Transcend 1. to pass over or go beyond (a physical obstacle or limit); to climb or get over (a wall, mountain, etc.) Obsolete. 2. to pass or extend beyond or above (a non-physical limit); to go beyond the limits of (something immaterial)
Transcendence 1. The action or fact of transcending, surmounting, or rising above 2. Of the Deity: the attribute of being above and independent of the universe
Transcendent: surpassing or excelling --Oxford English Dictionary
Transcendence refers to the action or quality of transcending—of “going beyond the ordinary limits” (Webster). If our daily activities are usually confined to buildings, the parking area, and the car, a twenty-minute walk can be a transcendent experience, going beyond our ordinary limits of exposure to the outside and mobility. If we are shy, initiating a conversation can be a transcendent experience, taking us beyond our ordinary social limits. If we are usually plugged in, pulling the plugs out of our ears, putting the smart phone on a shelf, and turning off the television, radio, and computer can lead to transcending the ordinary limits of silence.
A year or so after first starting to run, I was in southern Chad for two weeks to work with translators. Without much to do on the weekend, I decided to try to go beyond my ordinary running limit of two miles. I sat behind the chief translator on his motorbike as we measured an out-and-back route of five miles over the dirt road lined by palm trees, past white-washed houses and small shops. It was hard to imagine running that distance, especially in the 90° heat, but I would try. And I made it: transcendence!
Following the trail blazed and developed by ancient philosophers, I believe that the minimal transcendence experienced during an activity such as that 5-mile run is related to the greatest degree of transcendence that can be experienced, known, or imagined. Whenever we transcend a physical limit—such as one imposed by lack of exercise, it gives us a taste, a glimpse, a grasp of psychological, social, political, intellectual, spiritual transcendence. The discipline and strain involved in following a twelve-week training program for a 5-K run is related to the discipline and strain involved in moving beyond barriers of self-doubt and fear, barriers between you and me, us and them.
The ancient philosopher Plato admired the discipline, strength and grace of athletes, but thought their performance to be a shadow of what is best in human relationships with self, each other, and the divine. Similarly, the apostle Paul wrote that gymnasia “training” of the body is beneficial but that these benefits pale in comparison with training that leads to eu-sebeia “good-awe/worship/respect”. This training would lead to transcending common barriers: ethnic-cultural-political (“Jew versus Greek,” as Paul put it), gender (“male versus female”), or social-economic (“slave versus free person”). Plato and Paul agreed that the training needed to be rigorous but that the results of unity and harmony with each other and the divine was well worth the effort. They also agreed that lack of transcending barriers in human relationships reflected a lack of transcending barriers between the human and the divine.
This week I have been questioning why we stop trying to transcend barriers, at personal, interpersonal, local, and national levels.
A friend I will call “Jill” was impressed by the wide-ranging knowledge of her co-worker “Jack” until she heard him talking about an area that she had studied in depth. Jack said the biblical book of Acts of the Apostles was written by Paul, who was “a Roman, not a Jew.” Jill started with an “I think…” to soften her correction concerning the author of Acts and the ethnicity and citizenship of Paul. But Jack replied, “No, I know I am right. I took a university course in religion.” Later in his exposition, Jack referred to the country of Jerusalem. Jill said, “Now, Jack. Jerusalem is a city, not a country.” Jack dismissed this and asked another co-worker, who readily agreed that Jack, as usual, was right. Jill suggested that they check with their smart phones. Jack did so with an impatient pout, which increased when he saw that there was a problem with the app: it referred to Jerusalem as a city!
Comical, yes, but before we laugh too hard, we might ask how we and the groups we are part of tend to cut off potential growth. Have we quit trying to transcend physical, intellectual or spiritual limits, having decided that our course in religion—or communication or psychology or politics or science—has taken us as far as we need to go? And when do we decide that our decision to no longer make an effort at transcending barriers should be the decision of others as well?
