Running Through It: An Interview with Heather Campbell

  

So, first, please tell me about yourself! Did you grow up in Alaska? Or move there at some point? Why did you move or why did you stay? 

Although I was raised in Alaska, I wasn’t born here-that’s another story altogether! I grew up here, and though I have been somewhat nomadic, I have always returned to Alaska. 

 

I live in Palmer, the same small town where I grew up. I love it here. The single four-way stop in the heart of town hasn’t changed since I was a kid. I love living in a town where people still stop, look each way, and give a smile, nod, or wave before proceeding through that intersection. It’s such a simple way of acknowledging each other, of seeing and being seen.

 

I think of running, especially ultra-running, and its community in the same way: running as a four-way stop, where we’re all bodies and minds in motion, pausing to bear witness to each other’s journeys, to consider action and consequence, destination and starting point. 

 

 

Photo by Michele Harmeling. 

 

 

 

Do you think living there has influenced your hobbies, like running, writing, and photography? 

 

Absolutely. Having been raised here influences everything I do. It’s the only place I can envision my son growing up, and the one place I’ve returned to time and again. 

 

Photo by Michele Harmeling. 

 

How did you get started running, and why did you stick with it? What's your go-to distance/terrain for running and racing? 5k, marathons, trails, ultras, etc? 

 

Running began for me as it does for many of us: in school, at middle and high school track and cross-country practice. Despite being “slow” even back then, I loved to run. Our senior year in high school, the XC running team was particularly diverse, including several members who had to work hard for their 30-minute 5k finishes rather than gliding seemingly effortlessly through them. Yet there wasn’t a single disparaging thing said. Every member of that team ran back out onto the course to cheer until the last runner was finished. That was the season we captioned “It’s All About Heart”, and to this day, that slogan is a sort of mantra for me. 

 

Strangely, I ran very little after high school. Occasionally, in my 20s, I would run a 5k fun run here and there, or go for a jog, but never at any length. 

 

We are frequently convinced of what our bodies cannot do, rather than what they can, and so, I think, we confine and limit ourselves. We convince ourselves that the Wall is real, a tangible, stone-solid barrier for the mind, and we try our hardest not to breach it. It was extremely hard for me to complete even a 5k as a teen-I struggled with chronic shin splints, never attaining the blistering fast times my teammates did, so, as an adult, I just assumed running marathons or taking on Alaskan mountain and trails races was beyond my capability. 

 

I ran my first half-marathon in Seattle with a dear friend whose husband had been diagnosed with terminal glioblastoma (a particularly insidious form of brain cancer) just a few months prior. Running became a way of bonding for us, and a way of honoring him, of pushing through grief into resignation into what passed, those days, for calmness. I moved back to Alaska later that year, met my ex-husband and ran the Kenai River Marathon as my first full. It went well, a stark contrast to my second, the 2014 Anchorage Mayor’s Marathon.

 

I was five-and-a-half months pregnant. My ex-husband hadn’t come home the night before the race, and didn’t answer my texts until after I had finished. Thankfully, a friend ran with me, so I wasn’t alone, but I had never felt so lonely. Shortly after that race, I discovered empty vodka bottles stashed all around our apartment, and, later that fall, needles, tinfoil and burnt spoons. Running, writing, photography were all far from my mind. I was too busy just surviving. By the time my son was five-and-a-half months old, I had kicked my ex-husband out of our apartment, filed for divorce, and wasn’t running at all. I didn’t run more than three miles, slowly, pushing my son in his stroller, for a very long time. Life was scary, exhausting and uncertain.

 

About a year later, a friend told me about the new triathlon fundraiser she was helping organize. Created by a local teacher and his wife, the little a triathlon was a sprint tri whose namesake was the RD’s little girl who had passed away from brain cancer just shy of her third birthday. Their story touched my heart, but the entry fee seemed too steep-at over $100, I couldn’t afford the full fee. But I desperately wanted to participate. I thought about writing to ask if the fee could be reduced, at first too embarrassed that my life circumstances meant choosing between diapers and baby food or race entries.

