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. 

On Predation & Hiding.

A friend calls, her voice like one riverstone
rolling against the next, and she says
I sound breathless, and she asks
what are you doing 
so urgently
at 9:30am?

Because it's the truth, I holler STOP THAT
and then regularly say, The cat is an asshole
who's tormenting a tiny
nuthatch whose tail feathers

are all pulled out and I've got
to get him away from him.

She sends me off to do that: To rescue.
And all through the next COVID conference
call I've got an injured
nestling in the downy maroon
pocket
of my sweatshirt.

I am not sorry for what I've said-
the cat is an asshole,
but I'm sorry for predators,
who know not why they do.
The nuthatch jabs

his dainty rapier
bill into my thumb.

I find an empty Priority Mail box,
line it with tissue,
prepare to imprison this barely-fledged
creature,

and instead he flaps damaged wings
just once, falls, cries out
pitti-caw-caw, 
then disappears behind the fridge.

The damned fridge is old, unwieldy.
I know-I move it out, then back, then out again
trying to find the nuthatch

and cannot. An old dryer vent
hole appears.

All day I am tormented
thinking Surely, he's died. One cannot hide
in so much refuse and dust.

Surely he has suffocated, and will soon turn
to bone.

For how could something so tired,
so tiny, survive both predation and hiding?

I sweep mouse dung up,
move the fridge back again.

Behind it, the dryer vent
leads to outside.

SO MANY THINKS. A starter blog about dating...

...see what I did there? Thinks vs. Things? Eh?

Just kidding.

I have a particular beloved friend who is dealing with reentry into the dating world while undergoing a divorce. This experience is one with which I am well-acquainted, and I share her trepidation and dissatisfaction. Many difficult questions, and specifically those that challenge our sense of place, self and self-esteem, tend to rise to the surface in dating.

This, as the previous post, is a disjointed thought about what's ingrained in us as we develop our romantic and sexual selves. Likely other posts will follow...

We grow up with, are exposed to through all types of media, and are taught so many tropes about our personal relationships that are, because they are dichotomous, gendered, misogynist and/or couched in religiosity, that ultimately are unattainable and unrealistic. 

1. We, and women in particular, are taught that our partners must be our "best friends". Again, women in particular are taught throughout childhood and adolescence that a "best friend" is a singular entity. As girls, we yearn for that, to paraphrase Anne of Green Gables, bosom friend, who knows our secrets, our hopes, dreams and whole selves far better and more intimately than any one other person may. As we mature, and as we shape our romantic, sexual and sensual Selves, never are we able to do so FOR our Selves-indeed, we are taught to do so in order to be more appealing to this "best friend" who will eventually become our (another trope) "soul mate". Herein are resulting issues:

a. When we meet potential love interests, we automatically and unthinkingly subject them, and ourselves, to a battery of unseen "requirements", a rubric for knowing each other that must be completed before the relationship is to evolve and progress: favorite color? favorite and least favorite foods? side of the bed? shoe size? hometown? 

i. I have discovered that both the trope of a singular "bosom soulmate" is not only socially false, but unreasonable for me, as it pertains to the person I share a romantic, sexual relationship with. I hope never to stop uncovering and teasing out, and discovering that person. I hope never to have the same question, nor the same answer, for them twice, and vice versa. 

ii. Recognizing and honoring that, outside the romantic sphere, there are multiple people for whom I feel a deep, intimate love without romance or sexual attraction, has changed what I expect and what I view as necessary to receive from my partner. There are many whose input I respect and rely on. It is completely possible to use the human resources outside our romantic relationships to discuss said romantic attachments. It is not reasonable nor acceptable that we place the full weight of our expectations and fears upon a single partner whose role it becomes to at all times know us inside and out, nor should we expect that that partner's intimacy and most intimate self belongs solely to us. 

To follow: In what ways are we taught to deny our sensual selves when relating to others? How does this influence the ways in which we hold expectations for our romantic relationships, and place undue pressure on ourselves therein?

