Category Archives: unmarked trails

Forrest Gumping It

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Earlier today I spent several hours Forrest Gumping it, walking relentlessly in the woods, I know, I know, Forrest walked all over the country, but cut me a bit of slack, I’m just starting out here.

There really is something healing about hitting the trail and pushing the pace, letting the sweat pour. The endorphins kick in, you shift away from the worldly universe of daily troubles and wounds, and enter in a place of such spiritual beauty is reaches all your muscles, buries deep warm into the marrow of your being, healing… healing.

I’d gone to bed last night with every intention of climbing a 3,500-plus Catskill Mountain this morning, but given that I am just getting back into condition, common sense prevailed. I remember years ago when I ran marathons (very slowly I might add) I would repeatedly read and hear that our minds are ahead of our bodies on the conditioning front.

But I hit it hard today, and I brought Charley who is, I must say, one helluva trail dog. He will celebrate his second birthday the 30th of this month and he and I have been sharing life since the day he turned six weeks old. He has been on the trails from the beginning with me.

As I walk I am reminded of how the woods was always refuge when I was a boy, always it was a place of safety, a place where my imagination could dance and move and create and jump for joy in utter freedom. Realities of life surface for me here, knowing , for example, that while you can love people, you cannot free them of that which blocks them from knowing they are loved. All you can do is love, keep the “door open”, keep going.

I am walking up an incline and instinctively lean forward and push the pace. Charley, of course, cheats. He has four legs. Pushing the pace is an old habit that has no intention of dying. I have the same feeling about on incline on the trails as I did and do climbing hills on a bike; there is a very intense personal relationship between me and the earth, and here we are in a kind of friendly arm-wrestling match. The earth throws me an incline and I see if I can reach the top without stopping. Do I succeed every time? No, of course not, not yet anyway. And when I can’t, I stop and breathe and smile and often my eyes tear up because I am filled with joy because I am alive to have this moment.
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I Am All Here, Daddy

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Daddy, I am all here. There is room in this moment for only us and I am finally all here and I know, now, that is what you wanted, hoped for. In less than one hour I will reach the uncleared trail, the unlearned trail. I will step quietly into 1:44 p.m. this day, the first minute you never reached knowing I will be on my own in a way like never before. Not alone like never before, on my own like never before; there is a difference.

I know as I stand with you here that this will be my place of rest too when my time ends. We will, as always, be good great company. And oh, how I miss you, still miss you, always miss you.

You were ripped off, Daddy, dying at 55 like you did. Ripped off. And that she let you died alone Mommy did. Home with us in Nyack leaving you along in that iron lung in St. Luke’s Hospital, telling us, me, the doctors said you wouldn’t know if anyone was there anyway. Leaving you alone so foreign to me. She had her wounds, Daddy. The deepest? She could not see herself and thus could not love herself which is why she ended herself. Sad, Daddy, sad.

I am all here with you, Daddy. Always with you I can be all here. Now, finally, in sober life, I can be all here anywhere, and always with you.

I will soon be in the day and days you never met. On the uncleared trail walking point. It was you there until now. There is an aloneness to this I’ve never experienced. It is, in a way, scary. Yet, in another way, it emboldens me.

We are soon to that minute, Daddy, that last minute you were here. This time you are not alone, nor am I. I am all here now, loving you. Always loving you.

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