MAIDEN VOYAGE

The Black Bear Trail usually began with a half-miler up Kate's Mountain, switchback's and all, but on this first cool day after a long October I went backwards, galloping through the cabins and down the dirt path along the creek bottom before turning uphill. 







Then the trail through the Greenbrier State Forest steepened, turning rocky and rutted. Even in the best conditions, each step had to be deliberately placed to avoid turning an ankle. With the trail littered with newly fallen leaves, anything but full concentration on footfalls and balance meant hitting the ground. I once ran a rocky trail covered by three inches of snow with eight of my osteopathic medical students. The four who slipped and fell had only ever been runners, while the other four had been body-contact athletes - soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, basketball. Of course, this proprioceptive memory can also be gained by repeated rocky trail runs.

On the last and steepest of the rises, I shifted into a sprint a la Olympic marathon champion Frank Shorter: "Hills are speed work in disguise." Running on toes with short strides while lifting knees and leaning forward conserves distance energy as it propels you upwards. Finally topping the hill, I heaved a sigh of relief and let the legs return to a lope along a thin trail etched inside the bowl of the mountainside. 

Looking out into a prison window of tree trunks, the workday's worries - course coordinator and department chair frustrations and deadlines - slipped away as I wound my way across the hillside. Into view came my work predicament of being undermined in curriculum integration by a controlling supervisor. I needed to make a change, but into what I couldn't yet see.

Rounding a second rim path, I was brought back to the treetops by the flap of wild turkeys crash landing into a remnant white pine. There I saw a marriage that had slowly slipped into estrangement after a hundred and one too many lonely nights. I needed to make a change, but into what I couldn't yet see.

The mountain gave way as my legs did, forcing a squat at a little triangle of land between two seasonal creek beds before the last downhill stretch. Reaching down to tighten a shoelace, I saw the elegant oval fronds of a maidenhair fern beside my running shoe. A little further down the bank was a blue cohosh, it's tulip-like leaves leaning out from a bluish stalk. Poking up through the leaves beside the dry bed were hoof-shaped leaves of colt's foot. There on the opposite bank were a few fairy wands of black cohosh.

Recharged, I took off down toward the Jeep, skimming over the leaf covered rocks as images of medicinal plants slipped into my consciousness.