The Self as a Fractal

While mathematics and especially theoretical mathematics are not my strong suit, I have always had a fascination with the ways in which chaos theory and fractal math apply to socio-cultural and social-emotional situations. I have no idea what spurred the following poorly-expressed theory, but after a week of intense conflict with my Self, it came out in this form and fashion. A succinct way of distilling down all that I've been agonizing over, to be sure.

I have battled hard against anxiety and depression since I was a teen, and PTSD or CPTSD since my mid-20s (following a series of what is most easily described as Highly Unfortunate Events). Perhaps the below theorizing is the result of, a few days ago, finally having felt that I had battled my own demons and won...

"Humans in general are alternately the chaotic arms and spirals, and the central, tightly-coiled, absolute value in a fractal. Systemically, if applied to the individual psyche and psychology, we can posit that:

a. where a conflict between the Self and CPTSD, anxiety, depression, etc. exists, the central, Mandelbrot-based "c" value (the relationship between the Real and the Imaginary parts of an equation) are reflected by the current mental-emotional stressors; thus the Self becomes the derivative sequences (arms, spirals, infinite iterations); the central absolute can be considered both the cause and the solution to such chaotic, harmful Self-conflict: filial-tribal networks, community, learned healthy coping, resilience; AND:

b. the inverse can also be true, wherein the Self becomes the central, absolute value, having the most constant stability, as healthy coping, communities, and resilience are built; we might posit that information can flow both outward and back inward along a Julia set (this being the result of each further derivation from the original). Given this inverse relationship and the theoretical exchange between Chaos (the world around us; personal relationships; existent unhealthy coping) and subsequent Order (we observe; we experience; we are given input; we grow), can we teach ourselves how to become anchors in the eye of, rather than being the, Storm?"

What are our obligations to one another in relation to this ever-inverting and reverting system of emotional intelligence and growth? It would seem clearer progressively that we must encourage and empower one another to be unafraid of the two key and opposing states of Being: one that appears on the surface unmanageable, but is anchored firmly within the Self, and another which is chaotic  to the individual (whose mental-emotional state appears as many derivative arms), but is anchored in multiple ways.

Footnote-I will likely come back and add more to this later...

Resurrecting a neglected project...

I have not posted here nor on Sunday Morning Poems (a collaboration between myself, Lauren Leslie, and Nicole Hardina) in what seems like eons. 

But, here's a small thing, written in between checking things from both work and personal lists that never seem to become shorter.

It needs a title, which is not my forte and  never has been, but, it is still a sort-of poem...


6/20/2019

And when there is still, as the river-valley winds die,
haze scattering light across what's left
of snow, which clings like Dall sheep do
between peaks,
we call what breaks the treeline greens
and tundra rusts
fire. Somewhere south of us, it burns.
There, when by careless match or half-cigarette
or (disbelieve it?) lightning
strike, stillness is the beak of a boreal
woodpecker. Listen:
never more than three beats
at once, lest what we eat
discovers us, glossy black eye bent
close to dry bark, to crusted sap hardened amber,
which needs no match, no flicked ember
to set alight, within which we dream
(if ever the heat lets us sleep)
there are mosquitoes, gossamer
old wings containing old codices
of new life. And newness we crave wholly,
while the mountains trap thunderstorms,
and we wait
burning too, for a rain that smells
of snow.

Fish Pearls

Let's stick to just the facts.
When the birch logs refused to light,
paper-white bark lifting in flecks toward the sky,

that's when you disappeared.
Not vanished, mind you, but in mind, and I could see
through the trees (dripping rainwater from

branch to silhouette branch)
one long arm outstretched, not toward me.
And I could see that you could still

see me. Let's stick as justly
as the emerald-green moss clings to stumps.
To the facts: where the river undercuts

its own banks, there are footpaths,
and upon those are people,
and someday the people will cling to drifting logs.

