November rain didn’t fall on Vancouver Island this year. At least, not as often as it usually does.
Instead, our days have been cold and clear.
The nearby trails have been icy instead of muddy.
I’ve needed sunglasses more than a rain jacket.
Those trails have been a lifeline over the last few months. Our family has experienced two significant health challenges. In both cases, the worst may be behind us, however, the stress has been significant and ever present. And it continues.
At the best of times, November darkness and gloom weighs me down. This November was not the best of times.
The sunshine couldn’t have come at a better time.
But the days are short, and the sun is low – very low – in the sky. And that has affected my runs.
I’ve been exploring near our home. Trails I have never gone down before. Heights I’ve never reached. Views I’ve never seen.
So often, over the last few weeks, I’ve turned a corner and found sunshine streaming through canopies of green. Shade surrounds me, yet the light streams through, and, behind it, the sky is as blue as the air is cold.
The light that makes it through is indescribable and special. It’s ethereal. Almost holy.
It stops me in my tracks. I breathe it in.
And I stop running, pull my beat-up old phone out of my running vest, and take photos which don’t do justice to the beauty of what I’m experiencing.
As is so often the case, I’m writing this on a Sunday morning. One floor down, my daughter plays her electronic piano and sings ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas.’ I’ve never heard her do that before. Her singing is more precious to me than the light streaming through the trees. More precious than anything.
The rain was late but it’s here now. An ‘atmospheric river’ hammering the island. The sun won’t be shining through the trees today.
Maybe that’s a good thing. If it happened every day, it wouldn’t be special. It wouldn’t be magical. It wouldn’t remind me that light pokes through.
Every time you gaze at the stars you are inside a time machine.
The light you see took years – anywhere between four and four thousand – to reach your eyes.
A star that you can see tonight may have exploded thousands of years ago, and no longer exists. It is gone. But you can see it.
Intelligent, highly educated people spend their lives studying these things. Quantum physics. String theory. If you Google, “why there is no such thing as touch,” you’ll learn (but like me, perhaps not understand) that there is no such thing. I thought I was sitting on the couch writing this. Not quite. Instead, “when you plop down into a chair or slink into your bed, the electrons within your body are repelling the electrons that make up the chair. You are hovering above it by an unfathomably small distance.”
At the subatomic level, a particle can exist in two places at the same time. A measurable thing that exists can be in more than one place at once.
Does any of it matter for any of us? Arguably not. Whether we know, or do not know these things, hardly effects our lives.
I do not think about them every day. I rarely think about them at all.
Why did I think about them today? Because I was straining for an analogy to help explain the unexplainable. There is a broken bridge near my home. Surrounding it are forests, and streams, pathways and fallen trees. This little clearing in the woods is alive with birds and bugs. I’ve never seen a bear there, but every time I go, I expect to. It feels like exactly where a bear should live. I am drawn to this place.
In a subatomic world, where I can be in two places at one time, a part of me would always be at the broken bridge. It exudes peace. Sometimes I stand on the bridge and hear the water that runs below. Sometimes, I sit on a log and just listen. I’ve meditated there. I’ve walked beyond the bridge and discovered a trail I did not know existed. The broken bridge is the place where my inner voice yells the loudest, and the broken bridge helps give me the resolve to listen to it. The broken bridge is the place that I limped to last week, when an old hip injury flared up, and I worried that, not only would I be unable to complete the Vancouver Marathon, but that weeks or months of pain loomed ahead. [I finished the marathon. And my hip still aches].
When I walked there last week – “layered” is the word that stuck in my head. The broken bridge and the world around it are layered. Vibrant greens contrasting with dull greys and browns; chirping birds interrupting pure silence; trees reaching for the sky hovering above dead ones that have yet to fall. All those things interact with each other. Infinitely.
