Scattered Thoughts

I’d like to write more, but often I’m pressed for either time or ideas. Sometimes a photo prompts my next piece. Usually something happens that I feel compelled to share. When the ideas strike, the pieces often write themselves. I’m just the conduit. At least that’s how it feels.

Today I have time but no ideas. Photos but no stories behind them. Many things on my mind, and none of them flowing through my fingers. More like scattered thoughts colliding.

I’m fifty-one. Maybe closer to death than high school. I was thirty when I became a cop. I remember driving home at the end of a nightshift, pulling into the driveway, and wondering: wondering when I’d feel like a grown-up, wondering when I’d feel comfortable in my own skin, wondering when the world would make sense.

The world still doesn’t make sense. Yesterday in Buffalo, New York innocent people were slaughtered in a grocery store. I grew up near the U.S. border. My parents shopped at that grocery chain regularly. The grocery store is called “Tops.” I can still hear their jingle in my head “Tops Never Stops Saving You More.”

I’ve given up trying to make sense of the world. That’s not going to happen. Which ironically, may be an important step in having a better understanding of myself.

I may not be there yet – understanding myself that is – but I feel like I’m on the right path. It’s only taken half a century.

Fatherhood has helped. Not that it’s easy. Every day I grapple with being a dad. When to discipline? How to teach life lessons? What’s the best way to help an innocent child become a strong and confident girl?

Until very recently I listened to the Marathon Talk podcast. The hosts embraced the notion of trusting the process. It’s fine to have a goal, but the goal is secondary to the work you do along the way. It’s the steps that matter, whether in marathon training, or raising a daughter. Any goal is the product of the steps and moments that came before it. Take your steps. Live in the moment. Keep your eyes on the horizon. Never stop moving.

I became truer to myself when I stopped eating meat. I eat a whole food plant-based diet because I believe it’s my best chance to live a long and healthy life. There’s more to it than that – changing the way I ate showed me that, daily, my ideals and values could be in alignment with my actions. That was a powerful lesson.

Veganism led me to Rich Roll. Rich chronicled his journey from addict to endurance athlete in his book ‘Finding Ultra.’ His podcast guests are leaders in their fields; health, neuroscience, athletics, and the arts. Podcasts have reshaped the path I’ve taken in my life. They’ve changed the way I breathe, encouraged me to write, inspired me to wake up at 3:00 a.m. to run miles in the dark, and, conversely, prompted me turn my alarm clock off because sleeping may be the best thing any of us can do to promote physical and mental health.

I used to have one or two books on the go at any one time. Recently it’s been five or six. Although the world doesn’t make sense, books help me navigate my way through it. I’ve been reading about survival, hostages in Iran, a German general kidnapped in wartime Crete, the latest Reacher novel, a collection of essays from Jedidiah Jenkins, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I read with a pen in hand, underlying meaningful passages. I read with my journal by my side, and I copy especially meaningful passages into it. Great writing moves me. Incredible stories inspire me. They all help me focus on my process and my path ahead.

My wife and I have a close friend whose mother is terminally ill. Words so often fail in those situations. So we sought the answer in words more eloquent than any we could ever express. We sent a copy of Susan Cain’s latest book, ‘Bittersweet’ which is about grief. Cain wrote ‘Quiet,’ a book about introverts. It helped me better understand myself. Without having read it, I know ‘Bittersweet’ will be an eloquent, thoughtful work which will help people all over the world.

I have a friend who did something special yesterday. He ran one hundred kilometers in fourteen hours. That’s more than two marathons. He suffered. He endured. He finished. His achievement was even more remarkable because of his training. His longest training run was 10 kilometers. He’s in excellent shape. Obviously that helped. But, on paper, no coach would draw up a training program without incorporating much longer runs. On paper he should have done 20-, 30- and 40-kilometer runs. He didn’t. He didn’t need to. His mental toughness is off the charts. He ran sixty-two miles yesterday with his mind.

The mind. That’s another thing podcasts have helped me appreciate. The power of the mind. To heal. To create. To help us reshape ourselves through meditation, and by visualizing the lives we want to lead.

Two more scattered thoughts.

Yesterday we adopted a kitten. Her name is Molly. Our daughter’s name is Molly. We’re going to have to rename our daughter.

The pictures of the fallen trees are from a cutblock not far from our home. I walked through it, and although it was undeniably apocalyptic, it wasn’t awful. There was beauty in the desolation, and in the rich green forest behind it.

What are the Chances?

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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.

Sixty minutes. Salt pills. A hundred miles apart.

One tree.

Scattered Bones

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Evidence of a kill.

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.

The Hard Miles

“The hardship of running somehow softens the hardship of life. Running turns the madness into music.”

