Racing Waves

The first cross country race I ever participated in was a 3km run when I was in grade three or four. I was nine, maybe ten years old.

I remember training for the race several days a week that fall, the sun just up, the crisp Northern Ontario mornings biting into lungs and legs as a handful of classmates and I plodded through Jack pine forests and through frozen wetlands. Some mornings in the shower after those runs our legs bled where blades of grass like razors had left their mark.

I finished in the middle of the pack for that race, both on my team, and for the event.

The next race I competed in with this past June. Time lapse: twenty seven years, give or take a year.

It was the Mount Doug Gut Buster. A hot June day, the race was on my home turf, a hill I’ve run over at least five hundred times since moving to Victoria a few years ago. At eleven kilometers, with three accents and descents of the bulbous dome, it was a grind, and the heat left me sapped. I came in sixty ninth of one hundred and twenty runners.

Middle of the pack again.

I can’t say that the Mount Doug race was fun while I was running it. It was hard. I remember that while dragging myself along the back stretch, through dark trees towards the finish, someone said to me “pick it up!” She told me saying that was easier than passing me, which she eventually did. I simply couldn’t run any faster. I passed out that afternoon while my two sons bounced on me.

Over the weekend I ran in my fourth race ever, my third of the season. (I ran the Royal Victoria 8K in October as a last minute “something-to-do-on-a-Sunday” sort of thing.)

This past weekend was the Gunner Shaw Classic Cross Country Race at Thetis Lake. The location is another favorite place of mine to run, with winding trails that zig zag up oak dotted hills and down through dark, lichen strewn woods. The Gunner Shaw has a reputation as being a bit of a tough race with a rather unnecessary, but interesting, splash through a thigh deep swamp at its mid point. This plunge, aside from reeking of fetid algae, provides the added bonus of turning the legs into blocks of cement.

The final dash to the finish is through the foreshore of the Thetis Lake beach, which starts out at nearly crotch depth, and ends calf deep. Some sprint to the finish. Several people took a dive.

I finished in the middle of the pack – 205th of 460 - running the 9km race in 45 minutes. Josh reminded me that the Gunner Shaw attracts a pretty tough field: there were several Olympic athletes in the race. It was won in just over 30 minutes.

I was grumpy all afternoon, failing, I think, to properly dehydrate and replenish the system afterwards. Instead I jumped right back into single parenting.

My grouchy state was also because I didn’t feel I ran as well as I might have. I felt drained of energy before I even got started!

While running I kept pulling myself back to the here and the now, repeating over and over: “Where am I? Right here. What time is it? Right now. What am I? This moment.” But inevitably, as the weariness crept in, my mind drifted.

I forgot that I was running in a favorite place. I forgot that when I get tired while running I try to pull energy in from the rocks, the trees, and the water. I take what I can get. Instead I just tried to concentrate on being nice to people. I'm really not much of a competator: when I hear someone coming up behind me (often) I make sure they have room to pass and tell them they're doing great as they go by. Its about the phun.

On Sunday the boyz and I ventured out to Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site. Only a few minutes from town, we’d never been. Silas is obsessed with Lighthouses’ these days, though I don’t know that he’s ever seen anything larger than a navigation buoy. Fisgard was the first lighthouse built on Canada’s west coast, and was operational for 100 years unitl the mid 1950s. Its on the same site is Fort Rodd Hill Naitonal Historic Site, which served as part of the defensive system for the Esquimalt Naval Base through World War Two. It’s a pretty cool place for two little boys and their dad to spend an afternoon.




We visited the Lighthouse, which was lovely and immaculate and well presented by Parks Canada, and the boys dutifully posed for a picture, and I think Silas’ was pretty impressed. But all Rio wanted to do was go to the beach, which is hard for me to argue with, so we did.




There I cracked open a thermos of tea (I did wish that it was hot chocolate and Irish Cream for a moment) while Silas collected shells and Rio raced back and forth along the shore.

His running was so completely free. He would stand on a log along the tide line and as the small waves washed over the gravel, he would launch himself along the beach, jumping and laughing as he always does when we are at the sea shore. Its one of the things I love most about this dear, beautiful child, and there are many, many things I love.




When he stopped to catch his breath I asked him what he was doing? “Racing waves,” he replied matter-of-factly.

“What for?”

“Its for my exercises,” he said.

“Is it fun?”

He simply nodded.

“Do you ever win?” I asked.

“I always win,” he said, his pants wet to his knees, his boots sloshing with salt water.

