Elementary
Scribbling through the woods,
alone on a crayon line.
Color me content.
Trail run: 5 miles — Westwood Park
On this most perfect of summer days…
On a day I stood in absolute wonder as dozens of swallows circled over a creek…
On a day spent scrutinizing the colors of wildflowers playing a game of freeze tag alongside a woods…
Can there still be hope?
The question comes hours after the ride, darkness of night concealing everything outside the window above my desk. Searching for something different to listen to, I cue up Godspell, a musical I remember most from summers at church camp, back in a day when God still made sense. Tonight one track in particular, All Good Gifts, mines the deepest emotions.
We thank thee then, O Father, for all things bright and good,
The seedtime and the harvest, our life, our health, our food,
No gifts have we to offer for all thy love imparts
But that which thou desirest, our humble thankful hearts!
I used those lyrics in years past, when giving the blessing before Thanksgiving dinner. And, I sang them a thousand times, in good moods and during days of deep despair. Tonight it’s a bit of both.
This morning’s ride — on the rarest of perfect summer days — brings me to this place. With warm weather like an incubator, the afternoon came alive with the smell of ditches in a hundred shades of green, the cool touch of a forest, the tremendous view of rolling countryside seen from atop a ridgeline, and the scolding of a red-bellied woodpecker.
Despite all that, swallows are what my mind chased the most, what I want to never forget. Scores of the birds traced long, oval tracks in the air, alternating between flying, wings in motion, and gliding, a perfect aeronautic form. From the bridge deck, 15 feet above the water, I stood in greatest admiration as the birds moved around me. It was when they passed low toward the water that I got the unusual perspective of viewing the swallows from on high, as if perched atop one of the sycamores lining the bank. I didn’t want to leave.
I think of those swallows tonight. Of the wonder of a bird in flight. And my mind wings back to Godspell.
All good gifts around us
Are sent from Heaven above.
So thank the Lord, oh thank the Lord for all his love.
But it’s not that easy, those words. I felt something like love today, standing at the aluminum guardrail on that bridge, awed by creation. Felt it burrowing inside me like some living thing as I rode for hours on this perfect day. But by the time darkness covered my windows, I’m left wondering where God went with all that light and warmth.
There seems to be no one to ask. Not any more. People are too engaged in themselves to see others around them. It’s like the friend I visited in June last year, stopping by his house to talk. He had things to do that day, and we agreed to find an evening to go out for coffee. Months passed. I saw him at a Halloween party. He apologized for having not gotten together, saying he’d been busy. “That’s life,” I said. We agreed to try again to sit down some night. We never did.
I learned later that my friend, a deeply religious person, went to Japan after the March earthquake and tsunami to minister to the victims there. It struck me as odd that, in the name of God, he would travel 6,500 miles to the other side of the world, but he couldn’t drive 20 minutes across the county to see me.
I’ve given up on that part of religion in America — the church that claims to care but remains uninvested in the community outside its own four walls. Another friend of mine, a pastor, recently has come to the same conclusion, at least in part. We’ve been talking for a while about getting together some afternoon.
I really want to thank you Lord.
On this last day of the first half of the year, I want to feel something again. To find a reason to be thankful again. Not just when swallows swoop past me, but in the darkness of night, when I’ve got deadlines to meet and bills to pay, when the economy is in shambles and my main source of income seems to be hanging on a broken hinge.
I listen to Godspell, and remember a time when I had faith. Now the thought of a swallow’s flight has to be enough.
Road bike: 66.39 miles — Franklin and Fayette counties
Posted in road bike |
We should be riding. Seventy-five miles. Distance to slay the dragons we do not admit exist.
Instead, we stand in the wind under gray skies or stoop over a polychrome radar screen, shaking heads and mumbling, our swords dull and rusty.
I move to my chambers, alone, stripping down to shorts and the thinnest of shirts, light shoes designed for speed and agility, fingerless gloves my only protection, then I step into the wild, abandoning one beast to trail another.
The canopy shields me from showers. Trees protect me from my mood. Here I break off the hunt, stopping to watch a fawn, bold spots marking its age. Here I cease all motion, closing my eyes to everything but conversations drifting down from green balconies.
In the end it’s not the head of some beast I take from this place, but a splash of color collected gently from the edge of a woods, a tickle of neon so thin it shames me to pull it from the earth.
I return to the only kingdom I have, Deptford Pink in hand, evidence of lands covered. As I open the storm door to go inside, I glance to my right, down the driveway, to a road not traveled, to a quest left for another day.
Trail run: 13 miles — Westwood Park
Posted in Running |
Angry clouds crouch behind a wooded hillside to the west, waiting for dark so they might storm my house unseen.
I am not afraid.
The wind doesn’t scare me. I have both fought it and befriended it, a cycle repeating like four seasons. I neither shy away nor take it for granted. More than anything, the wind deserves my respect.
My face, no doubt, mimics the detached look of the girls I helped coach for three months, a far-off stare where anxiety and anticipation struggle against limits and potentials. There’s the dread of discomfort and the excitement of possibilities.
Though 18 others crowd the white arc, I stand alone, as I will run throughout the race — a field of one. At the sound of a gunshot, I touch a match to the slender fuse of so many training miles and stride forward.
I am emboldened.
Tonight I saw a backbone in the sky, floating above a solitary dragonfly. White vertebra in the clouds. Darting motions in the air. They came near dusk, as the day wrote an ending and set down its pen, with me as part of the story.
