Insights from the Trail

Went for a run in the woods this morning. Here’s what I saw:

It’s possible to step lightly and quickly enough to leave no trace, in dirt and sand, even when they’re wet.

It’s also possible to come within a few inches of a foraging robin, simply by running barefoot (if you’re both quick and silent).

Stone could teach us a hefty lesson in stubbornness, only to turn around and astonish us with its volatility. Between grip and slip, in situ and in-molten-flight, stone has us beat (until we demand it be self-aware).

A 45-foot tall tree, with a trunk 4 feet in diameter, is not only impressive, but tragic. Its strength is obvious, but its stability is hidden and therefore forgotten. These trees stand ageless and serene, but only until they become an obstacle and their wood deemed less desirable than a tree of similar stature from across the country.

A freight train may shake and scar the earth as it passes, but a hawk’s shadow through the canopy sends fearful chills of admiration down my spine.

In less technologically “developed” countries, one must be either very powerful or very stupid to care as little about leaving a trail as mountain-bikers.

Nature has mastered the art of tension between silence and cataclysm. Humanity has mastered the art of drowning out those tensions in favor of numbing itself to those cataclysms. 

That’s all for now. It was only a 4 mile run.