Super Sunday

The first Sunday of February rolled around and it seemed prudent to continue my lifelong tradition of completely ignoring the Superbowl. After Beat and I went running at Blue Mountain yesterday, we determined the trail to be in excellent condition for travel of the wheeled variety. We've been so running-focused these past months that he hasn't had too many chances to really try out his Fatback. The Big Boring Game promised a whole afternoon of almost zero traffic on both roads and trails, so we set out for what we decided would be a "short" snow bike ride.

The lower mountain is still coated in ice, necessitating a spiked walk both up and down the first mile of road. Beat also took the opportunity to test out his Big Boots.

We felt relieved that Sunday's chosen mode of travel negated the city's promises of certain death on Blue Mountain. After all, bicycles are much safer than sleds.

Once we got past the glare ice, the trail continued to be intermittently icy and hard-packed. The tread and ski tracks left behind by snowmobiles had frozen into concrete-like ruts, making the riding surprisingly technical at times.

On the plus side, every open field was covered in rideable crust, making for fun diversions from the uphill grind.

The steady climb made us work hard for our miles, and Beat noted that we were consistently making slower time than we had during our run, when we not only lacked the advantage of wheels, but also were dragging ~20-pound sleds. Snow fell steadily throughout the day, and soon the ruts and divots were masked by an inch of fresh powder. I knew the descent was going to be equally slow and tough.

We made it seven miles up the road during our run yesterday, and wanted to see how much farther we could ride today. We passed mile marker 9 before the trail started to become too soft and punchy to ride more than a few yards at a time, about 3.5 hours, 2,500 feet of climbing and 15 miles total into the ride. So much for a short day. The ride down really was difficult — so many ruts and exposed ice that it really was impossible to just let go and coast. Sort of like riding a rocky road where the rocks are covered in really slick mud. But we took it slow and relished in the technical challenge, keeping the spikes on our boots just in case we had to bail.

But it is fun to be way up in the mountains on a snowy February afternoon when most people are stuck inside, gorging themselves with beer and nachos to stave off the pounding boredom that is professional football. I feel bad they had to miss out, but grateful for the silence that allowed me to really enjoy the crunch of fat tires on snow.

And, for comparison's sake, here are the numbers from the Garmin GPS. Running versus snow biking up Blue Mountain:
Saturday Sled Run
Sunday Snow Ride

Winding down

The Susitna 100 is now less than two weeks away. It's hard for me to believe it's suddenly so close. I'm struck by a strong sense of homecoming — of my first return to Alaska since I left the Great Land, of returning to the first part of the Iditarod Trail, and returning to the Susitna 100, the place where all of this really began. In many ways, these feelings seem to trump the fact that, in the midst of all this nostalgia, there is the ridiculous and daunting notion of running 100 miles. I feel strangely at ease with it. In past years, I remember the entire month of February shrouded in all of my dread and anticipation for the unknowns I was knowingly jumping into, head-first. This year is different for some reason. There is comfort in the things I know, and excitement in the unknowns. Unlike my surprisingly unsettling emotions prior to my failed Iditarod attempt in 2009, running the Susitna 100 is not something I feel I "have" to do. It's something I really want to do. I have no idea whether I'm capable of running 100 miles and therefore feel secure in the worthiness of simply trying.

Two weeks also means it's time to begin the official "taper." After Sunday, I'm hoping to spend the next two weeks finalizing my gear and food, resting a bit and riding my snow bike, because I do have to make the transition from 100-mile run to 100-mile snow bike ride in just a little more than a month. As for the White Mountains 100, I also have plenty of reasons to fear that race, but I am hoping my wide cycling base will get me through it — after all, that worked out OK last winter when I spent most of my free time hiking and working on my Tour Divide book, and still managed to survive that brutal cold 21-hour effort without long-term damage (for the most part.) But that's March; there's no time to think about it now. The Susitna 100 is the real deal; for whatever reason, it's the race I focused on.

Today, Beat and I got out for a sled run. This was one was more of a dread run, obligatory because after reworking the gear list we had to get some testing in with our fully-packed sleds, and also because we're still two weeks out and should be doing a bit more training. But I was dreading it because after the deep freeze, Missoula was hit with another thaw. It rained most the day Friday and was supposed to rain again on Saturday. There was nowhere nearby with good snow cover, so we had to settle on the ice-coated Blue Mountain Road. As we started up the slick, hard surface, my sled meandered back and forth behind me a like distracted dog. On top of it all, a very strongly worded sign warned us of the risks of "sledding."