The day after the marathon we returned home. We’d spent three days in Vancouver, in a busy downtown hotel, in a large city. We were always surrounded by people and noise. After we got home, I walked to the broken bridge. I was alone. The day before, I’d been one of thousands of runners. That morning, we woke up in a city with hundreds of thousands of people. Hours later, I had the broken bridge to myself.
The broken bridge always looks the same and is always a little different. It’s magical, like looking into the past, hovering on a couch, or being in two places at the same time. I see it. I’m immersed in the beauty. But I can never explain or fully understand exactly what I’m experiencing and how it makes me feel.
I spent much of the last month away from home – almost two weeks in the Fraser Valley taking a course, and then a short stint on the west coast of Vancouver Island, as part of a team assigned to an investigation.
Wildfire smoke clogged the valley, the debris of millions of incinerated trees hung in the air for days on end. The floating particles found their way into my lungs and permeated my clothes. Every piece of clothing I wore outside reeked.
While I was in the valley, a police officer was murdered not that far away. I was in a room full of cops when the news broke. Grief hung in the air, as real, and more hurtful than the ash from the fires.
Everyone on the course had many years, even decades, on the job. The officer who was killed, had barely three – her career was in it’s infancy, her life, in many ways, just beginning.
When the course ended, I drove home. The wildfire smoke did not dissipate until I reached the ocean, more than 100 kilometers away. I took a ferry home. I was so glad to see my family.
I took the same ferry again last week. One of thousands who gathered for the slain officer’s funeral. Her family, friends and colleagues spoke so well. It was clear that she was a special and remarkable person.
It was in the days between ferry rides that I was on the west coast of the island. My unit investigates death. The small town where this occurred is a tourist mecca. However, we were not there as tourists. We stood out everywhere we went in our pressed pants and dress shirts. A few days in this town reinforced a truism of our work – that when someone dies suddenly and unexpectedly, the effects are wide, profound and long lasting.
Despite my observations, and my job, none of the things I write about above were about me. My career, and my current job, put me in a position where I have the privilege of trying to play a part, however small, in trying to help people through dark times.
However, the things I write about above do affect me. They continue to mold and shape me even though I’m over fifty years old, with more than two decades on the job.
This morning I’m at home with my wife and daughter. There’s coffee and juice, waffles, dolls and a Barbie movie. A perfect Sunday morning. Outside it’s grey, the fog hanging over the trees reminiscent of the wildflower smoke which hung over the valley.
Today I will run on trails, read whenever I have a spare moment, call my parents and hug my girls. I’m thankful to be at home.
Sometimes the first time my wife learns about something in my life is reading about it on readerwriterrunner.com.
When we first met, I told her that I liked to “bury things deep.” Maybe I was exaggerating for effect. There’s a difference between burying things, and not talking about them. I’m very good at not talking.
But I don’t bury them. To do so would mean hiding them away, somewhere within me – walled off from myself and unexamined.
I’ve seen a lot of death and misery in the last two decades. Death and misery come with the uniform. More and more over the last few years, I’ve seen colleagues suffering. Sometimes one incident is the proverbial last straw and the weight of what my friends and colleagues have seen becomes too much to bear. Sometimes the one incident is so awful it does it on its own. For others, there is no one incident, just accumulated suffering.
I’ve learned that when this happens to my colleagues, they are injured – a physical injury as real as a broken leg.
I’ve learned that this can happen to anyone, at anytime. And not just first responders and veterans. The pandemic has made things worse for everyone.
Last week I got a call from a close friend who was going through a tough time. I don’t think I could have handled the things he has weathered. He inspires me. I think he would acknowledge that for many years he buried things deep. And that part of coming to terms with those things is the opposite of burying them.
There are a lot of ways to shine a little light on dark places. You’re probably already doing them.
I read a lot. I read with a pen in my hand and a journal by my side. I underline passages that move me and copy some of them into my journal.
I run. Almost every day. Sometimes listening to music that transports me a million miles away. Sometimes in the stillness of a forest where all I hear is the stream that flows beside me.
