“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Road 46, mile 167.3 I wake before noon, sweaty from a mid-day sun that heats the van interior like an oven. Groggy from maybe 4.5 hours shut eye over…

“But it’s all still there in my heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure—they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days to come, like a treasure found and then, voluntarily, surrendered. Returned to the mountains with my blessing. It leaves a golden glowing on the mind.”  Edward…

EYES CLOSED The eucalyptus trees are finally drippy again. I narrow my field of vision as I walk the dog through the haze and look down at the ground to pretend it’s wet, that water is everywhere, and that it is briefly late fall or winter when the rains may return. Drip-drip drops fall from…

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality ~ Nikos Kazantzakis As a mountain runner, I write both here and my Strava about nature, and specifically wild places being the ultimate reality. Although I’m pretty sure that most people who firmly believe in a religious or spiritual value system would…

So, I’ve had a breakthrough. Not like the kind you put up on a leaderboard, maybe a 59 miler with 20 thousand feet, but a breakthrough in thought. Since healing from surgery in 2015 to repair a torn piece of cartilage sheared from my femur, I have avoided certain cross training exercises like Covid: when…

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears – unknown Nasopharyngeal. Translation: we are going to jam this popsicle stick with a tiny cotton swab up to the back of your sinus and push against that thing that separates your sinus from your brain – not just twice..but three times…because now that…

..me thinks that the moment my legs began to move, my thoughts began to flow ~ Henry David Thoreau Sunlight bursts through clouds to bathe me in morning warmth. After the climb, after the wet and the grey, this feels amazing; this feels incredible. I left the house roughly an hour ago, and I’m fatigued. I’ve…

  In Newtonian mechanics, momentum can be defined as the product of the mass and velocity of an object. Another definition that sometimes underlies my search for motivation after a period of time off from the run is “the impetus gained by an object in motion”. The search for motivation I sometimes wring hands over…

…out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours, a world which surrounds and sustains the little world of men as sea and sky surround and sustain a ship. The shock of the real. For a little while we are again able to see, as the child sees, a…

“The mountains plunge into the earth and reach into the sky. Endurance is never a linear decline. Endurance is trusting that a high will follow your low. Endurance is wisdom, too, that your high is temporary.”  Jen Shelton, about her adventure on the Sierra High Route “Hey, want a beer?”. Her high pitched slightly slurred…

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.”                                                              …

  “A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.” ― Jean Genet “The moon is brighter since the barn burned.” ― Matsuo Basho Note: This is part 1 of my Tahoe 200 adventure. Part 2 is here, part 3 is here. Through the darkness Awash…