Category / On the Trail

by suffernpodiatry.com

The crepuscular trail: A last flash of light

Neither “sunset” nor “twilight” adequately describes the crepuscular time of day, that time when the sun has dropped below the horizon but still sends forth just enough of a glow to make your way home. In this dimming light one can just discern the path, but can not see what lives in the shadows.

The only true light to be seen in this liminal twilight zone is the flashing abdomen of the firefly, Photuris lucicrescens.  I spotted my first firefly this summer just a few days ago. In the ebbing light the number of people outside was inversely proportional to the number of flashing, flying insectivorous abdomens. Almost no people. Lots of fireflies. They flash near eye level, staying close to the path or hovering over the grass where they can be spotted, staying out of the dense woods or thickets.

I immersed myself in the twilight several times this week. The first was in a swamp rehabilitated with hiking paths surrounded by phragmites and weeping willows, while dozens and dozens of fireflies lit up the trail like silent fireworks, no two flashes in the same location. The second time was in an urban park which hugs a tributary of the Hackensack River, with fields of yellow trefoils, butterfly weed, lavender clovers, daisies and purple asters, the petal colors all a shade darker in the low quality light. And the third time, tonight, during a run around the neighborhood, crossing through another park, the looming oaks blocking the day’s last rays of light. The bright green of the leaves faded to dark as the twilight zone drew closer to night absolute, shifting from lime green to emerald to hunter green, and finally to a deep brown-green, barely green at all.

We humans have traditionally not embraced this transitional period of dusk. When kids still played outside, the specter of  the coming dark could send kids racing home as the sun set. We are not totally comfortable with this dim light of twilight, unlike the fireflies and other crepuscular creatures such as skunks and deer. This time is their time, the low-quality light the time when they shine.

We on the other hand struggle to make sense of what is neither day nor night, our eyes struggle to adjust, our pupils open at full bore yet not open enough. And religions that base their calendar on the sun and the moon struggle to categorize this ambiguous time as well. If the holy day is slated to begin at nightfall, an indeterminate time is of no help. If a fast from food and drink is decreed to end at nightfall, an approximate time is not helpful. When does one end and the other begin?

In the Jewish religion much is discussed about twilight and dawn in painstaking attempts to delineate one day from the next, night from day and day from night. When can you begin praying? By what hour must you finish? Precisely when must all work cease for the Sabbath?

But all is not knowable. There is no precise moment when the illuminated day time sky morphs into night, just as there is no exact moment when a child becomes an adult. And  twilight will never resolve into nighttime with clarity. We must do the best we can to make sense of dusk and remember that at least some species flourish in the haze of the dimming light. The fireflies are one species that have adapted to use this period to search for a mate and live to illuminate another fading twilight with a final flash of light.

Howard E. Friedman

(written but not published, June 17, 2015)

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by suffernpodiatry.com

Mt. Everest: Man vs. Mountain vs. Tectonic Plates

from nytimes.com (04/25/15) The base camp at Mount Everest after an avalanche on Saturday. Credit Azim Afif/via Associated Press

from nytimes.com (04/25/15) The base camp at Mount Everest after an avalanche on Saturday. Credit Azim Afif/via Associated Press

For hikers, trekkers, trail runners, and armchair adventurers, Mt. Everest has to loom large as an ultimate destination. Unfortunately, over the past 20 years, so much high altitude catastrophic loss of life has occurred there. As of 10 p.m. EST on April 24, 2015, the New York Times is reporting another 17 people have perished on the mountain after an avalanche swept through base camp, killing climbers in their tents at base camp, and cutting off those camped above the avalanche beyond the Khumbu icefall section of the route. This avalanche is attributed to the magnitude 7.8 earthquake with its epicenter near Kathmandu which struck today and the subsequent aftershocks.  That event has reportedly claimed well more than 1,800 lives with that number surely to be revised upwards. In a chilling coincidence, with respect to Mt. Everest, this past week marks one year since 16 Sherpas died in an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall area between base camp and camp one on the mountain’s southeastern ridge.

Writer Mark Synott posted a thoughtful piece about guided climbs on Mt. Everest on adventureblog.nationalgeographic.com just days before this most recent catastrophe and loss of human life occurred. In his piece, titled ‘Everest-a moral dilemma’, which now seems very dated, reading it through the prism of the current unfolding maelstrom of even more human suffering,  Synott  questions some of the brazen trends developing among guiding companies working to put more and more eager people on the summit of the world’s highest mountain, whether those paying clients are qualified high altitude climbers or not. But Synott also looks back to a simpler time, at some of the great victories on Everest when the struggle was really man vs. mountain, a time when only the most prepared and daring would deign to make that climb.

