GOING MINIMALIST

"Listen to your feet" was the lesson I was trying to learn after reading Born To Run, Christopher McDougall's groundbreaking book on barefoot running. 

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Life had just taken a minimalist turn in the hot early summer of 2010 when my two teenagers decided to have only one home in the looming divorce settlement. Naturally, that would be where they were already living with my soon-to-be ex-wife in the house we had built a few years before. The three bedroom rental I had created for the kids was suddenly superfluous, so it was time to downsize. Going native in footwear seemed in the spirit of that change. It also made good biomechanical sense that the legs and back should respond to foot sensations by automatically adjusting into a more stable long distance posture.

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"Don't run on gravel" was the first lesson, sent after three runs in my new minimalist shoes on the shady and cool Greenbrier River Trail, the only level surface besides a track in southeastern West Virginia.

"Don't run on hills" was next, learned after two weeks of sore balls from uphill leans and soles from downhill slaps on the steaming blacktop around our little town of Lewisburg.

"Don't go past five miles" came after another month of letting my legs adapt to the painful sensations coming from my feet after long sunset runs on state forest trails or country roads.

After a summer's trial of barefoot running, it was time to get the larger message: A 50-year-old body sometimes needs a cushioned landing.

NOTHING BUT A HOUNDDOG

"Not hide nor hair" drawled the camouflaged hunter to my asking if he'd seen a couple of hounds running loose through the Monroe County hills.

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Cunee and George had been missing for two days since our Fall hike in the Second Creek gorge. Nine-year-old Jacob had run back and forth with the dogs as we walked the muddy streamside trail. 

"Moss, moss" screamed six-year-old Ella whenever she saw green fuzz growing on a rock or tree.

"It must be your spirit animal" I joked as we patted the soft mat.

And then the dogs were gone, a faint yipping from the little Rhodesian ridgenose somewhere on the hillside across the creek signalling the hunt was on. 

We went on to the walkbridge where the kids threw sweetgum balls into the fast moving creek as I huffed into cupped hands with my loudest whistle that had never before failed to bring our tall black-and-tan coonhound running.

A chill descended into the gorge as the sun slipped behind dark clouds so we turned back, stopping for a whistle every few minutes. Then a cold rain started as we gazed across the creek willing our hounds to appear. Two more hours of watching through the windshield wipers and the kids had had enough. 

Three more trips back to the gorge in thunderstorms over the next day and a half and I'd had enough of whistling and waiting. Cancelling clinic for the next morning, I broke out the hydration pack and the Odwalla bars and set out at a trot along the now raging creek, crossing over the bridge near where they'd taken off. After two hours of winding through the rolling hills, I came across the hunter squatting in the brush.

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"Send them down to the creek" I called, turning back toward the gorge by a different drainage.

"Will do" he waved before melting back into the shrubs. 

I got back to the big blue Isuzu three hours after I had set out and there they were, watching me and whining from across the flood. I started back for the bridge hoping they'd follow, but Cunee leapt into the torrent and paddled hard despite getting washed a hundred yards downstream. George was frantic but finally made the leap when he saw the big hound wading out. The poor little guy was swept under a muddy wave, reappearing over a ledge paddling madly with his nose poking up into the air.

"I got you George" I called, leaning off a rock to grab him by the scruff of the neck. 

He just whined, licked my hands, and ran to the back of the Trooper with tail and bottom wiggling.

"Time to go home" I soothed, driving up out of the gorge as they curled up fast asleep in the back.

It was a joyous reunion after school as two dogs bounded out to greet two children climbing down from a yellow school bus, their two day ordeal in the cold rain seemingly forgotten. Forever thereafter, however, two shivering hounds appeared by my side at the first distant rumble.

LIKE A WATERFALL

"Meet back at the top in four hours" directed our Brazil Group Study Exchange leader as five young professionals from Northeast Missouri plotted an afternoon at the Argentinian side of Iquazu Falls National Park.

"It's about six miles, we might make it" I whispered to Scott, convincing him we should hike down to a site called Escaleras a Cataratas Pequeno on the trail sign.

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We had just completed the first two weeks of a Rotary tour of the southern Brazilian state of Parana. Challenged to hoops by each local chapter, we soon became known as the Bad Dream Team in disdain for the first U.S.Olympic basketball team of professional players who had just swept the 1993 winter games. Tired of losing to business owners and their hoops-obsessed teens in the capital city of Curitiba, we'd bribed a Rotarian pilot with much coveted American dollars to fly us out to the world's largest waterfall by volume of water.