 

And then some voice in my head said,

You will never again have so little to lose.

 

It was true: I was still recovering from my abusive marriage, single parenting my son, and felt completely unmoored. What else was there to lose? Rock bottom seems to be just that: an absolute, the lowest point to which one can fall. Signing up for the triathlon seemed a wild leap into the unknown; to finish meant triumphing over everything dragging me down. I had already lost everything; only my son was keeping me afloat. There wasn’t anything else to lose. 

 

I emailed the race directors. The response was immediate, and suddenly I was not only registered, but a race volunteer. The triathlon was really hard: a ½ mile open water lake swim, 12.1 mile single track trail bike, and 4.2 mile trail run. I finished dead last.

 

But I finished. My son met me at the finish line. It was a renewal, an injection of courage. Broken and in despair, I had still accomplished this one goal, and found I still had the strength to give something back to the community, as well. 

A year later, I was offered a free race entry into the Anchorage RunFest 49K Ultra, having never run more than 26.2 miles. Ah, what the hell, I thought. Clearly I’ve got nothing to lose. 

 

Since then, I’ve run through the deaths of several dear friends, including my late mentor and the poet Derick Burleson. Derick made me a writer, and I grieve his loss sorely every day.

In his sonnet “Late Valentines”, Derick finishes with a poignant couplet:

 

I wanted to give you not was, but is.

Love, all I could build to give you is this.

 

We’re all standing before each other and ourselves, I think this couplet is saying, with nothing to give but who we are here and now. The world has shifted radically, in such a short time. The running community in particular is both rocked off its foundation, and going forth as per usual. We are all grieving and celebrating so many things at once; you have only to scroll through the posts in the GVRAT group to see it. Births, deaths, engagements; great loss and huge blessing. We’re all still here, running through it. We all have so little left to lose. 

 

Photo by Michele Harmeling. 

 

 

 

 

How is running in Alaska different than anywhere else? 

 

What I love most about running in Alaska is that one travels on foot through every possible gradation of civilization. Take a popular local trail, and you’ll move from suburban foot-and-bike paths to dirt single-track, from coastal and riverside landscapes up to altitude above the clouds. You can stand atop a peak looking down and watch as the grids made by roadways and neighborhoods blend into the trees, that swallow up a few cabins, spread further and further apart. Eventually, it’s nothing but forest and river and glacial moraine; or, follow the curve of the single highway along Turnagain Arm, the straight Parks Highway up to Fairbanks, where the sky is wide and there’s snow on the mountains to either side. There are also vast expanses of untouched wilderness, and self-supported, remote races are the norm. 

Photo by Michele Harmeling.

Alaska is a come-as-you-are place. Perhaps it’s the relative smallness of the running community here (Alaska’s population alone is a fraction of most states’), but as the same faces appear at every race and you interact with the same people time and again, the feeling of rejoining a few hundred of your closest friends for a few miles and to earn a medal never leaves you. 

It’s also, frankly, cold as hell much of the time. I’ve run races in driving snow, and in temperatures as low as 15 below (Farenheit). It’s a humbling experience, and one that throws you into direct and stark competition with nature and weather and time. Frozen hydration lines, frozen eyelashes (and nose hairs!), frozen fingers and toes. Alaskan winter running is exhilarating. It brings you a new appreciation for summer, when all you need to go for a quick five miler is shoes! 

Little Su 50k. Photo by Andy Romang.

 

Any bear sightings or similarly surprising stories? 

 

Bears, moose, lynx, suspicious eagles, you name it. I have many interesting running stories. They tend to begin with “So what happened was…”, and would take far too long to explain here. It might need to be a whole blog unto itself. 

 

Tell me more about your experience with the Hatcher Pass Marathon--was it weird/different running during a pandemic? How was the race itself? 