But as we worked our way up the gradual climb, the ice turned to snow, which turned to softer snow. The sun broke through the clouds and heated up the already warm air. It felt like spring, and smelled like a clear mountain stream, with sweet pine and a faint hint of fresh mulch to jolt my senses away from the winter drudgery. The run was slow, hamstring-pulling work, but the warmth and sun made it feel surprisingly light and easy. I felt reluctant to turn around. At mile 6, I persuaded Beat into one more mile. Then at mile 7, only about 2.5 miles from the top, we stood for a while debating whether we should just go for it. But the trail was already quite punchy, becoming steeper, and the afternoon was waning. Plus, we had no intentions to put in a big effort today. Even though I had been dreading this training run, I wished I could find an excuse to keep it going.

But, common sense prevailed. Making it to the fire lookout would have been cool, but I'm satisfied with the effort and happy the run turned out as fun as it did. Sometimes you set yourself up for a slog, and when you discover something entirely different, you almost feel like you cheated somehow.

As the early evening approached, we found ourselves stopping frequently to absorb the changing light, from brilliant whites to soft oranges to deep pinks and reds. In the midst of a burn area, we took a side trip to climb up the mountain for a better view of the Rattlesnake and Mission mountains.

The light really was fantastic. Difficult to capture with any true detail with a point-and-shoot camera, but fun to photograph nonetheless.

Then it was down, down, back down to the ice and freezing temperatures. We ended up running 14.6 miles and about 2,500 feet of elevation gain while tugging our full race kit. It felt strangely easy. I hope this means I'm as ready as I can be for Susitna.

Return of Pugsley

I wanted to go for a ride this evening, but I had a lot of reasons why I should not. It's my last week to train and test running gear before I need to taper for the Susitna 100. It seems lately every time I go for a ride longer than my commute, my angry knee flares up. There wasn't enough new snow to cover up all the glare ice on the trails. I wanted to meet up with my friend Bill for dinner. And I caught a cold; my throat was sore, my ears were clogged and my sinuses were all gummed up. Oh, and it was -6 degrees outside.

But as I prepared for my commute to work, I grabbed my snow bike, Pugsley, anyway. The frigid air slapped me like an angry friend and the wheels seemed glued to the snow. I had neglected to add air to the tires, and they were down to 6 psi or less. I pedaled as hard as I could but still the bike moved like it was towing a truck. I forgot about the cold and concentrated on how much my legs and lungs hurt. My commute to work is 2.5 miles, and flat. "I can't ride tonight like this," I thought.

As the day wore on, I frequently walked past the windows to the courtyard and glanced at Pugsley tethered to a frost-coated pole with a pink cable lock. He looked like a puppy dog waiting patiently for me to come outside. I realized that Pugsley and I hadn't gone for a ride in weeks. In fact, we hadn't gone for a ride since Dec. 31, which meant I had yet to take Pugsley out in the calendar year 2011 - and it's February. Guilt washed over me. Not because I really think my bike has feelings, but because I'm also supposed to be training for the White Mountains 100, which is less than 7 weeks away. "I guess I can muster up some kind of ride tonight," I thought.

The air was calm and cold at 5 p.m., but the sunset cast the mountains in a warm light. Trails were covered in a thin layer of snow, but it was hard-packed and faster than expected. I had aired up the tires and raised the seatpost to counteract my angry knee feeling, and the results were amazing. Instead of grinding along a flat river trail, I was able to power up steep hills and fly along the flats. I wended through the forest on tight singletrack and sweat profusely as I cranked up the soft-packed snow along the upper reaches of the mountain. By the time I reached Mount Sentinel's summit, my balaclava was encased in clear ice and my smile was as wide as the sprawling city lights stretched out in front of me. Behind me await a long descent, fast and frigid and euphorically exhilarating. I had nearly forgotten what that felt like, to coast free.

Oh, Pugsley. Yes I did miss you.

Gear for cold-weather running

(Today on my run: A quick Monday morning jaunt up to South Sentinel Summit. The temperature was -5 degrees with light windchill. I was wearing most of the clothing I'm blogging about today, staying comfortably warm but a little too sweaty. Plus, my hat got soaked. I wonder how that happened?)