Jack’s satisfaction with his hazy memories of a course in religion and his dismissal of others’ help to transcend limits of knowledge and understanding have a troubling parallel at the national level. Polls indicate that so-called evangelicals are the biggest supporters of candidates who most support sticking within limits based on hazy recollections of religious instruction mixed with secular nationalism. These “evangelicals” (belying for many the ancient Greek sense of eu-angellion “good news”) seem to have forgotten the apostle Paul’s claim that the work of Christ and Christ-followers is to “break down the dividing walls of hostility” between groups of religious, cultural, and political differences; they roar in approval of one who promises to build up a literal wall of hostility or of one infamous for his inability to work with anyone except those who fully agree with him.
Brought up in a fundamentalist-evangelical family and graduated from an evangelical college, I well know the insecurities, fears, and sense of us-the-righteous against them-the-unrighteous that the politicians are stoking. I well know how nice, generous and helpful people claiming this label can be. I well know how smug and intolerant if not racist they can be—and I have been. I also know how hard it is to transcend the boundaries that such emotions and perspectives impose. Much harder than upping one’s mileage in 12 weeks! Much harder but also much, much more satisfying and healthy!
Some questions in this regard:
There are an ever increasing number of trail races but no path races that I know of. A way cleared for bicyclists will usually be referred to as a path but one for skiers as a trail. Immigrants follow a path rather than a trail to citizenship but politicians follow a campaign trail rather than path. So what is the difference between a path and a trail? How do our mental pictures of the physical passageways that these words refer to influence our understanding of figures of speech in which they occur?
To study these two words, I began with the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (OED) inherited from my father. It is squeezed into two 9”X12” volumes, each having 2000 pages with fonts so small that a magnifying glass was provided by the publisher to make them readable. Its definitions could be compared with those in my Unabridged Webster’s dictionary (a less weighty volume: only eleven pounds, its 2,600 pages readable without a magnifying glass). Then patterns of American usage could be studied via the Corpora of Historical American English and of Contemporary American English, composed of a few hundred thousand texts with about a billion words.
Path is the oldest of the two words. With a Germanic, pre-Christian origin, its use in Old English goes back to at least the 8th century. It first referred to “a way beaten or trodden by the feet of men or beasts” and by Chaucer’s time (late 14th cent.) was also used to refer to a way to be followed, similar to today’s sense of trail: “diuerse pathes leden diuerse folke the rihte wey to Roome.”
Trail is a much younger word. It is from the French but with no known occurrences in English until four centuries after William the Conqueror brought his soldiers and language into England. It was first used to refer to parts of clothing drawn behind (a robe’s trail) and then, a century or so later, to tools dragged behind such as nets or sleds (“They…keepe certaine dogs..which they yoke together...to a sled or traile”). The sense of something dragged behind is then extended to the marks of something dragged (as the tracks of a wagon) or left behind (as a scent or footprints) but this use is not found in writing until around the time that the King James Bible was published (1611). Trail is never used in the King James Bible so the one yearning to find her lover is told to follow “the footprints of his flock” rather than the flock’s trail and the psalmist is led by the Good Shepherd along paths rather than trails.
The use of trail to refer to “a path or track worn by the passage of persons travelling in a wild or uninhabited region; a beaten track, a rude path” is not known until the early 19th century and even in the 20th century this use was “chiefly in U.S. and Canada.” In the Corpus of Historical American English, the noun trail does not occur at all in the decade of the 1810’s. It does occur in the 1820’s but only in the sense of something left behind (e.g. footprints, broken twigs, blood, piece of cloth) by someone or something on the move. In the 1830’s and 40’s, path occurs with its wide range of senses ten times more frequently than trail, frequently in contexts where “trail” would likely be used today:
These examples are taken from James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Pathfinder and indicate why the novel had this title and not The Trailblazer. The first occurrence of trailblazer in the historical corpus is not until 100 years after the novel was written. In Cooper’s time, paths rather than trails were blazed:
Since then, the use of trail has continually increased and it now occurs almost as frequently as path. Meanings once covered by path are now associated more if not exclusively with trail. In the early 19th century, trail referred to short-lasting marks such as footprints, bent grass, blood, or scents that were left, usually unintentionally, by people or animals at a specific time and followed by others in pursuit of those who left the marks. But from the mid-19th century until today, this sense of trail has increasingly been complemented by another: a passageway (rather than the marks of a specific person or animal passing that way) that is relatively long-lasting and followed to go through a specific area or arrive at a specific place (rather than to find a specific person or animal that went that way). Contrasts in contemporary connotations of the two words reflect this change: trail connotes greater length and, if made by humans, intentionality than path; if referring to a passage made by animals, trail connotes repeated use more than path.