 

The advantage to running races like Hatcher Pass Marathon and its sister race, the Archangel Marathon (HPM in reverse, covering 27 miles and 4,900 feet of grueling descent) is that due to the types of state parks permits issued, the number of total runners is significantly smaller than, say, Anchorage’s Anchorage RunFest Marathon and 49K Ultra, or Mayor’s Marathon. HPM and Archangel allow a grand total of 150 runners, where Mayor’s Marathon boasts over 20,000 runners annually. These local (and locally coordinated) races are fractional in number by comparison, and the result is a grassroots, deeply immersive experience. You really come away from HPM with a sense of accomplishment, of having embarked upon the adventure of a lifetime with a few of your closest friends (whom you’ve just met at the starting line and along the course).

 

This year did not feel significantly different when I toed the line with a couple of friends at HPM. Our RDs coordinated a wave start, with no more than 5 racers per “wave”, starting 5 minutes apart from each other. It gave the start a relaxed feel, but once on course, the race support was identical to prior years, if not even better. 

 

Alaskans are accustomed to isolation. We measure distance in hours, not miles. Hatcher Pass Marathon isn’t the most remote race in the state, but certainly it’s typical to go an hour or longer without seeing another runner. Running the race in the time of COVID didn’t feel vastly different than running in other years, as long as one ignored the nagging anxiety that we’re all experiencing nonstop. 

 

I ran this year’s HPM pacing a good friend. It was her first marathon, and she sure picked a doozy. Between the 4,934ft gain and the ridiculous driving, freezing rain, she had her work cut out for her, but she perservered like a champ and got it done. I’ve gotten into some informal coaching, and helping someone else achieve their goals is such a great feeling. 

 

2020 Hatcher Pass Marathon with Krystal Mitchell. Photo by Jacob Mann, Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. 

 

 

 

Why did you sign up for the GVRAT?

 

I signed up for the GVRAT in the same manner as I registered for my first ultra: on a whim. My extremely supportive boyfriend, Corey, who is also a runner, sat patiently for an entire night on April 30, while I obsessively scrolled through posts about GVRAT. Once he had had enough of my whinging and agonizing about how “everyone else was going to do it”, he magnanimously signed both of us up. We are bibs number 13909 and 13910, and while our journey to becoming RATs has been a source of wonderful bonding and encouragement, we are now also slightly broke (too many additional trail shoe, hydration pack and supplement purchases), and have a concerning affinity for not being able to do anything until we’ve both “gotten a run in”. 

 

I jokes. 

(Alaska Native peoples like the Inuit say “I jokes”, meaning, “I’m just kidding”.)

 

Corey and I both decided to register together for GVRAT to kickstart ourselves into better consistency in running. Admittedly, I am NOT a daily runner. My goal is to complete GVRAT on August 1, with the final 27 miles finished as I cross the finish line of the Archangel Marathon mentioned above. 

 

Morphing from an every-other-day runner into a dedicated daily runner has been hard! I’m blown away by the stories and metamorphoses occurring because of GVRAT. It truly is a worldwide phenomenon. 

 

Photo by Michele Harmeling. 

 

Photo by Barbie Wagner, By the Spirit Photography.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tell me more about your writing and photography? Does running compliment them? Do you ever do them at the same time? 

 

Answering in reverse, I can’t run well carrying my camera, since I tend to stop so much to snap a shot of foliage, vistas or curiosities so often that I’d never finish the run! 

 

 

Admittedly, I write very little about running, although those experiences do work their way into poems without my conscious inclusion. I compose poems in my head while running, but then do rather poorly at writing them on paper-you’re reminding me that I need to do better at that!

 

 

Of the three disciplines (or arts, depending on your perspective of each), I tend toward good habits in running only. As a writer, I’m a miserable procrastinator and as a photographer, I have many a day when I just don’t feel like carrying my camera gear or prefer not to set out on hikes and outings with the mindset that photographing everything is top priority.

 

While I don’t simultaneously engage in these three activities, I suppose they do complement each other in that each requires delving into a subject at hand with one’s full self. Running does create inspiration. As a trail runner I’m always seeing or thinking about things that later find their way into poems or short essays. 

