I hadn’t been out to Gertrude’s Nose in many years, so I jumped at the opportunity to join Hudson Valley photographer Steve Aaron on a hike, and of course, Odie the Labradoodle was eager to come, too. In fact, when I hopped in the car to run an errand (I was going to come back and get him), Odie was so upset, he cried and howled. So Odie came with me on the errand, and then we headed off to Minnewaska State Park Preserve and the trail to Gertrude’s Nose.
(An updated version of this post was published in The New Rambler)
“What are they thinking?”
In a recent New Yorker article, Kathryn Schulz ponders the 50,000 participants in the New York City Marathon, curious about what running could teach us of the “deep strangeness” of the human brain. Her essay discusses research studies and books about running, including Haruki Murakami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami is not only an internationally acclaimed author who’s been lauded as one of the world’s greatest living novelists, he is also a long-distance runner who’s completed thirty marathons including New York City. I was therefore somewhat surprised when Schulz dismissed his book as doing “very poor justice” to the question of what people think about while running. She found it “neither inspirational nor aspirational nor descriptive.” Rather, it was “banal.”
It’s true, Murakami’s book has an ordinary tone and lacks the whimsical, surreal touches that grace his fiction. But in re-reading the book, I found it addressed Schulz’ question head-on, just not in the way she might have expected. You see, when you’re running, what may matter more is what you’re not thinking….
Continue reading “What We Think About When We Run: Murakami”
Kathryn Schulz, a writer for the New Yorker, recently asked the question, what do we think about when we run? The question is especially apropos of racing, which is all about execution, and which therefore requires a purposeful mindset and a well-considered plan of attack. Indeed, for a race the more relevant question might be, what do we think about before we run?
As point in case, let’s rewind to Thursday, November 26, 2015. It’s 7:35 AM Central Standard Time, and I’ve just pulled into a parking spot at the Lincoln Park Zoo, with the intention of racing the Turkey Day Run Chicago 5k….
The weather station indicated a temperature of 39 F, intermittent rain, and gusty winds. Not a nice day in the conventional sense, but for those so inclined, a chance to get outdoors and mix it up with nature. In the back of my mind, I was thinking about the Yurok Indians of Northern California whose warriors would head out into the mountains during the stormy winter months to chase the Thunders, with the goal of demonstrating vigor and determination and, if they impressed the spirits, receiving special powers.
And so, I made my way to the paved trail that runs along the Chicago lakefront, but upon turning north, I found myself in for a rude surprise…
I read a biography of John Muir, and his passion for nature inspired me to follow his footsteps into the mountains. But I hesitated. According to the bio, Muir believed that nature was love, goodness, an expression of God, and never evil, and he was often frustrated by his peers, whom he found materialistic, conformist, and indifferent to nature. But it seemed to me that logically, if humans are part of nature, then everything we do must be an expression of love and goodness, regardless of our attitude toward the wilderness.
Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love.
— John Muir
This Thanksgiving, if you’re spending time with family and friends, that’s fine, but if you consider yourself an “Epicurean,” that is, someone who places a high value on fine food and drink, unfortunately, I can’t find any philosophical justification for your preferences.
As a fan of the Stoic philosophers of Ancient Greece and Rome, I thought it was only fair to give the other side a fair hearing, and so I set out recently to learn something about Epicurean philosophy, thinking it would be a study in contrast. After all, the dictionary defines Stoicism as endurance of pain without complaint, while Epicurean signifies devotion to sensual pleasures, especially fine food and drink. But I discovered, to my surprise, that this is not the real story.
“Of course you’re slowing down — you’re getting older,” the voice whispered, and I hated it. But it was true: this morning’s 1-mile repeats were disappointing, averaging around twenty seconds slower than earlier this year. “Age is catching up with you,” the voice continued, its tone at once insinuating and damning, “it’s getting harder to sustain speed.”
It’s not the fist time this voice has piped in; actually, I’ve heard it on and off for years. But when I looked at the data, I interpreted a different story.
In a recent post, I compared a weekend spent hiking in the Catskills to Henry David Thoreau’s two-year sojourn at Walden Pond, as both were experiments in natural living and self-sufficiency.
But then my daughter Emeline brought to my attention a recent article entitled “Pond Scum.” The author, Kathryn Schulz, questions why we still admire the literature of a man who was mean-spirited and a fake. She summarizes her opinion in no uncertain terms:
We are incredibly proud to announce the winners of the 2015 Long Path Race Series! We call these winners “Disciples of the Long Brown Path,” in a nod to the memorial plaque for Raymond Torrey, one of the Trail Conference’s founders and an early promoter of both the Appalachian Trail and the Long Path.
Created and maintained by the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, the Long Path is an incredible 350-mile hiking trail that reaches from New York City to the outskirts of Albany, along the way traversing some of New York’s most beautiful natural parks and preserves, including the New Jersey Palisades, Harriman State Park, Schunemunk Mountain, the Shawangunk Mountains, the Catskills, and the Helderberg Escarpment.
Continue reading “Long Path Race Series: Announcing 2015 Disciples of the Long Brown Path”
The goal was five more of the Catskills’ high peaks on one of the last weekends before winter, part of a quixotic mission to summit all 35 hiking barefoot. Odie and I piled into the car right after breakfast, and the drive to Windham went smoothly — except for route 23, where we had to stop at three traffic lights in a row, which sorely tested my patience, and then navigate a construction zone with a needlessly restrictive speed limit.
Yet once out of the car and on the trail, these frustrations vanished quickly. The path to Windham High Peak was a delight: smooth dirt at a moderate grade — a rarity in the rocky rugged Catskills — and I moved almost as quickly barefoot as I would have in shoes. From the summit, we looked south at the distinctive silhouette of the Blackhead range, which Odie and I had climbed just a few weeks earlier. Back then, we had marveled in the details: traversing three peaks and three notches, experiencing scrambles, slabs, and sometimes smooth trail, and discovering different plants and trees with each step along the way. Now for the first time, we got the big picture.
The Long Brown Path 