Thanksgiving

How can I tell you the day is beautiful without sounding cliché?  The day is bright and crisp; frost in the morning, patchy snow that reflects blue of the ultramarine sky.  There is no wind, there are no clouds.  We have the day to ourselves and hope to have a quiet meal with food to celebrate the harvest from our garden; squash pie, fresh mashed potatoes and the last of the japan truffle tomatoes with a baked chicken.  It is impossible to stay inside when the weather beckons us outside.  We usually have snow of considerable amount by now and some past Thanksgivings have required snowmaching out to the highway to get to friends. This day is a blank check. 

Gary runs of course, he chooses to run down Fox Creek Road, 'Maybe to Penny and Jim’s' he says.  I keep the dog inside, more than five miles is hard for him.  We will walk as soon as Gary is out of sight.

He is later than he thought he would be.  I make the pie to distract myself but when it is ready for the oven I decide to drive to find him.  Kaycee, the dog, is eager as well.  We haven’t driven a mile when I see a car coming.  Traditionally our road is one that isn’t busy, today it is even less traveled.  I stop the people to ask if they have seen a runner. ‘Yes, he is just behind us.’  I see him in the curve where Maggie lost her husband so many years ago. He smiles and waves.  ‘I'm sorry to have worried you.’  Guilt is a driving force in his life.  ‘What did you see’ I ask.

There were cougar tracks, bigger than his fist and many.  He also saw a number of dog prints, larger than any dog we know on the road.  'Maybe' he says, 'it is a wolf'.  And he saw neighbors.  There was Carl and Joanne, sixty-year old brother and sister, who were bicycling down the road to Wood’s Landing.  Carl is missing a lung and in sore need of a replacement for the remaining one so it is good it is a downhill ride.  His daughter follows behind in a pickup to take them back to ranch when they reach the highway. ‘Thanks for bringing Mom the mincemeat pie, she’s already eaten half of it’.  Gary’s mincemeat is famous in a very small circle, it is made with fresh apples, buffalo, raisins and plenty of rum.  She has already eaten half of it, they laugh. As of late her appetite has diminished so it is a welcome change. They converse, coasting their bikes alongside Gary for awhile then ride ahead.  Next there is Penny and her grandsons ‘We are so proud of you’ she says.  She came to the house when Gary broke his back eight years ago, bringing nursing and oil paints.  She knows the pain Gary had from a burst vertebrate and from the doctor's diagnoses that he would have to give up his lifestyle because of the injury.  Today she wants to teach her oldest grandson to drive, he is twelve and the empty road is perfect to learn.  Gary warns them of the cougars and tells the boys to carry sticks and yell loudly if they see one.  ‘It will eat up and shit you out up there’ he points to a copse of trees.  Kid-correct language is not one his strong points and the boys nod seriously.  ‘And’ he tells me ‘I made it to Highway 12’.  Eight miles each way and three miles more than he had planned.  He will have to get farther to be ready for the race in March but for now it is enough.

The Caballo Blanco Ultra Marathon.  A race that is relatively obscure in both geography and the race world.  A small race by comparison to others, the race winnings are in pounds of corn, and you race alongside people, the Tarahumara or the Raramuri as they call themselves.  They are a small tribe indigenous to the area.  I don’t know much about the race, there are a number of websites with more info that I have. Sites like http://www.ultracb.com/ and the Facebook pace for the race have specifics.  I know it is a 50 mile race through the canyon, in difficult terrain with serious altitudinal changes, on trails too narrow and steep for vehicles.  Most the landscape is rugged enough to deter even horsemen.  Still the race has captured Gary’s imagination.  Overcoming his Luddite trepidation he searches the web for information.  He has learned to YouTube just to watch the Tarahumara, Micah True and other runners in his quest for more information.  He looks at the sandals the Tarahumara run in, ingenious things made with tire treads and intricate lacings.  He listens to people talk about the race on the videos.  It is a fascination for him; the route, the run, the people.  Local events don’t interest him, races in general don’t interest him.  The beauty of the Copper Canyon, the respect the people have for their land and the appreciation he has for the people’s respect beckons.  

Sheep Mountain

Sheep Mountain stands behind our home.  It is the thumb of the mitten of mountains called the Snowy Range. There are moose, elk, deer, cougars, bears, eagles, grouse and a number of other types of animals that live there.  Humans have come to the mountain too; there are tipi rings, mines, native burials, and pieces of broken equipment on it. It supplies us with elk, deer, wild raspberries and herbs like pipsissiwa and yarrow.  We even gather small fossils, belemites, with our grand nephews on the mountainsides. 