“How do you dress to go for a run in the cold?” To me, this is as multilayered a question as “what type of bicycle should I buy?” There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Just asking what the temperature is won’t work. You need to ask whether it’s night or day, and whether there’s wind, what's the wind speed, and which direction is it moving. Is it sunny or overcast? High intensity, mid-intensity or low intensity activity? Packed snow or powder? Is new snow a possibility? Rain? There are really a lot of questions to ask, but I think people often forget what I believe is most important one — how long are you going to be outside?

Certain types of insulating clothing can often protect against a wide range of weather. But there is a monumental difference in a body’s needs when you add time. I can complete my 20-minute bike commute to work when it’s 10 degrees outside wearing only jeans, regular shoes, a cotton hoodie, thin shell, hat and fleece gloves, and still feel fairly comfortable when I arrive at work. But if I was going out for an eight-hour bike ride in 10 degrees, you can bet I’d be encased in fleece and Gortex, with huge winter boots and three layers of socks. If I wore my commuting clothes on an endurance ride, I would probably die. But why is something that’s good enough for 20 minutes not good enough for eight hours?

It’s probably both a simple and complex answer, but I think of it in simple terms. Take a 98.6-degree bottle of water and put it out in the cold. It doesn’t instantly cool down. It takes time, although the rate of cooling accelerates as temperatures become colder. Eventually, the water is going to freeze. Bodies react in a similar way. Humans have the added benefit of thermoregulation, which despite typical cold-weather complaints from our whiny species, actually works very well. Bodies want to maintain homeostasis and will do everything in their power to keep it, from burning up glycogen stores to burning body fat (although this is of course the heat equivalent of burning kindling versus old-growth wet logs. If your bonk in the cold and can’t recover your calorie stores quickly, your risk of hypothermia increases exponentially.)


But the problem remains — bodies start out warm, and because thermoregulation isn’t a perfect system, will eventually cool down over time. Physical activity helps stoke the furnace (like gasoline on kindling.) But even with an unlimited source of calories, muscles and motivation wear down over time, and the body is forced to slow to a more sustainable pace (big logs, slower burn.) Therefore, the practical way to dress for long periods in the cold is to start out as lightly dressed as possible, burn through the kindling, and then add layers to protect the slow burn as the body cools down.

It makes sense in theory, but in practice, I detest the layering and de-layering process on the trail. I like to keep moving, so I tend to start hot, shed an excessive amount of sweat, and then fight for hours to keep my suddenly damp furnace from fizzling out. Simple folk logic dictates that "sweat kills," but it's never a cut-and-dry situation. There are degrees of manageability, especially when sweat gathers and refreezes on the inside of a Gortex shell, where it limits the fabric's (dubious) breathability but otherwise doesn't do much harm. It’s certainly not ideal but I manage to make it work for me most of the time, by favoring moisture-rejecting synthetic layers and vapor barriers. I can wring the warmth out of lightly damp fleece layer for eight or 10 hours, but as I learned last year in the White Mountains 100 and previous Susitna 100s, this doesn’t work so well for 20 hours or more. As time burns on, my body just keeps cooling, and after a while I am just really, really cold.

And again, this is all combatable by adding more layers, of which I am always carrying a few spare. My situation has never been dire, but I am always on the lookout for a system that’s fairly adequate for not only a wide range of temperatures, but also a longer period of time, without changing clothing or starting out too cool and never getting the furnace going in the first place.

Thus, my “one-size-fits-all” Susitna system for a decidedly not-one-size-fits-all world. This is an event that, if I finish, will take at least 30 hours and as many as 48, in temperatures that could range from -40 to +40 degrees, from dry Arctic cold to rain. Temperatures will likely fluctuate ~30 degrees or more during the event, and I'm more likely than not to see some precipitation.

Outdoor Research Gore-tex jacket: In the past few years I have gone from embracing Gore-tex to shunning it to embracing it again. I learned in 2006 that one must have to option of being completely waterproof during the Susitna 100, because it can rain a lot. Also, this jacket accommodates my layering laziness with two hem-to-bicep waterproof zippers, which allow me to essentially turn this jacket into a poncho if I need to do some serious sweat venting without the inconvenience of actually have to take it off. Plus, it blocks wind completely.

Skinfit waterproof pants (I’m just guessing with this link because the Web site is in German): Beat gave these to me after I brought a cheap pair of rain pants on our backpacking trip in Yosemite. They have a full-length zipper, so they can be applied without removing shoes, and the zipper can also aid in venting if needed. Windproof, waterproof, awesome.