I write. Things I haven’t yet told my wife get posted online for anyone in the world to read. Anyone in the world, including my mom and my ex-wife and my ex-partner. That’s a varied audience.
I talk. Sometimes. One of the things I value more than anything in this world is going for coffee with my wife, at least once a week. We have one or two favourite places. We sip Americanos. And I actually talk. Things that have accumulated throughout the week come out. And speaking those words, to her, over coffee, always feels good.
I’ve always known how important, reading, running, and writing are in my life. I knew it instinctively. I felt it in my marrow. But I’ve increasingly also come to understand that it is when I read, run, write, and sometimes talk, that I shine light on darkness. Far from burying things deep, I actually deal with them head on.
Postscript
I thought about some of these things last Sunday as I ran with good friends as part of the Wounded Warriors one day run from Sooke to Sidney on Vancouver Island. This year’s team is gearing up for their 600-kilometer run from the north island to Victoria later this month. (As a former member of the team, I was privileged to be able to join them for the one day run). The funds they raise help first responders and veterans going through difficult times. Those funds also help their spouses and children. If you’re so inclined, you can visit Home – Wounded Warrior Run BC (akaraisin.com) to learn more, and perhaps even donate.
Yesterday I wanted to run for an hour. Not 59 minutes. The difference is psychological but real. There’s comfort and completeness in that extra minute.
Sixty minutes means thirty out and thirty back.
Our home is surrounded by forest and trails. I have many options, but one favourite – a short jog down the street and I disappear into the woods, unlikely to encounter anyone in a world of silence.
I climb, and descend, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, usually somewhere in between. Yesterday I checked my watch, once or twice, determined to turn around at the thirty-minute mark.
Twenty-four minutes into my run, on an isolated hilltop that overlooks our neighbourhood, I sensed where the run would end. I have been running long enough, decades now, to have a feel for pace and distance. It’s almost instinctual.
The tree. I would finish at the tree.
There are tens of thousands of trees within miles of our home.
There’s one that stands out.
Pictures don’t do it justice. My pictures at least. But it is wide and thick and towers above everything around it. It’s a special tree. The kind of tree that protesters would chain themselves to, if a logging company ever threatened to cut it down.
What are the chances? What are the chances that tree, my favourite tree, would be exactly thirty minutes from my home, along my favourite route.
It got me thinking. About something that happened two weeks ago. I ran a trail race, with a friend. “Trail’ doesn’t do the event justice. Almost twenty miles long, with 4400 feet of elevation, it’s a never-ending series of ascents and descents. Nothing is flat. Nothing is easy. Everything burns.
About four hours in, my buddy was in pain – run stopping pain. He moved to the side of the trail and stopped moving. He’d been hurting for awhile but had never stopped. He’s not the kind of guy to stop. Ever. So, I knew he was in agony. And just then, at that very moment, another runner came by, her palm open, salt tablets in her hand. She offered him a handful. He swallowed them. And almost instantly his pain lightened. His legs loosened. He was moving again. What are the chances? We’d been on the course for hours. He’d been stopped for seconds. At that very moment, in his time of need, another runner, carrying exactly what he needed, came by.
He and I talked about that moment. We talked about God and chance, about life’s profound moments and what lay behind them.
I work in a unit that investigates homicides. Fortunately, on the island we live on, they are relatively rare. Relatively is a relative term. Because our plates are full. There is no shortage of work. Even though sometimes months pass between murders. Months.
Until a few weeks ago. When there were two murders within hours. Over a hundred miles separated them. Only minutes separated them. What are the chances?
I don’t know. Perhaps there are answers. Maybe none exist.
It’s been almost a year since a vet came to our home and put Maggie down. She lay on the floor in our living room. The painkillers, which had given us a few more months with her, no longer worked.