Given the history of these words and our current understanding of them, here’s what I’m especially wondering about: How do contemporary uses of trail and path in reference to physical passages influence our understanding of their figurative use, especially in fixed expressions or in traditional translations of texts from other times and cultures?
For example, path to enlightenment and spiritual path are common expressions; trail to enlightenment and spiritual trail are rarely if ever used. But do our spiritual—or philosophical or psychological—journeys involve paths more than trails? I like trail races but the idea of a path race, especially through wilderness areas, does not appeal to me at all. It reminds me of races where I have seen runners—or been the runner—thrashing around in underbrush and scrambling up steep embankments to get back to the trail because a path was mistaken for the trail. I am understanding path as a “a track formed incidentally by passages between places, rather than expressly planned“ (OED) rather than “a route that someone follows to go somewhere or achieve something” (Merriam-Webster’s online definition for “trail”). The directions we take on our spiritual journeys are seldom “incidental”. They are along routes followed “to go somewhere or achieve something” whether happiness, peace, enlightenment, or liberation/healing/salvation. We have trail guides, not path guides, to help us along difficult physical routes. We have philosophers, novelists, psychologists, saints, prophets, and poets to help us along difficult psychological, social, philosophical or spiritual trails.
As indicated earlier, the King James Bible was published two centuries before trail began to be used in the sense “a passage…followed to go through a specific area or arrive at a specific place.” Path was used in contexts where we would use trail today. However, many translations published for today’s readers use path and avoid trail as if these two words are still used as they were in King James’ time. For example, the New Revised Standard Version, New International Version, and New English Version never use trail to refer to a route walked literally or metaphorically. The Message is one of the few translations to use trail in keeping with contemporary uses but does so only thirteen times. Practically all translations use path in one of the Psalm’s best known verses: “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” (NIV). “Wherever I incidentally go” or “the way that characterizes me as an individual” is an unlikely sense of “my path” in this context. A common theme in the Psalms and other biblical literature is that there is a way to follow that leads to right relationships, harmony, order; the Torah provides the essential guidelines for following this way. Perhaps this way is more a trail than a path.
My friend Jason asked if I would want to do a 2-person, 12-hour relay in the Black Toe Run: “The trail is 5 miles and 1,400 feet in gain per loop. With the combination of freezing weather, long distances, tough terrain, and bad elevation gain/loss this makes for one of the toughest runs created in TN.” It would be a month after the Lookout Mountain 50, I would have a couple weeks to do some extra hill training, and it had been almost a year since we had gotten together for a run so I readily agreed.
Jason gave me the honor of naming our team. Something to work on during those few minutes of the day’s run when the mind is in problem-solving mode. Hmmm:
Running up Hippie Hill and, a half-mile past it, on up to the radio tower gives an elevation gain of 4-500’ feet in a little over a mile. After two weeks, a couple days each, I could manage a kind of slow motion run up and down four times without stopping to walk. Satisfaction was checked by looking at the steep hills across the hollow and thinking their terrain would be more like the Black Toe’s. Still, each of us doing 6 loops for a total of 60 miles seemed achievable.
The race’s gathering and start/finish area is at the end of a half-mile driveway leading from a county road through hay fields, over the rise topped by the house of the race director’s parents, and into the eastern edge of another field bordered by the wooded hills through which the course runs.
