Wineberries and Dragonflies
Early July is a special time in the woods of Eastern Pennsylvania. During the winter and into the spring, should you go scampering along most any trail, you’ll notice an abundance of thorns - fun little guys whose heads I imagine to be filled with dreams of being transplanted along the route of Hyner or Black Forest and making a runner cry some time after
Conquering Mountains (even the little ones)
I am no mountain runner, nor do I pretend to be. Yet I am constantly humbled by mountains, and find myself wandering through them, eager to know them, whenever I am able. It has been a goal of mine to become a Saranac Lake 6er ever since first summiting Baker Mountain, the lowest elevation of the six, with my SIL Chenelle back in 2014. While I’ve hiked
Crisis of Identity
The year: 2009. The place: Hot Topic. The person: Me. I gazed in reverent silence at the decidedly irreverent graphics adorning tees in a variety of colors: black, darker black, and maybe–there’s-a-tinge-of-gray-if-I-squint-my-eyes. Metal studded belts and bracelets, slogans extolling activities which would have gotten me grounded through eternity should I participate, and a healthy dose of posters with more skulls than a graveyard. It looked like the devil
Jumping at Shadows
Many of the feats which trail and ultra runners attempt are so extraordinarily difficult that most people, when told about them, will either doubt the runner's sanity, question their seriousness, or both. Only through sheer, blind belief can we conquer the impossible. It requires a great deal of imagination to generate this belief, to visualize ourselves at mile 30, mile 50, mile 80. Imagination plays
“Matters of Inconsequence”
Matters of Consequence: “I once calculated that I have spent over five years’ total time sleeping in tents, and most of that in small tents pitched in the world’s most remote regions. I say that not to boast but to offer it as a measure of time spent deeply connected to wildness, because that connection has shaped the way I have lived my life, teaching me
A Figure in the Landscape
Ancient Chinese painting is known for its sharp contrast to the typical Western style. In Western art, it is customary to center the subject, to indicate their authority and power by giving them a gravity which the eye can’t ignore. Filling the frame, frozen in some bombastic pose, perhaps, in a moment of triumph, or bundled in agony and grief. Their emotion and their actions
Welcome to the Dark Side of Trail Running!
I have to admit that, once upon a time, I felt apprehensive about steep, gnarly trail races. But I can still recall seeing an iconic photo of my friend Pete Kresock, cresting the hill as he reached The View at the 2021 Hyner Trail Challenge, and feeling a sense of awe as I perused the details of that image. To be able to climb something like
A Few of My Injuries and How I’ve Recovered From Them
February 4, 2023 marked the fifth anniversary of my pelvic fracture, and I originally thought that would be a great time to discuss a few of the injuries I’ve experienced as a runner, as well as how I recovered from them. However, being injured at the time (refer to rolled ankle description below), I felt I was giving too much energy to injuries in general,
The Monster
There’s a monster on my heels. I recently spent a month volunteering at a spiritual retreat center in the lower Catskills. Shrouded in solitude, I was looking forward to devoting all my energy to the pursuits which truly matter to me. During this time, I did hard workouts twice a week in preparation for the 50K I’ll be running in June. These workouts were targeted to
Past Time
When the gun goes off, the stopwatch starts. When the finish line is crossed, the stopwatch stops. And when the stopwatch stops, we know who is the best. But do we really? Does that single number truly tell the whole story? Is something lost in using time as a singular reference point for performance? Time as we know it - splicing up a day into so
