Motomynd: On the trail (and not on a bike)

It is 11:00 p.m. on January 12 and the weather broadcast just announced there is a cold front ripping into the mountains just west of my home in Virginia. It is bringing with it the first measurable snow of the season; that means it is time to head out to properly greet an old friend too long gone.
    So while the safe, sane world sleeps, I am putting on running gear and headlamp and heading for an 8-mile trail run/walk to properly welcome real winter at one of my favorite places in Virginia—a sharp-edged piece of rock called McAfee Knob that juts from the face of Catawba Mountain and knifes into that west wind bringing a bit of Canada our way. A wind that also picks up a lifetime of memories from more than 100 trips to my family's home place in Upstate New York and hurls them frigid to the body yet warming to heart and mind into my life of relative southern softness.
    It is only a 20-minute drive to the trail head where Route 311 crests Catawba Mountain, and even in the dark I can manage this eight-mile section of the Appalachian Trail in under two hours. With any luck I can fit in the outing and still steal five hours sleep before tomorrow's schedule sweeps me away. Live strong and sleep less. Or, to quote the refrain from an old Warren Zevon song, "I can sleep when I'm dead."
    When I climb from the car, the wind cuts through my layers of running clothing. I will be cold the first couple of miles or so but as I hit the climb—1,300 feet of elevation gain in a little over a mile—I will warm quickly. What I don't think about, however, is that those first two miles are on the lee side of the mountain, unprotected from the wind. When I hit the climb I am assaulted by gusts of wind and feel ever colder.
    There are few things in life as exhilarating as being on an exposed mountain side in the dark, in a swirl of snow, during a period the weather service calls "high wind warning." More than I bargained for and almost more than I wanted. I find out later that the area supposedly had gusts in the range of 60 miles per hour. Knowing how the wind feels on a motorcycle at 60, I bet these gusts were every bit of that. Somewhere just to the right and safely downwind a tree crashes to the ground. Thinking of possible "widow makers" upwind raises my pulse and finally I begin to warm a bit.

On a warm, soft, safe summer day,
a hiker sits on the perch where
Motomynd and others like to stand
and lean into the winter winds of fate

Reaching McAfee Knob, I walk to the very knife edge of the rock and lean into the biting wind. This is a game many of us have played countless times over the years, body jutting outward with feet well behind our center of gravity, arms spread like vultures' wings, only the support of the wind sparing us a fall of more than 100 feet into the trees and rocks below. Eventually a lull in the wind will claim one of us and we will finally get our name in the paper. But not once so far in the 40-plus years we have done this, and not tonight. I spread my arms and lean out hard into the dark until the cold takes the fun out of it, then I pull back and continue on to Campbell Shelter and the turn back toward my car.
    Near the spring below the shelter a herd of deer trots away, snorting in the dark. Halfway back to the car another tree, again mercifully downwind, crashes to the ground.
    Back at home I take time for a quick shower and reload some carbohydrates with a bowl of brown rice spiced with a touch of organic molasses and Sunbutter, a peanut butter-like substance made from sunflower seeds that seems much more nourishing and tasty than Skippy or Peter Pan or their kindred. Unfortunately I lie awake listening to the howling wind and reliving the rush of leaning into the abyss at the Knob, and the planned five hours sleep drifts toward four, then three.

It is 6:00 a.m. and BBC news is talking about a financial crisis in Hungary. I stretch and roll in bed to loosen up a bit before I even try to walk. That is not nearly enough recovery time for a body now aged well toward 60, but it is all I have. Over breakfast I realize I was literally leaning into the wind of fate on Friday the 13th. I resolve to live carefully on the busy day that awaits.
    Call it silly, or immature even. Feel free to consider it rampant over-scheduling. Some of us just call it wringing all we can from every day. When you've lived on borrowed time for 20 years you grab every piece of life you can. What can be called crazy can also be called living.
    Now on toward a mundane day, carried not by extra rest but by the rush of the night before. All the best with your day.