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Roots

I hope I’m not exposing anything injudicious here -anything, well, unhealthy- but I sometimes trip on trails. Admittedly, it’s usually when I’m running, but occasionally it also happens when I am hiking and distracted by an unexpected encounter. I’ve never really gotten used to other people on trails –I suppose I’ve always assumed that hinterlands were created to avoid just that. Otherwise why put trails in forests when there are lots of captive trees standing around in city parks that would be glad of a distraction from their concrete jails and the stray birds who rest on their branches looking for a washroom?

I’ve taken sensible precautions I think -although not against the challenging people. I sometimes wear gloves even on those hot days when city hikers point at me, but I know that trail-burn would take longer to heal than any cracks in my pride. Besides, I’ve become quite adept at sticking bad thoughts in people as I run past. And anyway, they’re probably lost.

But I digress. When many city people think of trails, I suspect they picture strolling down little dirty paths that wind lazily through fields of flowers and into groves of trees from which they will emerge smiling and breathless as if they were in a pretend forest at Disneyland… Asphaltless, yet safely groomed –their trails are equipped with hand railings where appropriate, and canes and walkers are available to rent for the elderly. But a trail that is safe for high heels or flip flops, is not the kind that trips you.

I’m thinking more of mountain trails –real trails where nothing is off limits except timidity. Trails where the thrust and parry of shadows playing in wind-blown trees and swaying bushes challenge the novice like a black-diamond ski slope. Nothing is as it seems for long. Rocks come and go along the trail like salesmen in a conference lobby, and roots make desultory grabs at unwary feet. Surfaces change and buckle, at times flat and reassuring, then they change their minds without a hint and become a mélange of mud and leaves to cover things not wishing to be seen: more rocks, more roots; a previously dry stream bed gathering in silent strength away from prying eyes; a hole where some darkling creature lives. Or, even when you notice it in time and prepare your feet to land just so, you can be sure there is a more unadulterated trail biding its time –waiting and patiently nourishing plans to recapture territory lost the summer before.

And yet, of all these challenges, I find roots the greatest. They huddle unconcernedly across a trail like worms unearthed, defying both the gravity of the soil beneath and the desiccating sun above with pretend-bark clothes and teenage attitude. With youthful exuberance, they sample air and soil alike until they realize their proper place and sink for comfort and companionship once again into the netherworld of still, slow fungi and rotting things.

No matter how many times I run a trail, no matter how careful I am to judge the obstacles ahead, a root will suddenly surface from its hidden shadow-world, and glare at me like a sentry at a gate. Usually unannounced and likely unimpressed by my hominid vigilance, it waits for any unguarded foot so naïve as to underestimate its mission.

At first, I put this down to sloppiness on my part –attending to inner thoughts, listening to the wind soughing through the branches above, or simply trying to identify a bird singing from somewhere deep in in the thick green canopy ahead. There are so many things to do on a run.

But I soon realized it was nothing esoteric –nothing that need drive me to aesthetic compromise or divert me from the holy communion with Nature. In fact, it was simple: my feet were not lifting high enough off the ground. Adequate for city life, perhaps, where only concrete curbs disturb the level of travel, here on the slopes of the coastal mountains, where flat is anomalous and smooth is a memory, the feet require a different rhythm. A different stroke.

As a result, I’ve developed a survival digitigrade exaptation that swings into action now after the first stumble… Okay, if the first doesn’t cause me to tumble into the bushes, I sometimes just curse and keep on going. But it usually kicks in after two or three close calls. Even so, I don’t like to use it when anybody is around. It’s a high-stepping gait that the uncharitable refer to as my open-toed-sandal-on-gravel strut. But that’s so unimaginative. I think of it as more akin to the noble prance of one of those high stepping dressage horses showing off in an arena.

I haven’t worked out all the bugs in it yet, however –it’s a liability going down a steep, root-strewn slope where stability is a myth, and rapid foot-judgement is essential. Microseconds only, separate me from a life of explaining everything from a marble headstone. A downhill biker once suggested body armour when he saw my bruised arms, but I told him I’d sweat too much in those. And anyway, I don’t fall that often. Thicker clothes should do it, I think –parkas work in the winter, I know.

There is, of course, another trick that my mobile older friends practice on their rare sanctioned outings from the Home: the walk/run. Well, I’m sorry, but that just does not work for me -my mother endowed me with far too much guilt. I mean you either go out for a hike, or you go out for a run. How on earth do you dress for both? You can’t run very far in hiking boots and jeans, and I usually get cold walking in shorts and flimsy tee shirts. And then there are the ticks. They sit for months on stuff beside a trail just waiting for someone silly enough to walk past in bare knees, slowly enough for them to hitch a ride.

No, the walk/runs were excuses spawned by large people who point and snigger as I high-step by and lance them with curses, not loud but deep, their lives but walking shadows that strut and fret their hour on the trail, and then are heard no more… Idiots!

But perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Perhaps they never trip. Perhaps I am the anomaly… and have lived this way long enough. Maybe my way of life has fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf, and that which should accompany old age, as honour, love, obedience, and troops of friends I must not look to have…

Well, damned be he who first cries ‘hold, enough!’

Uhmm, sorry about all the Macbeth… I just like running on trails, okay?

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