In an eerie bit of foreshadowing, Synott concluded his  thoughts on Everest by writing that “there is high drama to be found on the world’s highest mountain…”. He surely did not anticipate another tragic climbing season with the loss of life reported so far only paling in comparison to the loss of life, human suffering and tremendous devastation ongoing in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, and the surrounding region.

Man versus mountain may succeed once in a while. Men versus moving tectonic plates, however, will never win. We watch helplessly from afar but hope and pray that swift relief will come to all affected, on Everest and throughout Nepal.

Howard E. Friedman

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by suffernpodiatry.com

On the Trail: Personal challenges and personal agency.

(Forestwander.com via Wikimedia Commons)

(Forestwander.com via Wikimedia Commons)

Six wild turkeys emerged from the wooded shadows into a clearing,  single file, variously walking on and sinking in to the foot of snow on the ground. Than another six than another dozen emerged, walking, sinking, moving slowly and circumspectly, stopping to forage among twigs branches and fallen tree trunks.

I had just finished running and walking among the same trails as these wild, ungainly birds. I knew a bit about the challenges they faced moving over uncertain and unwelcoming terrain, having sunk through the snow myself. Moving overland in the winter woods was laborious.

Today’s temperature was 20F, much warmer than last week’s low teens. But there was still a sense of accomplishment in managing the environment, wearing three layers instead of 4, one pair of gloves instead of two.

‘Manage the environment, don’t let the environment manage you’, an intrepid outdoors friend commented.

Humans have been struggling, and mostly succeeding, to manage their environment for thousands of years. And there is a satisfaction that comes with surviving frigid temperatures, avoiding hypothermia and frostbite and yet enjoying the out of doors, with its rich palette of colours, shapes and textures. It is the pleasure of matching personal agency against the challenges of the environment.

And we have largely mastered our environment, be it climbing tectonic uplifts soaring five miles into the hypoxic frigid sky, like Everest, or submerging to study thermal vents miles below the surface of the ocean, like the Marianas Trench, or, of course, the ultimate mastery by man- space exploration.

Yet assuming our personal agency always results in ‘mastery’ is a fallacy. It is a fallacy in the outdoors as witnessed by the many fatalities- Rob Lowe, dying on the cold shoulder of Everest moments after calling his wife in New Zealand to say ‘I love you’, Chris McCandless whose death by starvation trapped in the Alaskan back country was famously chronicled in the book ‘Into the Wild’, to name only two of hundreds, if not more.

And personal agency as ‘mastery’ is a fallacy in our day to day lives, as it only takes us so far. This is truest especially when faced with overwhelming challenges against which no one can prevail, not the smartest, the prettiest, not the wealthiest or the most accomplished, not the most important. No one.

In the test of man against nature, the latter always prevails. As for our personal agency, we can manage, or try to manage, our responses especially in the face of impending loss.  We can take small comfort that we have, at the least, participated in the process. The winter trail will test your ability to survive the inhospitable, the uninviting, the unnatural for us warm blooded, furless mammals. And it is that mere survival that makes the successful days on the hard packed snow among the barren trees and frozen ponds so gratifying, even as it gives a fleeting, albeit false, sense of invincibility.

Howard E. Friedman

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by suffernpodiatry.com

On the Trail: Winter and the Big Bang

(Forestwander.com via Wikimedia Commons)

(Forestwander.com via Wikimedia Commons)

In a week riddled with more senseless and barbaric killings around the globe one small item of astrophysical import did not  garner much attention, even though it addressed the fundamental question of how the universe began.

The mercury began this morning in the teens when I awoke.  Dressed in layers I ran  to the nearby woods to see what I would see. In winter, all is hidden yet all is revealed. I saw no animals running about but only remnants of their activity from the day or night before. Squirrel tracks galore, raccoon and opossum prints, the occasional deer tracks and even the footprints of a family of mallards on the ice covered portion of the slow moving creek, webbed toes pointed toward open water. Two red tailed hawks and a great blue heron took off from their hidden perches, quickly, silently, vanishing like actors disappearing into the wings.

