstrokes of light and shadow.

It actually strikes me as counterproductive to broadly proclaim that everything about and everyone engaged in your favorite hobby is "the best", suggesting in a way that anyone not running far or not letting their razors rust are somehow lessers or, at the very least, out of the loop.  That's just not necessarily the case and I would argue that anyone taking such a stance is the one missing out.

If nothing else, I encourage you to dig a little deeper.  Share a bit of yourself that isn't about what time you posted or intend to post at Western States.  You may be sporting quite the finely shaped Garibaldi that I'm sure will prove quite competitive at Worlds, but...what...else...can...you...tell...me...about...yourself.  I'd like to know.

Come out of character and let yourself be known and, while you're at it, spend a minute learning something about the people around you.

I've been blessed to meet some quite accomplished runners and beardsmen.  I marvel at their talents and what they've done with those talents.  But, if and when a scratch beneath the surface reveals little else, that talent isn't enough to hold my interest.  Thankfully, I have discovered that many of the folks you meet during races or while climbing onto a stage together to have your beards judged possess far more depth and have incredible stories to tell if you just allow the conversation get there.

I thank my two seemingly unrelated hobbies for having introduced me to so many amazing individuals, but I could honestly care little about how much running or bearding factors into the time I spend in the future with these fine people.

It's just not all that important if they make any more podiums or even reach another finish line.  I won't think the less of him (or her) if the next Best Full Beard Natural award is given to someone else.  What I will strive to be is the first in line to celebrate real life milestones, offer condolences for losses, laugh along, and just plain be there.  And I know that should I (gasp) shave or hang up my shoes once and for all, I can expect they'll be there for me too.

photo courtesy of iRunFar.com

Photo courtesy of Trevor Cranmer

Photo courtesy of Jo Weakley Agnew

Photo courtesy of Greg Petliski

Thank you, genuinely, to the many of you who have allowed me to be me and in turn given me the chance to truly know who you are.

And to those of you who I haven't yet met, be forewarned that even though my mouth can run a lot faster than my legs, I listen too and hope you give me a chance to hear your stories.

not small at all.

Being in the woods makes me happy.  Sometimes simply not being indoors is enough.

Add a predawn start with a bunch of good companions (including my favorite four-legged pal) on a favorite local ridge finally beginning to rally to life after a punishing winter and, well, things couldn't get much better.

Except sometimes the body doesn't cooperate.  It's tired, disinterested, unresponsive. And sometimes, no matter how non-competitive or goal-oriented a runner you might be, you bog down on not performing the way you hope to and allow frustration with momentary physical weakness to be a bigger, a MUCH bigger, deal than it should be.

By "you" I mean me and "sometimes" was Saturday.

Yes, I muddled through another 2700+ feet of climbing in a challenging season in which miles have been hard and hard to come by.  Yes, I am on track for what spring and summer have in store (on track, not nearly all the way ready).  I know that, but I stopped knowing it for a time on Saturday morning because instead of heeding the signs that my body needed a day off, instead of listening, I shouted over those indications with the noise of more of the very thing that had me worn down in the first place.

That's what ultrarunners are supposed to do, right?  Gut it out, suck it up.  Push harder, work harder, BE harder.  Keep moving.  Get back up.

Over and over and over again.

I get it.  I like all that and wouldn't be out doing the things I do if that weren't the case, but...

...boy, do we ever miss out on all the lovely small things when we get so hyper-focused on the big thing that (shhh, don't tell anyone) isn't really a big thing at all.  We should know better than most that from time to time energy lapses and the indestructible body proves destructible, the unwavering mind wavers and, surprise!, life goes on anyway.

I smiled for my friends and genuinely enjoyed their company but, make no mistake, my attention was inexcusably distracted by not being able to enjoy the movement because it wasn't the quality of movement I expected of myself.

Which is ridiculous.

 Thankfully, even my numb skull can warm with enough exposure to the glow of life's little wonders.

The coffee waiting at home tasted just as good as it always does.

A book pulled off the shelf for ten minutes of reading before Lindsay and the girls were ready to accompany me to the diner for breakfast did what books so often do, floored me with the power of words orchestrated by a conductor finely attuned to not just language but also to the essence of human interaction.  The words wouldn't have been any more or less stirring had I charged through my earlier workout instead of bumbling and muddling along.

The thaw continued at breakfast with relaxed laughter, a recap of the girls' individual adventures at school that week, and the sweet, reassuring touch of a daughter's hand in a shared restaurant booth.

Off to the rock climbing gym from there.  I resigned my tired body to belay duty while Lily and Piper were their normal roller coaster rides of grit teeth determination alternating with who-could-care silliness.

They were having fun, purely reveling in play and exploration, too busy to bother measuring the fun they were having by increments of accomplishment.  Hard to think of that concept as a "small thing" when you're forced to examine it, but too often our stressed-out by everything adult minds fail to grasp that simple wisdom.

Seen off by a round of hugs, Lindsay left the gym for a shift at the hospital and we three who remained headed back to the house to pick up Sugar Pie and then together we returned to the forest to retrieve the dog leash that I'd forgotten at the top of Molehill that morning.

Sugar Pie whimpered her want to move fast, fast, faster, but I and my battered legs were far more content to slowly amble along the Horseshoe Trail while the girls flitted about in search of scavenger hunt targets.

Hours before I had surveyed the ground beneath my feet through the narrow lens of a runner's eye, seeking traction and confident footfalls in a threatening landscape of ice, snow, mud and rock.  Now, with my daughters by my side, the terrain was full of hope and promise.  Receding snow revealed little pockets of life below and Spring suddenly seemed not so far away.