At 10 a.m., Jason, the leaders of the three other 2-person teams and of the eight 4-person teams, and thirty-five solo runners lined up at the start and pledged to push themselves, respect the environment and each other, and to be humble. They took off through a break in a stone wall, their backs to the hills they would begin to climb after a two-mile parabola through field, woods, brook, and the fields we’d driven through. The thirty-four other members of the relay teams waiting their turn to run, a few friends, spouses, and children watched them off and then broke up into clusters. Some went to their cars or tents; others and I slowly walked to the south side of the field to near where the runners would begin the climb into the woods. After cheering Jason on, I went back, got a fold-up chair from his SUV and sat at the edge of the stand of cedars just west of the barn, along the side of which were snacks and the chalk boards to keep track of the runners’ progress. The cedars provided shade from the sun. It was already in the 60’s. The race had been scheduled for the previous Saturday but the one snowstorm of the year closed middle Tennessee down that weekend. Our appreciation of today’s event was enhanced by thoughts of what it would have been like running through snow and ice and trying to stay warm on a day that started in the 30’s and ended in the teens. Sunk back in my chair, feet propped against the stone wall following the tractor path up the hill behind me, I watched three boys and their fathers fishing on the one-acre pond between the barn and the hills. Their lines glistened in the sun and curved in the breeze.
Our plan was to do three loops each and then decide how to proceed from there. Jason’s three kept us within the hour-per-lap pace we foresaw. Although he is much faster than me and relishes the challenge of running through pain, I thought my having run more than him over the past few months might enable me to keep up the pace. I thought I was in pretty good shape. Within the first half-mile, I passed four people who were walking or barely jogging. Obviously doing solo runs, but, dang, it was pretty early in the race to look that tired, I thought. Crossing the brook and following the lane between it and a stone wall, a guy heading into the fields called to tell me I had missed the turn. Back on track, I thanked him and went on ahead to the easy part of the course. Easy, but why was it taking so much effort to run as slowly as I was? I remembered that, at the start of the race, the leaders seemed to be going at a relaxed pace as they left the field and entered the woods. Relaxed, maybe, or straining as I was even before getting to the hills? Other runners would later tell me they felt the same, figuring it was due to a combination of headwind, swinging the feet through dense, though not high, hay and the breadth of the fields obscuring their gradual rise.
Then the hills. On the first loop, I jogged up parts that I probably should have walked and walked up parts that I could not jog. The race site calls the trail technical and there were some rocks, muddy spots, and small gullies but for the most part the footing was quite good without roots lacing the trail as they do on public land where hikers and runners continually pack the ground down to and between them. I enjoyed the quick descents, not wanting to think of the cumulative effect of pounding, jarring the legs in a way not done on the smooth, paved surface of Hippie Hill.
I finished the first loop in keeping with the plan time-wise, but at the beginning of the second, I found myself walking on the easy stretch where I had passed so many an hour ago! “I will be humble,” the race director had asked us to pledge. I was humbled. The run through the field was even slower. In the hills, I walked up stretches that I had jogged the loop before. The third loop: oh the entropy of it all.
Jason took over but was ready for a rest after one lap. The sun had set. Of the twenty-nine who had signed up for the 12-hour solo run, only 11 were still going, some of them barely so. My legs had not benefited from the hour’s rest but I forced them to move, slowly, slowly.
Approaching the entry into the woods and hills, I was already so beat that I thought of cutting back to the staging area. But I figured that the time taken to finish the loop, even walking most of it, would be less than what it would take to go back and have Jason redo what I had just covered. So I strained on.
The cool air encouraged moving along as quickly as possible, the dark and quiet kept focus on the steps and off the fatigue, my new headlamp of 200 lumens provided a much better light unto my path than the old one I had for the Lookout Mountain 50. Apart from the occasional leaning of the head against a tree to not pass out or stepping off the path to let the gas-station pizza eaten during the last break pass out, I kept moving. When I finished the loop, I told Jason that maybe I could do one more: “No,” he said, “You look terrible. I’ll do one more and we’ll call it a day.”