The morning she died, she walked into our bedroom. A room she wasn’t allowed to be in. Later, she nudged her way into my bathroom. Also off limits. She did it to be closer to me.
Two unmistakable signs that the time had come.
I said my goodbyes on the living room floor. My daughter, Molly, hugged Maggie. Told her how much she’d miss her. Molly was four, Maggie thirteen. Molly had never known a world in which Maggie did not exist.
This was pre-vaccine. Only one of us was allowed to be with Maggie at the end. I took Molly upstairs. My wife, Sonja, stayed with Maggie. They loved each other very much. I’d had Maggie for years before I met Sonja. But Maggie became her dog – Sonja spoiled her, spent her days with her, spoke gently to her, and not surprisingly became the primary recipient of that sweet and strangely morose golden retriever’s affection and loyalty. I’m thankful Sonja was with Maggie at the end.
I carried Maggie’s body to the vet’s van parked in our driveway. A neighbour, walking her own golden retriever, saw me carrying the white shroud and knew exactly what had just happened.
A week later, Maggie came back to us. Ashes in a cannister.
I didn’t know how to tell Molly about cremation. I didn’t want to tell Molly about cremation. So, I fudged the truth. I told my daughter that the vet had used chemicals to transform Maggie’s fur into little white particles.
Sonja loved Maggie, but not Maggie’s ashes. So, Molly and I took that cannister, walked the trails near our home, and scattered some of Maggie’s ashes in a stream where my girls had spent countless hours playing.
It was a big cannister. And there was another special place where Maggie needed to be, and where I needed to take her. Victoria, and the ocean, along Dallas Road. One of the most beautiful places in the world. Maggie and I had lived in that area for years. In different homes, at different stages of my life, she was my constant. My faithful companion. We’d walked hundreds of times along that stretch of beach. I’d thrown thousands of stones for her. She chased every one of them with abandon. In my darkest hours she was my confidant. When I felt alone, she was by my side, figuratively, and literally – on the beach and in the ocean, swimming near me as I threw one rock after another, she never gave up hope that just once, she’d catch the rock that splashed in the ocean, right in front of her. Without Maggie, I wouldn’t have met Sonja. My online dating profile picture was a photo of me and Maggie. Maggie was indisputably and infinitely better looking than me. I rode her coattails into Sonja’s life.
That’s why I wanted to spread the remainder of her ashes along Dallas Road. But life intervened. As it usually does. So, for the better part of the last year, the remainder of Maggie’s “fur” remained in that cannister, in our garden shed. Sadly, and honestly, a little forgotten. I walked in there many times, grabbed a shovel, or the lawnmower, and never once thought about Maggie.
Last Sunday, on a sunny, summer’s day, we took Maggie back to Victoria. Maggie’s remains accompanied us as Molly fed the ducks, ate French fries, and played in two different parks. And then we headed to the ocean.
It was very windy. I pictured Maggie’s ashes blowing back into my face, and hair, and covering my clothing.
Leave it to a five-year old to come up with the perfect solution. While Sonja watched, Molly and I dug holes in the sand. I poured Maggie’s fur into those holes. We covered Maggie with sand, and then, covered the sand with stones.
And then we walked away. Before the tide came in.
I didn’t want to see it happen, but I knew that the ocean would wash over those stones, and take the rocks, and Maggie, back out into the water.
That had been our special place. It always will be. And I know that every time I return, I will look at the beach, and the water, and the mountains in the distance, and I will know that Maggie is a part of that splendor.
At the end of a side trail, not heavily used. I might have been the first person standing there in days, weeks – maybe even months or years.
Scattered bones – bleached white. A deer ripped apart, the spinal cord severed, a piece of a jawbone, a smattering of teeth.
An awful death. Perhaps, mercifully, a quick one.
A vivid reminder that our forests and trails, so near to our homes, are a different world.