I ran a familiar route on snow and ice and came to the small pond, now frozen solid, a rare opportunity to walk out on the ice. The water is never deep here so the only risk would be wet and frigid feet if the ice cracked below. But it held.

The harsh frozen landscape seems ancient, as if it could exist for eternity, in contrast to Spring where flowers and their petals seem so fragile, even at the peak of their beauty. Winter conjures images of frozen planets in our solar system, or the frozen dark side of the moon, dry, seemingly lifeless. And thus winter makes me ponder the origins of our universe and the earth itself.

Professor Brian Koberrlein expanded on an article explaining how our universe did not necessarily begin with one defined singular moment, the ‘Big Bang’. Rather, the professor at Rochester Institute of Technology wrote in Physics Letters B, citing research from the University of Benha in Egypt and Letherbridge University in Alberta, Canada this month, the universe always existed and will always exist. A ‘big bang’ happened along the way, but that moment, referred to as “singularity” by astrophysicists, does not have to have been the first moment.

“Singularity”, one point from which all else emanates, is a comforting idea, and, we each can identify defining moments in our lives that marked a new beginning. But, outdoors in nature, peering down the snow covered trail that fades into a sun filled patina of white and ice, the infinite seems more real than the finite.

And I am glad to welcome “infinity” back into the model of how the universe began. The concept of timelessness helps frame our own travails and challenges. Whatever will be, the universe always was and always will be and we are a part of that timelessness. And while winter on the trail evinces a natural timeless quality, you can follow that same path in the Fall, or Summer, or Spring, and it will still take you to forever.

Howard E. Friedman

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by suffernpodiatry.com

On the Trail: Ski shoeing, a mix of cross country and snow shoeing.

Ski-shoeing In the Altai Mountains (https://altaiskis.wordpress.com/, Nils Image)

Ski-shoeing In the Altai Mountains (https://altaiskis.wordpress.com/, Nils Image)

Thanks to ancestors of Mongolian horsemen and warriors who trace their lineage to Genghis Kahn, winter hikers do not have to choose between either cross country skiing or snow shoeing. Rather, they can benefit from the centuries of experience of the Altai people, the indigenous Chinese citizens of the Altai mountain range, bordering China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia, who have mastered a hybrid form of winter snow travel, best described as “ski-shoeing”. This technique uses short and wide skis designed to enable walking up snowy hills as with snowshoes, but allows skiing downhill like with cross country skis yet enables sliding across level snow covered ground. And, ski-shoes, which are about 70-75% the length of traditional skis and weigh about 5-6 lbs. per pair, can break trail too.

The ski shoes, called Hoks, which means “skis” in the native Tuwa language of the Altai people, includes a fabric climbing ‘skin’ built in to the undersurface of the skis, as well as metal edges, commonly found on backcountry skis. The Altai Hok skis were designed to be more efficient than snow shoeing yet easy to learn even for non-skiers, Nils Larsen, president of Altai Skis, interviewed by phone from Curlew, WA, said. In fact, hikers can use their existing hiking or backpacking boot with the ski’s universal binding, or, use a cross-country ski boot with a different binding for increased control.

Altai Hok skis, front, and back, showing climbing skin (http://altaiskis.com/)

Altai Hok skis, front, and back, showing climbing skin (http://altaiskis.com/)

The Altai people have been using similar type skis for centuries or longer. They use horsehide, however, as the climbing skin, with the stiff hairs facing downhill to provide traction when climbing. The Hok skis use a similarly stiff but synthetic fabric. Unlike traditional cross country and down hill skis, the Altai people use only one pole, made of larch or birch wood, not two poles. Called a ‘tiak’ this one pole is held by both hands and dragged behind the skier to provide balance when skiing downhill. Larsen explained that using the one pole in this manner really improves stability. The pole is not used to propel the skier forward.

The Hoks could be used on as little as several inches of snow, Mr. Larsen said, and can be used to climb most hiking trails with the exception of thinly covered icy trails. They excel, though, in deeper snow. The Hoks can traverse exposed rocks but the skier has to walk over them like with snow-shoes. Compared to cross country skis, the Hoks are slower both on flat terrain and downhill, and they do not fit into groomed cross country tracks, Mr. Larsen said. But, he maintained, they are more efficient than snow shoes since the user can slide his foot forward each step instead of lifting it up. And, the shorter ski length makes the Hoks more maneuverable than longer skis when navigating around trees in wooded areas, he added.