That sounded good to me even though I had done only twenty miles. I went to the SUV, changed shirts, and had a coffee from my thermos. Then, feeling better, went to the snack area and poured a beer from a keg into my water bottle, went to sit by the fire, and enjoyed having nothing to do but chat with son Pascal who had come by a couple times to do some filming.
After Jason completed his loop for twenty-five miles and wrote down his time, he noticed that we were considerably ahead of the three other 2-person teams. But maybe they could catch up if we did not do one more loop. “I’m feeling fine. I’ll go around once more,” I said and started to get ready.
“No. No. You do look better than the last time I saw you but we’ve run enough. Let’s end it here.”
A good way to end. We had pushed ourselves. Our legs were punch-drunk. We would sit by the fire, talk about the day’s run, work, books, and whatever else might come to mind until the fireworks went off. If our lead would stand, a fun little bonus. If not, good for those who kept pushing on!
--“I look handsome, I look smart, I am a walking work of art” --Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
--“Be not lifted up because of thy strength or beauty of body, for with only a slight sickness it will fail and wither away.” --Thomas à Kempis (15th century)
My “Night Vision” post contrasted a wall of distrust with an open door of welcome, and falling alone with being helped up by others. The night I finished writing it, I fell asleep with the radio on. I awoke to a 2 a.m. recast of On Point’s Boutique Fitness Craze, discussing the “extreme, expensive studio exercise that focuses on very specific methods from Pilates-influenced ballet…to stationary-bike dance with a lot of soul talk along for the ride.”
In his introduction, moderator Tom Ashbrook referred to this movement as “almost a religion” and religious notions were used to describe it throughout the program. The aromatic candles of SoulCycle suggest the candles and incense of traditional liturgies and chapels; its pounding music helps its cyclists to “reach a higher plane” like highly repetitive worship songs of nondenominational churches or Taizé. “People at the front desk [who] know your name” are like the ushers who smile and shake your hand as you walk into church. High-fives and whoops after a workout substitute for the holy embrace accompanied by “The peace of the Lord be with you.” A workout that “hurts like hell!” and in which “you almost black out it’s so intense” incarnates the churchgoer’s thoughts of “suffering for the gospel.” Charisma is as important for the coach as it is for the preacher in building up a following. Sceptics ridicule the “silliness” of people swindled into believing that they are “cycling their way to immortality” just as the scoffers scorn those who delight in the Torah.
Ashbrook’s last guest was Harvard Divinity School student Angie Thurston. She studies an American cultural shift evident in her generation of Millennials (born in the last two decades of the 20th century), who are “looking for spirituality and community in combination” but not in “institution[s} with religious creed as the threshold.” Membership in traditional faith communities is decreasing; membership in clubs and organizations offering communal identity is increasing.
Toward the end of the program, Ashbrook questioned the relationship between fitness clubs and religion since “we associate religion with… a moral vision... with some kind of a transcendence.” But “some kind of transcendence” was at play throughout the program. Transcending physical barriers was linked to the transcendence of psychological barriers. The fitness director of Shape magazine said that there is "an evolution in the way that people are exercising. You are working out at such a higher level than you might otherwise… You break boundaries every day… All that superficial stuff doesn’t matter in that moment." The founder of Soulcycle says that after "getting through" obstacles on the bike "I can go out into my own life and operate on a higher plane that’s super powerful and very valuable."
Social barriers, in an age where “people are more digitally connected but more locally isolated” (Thurston), are transcended by the sense of community nurtured in boutique programs. “You feel this support for one another… proud of one another,” a guest said. A caller referred to his gym as a “safe place” where “I can bring my whole self to the gym” and be respected by others regardless of physical and social differences. The movement is “transcending culture and…national boundaries,” says one of CrossFit’s cofounders, referring to the growth of its affiliates throughout the world.