I’d hadn’t gone this deep into the woods for weeks. Since I’d seen a bear just minutes from our home. That was six weeks ago. On a well used trail at the junction of two paths. If I left my home right now, I could be there in five minutes. Or less. My bear encounter happened at midday. A warm day. The perfect day for a quick workout. Hill repeats. Up and down, up and down. Strengthen the legs, stress the lungs, tune out the world. Music blasting in my earbuds. I stopped tuning out when, on the last downhill, I glanced to my right and saw a black bear ambling up towards me. Maybe 30 or 40 feet away. A scenario I’d imagined a thousand times. I stopped running, pivoted, walked backwards down the hill. Slowly. Yanked out my bear spray. Pulled the cord on the noisemaker clipped to my chest. Knew in my head that black bears rarely attacked people. Feared in my gut that this one would. Kept retreating. Got to the bottom. Saw the bear at the top. It looked at me, curious and calm. And kept on going, towards the woods, away from me.
A few days later, I ran again on the same hill. Head on a swivel. No music in my ears. A little scared, but knowing the longer I waited to go back, the less likely I would be to do so. Still, that was close to home. Close meant comfort. At the junction where I’d seen the bear, I could see dozens of houses and cars passing below. It was practically my backyard.
The side trail with the dead deer was not my backyard. I’d planned this run for days, and then talked myself out of it the night before. Because I was scared. Scared to venture far from home. Far from houses and cars and a pretty subdivision. Into the land of cougars and bears. I talked myself into a safer run. Along well traveled roads, to a public park filled with hikers and mountain bikers.
Then I woke up. And talked myself out of the talking out.
Maybe it was because an article from a trail running magazine popped up on my Twitter feed with an article about the rarity of bear attacks and the effectiveness of bear spray.
Maybe because I thought of my daughter. The fears of a five-year old can be overwhelming – unfamiliar situations, unexpected change, a bug on our trampoline – overwhelming and every bit as real and powerful as the primal fears of an adult. When my daughter is scared, my wife and I encourage her to face those things that frighten her. To gain strength, incrementally, by winning small battles against little terrors.
Or maybe it was just because I love to run on hard packed dirt, baked dry by a month of heat, in the midst of towering, never-ending evergreens.
So, I went for that run. I added a knife to my arsenal. Razor sharp, encased in a multi-tool which I carried with me for the entire run. The multi-tool in one hand, a rock in the other. I banged them together frequently. “Make noise,” the experts say. Scare the bears off before they see you.
I made noise all right. No earbuds on this run. Blue Rodeo blaring from my cell phone. My rock smashing into my multi-tool whenever I approached a blind corner.
I made noise, and scared a lot of birds, who flew off as I approached.
I don’t know if I scared any bears, or cougars. I certainly didn’t see any.
But I smelled death. The unmistakeable odour of decomposing flesh hit me hard. Twice. The rotting carcasses must have been just meters off the main path that took me further and further out.
Further and further out to the side trail, which ended with scattered bones and an awful death.
An awful death and a necessary run.
A run that replaced fear with confidence.
A run that reminded me of why I was scared in the first place.
Our daughter is not a dud. She rarely stops moving. Or speaking.
I’m quieter. Not talking is my default.
When I fly across the country to visit my parents after not seeing them for months, I often sit in the living room and read. It must frustrate my poor mom as she regales me with stories, and I do not respond. Instead, I’m mute, poring over the local newspaper.
Last week, after Covid restrictions loosened, we visited with my wife’s parents and sister for the first time in forever. They are a passionate family – interested in everything – lulls in the conversation are rare. We sat outside on their patio, which offers a spectacular view of the ocean.
True to form, I said almost nothing. I sat. I gazed at the water and Mount Baker in the distance.
I must appear disengaged. Lost in my own world.
Yet that’s not the case. In those situations, nothing is more precious to me than my family. Being surrounded by those I love means more to me than anything. It is where I want to be. It is my comfort zone.
Talking isn’t.