Now the mountain is a preserve with no roads on the top and surrounded by private land.  It has always been a quiet place due in part to its inaccessibility.  It’s not just the private property, it is the mountain itself which juts up 1500 ft. from the land around it and the footing of grus or ‘rotten rock’; granite that was poorly complied during the geologic period it was constructed.  Even the trees have trouble finding good purchase for their roots.  Now they are struggling with the bark beetle infestation.  The ribbons of limber and ponderosa pines that embellish the sides are now mostly gray and red, not the rich green they were when we built our house here 30 years ago.  It is here that Gary runs.  He would assure you there are trails, but I am not sure you would see them.  Even Bob, his coach, was unsure when he began to run with Gary on the mountain.  He followed Gary through the course and over the wind-felled trees. His trails involve deer trails, ravines, a couple of rock outcrops and the remnant of the two track that traverses the top.

His runs bring him back refreshed and full of life and stories; he saw three elk, he saw fresh cougar tracks, the limber pines didn’t set cones, there is a new elk camp with pinto packhorses… He becomes young and his worries about the world erode.

It started with a book

It started with a book.  Obsessions always start with a book with him.  His mother would tell you the reason he ended up in Wyoming was an obsession with a book called The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie.  It was a story about mountains, fur trappers, Native Americans and freedom.  I don’t think she was right; he would have ended up in Montana if that book had obsessed him.  He just fell in love with Wyoming and decided to stay here.

In the mid seventies, when he first moved to the valley and was just a crazy flatland hippie kid, he picked up a book in Boulder called Cross Country Downhill. It was a book about the sport better known as Telemark skiing. He read the book, put the beartrap bindings on some downhill skis from the Salvation Army and voilà! He was good to go. He used them on the ski slopes during his breaks and a life operator.  People shook their heads and laughed ‘you can’t ski like that’ but he was headstrong and self reliant, he didn’t need their advice. That was when winter was deep here and most of the residents didn’t bother to get to know your name until you had weathered at least one.  Two if the snow had not closed the road for at least a couple of weeks.  He stuck around and kept skiing although he did transition into true Telemark skis once they started selling them in Laramie.

Then there was the book on log building, he read it then headed up into the mountains for standing dead and hauled them home in his yellow, 1953 Chevy truck.  By then he had lived in the valley for about seven years, logged, been a carpenter, worked at the ski area and survived.  He looked at the drawings in the book, peeled the logs, notched each one, set them all with only a chainsaw, an adz, a monstrous chisel and some handmade calipers.  The result was a sturdy, warm, twelve-sided log home.

Now he is staring down sixty and running.  It started with a book called Born to Run about a guy named Caballo Blanco.  That guy ran here, outside of Laramie on Pilot hill, but they didn’t know each other.  He didn’t run then.  But now, after three broken backs he is running.  Miles.  He read the book, about a man who loved to run, and a group of people who live in Mexico, the Tarahumara, who ran; all of them smiling.  They don’t just jog a couple of blocks over lunch, they run miles, fifty and hundreds of miles. Smiling.

I would like to tell you he researched or at least asked other runners how they approached running before he started but the truth is he didn’t.  He did check out a few You Tubes of the Tarahumara and noticed they made their own sandals. But he passed on that.  He was thinking that maybe his skateboard shoes would work. They have great traction.  Finally he settled on some running shoes but had to customize them by taking off the wide heel with a knife. 

He runs behind the house, on the state land.  The neighbors began to catch glimpses of him this summer, up on the ridge tops by Sheep Mountain.  He and his crazy Australian shepherd cresting the limestone hogback before they dip behind it. 

‘Is he running out there?’ they asked simply.

‘Yeah.’

‘Thought so.’

There are cougars on the mountain, and the night I arrived home after dark to find the dog in a frenzied state; running at me then towards the mountain.  He came back in the dark, smiling and with the high that seems to accompany his jaunts.  He explained that there had been a noise, that the dog growled and headed back home but he felt it was probably nothing and he should just go on ahead.

‘Listen to the dog.’ The old-time neighbor said after he heard about the incident.

It’s winter now, the mountain is closed due to snow.  Now he runs on the road. 

You can’t miss him, he has a look based on warmth and not hampered by style.  Aforementioned altered, yellow, running shoes, green canvas shorts over black fleece pants, a vintage alpaca Fair Isle sweater over a black turtleneck and his French trapper hat (usually the olive green one).  To calm my fear of cougars, he now carries a stick, a heavy hedgewood thing.

The neighbors don’t really give him a second look now, although he does get stares from the snowmobilers and snowboarders who use our road as a shortcut to the Snowies.  They slow down, bewildered, uncertain if they should offer a ride or step on the accelerator.  A few have taken pictures.  I wonder what their caption might be.

The obsession had morphed into something else I think although I am reluctant to put a name to it.  It isn’t strained, it doesn’t take time from other things.  It feels more like a missing piece has found its place.

He says he runs for all of us; a prayer for his son, his neighbors, the deer.  And he smiles.