Receiving much less attention than “some kind of transcendence” was the question of “moral vision” that Ashbrook referred to. Thurston touched on this, referring to a paper in which she compared contemporary fitness clubs with ancient philosophical schools: they are similar in linking physical exercise to community but the ancient clubs gave much more attention to the link between physical and moral development. Thurston says there is some movement in this direction now, giving as an example a program started by Rick Warren, author of the Purpose-Driven Life: Christians with CrossFit Faith “offers spiritual Workouts of the Day alongside the usual daily regimen of weights and burpees.” With similar concerns, an On Point caller told of opening a CrossFit gym for ex-military and others involved in dangerous and stressful work to facilitate discussion of the challenges they meet outside of the gym as well as to work out together.
I am as grateful as a boutique member for my experiences of transcendence related to physical exercise. But I also wonder if the blurred vision during my recent ultra-run might be a metaphor for blurred moral vision: excessive attention to my own progress along a side-trail may blur my vision of those thrashing through entangled paths or fallen on the main trail. I guess some of my concerns might be expressed in a recast of the ancient parable of the loving neighbor:
A man was walking on a city side street, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a SoulCycle instructor was going down that road to lead a group of professionals to a higher plane; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a CrossFit coach, heading for the gym to train people “not only for the unknown, but for the unknowable,” saw the man and passed by on the other side. Then an overweight guy out to have a smoke came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, carried him to his car, brought him to a hospital, assured that he was given good care, and promised to cover all expenses. Which of these three, do you think, truly had soul? Which was truly fit?
The Lord appeared to Abraham…as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them… He said, “…Do not pass by your servant… Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on… So they said, “Do as you have said.”… Then the men set out from there…and Abraham walked with them to see them on their way. –Genesis 18
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
--Shel Silverstein “Whatif”
Snow seldom visits us in central, mid-south so when I lift my eyes and see that it has come from afar, I like Abraham run from my tent to greet it, begging “Do not pass me by,” at least not until I can get dressed, put my gear together, leave the AC’s heat of the day and run along with the storm to see it on its way.
I left for this run in my usual hat, thinking the visor would keep the flakes off my glasses, but after a half-mile turned back for one of the wool hats 90-year-old Willie Frank gave me. Throughout the year, he knits a hat a day, giving them to relatives, friends, and homeless shelters. He has given me an orange one for hunting and a blue one for around town. I got the blue one and pulled it down over my ears.
The road past our house showed pavement only under one set of tire tracks. After the half-mile turn away from the subdivisions into the country, the road was completely covered. I listened to the phmp phmp of my steps packing footprints soon to be covered.
I had brought a cloth to clear my glasses but after a mile took them off. I could look at the gray sky, swirling snow, covered fields, and dark tree lines without being troubled by lack of clarity. A small flock of birds swirled like leaves in the wind beside then across the road. A lone bird flew low. Its wings beat in sharp, erratic angles. A couple days earlier, someone asked me if I get “a runner’s high.” I answered that I know the expression but am not sure that I get it. “I enjoy running,” I said. This might be a runner’s high, I thought, as I felt the snow against the face and ran easily in the subdued light and quiet.
After mile two, there is a right-angle turn and a run along an open field. I realized there that a tailwind had been contributing to the ease of the run—and that my last several miles would be into a headwind if I continued on the planned route. “Maybe I should shorten the run. Maybe I should reroute to have a tailwind in the last half.” I did not. A principle that I have developed over dozens of years of travel is “Stick with the planned route if the reason for doing otherwise is primarily fear of what might be—fear of the kind mentioned in my “Night Vision” post, “whatifs” like those in the Shel Silverstein poem I used to read to my children—to their smiles, to my silent self-rebukes, and to my thoughts about parenting and the children growing up.