 

 

 

 

 

What about foraging? Do you forage on the run? 

 

I do indeed forage on the run, and have done so during races, even. I get some odd looks from passers-by but by and large, my running buddies and local RDs have gotten used to it. 

 

It’s difficult to pass up a good crop of something, no matter how far you might have to carry it. And I think there’s a natural cohesion between finding your own food and choosing to run long distances in the elements: so much of our instinct as runners is rooted in not only survival but fueling and feeding the body. We’re attuned to our surroundings out of necessity, in both a subconscious and an alert, instinctive way, which is the way of both the nomad and the hunter-gatherer.

 

Most of what I’ve learned about how not to die in the woods came from my upbringing, and from previous work in environmental and salmon habitat restoration in Washington State. 

 

My running buddies have to tolerate my frequent dives into the brush. If they’re feeling generous, they help me cart my finds back to the car or race aid station for safekeeping. They have also learned to tune out any unsolicited botany/mycology lessons and feel completely comfortable sending pictures of random growths in their yards with the question “Can I eat this?”.

(I also teach basic mushroom and plant ID, and sustainable foraging classes, although COVID has put a damper on those lately. The class is now aptly titled “Can I Eat This, or Will It Kill Me?”, which I suppose applies to bears as well…) 

 

Notably, I once came across a bumper crop of Boletus Edulis, commonly known as porcini, about two miles into the Resurrection Pass 50 miler. I’m fairly certain a normal person would have begrudgingly left them behind. However, I had a perfectly good rain slicker and wasn’t about to waste it, so I fashioned a carry sack and picked about seven pounds of them, tied them to my hydration pack and kept going.

 

A series of unfortunate events forced the DNF that race, which requires withdrawal at a single aid station under a waterfall about halfway up Devil’s Pass. Then, exiting racers and the aid station crew must hike themselves out to waiting vehicles about 5 miles back up that trail. 

 

I carted those mushrooms about 26 miles that day. They were, upon returning home (a four hour drive away), slightly squashed but still very tasty dehydrated, reconstituted, and served over steak. 

 

 

 

Is there a race or running event in Alaska that you think everyone should do at least once? 

 

Just come visit! Take a week, or two weeks, and immerse yourself in what Alaska has to offer. Hiking, biking, running and walking the trails here is the experience of a lifetime. I think the world of races and events looks so different now that it’s hard to say where we’ll be in six months to a year. There’s not much to register for, and virtual races are all the rage, allowing us to complete our miles anywhere. Come on up, explore, and find your new favorite trail.

 

 

Anything else you'd want people to know about your running journey? 

I do not own the trail.
When I run an ultra, certainly a level of bargaining occurs. The distance and strain push me through each stage of the grieving process. I remember people I've lost, whom I love dearly. I say their names. I think endlessly about my son, who is usually with friends or my boyfriend. I reaffirm over and over again, through the miles, what I've been through, and who I've become. But the trail, with all its beauty and treachery and challenge, is not mine.

When I write, it is meant to be read, else it remains flat and unfulfilling.
Poetry, essay, even this blog, are given life by readers.

As a photographer, I often take photos of people. Of places holding secrets and wonders of their own.
I own neither the subject of my work, nor the photos themselves.
These photos are meant to be seen, and when I lower that camera from my eye,
those people, places and remarkable things are still there.
The photos? They belong to the world, to see. To spark a conversation. 

Running, to me, is a constant dialogue. A discourse between myself and the trail, a way of moving not through the world but with it, of letting go and surrendering control over everything but stride and breath and limits. It’s a tribute to those I’ve lost, to my son, to the act of putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again. 

As a domestic violence survivor, I’d like for others to know that there IS hope, and that they’re not alone. Even stepping foot out the door, while you’re still healing, is strength. The more you speak up, no matter how your voice may shake, and tell your truth, the less power your abuser has over you. Keep running, keep speaking, keep fighting. 

Photo by Michele Harmeling.