Tonight I raced against myself. Others were there. Younger. The wind watched, staring hard at the first turn, glancing over its shoulder at the other end of the track. It cursed and encouraged, calling out my name. Taunting. Cheering.
Only the helpful things were heard. Like the gentle words of a coach I had when I was 16 years old or the booming voice of my father in wooden bleachers 30 years ago.
I am at peace.
Thinking of that mile while watching the clouds like a seer.
Run: Greenfield-Central All-Comers meet
Posted in Running |
Sometimes it doesn’t come. Not here. Not now.
From the start, it’s like breathing through a warm, wet cloth. Heat and humidity cover my mouth, my face, my body. Wind pushes against me like an accomplice. Nothing feels good.
The miles are empty. Even the country roads I follow today, a course that pushes me through new scenery, prove lackluster at best, coming with the sound and feel of an old movie, the clickity-clack of the projector spilling black-and-white images before me.
Stiffness in my neck and shoulders. A heavy hollowness in my legs. A sense of separation in my arms, as if they no longer connect to my body and the handlebars. Nothing feels right.
A wheat field on my left toasts under the sun. A slight tinge of green remains in the stalks, but the bent heads of grain already throw off a dull, dusty scent. Even that’s not enough. Not today.
The miles are hard. When I push home, distance decreasing, the wind running beside me, a hand on my saddle, I’m still slumped wearily, counting crossroads and hills.
Turning into the driveway, coasting to a stop in the grass, there’s no sense of success, no essence of accomplishment. I roll the bike indoors, log the ride and tread deeper into the day.
Sometimes it comes. In another place. Another time.
I step into the coolness of the night’s breath and am halted by a vision to the west. Ten thousand fireflies strobe beacons of their existence. Movement overhead turns my eyes to dark skies, clouds like blackout curtains hiding heaven’s homes and industries, while a bat zigzags, connecting dots in a third dimension.
I fold into my surroundings and smile, finding something perfect. That which eluded me over so many miles. An astonishingly ordinary thing awaiting me this first day of summer.
Road bike: 26.20 miles — Henry and Rush counties
Posted in road bike |
In the end there are scrapes and bruises. There is pain. But I’m still on my feet.
–
I’ve taken a sabbatical from Bicycle Eyes, concentrating on other things and sometimes nothing at all. I’ve biked and run. I’ve coached and raced. I’ve been long enough off the bike at times to miss it, and long enough on the track at times to never want to step off. My lack of writing is a reflection of none of that.
It’s something completely different and sometimes nothing at all.
–
I run alone. Again. But I don’t mind. Separate plans fell through to see my first-cousin-once-removed for a run and my brother-in-law for a bike ride. So Saturday afternoon, when the rain finally passes, I’m on the trail by myself, holding a respectable pace, steady and sure. As if my foot never hurt. As if I’ve continued to log respectable miles. As if the woods don’t encroach on the trail around me.
But it did. I haven’t. It does.
I run anyway.
–
I’ve worked all day on stories, cramming to meet deadlines the way a college student leans into books the eve of finals. With two articles completed, I can think no more. I close my laptop, change into running shorts, and head to the park. I need trees and mileage to clear my head. An easy run, I tell myself. Something to test the foot. Distance like a measuring stick.
–
A year ago today my daughter and I ran here, a casual out-and-back where hills and heat whipped her, like a sapling against tender skin. She’s a different runner now. Seasoned. Within the year she’ll be faster on the track than her father. That’s okay. Great even.
–
Today the contest starts shortly after two miles, when my speed increases slightly and then holds, legs like a metronome, rhythmic across hilltops, up and down ravines, over bridges. I’m no longer running just to run. Now I’m looking at splits on my watch and wondering how long I can maintain pace. The first seven miles are almost leisurely. The last three take more effort, listening to the tick-tock turnover, concentrating to hold the tempo. At mile nine I’m ahead of pace, needing only to sustain some semblance of effort on the remaining hills, running smoothly on the flats in-between.
Half a mile to go, I don’t see the thing that trips me. It doesn’t matter what was there. My right foot stutters, my left can’t recover, and I drop hard, managing to avoid a tree as I slide headfirst off the singletrack. But there’s no time to assess damage, not with the clock still running. So I right myself, brush away dirt clinging to bloodied knees, and convince my legs to move again.
I finish nearly a minute ahead of my goal.
–
That’s life, I understand. The falling down and the getting up. Running in pain or not running because of it. Doing the things that have meaning. And sometimes nothing at all.
I return here with just one story. There have been dozens in the four months I’ve been gone. They will never be told. And so it goes. I concentrate on the present. The running. The writing. For now, on my feet, I’m willing to try again.
Trail run: 10 miles — Westwood Park
Posted in Running |
It’s not spring. Far from it. But for a day we ride as if a season has turned.
In fact, we are somewhere between seasons — between the trainer and the road. Finding ourselves on dry pavement and in snow melt, throwing grit into our gears and rooster tails onto our backs. Keeping wheels on the narrowest stripes of blacktop where the woods toss out shadows that keep the road a sheet of snow-packed misery.
We finish on the same three-mile stretch of the Pike that came so hard at the end of a 15-mile run only four days ago. Today, from the saddle, I move almost effortlessly, past a field where Hope and I will hunt for arrowheads in the days to come, spring like some promise we’ve dared to believe in through the long, cold winter.
Back home again, Dave rolls his bike up my driveway and plants it in a snowdrift, nature’s sub-freezing kickstand. We look around then, in 60-degree temperatures, and smile at each other, accepting the weather like a gift.
Road bike: 22.20 miles — Henry County
Dave's Allez parked in a snowdrift.