And off he ran again.

I can’t wait until he and I run together through the woods. And we won’t be racing the clock, or each other, but simply racing for life, racing the trees that blur past, racing the waves, racing the spinning earth. At East Sooke Park we’ve run along the sandy foreshore for hours, jumping logs and dodging boulders and getting our feet soaked and laughing like fools. It’s the purest expression of running I know. Its freedom incarnate. Its joy. Its bliss.

We take a break from running for a snack. Rio finds a rock that he brings to my attention. I asked the boyz to find something beautiful that we can bring to Jenn, whom I love deeply and profoundly, and who will arrive in Victoria in a few short days. We always try to find something beautiful for her when she isn’t here. Beach glass, heart shaped stones, something lost overboard far out to sea. Today it’s a lovely russet coloured rock with green stripes. We take a picture of us with it to send to her.



What I found that was beautiful on that beach that day was a reminder of why I run. I’ve only recently enjoyed (the aftermath of) racing. For much of the last few years running has simply been the way I dissolve myself into the splendor of nature; to feel with my body the reality that I am nothing more than nature moving through itself. To let my heart and head have some time to do their work without my constant intrusions; to let my body do what comes most naturally – be completely free.

Eleven Skies

Its starting to sink in. I can relax into being loved. I can let go of my fear, my apprehension, my jealously. I can accept that I deserve this. I deserve to feel this good. I can trust myself: I won’t blow this because I think that I don’t merit feeling so adored. And I can get comfortable with vulnerability and uncertainty -- it will always remain -- and simply accept that these questions enhance, rather than detract, from the experience of loving, and being loved.

This week it's been a story told under eleven skies.

First Sky: Victoria, the mottled cloud cover, dappled autumn leaves, rain. Under this sky I walk up the ramp and board a flight to Alberta. Its only been a week since my lover left, but it feels like a month; a year.

Second Sky: Above the clouds, the Rockies hidden below, glimpses of familiar ridge lines I’ve walked in a previous life time. Poetry. Longing.

Third Sky: Calgary, my lover greets me at the airport. Time is suspended in her eyes when I see her. I can’t say a word, but only kiss her face, her eyes, her mouth. We embarrass people in the parking lot.

Fourth Sky: the Bow Valley. It was home for fourteen years, so familiar, but so strange. The last time I was here was one of the most painful days of my life. Now, its just mountains and forests; at once so familiar and yet so foreign. And its where my lover lives, so its also paradise.

Fifth Sky: Day Two. Breakfast in Banff at three in the afternoon.

Sixth Sky: driving up the darkening valley we let fear and jealously and guilt creep into our hearts. Darkness falls early. Hell, we just ate breakfast! But the days are so short. Its so easy almost all of the time, but when its not, its really frightening. I fear the fear. I don’t want to feel this after so many months of vulnerability. But with the open heart comes tiny wounds, healed swiftly by loving hands.

Seventh Sky: We practice retail therapy in Lake Louise. Visit friends. Drive back down valley in the darkness. I forgot about snow squalls.

Eighth Sky: Harvie Heights, where I lived for six years: we delight in the carved stone of Fairholme Canyon, its polished walls pocked with fossils, its bends and plunge pools and narrow slit of sky like the embrace of an old friend. New love, my last love, here now in my arms.

Ninth Sky: Too swiftly our last evening comes, and under a fat moon we curl into one another. I don’t want to leave. I just found you! I just found you, I want to cry. That very morning I burst into tears at the joy of this discovery. The following morning the sun rises over the tentacles of the city as we drive towards the airport. Its like time stands still when we are in each other’s company. Its so damned easy.

Tenth Sky: The moment I step through security I want to turn around and run back. I feel the lump in my throat and the ache that starts in my heart and seeks a place to end. Then Vancouver, where I work with a client, and then….

Eleventh Sky: Victoria. Under a powder blue sky I fly home and await the arrival of Rio and Silas. How I wished that I was walking through the door to the sound of ice cubes chiming their happy song in a glass, and her arms thrown around me. Love, bottomless.

We go to bed early, and by 8:30 I am drifting in and out of sleep, moving between Silas’ and Rio’s beds. Rio asks me to massage has back, and gives detailed instructions on what he likes: “Now make your fingers tickle me,” he asks. I feel his body slacken as sleep settles over him. I smile at him and point to the ceiling, the meaning understood between the boy and the man: I love you as big as the sky. Then he says, his eyes closed, “I love you as big as eleven skies,” and I close my eyes too, imagining the vastness of such a love.