North Face Windstopper tights: I bought these large enough to add a layer of microfleece tights underneath if needed. But even at -10 degrees, they provide a lot of warmth and wind protection while still venting moisture fairly well.

Sunice Alana Fleece Pullover: I won’t start out wearing this layer unless temperatures are quite cold, but it will offer the option for quick and effective insulation during slower-burn periods.

Underarmor Evo base layer: I’ve been using these shirts on a regular basis for three years, ever since my youngest sister bought me one as a birthday present at Nordstrom’s. It's always strange to receive a favorite piece of gear from your fashion-conscious sister, I don’t see any reason to change now.

Vasque Mercury Gore-tex shoes: Feet are warm and snow is cold, which can lead to melted snow and wet shoes and cold feet. Thus the waterproof shoes. I got a women's size 10 — 1.5 sizes too large — to accomodate lots of insulating socks. Comfortable and warm.

RBH Designs insulated VaprThrm socks: A full vapor barrier retains heat and moisture to keep shoes dry and feet warm. It's impossible to fully expel moisture in these kinds of conditions, so it's best to keep it contained.

Drymax socks: I realize that 100 miles of anything is going to wreck feet, and the only way to mitigate this is to keep them dry. Since the vapor barrier socks combined with Gore-tex shoes will retain most of the sweat moisture, I'm hoping Drymax will help hold it away from skin. I know there will be moisture against my skin, but in all of my testing, so far, so good. I will carry several of these so I can change frequently, as well as polar fleece and wool socks as backup insulation layers. Can't be too careful with feet. Blisters suck but frostbite is worse.

Mountain Hardware Microdome Beanie: I like this hat. It's warm and it doesn't make me deaf like my other Windstopper hat.

Pieces of gear I haven't yet dialed in exactly yet are a down coat, knee-length waterproof hiking gaters, several pairs of liner gloves, mitten shells, light balaclava, neoprene face mask, heavyweight balaclava, goggles, and the big one — a hydration system. I'm going to play with a few more options before I dial that one in. But the preparation is half the fun! (Not really, but I tell myself this because otherwise I have a bad habit of cobbling stuff together and hoping it works out. This is why I commute to work in cotton hoodies.)

This weekend on my run

My last blog post probably made it sound like the Susitna 100 is the most dreary race in the world and I'm training for it in the most dreary way possible. The truth is, I don't believe that in the least. The only reason I race is so I have a valid — or at least good — excuse to train, all the time. A couple of weeks ago, I read an article in Time Magazine about a scientist who is working to develop a pill that gives mammals all the benefits of exercise without actually having to go to the trouble of exercising. I asked myself if I would take such a pill, and decided with confidence that I would not. In all honesty, the supposed benefits of exercise fall far behind the simple fun of pursuing an active-adventure lifestyle. I mean, really, how many adults have an "excuse" to strap a 20-pound sled to their hips and press into blinding white-out with illusions of Shackleton and South Pole exploration swirling through their endorphin-buzzed imaginations, and not be labeled as crazy?

I was busy all day Friday with work obligations, so there was only time to squeeze in an 80-minute run up the south summit of Sentinel at sunset. Missoula has been mired in a prolonged January thaw, which completely decimated the snowpack. Most of our run to 5,100 feet elevation was on mud and ice-crusted dirt. The temperature was 43 degrees. It wasn't California warm, but it wasn't Montana cold. It was this strange, in between place that made me think a lot about spring.

It didn't help that it looked like early spring, with warm light reflecting off snowy peaks that seemed impossibly far away.

On Saturday we wanted to do a test run with our sleds, so we had to go looking for snow. Lolo Pass crosses the Montana-Idaho border along the Bitterroot Divide, and is notorious for capturing snow. It's only an hour away from Missoula and yet I've never been there, another sign that I don't really travel locally in Montana. We eschewed the popular cross-country ski trails for a nearby Forest Service Road with what turned out to be minimal snowmobile traffic.

The "run" was amazingly difficult for me. The surface was soft and we were climbing at a rate of about 500 feet a mile. With every step my quads and hip flexers burned, like I was doing an endless series of squats, or walking through deep sand with weights attached to each ankle. Despite warnings that Lolo Pass would be crawling with snowmobiles, we were the only ones who had cut tracks in the trail since the storm, and only saw one group of snowmobilers in the entire four hours we were out, right near the end.