I passed the church and continued on to Gee road, past Aileen’s fields where I have sat waiting for dawn and deer. Then through the woods before Willie Frank’s trailer on one side and his 30-acre pasture on the other. As I ran by his driveway, I saw tire tracks going into it. “Hold it, I should go back and check his door.” I knew he was not home; he was in rehab, having broken his hip two weeks ago. He has had problems with break-ins. He has a trailer now because someone had burnt down the house his father built over a hundred years ago. An old SUV was coming out as I returned, all windows covered with snow except the windshield, the wipers struggling to keep it clear. The driver rolled his window down and poked the snow away: wool hat, non-hostile eyes, a lo-ong, bushy beard.
“You know who lives here?” I asked.
“You know his name?”
“Willie. He aint here. He broke his hip.”
“Oh okay. I just wanted to make sure things were okay. I’m a friend of his. My name’s Tim.”
“That’s my name too. I’m his nephew.”
I had heard of his nephew Tim. He looks after the cows in Willie Frank’s big pasture several miles from here. We shook hands and went our ways.
Maybe I should turn around at the chicken barn, I thought as the road turned slushy with puddles I couldn’t avoid. But the feet didn’t get cold when the water soaked through. The SmartWool socks that I usually wore only with hiking boots were doing their job. Okay, no more excuses. Onward to “the beautiful mile,” my name for a straight stretch of road heading directly east, through fields with no buildings on either side. Several years ago, I turned onto this stretch just as a full moon was rising over the hills. For several minutes, without the least turn of my head, I could watch Diana rise as I ran. I recalled that warm summer evening as the crosswinds blew.
In the four miles past Willie Frank’s, the only movement in the road apart from the snow was two ATV’s driven by teenagers focused on staying on the road, the snow obscuring boundaries of edge and ditch. They gave no sign of seeing me.
At mile 9, the half-way point, I left the flatland and started up the road leading into one of my favorite stretches with its two miles of rolling hills, pastures and woods. At the top of the first hill there was a large dark shape in the road. I put on my glasses and the one shape turned into several silhouettes, a few tall and several small: parents watching over their children ready to slide down the hill. They quieted as they watched me approach but laughed when I spoke of the nice day for being outside.
My legs were tightening up and I was thirsty so I walked while taking a drink. I walked after finishing the drink. The angus on the west side of the road and I studied each other. Behind them, the thin bright border between the dark trees on the hill and the gray sky, indicated that the sun would set in a half hour or so. It’s quite okay to walk. I probably should do so more.
The beauty. The beauty.
And the cold. The wind picks up. It is now a headwind, penetrating my wet jacket and sweaty shirts. My walk turns into a shuffle then back into a jog.
One nice thing about this weather: the aggressive dogs at the house-&-junkyyard past the two-mile stretch are holed up somewhere and don’t even bark.
The first moving car I’ve seen in the 8 miles since Willie Frank’s passes slowly.
I’m cold and tired. I stop at Bill and Julie’s knowing they will be happy to offer a refuge of warmth but they are not home. Bill will later tell me “Another time like that, if we aren’t home, you go into the garage and turn on the electric heater!”
As the cold increases, the day darkens, and the legs thicken, I think “The best part of distance running is being able to come back home.”
A pick-up stops and the driver asks if I’m okay. I assure him that I am, just out for a run, less than two miles from home. He seems a bit skeptical: “Okay. I just wanted to make sure.” I thank him. Not until I get back to the house, see the chunk of ice that falls from my beard and realize that several icicles still remain do I start to think of what kind of picture that driver saw.
Evening after the snow storm
Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.–Gospel of Luke
What entangled paths! What presumption: to think of leaving you for something better. Turning, returning, backwards, sideways, ahead: obstructions everywhere. You, the only way out. And there you are, nearby! You rescue the miserably confused and set us on your path. You comfort me, saying: “Run, I will bring you. I will guide you. I will bring you there.” --St. Augustine, Confessions
At 3:50AM, someone knocked at our front door. We waited for them to give up and scam for their three loaves elsewhere. They kept knocking. “Trouble me not. the door is now shut,” locked for good reason, I could have shouted but kept still. There was a pause of a few minutes but then the knocking resumed.