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"Two downhill hours, but there it is" I observed to Scott from the top of a thousand step stairway along a clear stream spilling down a cliffside and into the wide Iquazu River still hazy a mile downstream from the tremendous cataract. "If we go down, we'll never make it back in time."

"Fuck it" yelled the realtor and former Northeast Missouri State University defensive end lumbering down the stairs through the dense understory with me in hot pursuit.

Fuck it we did, rollicking in the icy jets until the late summer sun dropping below the canyonside reminded us of the time.

"Either we run back or rock hop to the base of the big falls" I proposed. "There might be a way to the top."

He leapt for the first rounded boulder and then we climbed and jumped for a sweaty quarter mile before the futility sank in.

"Let's float back to the little falls" he urged stepping to the edge of a tan megalith.

"A boat!" I shouted, and we proceeded to wave wildly as first one and then another small motorboat sped downstream.

"Wave these at the next one" I offered, handing over two twenties and keeping two for myself.

Our eighty turned the trick that two crazy gringos couldn't, and we soon disembarked at a ranger's hut four miles downstream. He emerged from under the hood of an old Jeep.

"No maquina" he said with a toothy grin, holding up two oil smeared hands.

"Telephone?"

"No telefono."

"Muchas gracias" I called over my shoulder as we took off up the dirt road.

"For nothing" grumbled Scott trudging along as if in full pads at the end of an August double-session.

After an hour of coaxing the big guy to run, we were only halfway to the top.

"We're late anyway, might as well enjoy it" he reasoned while slowing to a stroll through the lush forest.

That's when we glimpsed a police jeep bouncing down the trail toward us.

"What happened" cried our fearless leader, sweaty and pale in his fear that we had fallen off the cliff.

"We liked that little waterfall" Scott rationalized as I blushed to match the trumpet flowers dangling from every tree.

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Cataratas de Curitiba

     The spring at your source

          gushes into old homes

               rushing out with coliforms,

                    flows into factories

                         running out with chloroform,

                              and trickles into favelas

                              overflowing with the children

                              who will clean the homes

                              and work assembly lines.

- March 1993

CLIMBING MOUNT FUJI

"A wise person climbs Mount Fuji..." quoted the Fodor's guide as we prepared to visit our sister Karen teaching in Hiroshima. Too bad our trail to the fabled volcano at the center of Honshu had been fraught with more foolishness than wisdom. 

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"Parts from the number one engine took out the number two engine" announced the pilot upon landing between rows of firetrucks back at Newark an hour after first takeoff.



"This is a good day to die" quoted sister Karla from the historical novel Shogun as we glimpsed the Arctic ice sheet while flying over the top of the world.



"Tatami for sleep" urged the hostess escorting us into a sparse Tokyo ryokan after a long and sleepless flight.



"Chopsticks?" asked the waiter handing us bowls of green slime with a giant snail floating in the center.



"Oops, wrong side" exclaimed brother-in-law Howard driving down the right hand side of a country road as oncoming cars swerved.



"Saki wa, David-san!" insisted the Matsue restauranteer refilling my ceramic cup for the fifth time.



"Geiging, Geiging" pointed highschoolers as two foreigners biked through their village on the way to a paper making shop.



"No theft in Japan" admonished the police operator when I reported dropping my never-to-be-found wallet containing 125,000 yen ($1000) in a Kyoto taxi.



"Nice of them to provide a well" I marveled, downing a ladle before noticing that the Japanese pilgrims to the Miyajima tidal shrine used it to purify their hands before passing through the torii.



"Last bus two hours" yelled the driver opening the door at the third climbing stage of ten for the two remaining passengers.



"Better run" cautioned Karla as we circled up the cinder trail that wound around the ancient volcano at the center of the main island.



"Last water before the top" observed the bassoon player for the London Philharmonic tramping straight down the glacier in crampons as we sipped the ashen runoff at stage seven.



"Thirty minutes until bus" warned Karla as we slipped and slid around the eighth stage.

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"... but only a fool does it again" I added, turning back for the slog down to stage three.

Fuji-San

With head cloaked with cloud

and foothills shrouded in fog,

ravens pick your ribs.

                                                        - May 15, 1991