One cold evening, as I was ruminating about my future, a sly thought crept into my vacant mind — to climb 1,000 mountains.  And it felt so right, although I held off from making a firm commitment, reminding myself to “give yourself some time to think it through.”  But the allure was powerful and immediate.  You see, I’m the kind of person who likes to take on big projects and get them done.  Like when I ran the Leadville 100-mile ultramarathon, and a few miles before the half-way point, there was this sign – “Go Big or Go Home.”  And then the trail headed up and up and up, rising relentlessly into the mountains, until it finally crested at Hope Pass, elevation 12,600 feet, where I felt like lying down on the trail and dying, although I hadn’t yet reached the half-way point.

Mind you I didn’t initially draw any connection between this project and the dragon.  Which I’d only seen once before.  A year ago, to be precise, in December 2022.  I was hurtling south on route 26 toward Grapevine, Texas, in a rental (black Dodge Charger with a 370-horsepower HEMI v8), satellite radio blasting Soundgarden’s alternative edgy angst — when my eye was snagged by the roadside foliage’s autumnal tints.  Oaks in green and red and bronze and mottled orange.  Cedar elms turning tangerine. Frilly mesquite leaves waving green and lemon.  What did these colors signify?  Could there be, I wondered, a cosmic dragon studying our world from a parallel neighboring universe – and were these spots of color, flecks in the iris of its eye?

It’s possible I first saw the dragon even earlier — in August 2018.  From the window of an airliner lifting off from New York’s LaGuardia, banking southwest, crawling above the Jersey shore.  Out the window — a dreary skyscape formed of stratus layers.  Featureless.  Shadowy.  Forlorn.  A typical New York skyscape.  Perhaps the gray layers condense as moist air trundles across the Catskill Mountains.  Perhaps the skies reflect the character of New York state – an old place, populated by stubborn people who stayed behind as opportunity shifted elsewhere, while others headed west in search of opportunity.  Like gold.  As I’m musing, the sun peeks through a gap — and suddenly a fan of crepuscular rays opens across the horizon.  As if a cosmic eye were batting its lashes.

Now, 1,000 mountains is a large quantity, especially when you climb them barefoot, which is my practice.  Although some of them are quite modest.  Like Touchmenot Mountain in the Western Catskills, which doesn’t even reach 3,000 feet.  But it’s called a mountain, so it counts, and to be fair I’ve also climbed Mt. Whitney (14,500 feet), which is the tallest mountain in the continental U.S.  Three times, actually – once in shoes as part of the 292-mile Badwater Double (but shod climbs don’t count towards the goal) and twice barefoot, from Guitar Lake in the west, while thru-hiking the John Muir Trail.

When I first conceived of the idea, I rushed to open my training log to see where things stood.  The log, which consists of an Excel spreadsheet with 14 tabs stored in the cloud, showed a total count, dating back to my first barefoot ascent (Peekamoose Mountain in 2015), of 340 mountains.  Or maybe it was 341, as there were two sets of calculations which didn’t reconcile.  Speaking as an accountant, financial analyst, and corporate executive, I have no tolerance for imprecision.  It took an hour’s work to validate the count — 341 was the correct number, comprised of barefoot ascents in New York’s Catskill and Adirondack Mountains, the high peaks of Maine and New Hampshire, and those two visits to Whitney.  Later on, when my knee was aching so badly I could hardly walk, I went through the log and found a handful of smaller peaks, including Touchmenot, and added them to the count, bringing the current total to 351.

The ancient Greek philosopher Pindar said, “Learn what you are and become that.”  Here I am, age 60, and evidently these barefoot peaks are some kind of clue.  Still, with respect to my identity, much mystery remains.  I think I am part and particle of many things.  Mountains.  Trees.  Flowers.  Ferns and lichens.  Animals.  Clouds.

I read that the Indians of California believe there is a ‘second night’ which their shamans could perceive and that the spirit world would send animal messengers to help them with their spells.  Perhaps they sent a dragon to personally guide me (this seems questionable)– or maybe the dragon took notice of me, climbing all these mountains, and was curious why I wasn’t wearing shoes.  As Riccardo Manzotti, an Italian philosopher and robotics scientist, points out – “A whole world speaks through your body and that world is consciousness.”(1)  Which means, I think, that even the strangest ideas have meaning, because they derive from the body and the world that lies beyond.

I drove down to New York City.  Flew to Chicago to visit family.  Thence to Phoenix, where I’d signed up for a 24-hour race called “Across the Years,” the goal being to run my age in miles.  I ran around the 1.4-mile loop for hours, at first barefoot, until grit, gravel, and rough pavement wore me out.  Then I ran in shoes.

As I circled the course, I felt peaceful at first, but gradually my mind clouded over with grim thoughts.  I was thinking about a family member I’d just seen, who’d embraced a radical cause.  In my eyes, she was making excuses for bad people.  People who torture, rape, and kill.  I pressed her on this, found she did not understand the history.  I read her sources, found she misrepresented their arguments.  I mustered my considerable diplomatic skill and challenged her logic ever so gently, which must have triggered her since I received the following response – “I do not exist for the purpose of making you see our world differently. But I won’t have much else to say to you on the subject; I have minimal time and energy to spare.”

Now, as I ran around the 1.4-mile loop, first during the day and barefoot, and then during the night in shoes, the question I kept wrestling with – at what point do you take a stand for what is right?  At what point do you fight?

