Forged on Red Mountain

We closed our house this week so I haven’t had much time to write outside of work. I do have some great drafts started that I’m excited to share with you! But this week, I’m reposting a story I wrote about my trail running days. Please enjoy!

Bending down to tie your running shoes, you sneak a peek at your watch. “Finally” you mumble to yourself. You flip the strings around your fingers and pull them tight. You pause to drink in the fresh air. “Woo hoo!” you shout in your head as you jump up to scramble across the parking lot and onto the trail. Electricity charges down your spine, ending in a shiver and tingling fingers. “Let’s roll” you smile to yourself.

But once you start building up speed, things start to change. You first start to feel it in your knees. Is that a shooting pain? Why are my legs suddenly sore? Then it starts to emanate out to the rest of your body. You feel clumsy. An eternity passes. Thud, thud thud. You check your watch. “0.18 miles” What the hell? You swear you already ran a mile.

And it just gets worse from there. Your breathing gets heavy and your arms feel weak. You start to sweat now, and your shirt feels scratchy. You shift your weight from one shoulder to the other. Your eyes bulge. Your ears ring. That miserable thought comes - maybe we should turn back around. This isn’t really what we want to be doing, is it?

Your mind shifts to this morning’s meditation. Japanese poet and marathoner, Haruki Murakami,  is known to quote “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” As much as you hate platitudes, you desperately need this one right now. Pain is falling and breaking your foot on Bourbon Street, because you were running in sandals in the rain. (What the hell were you thinking?) This isn’t pain. This is nothing but good old fashioned suffering. You choose to press onward.

You take a slow, deep breath, closing your eyes. You observe your thoughts, and realize they are not you. Your shoulders drop and the blood rushes to your fingers. Then, you hear it. Pad, pad, pad, pad… there’s a rhythm emerging. Suddenly your knees loosen up, and your shoulders feel balanced. You look down at your watch. 1 mile! You made it! It’s all downhill from here, you think. Your thoughts disappear and time vanishes.

You open your eyes to look around and take in the day. The trees are dense and the trail is dark red. Rock of all shapes and sizes jut up out of the trail. You have to stay focused to be sure you don’t fall. The air is cooler on the mountain. You smell clean fresh air as you breathe in. The sun breaks through the canopy above as you get closer to the top. You feel warmth on your skin, and keep running. You hear the birds and the wind in the trees, and you keep running.

You think of the days, weeks, and months gone by. The tyrannical version of time doesn’t exist up here. The bad days hurt less on the mountain for some reason. Days spent slipping out of control, losing your mind, waking up homeless in downtown Austin Texas. Days bruised by the violence of dogs eating dogs on the streets. Weeks and months of being among the forgotten, the cast aside, the hopeless, the desperate. No, up here is nothing but peace and healing, where the light touches you and makes you whole again.

As you wind the last curve and head into the parking lot, your mind takes you back to the beginning. It was a cool autumn morning at the base of Red Mountain where you first felt the pain and anguish of The First Mile. You were training with your new “running coach,” who was really just one of the guys at the sober living home where you recently moved in. A memory from a good laugh with the guys floats by, and you smile to yourself. You realize you’re still a little high from the dopamine rush at the top. 

Red Mountain, you think, was named after the red sheen all around from the iron ore in everything. This used to be a huge iron mining operation, generations ago. Now it’s a local trail, where a different kind of work takes place. You were a lump of ore not too long ago. You can’t recall exactly why you decided to start running. Maybe it was to get back in shape after years of abuse and neglect. Perhaps it was to impress someone. It might have even been simply to pass the time, who knows.

You can see that you’ve been shaped and sharpened out here on this mountain, where they used to mine iron and take it to be forged. Now you’re the iron, hardened and ready for life. You close your eyes and take it in.

Healing is so much like a long distance run, you think. It might be hard right now, but you’re just in the first mile of this journey. You know that if you just hold on, and push through the first mile, you’re going to be ok. You know that mile might be the next day, or the next hour. But healing is happening. Iron is being forged. You are being sharpened. And for that you are grateful.