Those words, from the foreword to Phil Hewitt’s ‘Outrunning the Demons’ capture the essence of this book – Life is hard. Running helps. Hewitt himself was stabbed, beaten and left for dead alongside a South African highway. He survived. Running helped.

And inspired him to collect the stories of others who, in their darkest hours, found solace in running. People shaken by grief, addiction, disease, injury, and mental illness – in the worst of their pain, running helped them survive.

As is often the case, I write this on the couch, my daughter beside me. A mini-crisis has just passed. Strawberry yogurt everywhere. “Oh no, I got some on my pajamas,” she yelled. A very big deal for her. Less so for me. I responded that if yogurt spilled all over the sofa, and covered her and painted the ceiling, it would be okay. We would fix it. We would survive a Yogurt Disaster.

As the yogurt spill played out, I looked out our front window and saw a runner, in her bright yellow vest, racing along a path near our home. I know her. A little. She runs every day. I’ve seen her running in deep snow on days when I struggled for hours just to shovel our driveway. In winter’s darkest days she is out there – in driving rain and howling winds. I don’t know her story. But I suspect she needs running. Needs it just as much as food, and water and air.

That’s how I feel too.

Not many years ago, someone very close to me was diagnosed with cancer. I was terrified she would die. It was a bad year. Stress, worry, uncertainty and fear churned within. So I ran. Signed up for a marathon and trained for it not because I wanted to. I had no time goal. The distance was no great challenge. I’d run marathons before. I entered that marathon because I needed to. A lot changed in my life that year. But running was a constant that helped see me through the worst and emerge on the other side.

The other side is a new life. A life that might be very similar to yours. A spouse, a child. A career with constant stress, modulating daily, sometimes hourly, from moderate to severe. Always present and always a roller-coaster ride.

Yesterday was Easter. My wife and I watched a day of joy unfold as our daughter hunted Easter eggs. We watched as her grandparents and aunt showered her with love, and chocolate, and placed a pink Easter bonnet on her head.

And there was sadness too. My parents are a long way away. So is my youth. I remembered Easter when I was a child. Chocolate and church and sunshine. Yesterday I wanted to hug my mom and dad and my brother and his family. And be with them and tell them how much I love them. And thank them for those wonderful memories.

One of those memories is music. “Morning has Broken.” A song for the ages. A song that captures light and life and spring and sunshine. An Easter song. So yesterday, in the midst of it all, on a bright beautiful April day, I ran to the trails and listened to Cat Stevens sing that song. I played it over and over again. I found a valley and a lone daffodil. Just the one, in a sea of grasses and weeds. And I thought about it all. And was thankful for everything. Joy and youth, light and life, family and friends. Running and hard miles.

The Horizon was Upside Down

I’ve been reading a lot about ultrarunners. They push their bodies into agony and train their minds to overcome their pain.

They volunteer to suffer. Seek it out. Embrace it.

Hillary Allen did that. A world class ultrarunner racing on a mountaintop she lost her footing, crashed to the ground, fractured both wrists, several ribs and sliced her head open.

Doctors told her she might never run again.

But she did.

Reading about Hillary sent me to YouTube, and a video called Redemption. I was about 30 seconds in, when my daughter Molly scrambled up on the couch, insisting I turn off the “boring” show so she could watch her new favourite cartoon, PJ Masks.

Molly cut her knee earlier this week. She bled and cried, while mom and dad cringed at the chunk of gravel embedded under the skin.

The gravel is out, the knee is healing, and Molly is back to tearing around the neighbourhood park and scaling the ropes of the jungle gym.

I didn’t turn on PJ Masks. I told Molly that Hillary had fallen and hurt herself badly. But she’d healed and was running again. We watched Redemption together. Over and over. Molly kept asking me to go back to the part where Hillary Allen talked about her fall and said, “the ground was pulled out from under me” and “the horizon was upside down.” As she fell Hillary thought she would die. As I write this Molly is sprinting back and forth in our living room, holding my headlamp, pretending to be Hillary running in the dark.

This week the horizon turned upside down for some very close friends. They weren’t running. No wrists were fractured. But their son received a life altering diagnosis. A diagnosis that will affect his life, every minute of every day. That will affect the lives of his parents every minute of every day.

They don’t deserve it. As a family they have already sacrificed and struggled, pulling together, working to overcome another diagnosis. Also life changing. Also something that is always with them. It is so unfair.

“The ground was pulled out from under me.” A regular reader of this blog had the world pulled out from under her a few years ago. Members of her family were murdered. She is a writer. I suspect that sustains her in her darkest hours.

None of these stories are mine to tell. Not Hillary’s, not my friends, not the regular reader’s.

Not Terry’s either. I worked with Terry ten years ago. She was one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever known. She didn’t wear it on her sleeve. Her profession, her career, her success required strength. Steel.