A Thousand Normal Things

The half moon crests above Grotto Mountain. The air is crisp – I haven’t felt this kind of air in my lungs for a few years. In the morning I run the trails along the bench lands and mull over the fact that I’m not in as good a shape as I thought I was, and I don’t really care.

Catching up with the world after a few days in hibernation: I look at Asha Hope’s blog. My friend and colleague Will Horter, and his partner Claudia Campbell had a little baby girl on Thursday, born 15 weeks premature, and less than 800 grams in weight. The next few months will be a daily trial for little Hope, and her lovely parents. Looking at the photos on the blog of Asha Hope in her sealed incubator, I couldn’t help but imagine how much Claudia and Will must long to hold her. My lover's arms around me, I close my eyes and say a prayer for her.





Then I checked in with the Facebook page of friends Joel Solomon and Shivon Robinsong. On Wednesday of last week, Shivon gave Joel one of her kidney’s (in a hospital, with Doctors looking on) as his were slowly shutting down, the result of a life long disease that has finally caught up with him. Both are well, buoyed by an outpouring of love, as Shivon’s kidney now pumps away inside Joel.

Out of habit, after visiting Asha Hope’s blog and Joel and Shivon’s Facebook page, I clicked on the Globe and Mail site, and as I was doing so I caught myself thinking: “I wonder if there will be any news about Asha Hope?” Then I shook my head at how asinine a thought that was. There is nothing really important in the news. There is never any report on the thousand normal things that make up each and every one of our days and nights: triumph and tragedy, hope and despair, joy and sorrow, pain and bliss. The magic of life, the ecstasy and wonder of every single moment.

The sun sets behind Mount Rundle. The sky is indigo except where stars prick the tapestry of dusk. Its just another day. Another thousand normal, extraordinary, heart wrenchingly beautiful things.

Faith

“Faith is like a bird that feels dawn breaking, but sings while it is still dark.”

~ Kalil Gibran


Somehow I just believed.

Somehow, despite months of darkness, I knew that there was light.

We knew that there was light.

Early moments: lying on the sand at Botanical beach, the heat of July soaking us, the pockets of water that team with life stretched out towards the rippled horizon. She rests in my arms, her skin under my fingers. Then we’re exploring, she is showing me the secret world of tide pools, places I might otherwise walk past with merely a glance. Its not the life beneath the water that I marvel at, but the life dancing in her eyes.

That’s the moment I fell in love. That very moment.

It was like falling into one of those tide pools. A shock. Unexpected. This wasn’t supposed to happen. But like morning's swift approach, there was no struggling against it.

Early moments: the dizzy delirium of falling. The way she looks at me. Speaks to me. I can feel the love though she can’t say the word. Not yet.

Early moments: racing down the highway, out of Strathcona Park, Moby’s Hotel filling my ears, the windows open, the sun shining in, and I’m going to pick her up on my way to Victoria. Pure delight. Pure light.

In those early moments I saw a lifetime of possibility. This is how I want to feel for the rest of my life.

It was that light, that possibility that helped me, helped us, navigate very troubled waters. The darkest moments before the dawn.

She asked me to believe in her. To trust her. It became my mantra. I would meditate on those words: I trust you; I believe in you.

I believed in us.

I had felt dawn breaking. I knew what dawn felt like. Soft fingertips. Loving eyes. Belief beyond words.

During the darkness I held onto that belief. That trust.

First light came a month ago. It seems like we move in 28 day cycles, she and I.

I had been prepared to let go, forever, if that is what was needed for her to be at peace. Her peace was what I dreamed of, and was prepared to give her, even if it meant goodbye once and for all.

But when she walked through my door, I knew that my faith, my belief, my trust in us had been vindicated. She knew too.

Later that week she said “look at me.” I was already. She said, “really look at me.” And then she told me that she loved me, was in love with me, and that I was the man she didn’t know that she had been searching for her whole life, but had somehow found.

Faith is a bird….

Mornings in her arms. We slip down the Oregon Coast. Become enchanted by sea otter play. Have normal nights. Dream together. Bliss. Watch salmon spawn with my boyz.

It was easy. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was easy to have faith. Despite the darkest of times, the fear, the vulnerability, it was easy to have faith.

We’re not out of the woods yet. There will be many dawns that we must hold our faith through before morning finally comes for good. Maybe morning never really lasts, but like the diurnal rhythm we all share, we simply pass through mornings and nights over and over, believing, trusting, and falling more deeply in love.