The Altai people use their ski shoes for daily travel around their villages as well as tracking of Elk in their nearby forests. An Altai Elk hunt on ski shoes was well documented by National Geographic in their December 2013 issue (including some video footage of the Altai skiers nationalgeographic.com). Researchers suggest that short, wide skis lined with animal hair could date back thousands of years and may represent some of the earliest skis ever. Winter hikers may find that this simple design could enhance their winter adventures by making snow travel on the trail more efficient than with snow shoes and more versatile than with cross country skis.

Howard E. Friedman

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by suffernpodiatry.com

On the trail: Walking and newness

“Are you getting tired of walking?”, Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition asked National Geographic adventurer Paul Salopek after he had completed the first year of his planned seven year walk retracing human migration from Ethiopia, through the Middle East, Asia, North and South America and ending at Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of Chile. Salopek is wintering in Turkey for a few months, to rest, catch up on documenting his trip and plan the next section of his walk.

Salopek did not hesitate to answer.

Myriad reasons attract people to walk the open road or trail. Many are motivated by the need to exercise. Some are seduced onto the rocky trail by the siren call of rustling leaves, or a cascading creek, or the birdsongs which are so prominent a part of nature’s soundtrack.

And if you are fortunate, you returned from your hike or run or walk in the woods feeling emotionally recharged, even if physically tired. You may have seen an animal or flower that quickened your heart beat. Worries dissipated, at least for a time, and where to place your next footstep was your most pressing concern.

But how does it happen? How can running along a brook, hiking in a meadow or walking through the park be so therapeutic?

Today at twilight I ran along a creek, a small river, actually. And I was surprised by what I did not see. No birds. No herons, or egrets or cormorants. No swallows diving toward the water than soaring toward the sky. And I saw precious little animal life. One cottontail, not the dozen I usually see. And one doe, large eyes staring straight at me, but all alone.

The branches were bare save for the pine and spruce boughs. And no trefoils or clover were in bloom. All was quiet, nature bereft.

As I contemplated the stillness I thought of the answer Salopek gave at the end of his interview.

Salopek interacts with villagers (photo by Paul Salopek) http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/paul-salopek/

Salopek interacts with villagers (photo by Paul Salopek) http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/paul-salopek/

“Are you tired of walking?”, Inskeep asked.

“No”, he answered immediately. “I think, on the contrary, that’s what this walk does. This walk has the power I never imagined, to make the whole world seem new again”, Paul Salopek concluded.

How than does the trail recharge the soul? When you engage the world at a slow human pace, and remain in contact with the ground, you have the opportunity to see the world anew.

Around the globe, many people will soon mark a new calendar year. But make no mistake. What makes the year, or month or day new, is not the date on the calendar. Rather, the ability to look at the day with open eyes, and take the time to contemplate that experience, that is what endows sameness with newness.

I do not have Salopek’s seven years to walk. But I can wander into a nearby forest or field, and when I do and whatever the season, even on a barren winter eve, all seems new, again.

Howard E. Friedman

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by suffernpodiatry.com

On the Trail: Boots on the ground

"Wild" from Fox Searchlight Pictures, featuring Reese Witherspoon, and Danner boots,

“Wild” from Fox Searchlight Pictures, featuring Reese Witherspoon, and Danner boots,

The movie “Wild” is coming to a theater near you, the screen adaptation of the eponymous book about Cheryl ‘Strayed’, a newbie hiker who set off and thru-hiked the 2,600 mile Pacific Crest Trail on a journey of self discovery and emotional healing.

When you see a trailer for the movie, you will see Cheryl’s boots, the camera pointing straight down toward her heavy backpacking boots. Big, solid leather boots with prominent red laces and metal lacing hooks. For the movie at least, the actress Reese Witherspoon wore Danner boots, made by the long-time boot manufacturer in Portland, OR. I know this because I ordered a pair of Danner Station boots which I wear to work and therefore I am on their email list. They proudly sent me an email newsletter with a short film about the making of Reese’s boots, including footage of the Danner manufacturing plant and interviews with the employees, craftsmen, really, who assemble this old-fashioned bespoke footwear. (See Danner’s well done promo about their Mountain Light Cascade boot worn in the movie here).

