Running With My Neighbor

When you have long hair, you tend to forget it is attached to your head. Why bother to think about it? I just let it be hair until it annoys me. Logic is desensitizing. I have more important considerations than what my hair is doing. 

Trail running started as a way to escape the road. Slowly, it became less about pavement avoidance and more about mental liberation. It is meditative. It is spiritual. It is transformative. It reminds me I have hair. 

Some people go to church. I go to the woods--and every footfall is deeply personal. 

If you want to learn about "running economy," or "running the tangent," or some other fancy lingo, you can read a number of books.  You can hire a coach, or skim blogs, or troll Facebook threads. If you would rather surrender to your instincts and harness the knowledge you were born with, but struggle to access, you can follow the most discerning of all running economists.  One who inherently knows the correct tangent. Eventually, you will not be following. Your paths will merge simply by letting go of what Google told you to read. 

I often refer to wolves as our "most elusive neighbors," and I have followed their tracks through bogs, down snow covered logging roads, in mud, across sand. They have led me, without fail, along the easiest part of any trail into the wilderness, and I am grateful. 

I leave the highway and fall in along his tracks easily.  We are going north on a forest road together, separated only by time. Always, to my disappointment, we have been separated by time. When I reach the creek, I hear the sparrows that have undoubtedly been singing for miles. Were they singing when he went by? When I reach the logged area, I sense that my hair is tucked behind my ear. It feels good there. When I reach the lake, I can't see his tracks anymore, but that does not matter. I have given my thoughts away to the wind in the trees by now. I know the way. 

Heading south, I visually pick up his trail beneath my feet. I slow. This time, his paws have written a message on the road, and the invitation is only for me. Keep going, for I am just ahead. 

The time separation dwindles to minutes, to seconds, to nothing. He is moving effortlessly, silently, along the road. I follow until he turns, ears cautious, stepping lightly onto the tracks he just laid. We both freeze. I am desperate for him to stay. 

"Don't go. I have waited so long to meet you."

His ears come up, tail gently lifting. He comes back towards me: one step, two steps, now trotting with his nose raised in curiosity, his feet make no sound. He never leaves his earlier track. He retraces it without looking.

I can feel my hair, it is brushing my shoulders. It feels like a whisper, or a song, maybe a feather on my skin.  And there are no better two minutes be alive than these two minutes--alone, with this wolf, in these woods.