I would say, if interrogated, that this disappearance
was not sudden; limb by limb,
you faded-spine a bulwark, shoulders a scale.

Just, let's stick to the facts:
some of those people own cabins of split log.
When the river cuts into

its own banks (braids itself in like snakes
through the hair)
the elderly couple clinging to their home

will drift with split logs
into the new main channel, where the gray
water is the color of a salmon's split belly, of the skin

peeling back from the salmon's bare skull,
eye sockets housing what we called,
as children, fish pearls, 

tiny white calcified flecks
scattered in sand, that we knew for a fact
were precious
beyond measure.                                                         

The Iceberg, or the Ship?

"We'd rather the iceberg than the ship, though it meant the end of travel,"
-Derick W. Burleson

I've been thinking a lot, especially recently, about fear,
and what the modern concept of "ownership" means to us, when we're afraid.
I've been thinking about the dialogue between people, and how it becomes less a dialogue, and more a debate or a battle, over and over again, between people whose individual fears of loss rear ugly heads, dredge up painful memories, and, like quick-growing vines, tend to choke out all empathy, disallowing true "hearing".

About how we dishonor ourselves by using words like "objectivity" and phrases like "meeting halfway". How we become indoctrinated by others into believing that emotions, especially those pertaining directly to relationships and human connection, can be bought, paid for, given, or taken away; that transition, change, and fluidity are foreign, unfair, and unsafe.

Two days ago, I DNFed what was supposed to be my very first 50-mile ultra.
I managed to make it 22 miles to the "halfway" checkpoint. By that point, I had rolled my left ankle. I have had ongoing hip and knee issues in the same leg, and the combination slowed my first-half pace to a crawl. By the time I reached mile 22, it seemed inevitable that even were I to continue to finish, I likely would not make it there by the finisher's cutoff of 15 hours.

The choice to DNF devastated me. I had to hike myself and my gear out another 4-5 miles, to where a friend's vehicle was waiting. More than the physical pain (a thing most ultra runners grow accustomed to), the mental/emotional blow of having experienced what at first I felt as a total, utter personal failure has been dragging me down ever since.

During that same time, I began once again hearing the language of fear from someone who had mistrusted me, and shut down in our relationship. The slamming of an emotional door by someone we love-isn't it often the most hurtful thing we experience?

When our authenticity and our genuineness are questioned, or even insulted, and we are told that we are "too much", it's often by those whose emotional ideation is based in the fear of having things taken from them. And that fear becomes a function of the ego; of a mindset that disallows fluidity for the sake of the ego's concept of all other human beings as sheer consumers-of sustenance, product, and of people. 

Their fear is that if they share, are authentic, are true, and meet our truths head-on, that somehow we will assimilate them. Their fear is that this, then, will take away any upper hand they may feel they have in interpersonal relationships.

My running community, above all things, has dealt a compassionately firm hand when I've felt that my experiences on the trail are not mine. In DNFing, it's easy to feel as if one's performance is a function that's completely within our control: if I had just increased tempo sooner, brought more food, hydrated better. It's easy to forget that even in what we consider failure, we do not own most of the circumstance. It's not a fountain pen. It's not a cheese grater. In the immortal words of Chuck Palanhiuk, "you are not your fucking khakis".

Things ARE in fact just things.
Our experiences, ideas, conceptual frameworks and emotions are not.
We don't own happiness, trust, or authenticity anymore than we own the air we breathe.

My failure to finish this 50-miler was preceded by all these messages from someone I care about saying, you are asking me to give and I do not want to. I am afraid that you will use my emotions, thoughts, and ideological concepts as hard currency. I am afraid of your authenticity, and I am jealous, because you are NOT afraid. 

Emotionally, that's a heavy place to be, and I could feel it in my very feet on the scree.
Here I was, actually running between the rocks of the trail and a hard place-a hard place created by my having conceptualized, based on this person's poor communication, feelings, interpersonal empathy, trust and love as THINGS. As if those concepts were akin to money in the bank, to be earned, hoarded, spent. I was not engaging in self-stewardship, or in stewardship of my fellow runners and the environment around us.