But Terry melted around those who had nothing. Addicts, sex-trade workers, the mentally ill. Those for whom every day was a struggle to survive. Those who are so easy for us to drive by and ignore without giving a second thought. I do it, all too often.

Terry used to remind me to treat everyone with respect and kindness. Everyone. Because you never know what they are going through.

Soon after she retired Terry was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. She fought hard. Valiantly. With dignity. And passed away less than a year later.

There seems to be a consensus among ultrarunners, that the pain they experience is worth it. Perhaps not in the moment. But in the process, the preparation for the race. And in the aftermath. Real life lessons learned from voluntary suffering.

Suffering. Utrarunners seek it out.

Suffering. It seeks us out, throughout our lives. Ground crumbles at our feet. Horizons turn upside down.

I had no idea how to respond to our friends this week. No words can heal what they’re going through. I sent them my love. I think about them. They are strong and brave and they will need every ounce of that strength and bravery in the days, weeks and years ahead.

Their horizon is upside down. I pray for healing in their lives. For love and health and family to prevail. For their horizon to right itself.

The Essentials

I read. I write. I run. Ideally. But not as often as I’d like.

I’m a husband, I’m a father. Every second, every hour, every day.

I work. And commute.

That’s my life, in three lines and thirty words.

Three lines, thirty words and twenty-four hours to fit them all in. Precious time. Never-ending but never enough. For the essentials, or the non-essentials. Like the ten cedar fence panels that need to be stained. Start to finish that would take me about thirty hours, spread out over many days. Thirty hours I don’t have. Or more accurately, thirty hours I don’t want to carve out of my schedule. Sacrificing essentials.

A fifty mile run is starting to feel essential.

Run, jog, climb, walk, shuffle. 12 hours. Or 14. Maybe longer. Through heat and humidity. Or rain and wind and mud. Discomfort. Pain. Chafing. Boredom. Cramps. Nausea.

A finish line.

Exhilaration.

The allure of the 50 Miler. An allure I can’t entirely account for. But I’m drawn to the 50. Maybe because I’m closing in on fifty myself, running 50 miles before turning fifty feels like a worthy goal. Maybe because it’s a challenge that seems hard, but doable. I might fail – in the training, or on race day. But I might succeed. I think I can succeed. I’d like to find out.

But I haven’t registered yet. I’m not even sure which race I’d attempt.

Maybe the same one my brother did several years ago. He suffered, finished and inspired. He ran all 50 miles with a Yoda doll on his back. “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” My brother the Yoda runner made a lot of people smile that day. The trail run is called Sulphur Springs. It’s just outside Hamilton. My dad grew up there. My parents were newlyweds there. I was born there. Went to university there. Hamilton is special. The farther it recedes in the distance the more special it gets.

Sulphur Springs is in a little town called Ancaster. I did my first ever 10 kilometer run in Ancaster. Twenty-two years ago. Part of training for my first marathon. I remember finishing, and hurting, and wondering how could I possibly run four of those back to back. Plus another 2.1 kilometers just for some extra agony. But I did. Learned that it was possible. Running rewards training, and miles, and minutes and hours.

There are good reasons not to do it.

Thousands of reasons. Thousands of dollars. Flight, hotel, rental car.

Hundreds of reasons. Miles. Hundreds and hundreds of miles required. To train my body and my mind. But when a one hour run is a luxury, how do I justify a three hour run? Or four hours – two days in a row? Time away from the ones I love. Days, hours, minutes, seconds.

I think a lot about those seconds.

About selfishness.

About the distinction between being true to myself and being responsible.

About the essentials.

Should a daughter grow up seeing her father doing the things that he loves? Or does she grow up and remember that he was away for endless hours. Not with her. Choosing not to be with her. When I want more than anything to be with her.

I started writing this essay months ago, and set it aside until today. Coincidentally it’s Father’s Day 2019. An incredibly special, still surreal day for me, a man amazed that I am blessed to be a father.

I’m awake early. On purpose. Some quiet time before my daughter wakes up. I can hear her singing in her crib. I’m too far away to make out the words, but it’s probably a song from Frozen, the Disney movie. The one all little girls seem to love. I can’t tell you how much I love having a little daughter who loves Princess Elsa and Princess Anna. It’s one of the best things ever. She sings, and dances, and role-plays, and assembles her dolls and celebrates Coronation Day. Pure joy, and innocence.

Elsa and Anna will probably have a Coronation Day this morning. On Father’s Day 2019. I’ll be one of the invited guests.

And sometime after Coronation Day, or maybe before, I’ll put on my shorts and lace up my shoes and head out. For a ten miler. Or maybe 15. Building blocks for a 50 Miler.

Coronation Day. Father’s Day. And maybe, one day next year, Race Day – 50 Miles.

The essentials.

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