I “will not rise and give to you, because you are my friend, yet because of your importunity I will rise” and ask, with hostile voice, what you want.
A woman’s voice: “…leave my baby… Kay.”
Leave a baby! “There is no Kay in this house,” I am about to say, then recognize this as the nickname non-family use for my daughter. I wake her and tell her. She leaps out of bed and runs to open the door. She had forgotten that she was to take care of the baby so that the mother could meet her work schedule.
Good Christian that I am and it being mid-Advent, I might have stayed up to watch and pray, starting with the thought of a baby being brought to our home in cold, dark night—by a woman named Mary! I could have watched the darkness turn to the “light of dawn” that Ukyeye, our daughter’s name, refers to.
Poor Christian that I am, I went back to bed.
But I could not sleep. My thoughts soon turned from what had just happened to what could happen in four days. I saw myself stumbling in the night. Muscles seizing up, calories depleted, hypothermia setting in. My headlamp revealed dark trees, blowdowns and rocks projecting from eroded cliffs. I had lost the path. I tripped over a tree root and fell.
The vision reflected my doubts and fears about the Lookout Mountain 50-mile trail run in four days. It was only my second run of this distance, my training for it was considerably less than for the first one, this course would be tougher elevation-wise, I was uncertain about how my body would hold up and imagined long-term damage and consequences for my family as well as for myself.
All elements of my vision did become a part of the trail race. I began stumbling over roots after 35 miles, my hardest fall just two miles from the finish line when I slipped on mud and whammed my ribs. I lost the trail twice in the dark. But there was a key element of the race that had not been in the vision: people offering help along the way. Volunteers at the safety stations every 7 miles assured we had drink and food. Two of my hardest falls came as I was coming up on a runner ahead of me. Each one heard me go down—and each turned back to help me up. The last 12 miles, from late afternoon into the dark, my daughter Kayitesi accompanied me.
Throughout our first four miles together, Kayitesi’s delight in the beauty of the Way checked the haze of fatigue that had been obscuring my appreciation of it. With elfin lightness and humor, she would dash ahead through a stand of pines, stand by the gleaming waters of Rock Creek, angle off to the edge of Eagle Cliff to look over miles of Chattanooga Valley, turn back for glimpses of the sun setting through the trees behind us, catch up to watch as I used the ropes to aid in the steep descent to Lulu Lake, and view the 100’ waterfall in the last of the daylight.
In the dark, she stayed close for my sake. Her headlamp shone brighter and her eyes were brighter: mine, drying up, made it seem like the lenses in my glasses were heavily smeared (I’ll carry eye-drops on my next ultra). It was hard for me to discern between shadows and tree roots or stones so Kayitesi would go in front, calling out obstacles and which side of the path to take: “This way, papa! No—“ my understanding of her words and hand signals blurring like my eyesight, I veered to the right where she told me to keep left, “--this way!” A sigh at my stumbling.
Soon after the fall knocking the breath out of me and bruising my ribs, less than two miles from the finish, we came to a division in the muddy road, neither way having the small reflector flags spiked into the ground to indicate turns. Others were following us. We yelled back to them to look for the turn. After a few minutes, the one furthest back yelled that he found it and we followed him, seeing that the reflectors had been knocked askew by the feet of earlier runners. The one who found the turn and led us for a half mile lost the trail in a soggy stretch of brush, rhododendron, and alders. We floundered, then spread out until I spotted another cluster of reflectors thirty degrees to the right of where we had been heading. A light shone brightly ahead: a volunteer assured us that there were only a few hundred yards left. We finished in joy.
All elements of my nightmarish vision were realized in the run. But a key element of the run was absent in the nightmare: the presence of others, reflections of the divine saying “Run. I will bring you. I will guide you. I will bring you there.”
The one who helped me the most had sprained her ankle only a week before, on part of the course that I had run in the morning. It pained her, I would learn later, as she ran, like the nail-pierced foot may have pained the one who leapt into the clouds, providing light for those on entangled paths.
Trails we follow,