My wife and I joke that I “bury it deep.” Why speak aloud what can safely be tucked away inside?
I could do better. I could talk more. I do believe we should all push beyond our comfort zones.
Yet, we have comfort zones for a reason. Water finds it level. We do too. Learning to accept who and what we are – those things that are intrinsic to our personalities, and fundamental to our beings, is essential.
I don’t actually bury it deep. If I did, this blog wouldn’t exist. On it, I share some of my innermost thoughts. Things I wouldn’t say over coffee with my family, friends, or co-workers, I write down for the world to see. I can’t explain it. It just feels right.
Like silence.
As we sat on my in-law’s patio, and they talked, I spotted two Orcas, no more than a hundred meters offshore. The fins of these killer whales cut through the water with grace and precision. It was a spectacular sight.
All synonymous with ‘the Malahat’ – both an 1100-foot mountain and a twisting highway on Vancouver Island.
When conditions aren’t ideal it’s awful to drive – no lights illuminate the road, few barriers separate speeding cars from massive trucks, and rain, fog, and snow slicken the pavement and obscure already obstructed views.
Oh, but the view from the summit is extraordinary.
Just hundreds of meters away from the congested highway is a mostly deserted trail. Last weekend I ran to the summit. In two-hours I saw two dirt-bikers and no one else. On an island of several hundred thousand people, I was alone.
The trail to the summit was mostly satisfying – hard-packed dirt and gradual elevation. Closer to the top, a rocky pathway replaced the earthen trail. Running slowed to a jog, every step a potential twisted ankle or inglorious fall.
Soon after, running ceased altogether when I chose the direct route to the top. Straight up a gully that must be a continual stream of water from November through spring. But last weekend, on a hot dry day with summer on the horizon it was dry and completely accessible. I grabbed a broken branch and used it as a walking stick to help as I scrambled my way up.
The scramble was worth it.
Oh, that view.
Blue sky, bluer ocean, distant mountains, a forest canopy, and an international airport as small as a postage stamp.
Travellers from across the country and around the world drive up the Malahat highway, exit at the scenic viewpoints, and revel at the glorious view. Thousands – tens of thousands – do it every year.
Far fewer take the trail to the top. Dozens. Hundreds. Runners like me. Hikers, mountain-bikers and quad-riders.
We are drawn by the same thing. Beauty. Magnificence. Nature’s wonders.
The attraction is so understandable. The destination is worth the journey.
Which makes the next part so hard for me to understand.
Garbage at the top. Beer cans. Plastic. Paper.
Lucky lager cans tucked into the base of a hydro tower. A fire pit filled with garbage.
Who does that? Who makes the effort to get to the top precisely because it is beautiful and then purposely despoils that beauty? The beer cans tucked into the hydro-tower. More cans, paper, and plastic left almost lovingly behind in the pit.
I don’t have the answer. My gut reaction is that anyone who does that is an asshole. I hate using that language in my writing, but it’s hard to feel otherwise.
But maybe that’s not fair. Maybe the person who makes the effort to get to the top and then discards their trash for others to clean is me on a bad day. Maybe it’s you. Those people are someone’s neighbours. They’re the people we see at the grocery store. People we hire, work with, or work for. Maybe our friends. Whoever they are, they walk among us.
I try and understand. Try to be sympathetic. Usually, my anger and disgust overpower empathy.
How are we supposed to understand people who clearly appreciate beauty, yet are so reckless in making the very place they worked so hard to arrive at, less beautiful?
There may be a million answers to that question. Philosophical, spiritual, practical. There may be no answers.
I’ve given up trying to understand. I find great wisdom in the words of Lee Child. Author of the massively best-selling Jack Reacher series, something he wrote several books back has stuck with me ever since – “People are complicated.”
I’m not sure truer words have ever been spoken, and I don’t think a philosopher, or a Nobel laureate could say it any better than that.
readerwriterrunner.com 