Danner;s Mountain Light Cascade

Danner’s Mountain Light Cascade

Over the past several years, hikers, backpackers, runners and anyone who takes more than a passing interest in walking or running, shoe wear and design knows that the trend toward lighter weight foot wear has taken over much of the industry, at least for the shoe cognoscenti. Hikers are routinely thru-hiking the country’s longest trails, the Appalachian, Pacific Crest and Continental Divide trails, in running shoes or low cut hiking shoes.  And the reasons are simple. Researchers have established incontrovertibly that every 100 gram decrease in shoe weight results in about 1% less oxygen consumption required during activity. Basically, lighter weight shoes are simply easier to wear over long distances.

But, is there a hidden cost to our light weight foot wear?

Cam Honan who Backpacker magazine says “trekked 50,000 miles” on foot is reported in the March 2014 issue to have worn through 28 pairs of shoes on a 15,000 mile hike of all of the longest trails in the US including the AT, PCT and CDT. He switched out shoes on average every 535 miles. His experience is not unique. Long distance hikers often literally wear out multiple pairs of shoes. Old shoes, if we are conservation minded, get donated to a charity, if they are in any kind of wearable condition. Otherwise, they get added to the growing pile of the world’s refuse heaps.

So while boots like Danner’s Mountain Light boots are very heavy (probably approaching 2 pounds each), they are resoleable, what Danner calls “recraftable”. Perhaps Cam Honan could have covered 15,000 miles in two boots, the one he was wearing and the one that was being resoled. Who knows? But as we embrace lighter weight footwear, we should think about the issue of durability and having to throw more junk into our landfills.

The hiking and trail running shoe manufacturers should start to take a cue from rock climbing shoes, which take a beating, getting scraped and brushed against all manner of hard rock surfaces, yet, can be resoled and more than once. I have been wearing a pair of Five Ten Guide Tennies for a number of years and have had them resoled. Why can’t hiking shoes be light weight and resoleable?

I challenge hiking and trail running shoe manufacturers to design technical footwear that is both lightweight and ‘recraftable’. That way we can be both good to our feet and good to the planet.

Howard E. Friedman

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by suffernpodiatry.com

On the Trail: Great Blue and You

Great Blue Heron, by Marie Read, allaboutbirds.org

Great Blue Heron, by Marie Read, allaboutbirds.org

Twenty minutes watching a great blue heron from fifteen feet away can teach you a few things.

I sideled up  to the waters edge of Overpeck Creek recently after running in the large urban park, to see what I would see. Usually not much. A distant cormorant or a snowy egret on the far side in the phragmites. But this morning would be one I would remember. A great blue heron stood motionless on the kayak dock just a few feet off shore. Completely motionless. Statuesque. Immaculately attired actually.

And there it stood. I  sat on a nearby granite rock and noted the time. It did not move, fixed in its gaze toward the water. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Than in balletic form it turned 180 degrees. And again stood still, now gazing at the water in the opposite direction. Another five minutes. No movement, until slowly the heron stepped off the dock and into the water, clearly a more strategic position. It lowered its head to within inches of the water, than looked up and moved away,  crouching under the sloped gangplank of the dock, compressing its neck into a perfect S shape, its dagger like beak pointed, poised, primed to strike.

Then in one explosive action the bird uncoiled its neck, and in so doing buried its beak full into the water with nary a splash.

Great Blue Heron, by Greg Bishop, flickr.com/photos/gregbishop160/2928315528/

Great Blue Heron, by Greg Bishop, flickr.com/photos/gregbishop160/2928315528/

What happened below the surface, though, remains a mystery for it raised its head high, its beak empty. Had it caught something small and quickly ingested? Whether because of its success or its failure, the great blue than strode away.

I took away some lessons from watching the heron, lessons of patience, perseverance. Lessons of focus, stillness and, that solitude is often essential.

But I also learned that clear, cool autumn morning by the shore of the wide slow moving river that if you plan to survive hunting small aquatic wildlife near the water’s edge, you should arm yourself with a very long, flexible neck and a beak as lethal as a bayonet.

Howard E. Friedman

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by suffernpodiatry.com

On the Trail: ‘Shelter’ outside

West Mountain Shelter, Eric Koppel

West Mountain Shelter, Eric Koppel

“Shelter” is not a word commonly invoked to describe the vagaries of our modern 21st century day to day lives. We don’t say “I am going into my shelter now”. Rather, we say “I am going inside”, meaning, of course, we are returning into the safety and security of our homes. In fact, “shelter” evokes images not of home and hearth but of a bomb or air raid shelter, remnants of the 1950s cold war. If you live in Israel, a “shelter” is part of your normal vocabulary as all new construction must include a shelter or “safe room” to protect from missile attacks, or worse. And, a little over a year ago the word “shelter” was repeated frequently as Boston police warned residents to “shelter inside” while they searched for the Boston marathon bomber.

