The room I sit in for 40-plus hours a week does not have a window. The air is recycled. I look into a monitor, answer the phone, and scratch notes on a yellow pad. The days can blend together and when I leave the office I feel like Fred Flintstone, screaming down the dinosaur. I love what I do and am blessed to have a job; I would just rather be outside doing it. Sometimes life does not feel like much of an adventure, with the meetings, the PowerPoint slides, and emails you are copied on but can’t figure out why.
I crave the outdoors, much like my father did. It has only been later in life that I have fully appreciated the massive gravitational pull places like the Red Feather Lakes or Eagle’s Nest Wilderness had for him. My father died on the Fourth of July several years ago, and some of my memories of going to these places with him are difficult for me to lift up to the light and examine.
It was clear that on some occasions he would rather be out there having adventures on his own, rather than with a ten year old who fouled up the tent lines or hooked himself in the ear fly-casting. Getting to the deep spots in the Gore Range is not always easy, so when I dragged my feet or complained about blisters I could see it in his face; “Why did I bring this kid?” My father drank a lot, and his frustration with me would often rise as the level of the scotch bottle dropped.
The fish in the more remote places in the Colorado wilderness are very old and very wise. The foolish angler will go away empty handed every time. If you talk, move around, or even breathe too heavily, they will gaze at you with pity and slowly swim away. Sometimes my father would approach a stream crawling on his belly, like a marine, and cast from his knees. With Jedi-like focus, he would lightly cast into a six-by-four inch spot between the bank, a rock, and a broken tree limb, and wait. He was much more patient with this process than he was with anything else in his life.
I learned to be quiet and stay out of the way. I would leave my line in the water for long periods of time to avoid having to recast and face the possibility of getting tangled in the trees or snagged on a sunken log. This way I could avoid calling dad over for help and the verbal strafing that often came with disrupting his Zen-like focus on the moving water. You don’t catch a lot of fish leaving your fly in one spot, but who was I to disrupt the alcoholic family dynamic?
As a child, I did not fully understand why my dad loved being out there in the woods. It often seemed boring. No basketball, skateboards, or Flintstones. I also realize now that as a child with an alcoholic father I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, so this constant stomach-knot likely tainted for me from what was so wonderful about being out in the middle of nowhere. If other people are around the shoe might not drop on you, but in the Eagle’s Nest it seemed like we could go days without seeing anyone.
On occasion I understood the draw of nature, or as Jack London called it, the call of the wild, but only when the conditions were just right. The light through the trees hitting the stream in just the right way or the smell of the damp forest in morning offered small insights into my father’s need for these places. These glimpses of beauty and peace have since bloomed into full comprehension.
I run now, and being outside running, especially in the mountains, has crystalized for me why the outdoors were important to my father. There are days I feel an immense sadness at being away from Colorado and the easy access I had to places like Deer Creek or Red Rocks. Even though these places are close to the city, you could get back there and feel a million miles away.
I don’t run for speed or to pile up mileage. I run to challenge myself and learn that I am stronger than I often think I am. I run to be outside and feel the sunlight. I run to clear the cobwebs, and in Samuel Johnson’s word, ‘clear my mind of cant.’ I run so I have the space to pray, reflect and think about my family and friends.
Last week I left the house and went over to 192nd. Our house is in the last development before a series of gravel back roads and cornfields. There is a town called Gretna about four miles away. 192nd passes over a train track about a mile out from my house. This road has become my early Sunday morning run as I train for the Denver Marathon in October. I ran out on the dirt road and left the houses behind. The corn is getting high and it was wonderful to run by the fields and breathe the fresh morning air. I hope this area does not get paved over. There are two ‘for sale’ signs on plots at a corner I call “the North by Northwest corner.” I hope Wal Mart does not get them. Now they are full of corn and soybeans.
As I approached the overpass, I thought of risk and adventure, and how the opportunities for these present themselves to us every day but that I am prone like everyone else to let them go. I thought about how the following day the week would begin and I would once again be in the windowless space in front of the computer. Since moving here I have heard the lonely train horn in the morning and evening. I knew the tracks were close and they called to me.
I’d like to think it was a spontaneous decision, but it wasn’t.
I dropped down the overpass embankment to the tracks, skidding and sliding through waist-high grass and wild raspberry bushes. I scratched up my legs on some kind of thistles, but made it to the tracks without breaking my neck. I stood on the tracks and looked down to where they curved around a bend about a mile away. I did not know where the first chance to get off of them would be. I was stepping into the unknown and this pleased me to no end.
The trees and bush were thick next to the tracks, and it was likely the next chance to get off would be somewhere near Gretna. The clock was ticking. Contrary to what I had imagined, the surface on either side of the tracks was not fine, soft, blackened dirt, but rough fist-sized rocks. I tried running on the rocks, but quickly realized this was a sure prescription for a sprained ankle. I moved to the center of the tracks, looked down at the bend, and ran as fast as I could.
Running on railroad tracks is technically much more difficult than I had imagined. I was reminded of how before trying it, I thought running on the beach would be easy, like in the movies when you see people just gliding along and smiling. Running on the beach is actually quite difficult. You sink in the heavy wet sand and it is exhausting. I think some people imagine fly-fishing in the same way before they try it, perhaps seeing it as similar to lake fishing. Throw on some bait, push a button, and let her rip. The shock of trying to cast a fly rod for the first time can be like running on the beach, a difficult and frustrating surprise.
The wooden track ties were slick with dew and oil, and you have to treat it like trail running; head down so as to not go down in a tangle of arms and legs. With my head down, I could not focus on the bend in the track. The damp ties were not spaced in accordance with the length of my stride, so I had to continually make micro-adjustments to my cadence as I ran, tightening here and lengthening there.
It was then that I thought about senses, and how I would likely feel and hear a train before seeing it. I thought about my father, sensing rather than knowing where the trout were in the river and his patience with the process of casting, waiting, looking, and recasting. I was slowed down and my heart rate dropped well-below where I was getting much of a workout. Initially I felt the frustration my father expressed when I disrupted the calm, silent flow of fly-fishing. The tracks became a burden.
Running the tracks required a patience that the runner can lose sight of. Slowing down became an answer rather than a problem. The purpose of the run had become something much more than exercise or training. I was on an adventure in the outdoors. I was risking and being foolish. I was coming to a renewed understanding about being outside; something my father knew but never taught me in a formal way. He tried to show me, and carrying all his weaknesses tried the best he could to foster in me an appreciation for what being outside meant, both to him specifically, and in general as a way to break with the sometimes mundane life of the city and office.
While on the tracks I felt a rush of excitement and joy. I wonder if my father felt this when he saw the spotted green curve of a trout move towards his fly. I can only believe he did.
