Higher reaches of the Mill Hollow area.
A view of Mill Hollow Reservoir in the Uinta Mountains in Utah.
When I was in third grade our school gave young students a chance to go to a week long camp in the Uintas at a place called Mill Hollow. This small Summer Camp was like any number of youth Summer camps filled with nature hikes and boon doggle. We also had free time each afternoon to play around the little mountain retreat. My best friend at the time, Anthony Wood, and I formed a small posse of like minded souls and we created a sport we called "stump jumping". The goal of the game was to scramble as far up the side of the wooded mountain slope as possible and then to run down the steep stump choked hillside with reckless abandon as fast as your legs could carry you. We didn't just do this to go fast but we also showboated by launching off from logs, stumps, and rocks to see how much hill could slip beneath your airborne body before the bone jarring landing, often times jumping many meters at a time. We then got creative and began to jump over our fellow school mates by placing them under a lofty precipice and then using our downhill momentum to hurl our adolescent bodies over the brave volunteer.
One thing I realized today as I was flying down the trail at dusk is that I am exactly the same today as the small tow-headed third grader that I was then. When I was younger I found myself the happiest when I was in the woods flying down the side of a mountain that any normal person would call insane. What a great piece of insight to realize that I am still a happy boy who loves life and I am still a boy who is happiest while playing in nature. I don't have money to enter many events (even though it is something I would like to do more of) so my running isn't really influenced by races or bragging rights. I run because it makes me happy because of how playful and innocent it is, and because I need to spend some time each day being who I really am, and that is a big kid who likes to go fast in ridiculous terrain. Now that I am older I can say that I still make that playfulness and that adventure part of my daily routine. I truly am lucky to have such a great opportunity to run up and down mountains and trails right outside my doorstep.
The last three summits of Mount Doug were pocked with small victories again. I am finally getting my uphill endurance back and I am running to the summit without power hiking (at least on the first summit) which is awesome. I also added a third summit to the mix today. I know I was only supposed to summit 2 times a day this week but because yesterday didn't allow me to get out I figured throwing in an extra summit today was fine. The third summit was a bit painful but I forged on ahead and made the summit right as sunset on this awesome 55 degree clear sunny day. I am even seeing a few cherry blossoms out hinting at the nearing spring.
All I can think about is running up summits everywhere and I am putting together a list of all the summits I would love to run in the next year or two. I should post mt summit list and see how many I can nail in the next two years.
Music has been important this week and I find that after hours of spreadsheets and diving into my data it is the perfect release from stress that comes from experiments and results that are straying from my hypothesis, and the solutions I need to solve the problems. I have been listening to a lot of poppy and upbeat "springy" songs and groups lately which is quite different than the melancholy music that dominated last month. The other day as I was in the car my wife had left a CD playing with a bunch of different songs on it but the one that was playing when I hopped in was "Running up That Hill" by Placebo which is a remake from the Kate Bush eighties classic. The song has a "chug-a-chug chug-a-chug" type beat that actually feels like you are chugging up a hill. I always have ran to this song whether on my ipod or in my head on my runs I purposely leave the ipod at home, but since I have become obsessed with running up hills this year I found the song only fitting to represent this post. I think Placebo does a great cover-- I like the arrangement and think it has a raw power and emotion to it. It is a great song to slowly run up any hill to. I don't think that Kate Bush had ultramarathoners in mind when she wrote the lyrics but that is what I get out of it so I am sticking with my interpretation. Here is a live Placebo and old school Kate Bush live version.
1 comment:
I wish it was 55 degrees here, though we have had a few days in the 40's the last couple of days and it has felt AMAZING, so I could only imagine 55 degrees. Soon enough right.
That would be really cool to see your list of places you would like to summit as I am sure you would manage to put some serious doozies (spelling??) on that list of yours. Just be careful and don't kill yourself on one of those decents down the mountains. I am SO stoked to start running again and being able to post about them. I have just got to find a way to get past my blasted knee somehow.
By the way you should try to make it down for the 1st annual Layton marathon in October that would be SWEET!
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