And it dragged me down. I could not finish that race. Mentally, emotionally, I became heavy, having spent (using this ideology, that was not my own) all my currency in attempting to convince someone who had shut down that I was being genuine, authentic.

In the last couple of days, the trail/ultra-running community has reminded me:

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. 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.
The trail does not belong to me.

There are so many other beautiful aspects of my life for which this principle holds true:

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.
I do not own these words.

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? Those belong to my clients. They belong to the world, to see.

My child. My heart, my child.
I should hope beyond hope that no matter how much we all love, protect, nurture 
and revere our children, we know we do not own them.
We help them grow their wings. We instill values. We worry, fret and pace.
We hover-oh, how we hover. We cleanse their wounds.
But we do not own them. And no matter that they make us proud
or hurt us beyond reason, we do not own their destinies, paths or actions, either.

As a survivor of domestic abuse and rape; as a mother; as a single parent: this is a HUGE act, not of letting go, but of acknowledging a deep connection to re-imagining my world as one that I move through, and not against. Instead of being incessantly afraid of the horrible things that might happen, of the fact that people may hurt me, I choose, every day, to frame ownership in a different way: after DNFing for the first time, rather than clinging to what I did wrong to prevent myself from finishing that race, I can focus instead on the things I don't have charge of-the trail, the weather, the wildberries along the course. The kindness of the race volunteers. The support of my friends. My body aches. My pride is wounded. My concept of the trade-off for that, of having my experience "taken" from me? That is all completely up to me.

It is a supreme act of faith, one that says, I have been hurt and betrayed, yes. I have had physical, corporeal things taken from me. I have been put in fear, but I refuse to LIVE in fear. The most important things in my world are things I do not own. They are not things, at all. What's precious to me is meant to be shared, spoken, passed back and forth around the hearth-fire.

People have asked me, given the situation I've come from, how it is that I do "it"-which is to say, "How do you live your life? Isn't it hard?"

It is. It is undeniably hard.

But although this life is not "easy", it is SIMPLE. And much of that simplicity lies in the ability to conceive and then achieve an awareness of how it is perfect, natural and wise to give our feelings and emotions, even to other people, other people who may hurt us. Because we do not own them. They are not things.

They are fluid, dynamic, shareable.
The hard parts, too-the DNFs, the miscommunications. The breaches of trust.
We no more own the feelings and ideologies of others than they do ours.
We can choose, daily, to be self-stewards rather than consumers, in the same way that we can choose stewardship of others over consuming them emotionally.

If there's anything I've learned, especially through use of running and the running community as therapeutic, it's that we should never, never falter in our authenticity just because someone else tells us, Whoa, slow your roll-that's too much for me. When you come at me all authentic and genuine-like, it scares me. It makes me afraid.

What a life, to constantly wall yourself off from others' shining, strong light because you're afraid. To ask others to hide that light under a bushel basket (to use a Biblical turn), out of having been hurt so badly that you no longer know how to be authentic yourself.

And, too, what a life we would all lead (and so often do) if we met that fear by always spending a currency we don't understand, to try to earn things we shouldn't have to earn. Things that should not be treated as such.

I'm going to go back out. I'll be on the trail, training, hoping and dreaming again, sooner than I might think. DNF happens. Unfair people happen.

Remember, when you're hurting, all these amazing dialogues you don't own-the sound of breath and feet on the dirt; a beautiful sunset; the best story you've ever read or heard; someone else's pain.

Your own pain.
Your own light.
Your story.
Continue to put it out there, please. 

Continue to ask little, and give more. Ask your ego to step aside-tell it to bugger off. There's so much to learn and see and do when we cease to hoard our truth and trust.

Keep running. Writing. Singing, speaking, painting, capturing the world around you.
But don't forget to let it go a little, too.