What we know about dragons comes from ancient lore handed down over generations.

Dragons are formidable creatures.  Archetypal challengers.  They do not suffer fools.  But if you are resourceful and clever, a dragon might help you.

Dragons are solitary creatures.  In every story, a single dragon guards one treasure pile.  Guarding treasure is their primary mission, and it’s an important one.  Because treasure represents stored value.  The creation of which took years of purposeful effort on the part of skilled artisans, working with rare and costly materials.  We must preserve treasure for important causes.  We must not fritter it away.  This is a universal law.  Dragons are enforcers.

Consider this.  Every corporation has a treasurer, charged with managing the flow of funds into and out of the enterprise.  The authority to execute trades is delegated in writing.  Daily flows are accounted for, down to the penny.  Nothing is missed.  We have a young treasurer at the company where I work.  She’s totally in charge.  And very sharp.

I sat down once with the management team of a bulge-bracket investment bank.  A senior trader, someone who handled transactions in the billions, explained to me that after the markets closed, he stayed as late as needed to reconcile the day’s trades.  Every single one.  To understand where he’d made money, and where he lost it.

I appreciate this kind of attitude.  I worked hard to earn my money, and I do not like to waste it.  To my wife’ chagrin, I wouldn’t let her renovate the house.  Then, to ensure our lifestyle was sustainable, I vetoed air conditioning in the summer and set the thermostat below 60 F in the fall (it was about this time she moved out).

Dragons have a similar mindset.  If you were to look one in the eye, past the third eyelid (nictitating membrane, same as alligators and cats), you’d sense a baleful spirit.  An unblinking intelligence which looks into your heart and through it.  Weighing the content of your words.  Assessing your intentions.  Calculating your options.  Dragons are strictly logical.  They are quite difficult to trick.

After reaching 60 miles at the race in Phoenix, I called it quits.  Mission accomplished (I’d run my age) — no point taking further risk.  Not with over 650 mountains to be climbed in my remaining lifespan.  By the way, average life expectancy for Americans peaked at 78.9 years in 2014, and has recently fallen to 76.4.  But the average American healthy life expectancy (HALE or “healthspan”) is only 64.4 years.  Which, for me, doesn’t leave a lot of time.

The next few days, I took some easy walks for recovery.  Noticed there was still some tightness behind the left knee.  This had started back in December.  Possibly after a session on the Stairmaster.  There was a dull ache, too, on the medial edge, and it was painful to flex the knee completely, as in pulling heel to butt.

I ventured out to Piestewa Peak in central Phoenix, wondering if a dragon might reveal itself on the steep rocky slope.  Then I climbed South Mountain.  There were no special visions to report, but at least the left knee seemed to be OK.

It was on the descent from Superstition Peak 5057, which is an arduous 3,000-foot climb through saguaro and cholla cacti and stands of agave with weird twenty-foot-tall flower stalks, that the knee began to ache more seriously.  Then I slipped on some loose shale and jammed it.

The trail was steep and strewn with rock flakes and lined with barrel cacti and prickly pear.  The descent turned into an ordeal.  It took all afternoon, and still I wasn’t back when the sun began to set.  Was 1,000 mountains a realistic goal for someone of my age?  The year before I’d made 38 barefoot ascents.  At that rate, the project would take me until I was 80 years of age.

I feel like I have unlimited energy, but my platform is losing resilience.  Dragons, too, are mortal.  Eventually some young hero comes along, hunting for the treasure.  Carrying a bow and arrow or a long sword forged of cold hard steel with a razor edge.

I made it half-way down the mountain, reached a series of shallow pools collected in smooth rock basins, saw a family standing by the side of the trail who asked me to take their picture.  Through the aperture I noticed an orange glow spreading across the western sky behind them.

I limped along through piles of chunky gravel as the light faded.  The cloudy sky turned brilliant orange and then darkened into vermillion flames, which cooled to shades of chartreuse and cherry, while strings of diamonds glistened on the black valley floor.  I stopped to take a picture, so I could share the vision with others.  Share the feelings.  Share the wealth.

I limped through Sky Harbor International Airport.  Flew back home.  Browsed pictures on the internet of bones and tendons.  A strain in the medial collateral ligament?  A torn meniscus?

That young family member, the one who was romanticizing terrorists – she was in my thoughts.  Life is nothing if not endless calculations.  Of who to be.  And what to do.  I thought about disowning her but decided instead to wait and watch and reassess.  She’s trying so hard to become something – that I know.  But I can’t tell what.

In every story the dragon dies.  Which makes sense.  Because treasure is not meant to be preserved in perpetuity, but only until it can be put to work.  By knights in shining armor.  By dwarves and hobbits.  Or other kinds of motley heroes — it doesn’t matter, so long as they are clever and resourceful and have some good ideas.

No doubt fairy tales are written to be dramatic.  Maybe it’s the case that in reality, when the hero finally shows up, the dragon simply steps aside.

I have a mission – to climb 1,000 mountains, of which 649 are left to go.  And another mission — to accumulate experience, distill the value, and share it.

(1) Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks, Dialogues on Consciousness, 2019
(2) https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-life-expectancy-compare-countries/ and https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2021/comm/healthy-life-expectancy.pdf and https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/americans-unhealthy-chronic-disease-3f35c9f5

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Running the Long Path is my account of a 350-mile run in pursuit of a fastest known time record and what I discovered along the way.  (Click on the image for more info)