It wasn't that Lily and Piper were more attuned to the small things so much as they seemed enamored of everything.  Of ALL things.  I marveled at just how many different things caught their attention, at Lily's endless stream of questions, and Piper's tenacious tracing of every one of her big sister's strides.

We scavenged, successfully, finding most everything on our list, including Suge's leash.

My legs ached, they must have, but that isn't part of my recollection of our time together.  

The thaw was complete and I was lost again to living in the moment.  Lily was actually the one to remind me that I was tuckered out by suggesting that when we got home I sit and relax while she and Piper rode their bikes and played on the playground of the old decommissioned elementary school behind our home.

I could not and did not argue with her.  It sounded like a great idea.

That's when another not so small thing happened.

Lily decided that she didn't need her training wheels anymore which was news to me.  But, take them off we did, and except for a few fairly harmless slow-motion tumbles, she figured it out despite being perched atop a bike that seemed two sizes too small for her growing-too-fast-for-mom-and-dad legs.  It seemed like I should make a really big deal out of the accomplishment, but she seemed satisfied by my wide grin and more interested in riding than hearing me heap parental praise upon her.

She and Piper Bea whooshed around and around and around the small playground until hungry bellies won over their will to keep pedaling. I was hungry too but could have gone on watching them at play forever.

Lily dashed towards the house as I shuffled behind with two little bikes in tow.  Piper had been right by my side so I was taken aback when my asking her if she'd had fun went unanswered.  Looking back over my shoulder, I found her summiting a lingering pile of plowed snow at the edge of the schoolyard.

"What are you doing, Pipe?," I asked.  "Why'd you climb up there?"

"Why not?," came my answer as she thrust out her arms to beckon for rescue.

"Why would you climb up there if you can't get down?"

"I figure it out once I get up."

Yes.

My child, a small thing herself (for now), had blessed me yet again with another not small at all example of why life isn't so much about how well or how poorly you climb the hill so long as you appreciate the gift of a hill to climb in the first place.

resolved in children.

Someone asked me recently about the tattoo on my right bicep, artwork that depicts Lily's footprint at birth encircled by cursive text.  The writing is the final two sentences of lyrics from a defunct, but forever favorite band of mine from Baltimore, the oft overlooked and most certainly underappreciated (not by me...to a fault, perhaps) Lungfish.  I've written of them before and spoken of them ad nauseam.

Yes, I know that band lyric tattoos have become a modern day cliche but this world as inhabited by humans, frankly, is a magnificent bundle of such things and she who is without guilt, well, you know what to do.

Digression.  As the years pass, the words of Creation Story mean more not less to me.  Like any well-written lyrics, the words are widely open to interpretation, to bending, to repurposing as fits the listener.  This song continues to help tell the story of civilization as I believe it to have been, its evolution and regression throughout the millenia, while helping to explain and express the teensy part I feel I play in its current production.  With each passing day, I find more truth in the song, more connections and even closer connection to "now".

I will share the lyrics and a link (from the title) to the song.  Know that it is poem, more than song, but filled with rhythm and music that earns it, in my eyes, the title of song.

You may read or not, listen or not, but know that when you cross my path, be it on the trail, in the workplace or on city streets, these very words dance behind my eyes and interweave around the voices and sounds I hear, the images that I see, and help to filter my processing of those messages and instruct my responses.

Songs are rarely written expressly for any one listener, but the best of them seem to be uniquely adapted for every listener.

Resolved in Lily Harper and Piper Bea I shall live.

-----------------------------------

Creation Story by Lungfish (lyrics by Daniel Higgs)

Paranoia warped into a gravity.

Which spread a smothering blanket on an evolutionary launch pad.

Vision was tested on blank sky and voice said, "Let me tell you about the time that something occurred."

Medication caused an ear to hear and a conflict of interpretation arose.

Landscapes were drawn from a plague of particles, and the burden was distributed.

The law would return as inflated skins.

While music initiated architecture.

Animals, living through a velocity of fear began to modify their behavior to comply with human observation.

Thus dropping a keystone into the eggshell honeycomb of anthrocentric history since.

As for the plants, they had been with the music.

Science procured a steepled shell dressed for immortality, hollow to hold the music.

Emotion repelled all opinion and refused to consider it's origin.

Apples happened bringing acids and enzymes, the spinning recorder disguised as an endless bouquet.

Things became erotic at the drop of a hat.

A tyrant placed an apple on a table and lorded over it.

As a fish realized it held a monkey inside itself and expelled it on the beach in a larval salamander form.

The voters clamored for more circles and the whole rig began to rotate.

Books were used for fuel and money and everybody was writing them.

The planets turned inside out to expose their freight.

No charges were pressed because all involved agreed that they could die.

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

A young order of birds that eats the eyes of believers.

Science predicted forms of worship and reveled in them.

An orgy of mutation took place for many years.

Between stones, near water, and inside clouds.

The people bound their feet with the skins of the animals to trample their own cities and each other.

They developed external organs like guns and television sets.

They believed that they owned things.

One mind in a generation will hear the eternal broadcast of the voice saying, "Let me tell you about the time that something occurred."

And that mind's body will be strapped down and that body's mind will subject to testing or electric currents rippled through the brain.

But the music pervades.

It was music that gave the shove.

And resolved in music we shall breathe.

It was children that crafted a parent.

And resolved in children we shall live.

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.