In all recent examples, “shelter” has a negative connotation: a place to retreat from mortal danger.

And so, the notion of a 3-sided low ceilinged stone structure built on the side of mountain, miles from a road,  town or city being called a “shelter” is anachronistic. Afterall, this primitive structure could only protect from rain and snow, and that only if they are not blowing in sideways. These shelters are no protection from wild animals, big or small, and offer only partial protection from cold or heat. Yet, these structures found along most long distance hiking trails are in fact referred to as “shelters” for they do offer a hiker  a modicum of protection from the weather. A “primitive shelter” is a more apt name.

As I set my backpack down last Sunday on the stout wooden floor boards of the West Mountain shelter in Harriman State Park, about a half mile from the Appalachian Trail, I felt indebted to the men who, in about 1928-29, went to great effort to build this structure in the woods. In their prescience, they sited the West Mountain shelter on pre-Cambrian granite bedrock,  to face an unobstructed view of the Hudson River and off in the distance, the Manhattan skyline, a skyline that was only just getting started at the end of the roaring twenties.

This shelter, like so many shelters on hiking trails in the northeast, is a substantial structure consisting of three walls built from bowling ball sized boulders of different colors and shapes, held together with no mortar noticeable, yet impermeable to wind and rain blowing through the walls. The ceiling consists of shingles on top of wooden beams and slats. The West Mountain shelter even includes two built in fireplaces on either side of the broad open front entrance. It does not have a water source nearby but I can not fault the nameless men who built this edifice 85 years ago. They were clearly taken with the beautiful view, water or not.

Volunteers continue to maintain and build hiking trails all over and even refurbish shelters when needed. But I do not hear of many cases of shelters being built at new locations, although it probably happens. As I ‘sheltered inside’ the West Mountain lean-to, protected from nothing in particular on that sunny, balmy, picture perfect day, I wished I could have offered a personal thanks to the people who chose this location, gathered the boulders and wood needed to build this old fashioned trail shelter so many years ago, rock by rock, beam by beam.

Howard E. Friedman

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by suffernpodiatry.com

On the trail: defining “trail”

What is “the trail”?

Recently I responded to trail shoe company Vasque’s request for product testers for a new model of trail running shoes. I had to itemize how many miles a week I run and on what surface. The choices were single-track trail, dirt, grass or pavement. I ticked off checks in the first three boxes. I don’t run on pavement.

I started wondering, am I a trail runner if I run on grass and dirt in urban environs more than I run on single track paths in the forest?

For a trail runner or hiker, must the ‘trail’ be surrounded by forest or rolling hills? Must it have rocks and roots? What about running on the grass and uneven dirt to the side of an asphalt path in a dimly lit urban park, at night? Does that constitute ‘trail running’.  What about if you run  on a wood chip path in a tree filled park but you see buildings beyond its sylvan perimeter? Is that a ‘trail’ run’? How about starting a run in a park but leaving the graded path to run through high grass, emerging with burrs and maybe a tick or two? Does that count?

Or does “the trail” really limit you to a path in the woods, or wilderness, somewhere far away, a car drive away? Perhaps running on a graded trail, maintained by trail volunteers who trim away brambles, fix the blazes, remove fallen trees, is not even real trail running. Maybe you need to bushwack your own trail through the forest to really make it count.

I never heard back from the folks at Vasque. My mileage was probably too low. My age probably too high. Maybe they don’t count running on grass as real trail running. Fair enough. They should find the hardest charging trail runners out there to test their shoes. Admittedly, that’s not me.

But I am left with my question. Am I a trail runner? On most days, honestly, probably not. But neither am I a road runner. I would accept the moniker “off-road” runner, however. But even when trying to harvest a trail run out of a city park, I aspire to return to the trail, for all the reasons more and more people are running on single track paths in the woods: the inherent challenge, the beauty of the scenery, the need for rapt attention to every foot fall. And I will return. Maybe this weekend, or next. In the meantime, I will continue to nurture my aspirations with the resources I have available. And that is the best training there is.

Howard E. Friedman

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