The road cut through several clear-cut areas. The thick fog and blowing snow created a bewilderingly blank moonscape. When I wasn't grumbling to myself about my wimpy muscles or obsessing about pizza and coffee, I lived out my Shackleton dreams.

On Sunday, the snow found us. A blizzard hit the Missoula area, turning our nice brown lawns and dirt-covered trails into new sheets of white. We waited around all morning in hopes the weather would clear up. When it didn't, we reluctantly left the house at 2:30 p.m. for our favorite Sentinel Loop. The first two miles felt downright dire, with heavy snow blowing right in our face and constant stops to adjust gear as the subzero windchill needled into our clothing.

I'm getting pretty close to zeroing in on what I'm going to wear in the Susitna 100 — weather dependent, of course — but it's pretty light given what I'm used to (on a bicycle, I feel a need to wear a lot more layers.) Today it was just a light polyester shirt, a light Gortex shell, a single pair of windstopper tights, a fleece balaclava, fleece gloves, a polypro liner sock, a wool sock, hiking gaters, and Gortex running shoes.

The storm cleared up ever so briefly and a few suckerholes appeared, giving much cause for celebration.

The trail surface was really slippery, with fresh power on top of a solid sheet of glare ice. Beat proclaimed his micro-spikes to be his favorite piece of winter gear, though with my too-light fleece gloves I was greedily eyeing the mitten shells dangling from his wrists.

Top of Mount Sentinel, trying to choke down food before the chill really set in. In this kind of "training," miles count for very little. It's all about gauging conditions, making good choices, staying warm and fed, and when all of that has been completed, maybe marginally increasing fitness. We ran 13.5 miles in just under four hours, which is only a little bit less time than it took me to run a full hilly trail marathon last week in the Pacifica 50K. Today's run was harder, and more satisfying. I love training.

Training for tedium

This has become a weekday routine for me, the Rattlesnake Corridor, dragging a heavy sled that sounds like a far-away airplane as it grinds over the icy snow, punching footprints in the soft slush until my legs sink to my knees and I can hardly move anymore. This forced stopping point always happens at nearly the same distance, 5.5 miles. I leave at 5:30 p.m. under the last gray streaks of what feels like hard-earned January daylight, which fades imperceptibly to dark gray and then black above the thick tree canopy. At first I can run "fast" at nearly 6 mph but as the trail deteriorates I "run harder" for a quad-and-hamstring-burning 3.5 or 4 mph, and then, as most trail use fades, finally a full-calf-and-ankle-shredding-1.5 mph slog.

It is the most tedious three-hour workout I have ever done. There is nothing to see but a dim circle of white light on the punchy snow, or the dull orange glow of distant city lights against the clouds. The narrow canyon and thick trees choke the landscape in two-dimensional shadows. The drag of my sled drowns out the otherwise eerie silence. Sometimes I fantasize about more engaging workouts I have done, like running on a treadmill at my old Juneau gym while Fox News blared on the television screen. But most of the time my mind succumbs to the numbness of complete boredom. The Corridor follows a gradual incline up the canyon, but the trail conditions are so difficult that I might as well put the effort into climbing a mountain. Unlike a mountain, there is no reward at the end of the Corridor, only a point where I have to stop because I can't move anymore. I turn off my headlamp and squint into the night — only the faint outline of mountains, trees, and more shadows. Then I turn around, and it takes the same amount of time to run back, even though it's downhill.

I detest the Corridor workout, dread it, and yet I go back. Why? There is much about the Susitna 100 that I can't train for, but there is one area where I truly believe preparedness counts the most — the mental game. I have my reasons why I believe running the Susitna 100 will be a truly rewarding experience, even though I don't know yet what those rewards will entail. But there's one thing I know for sure — the Susitna 100 is going to be tedious. Amazingly, mind-numbingly tedious. I look forward to the physical challenge, the beauty of Alaska and sharing such a deep emotional experience with my boyfriend and friends. But I know at some point it's going to be 3 a.m. or 7 a.m. or 8 p.m. and I'm going to be shuffling along the Yentna River, breathing through the thick frost crusted through my face mask. All I will hear is the infernal grinding of my sled, and all I will see is the faint island of light from my headlamp, the muted gray slate of the frozen river and the two-dimensional shadows of trees along a too-far-distant horizon.

And when that time comes, I'm going to be ready. My mind will shift back to these training runs — the wet, cold feet and knee-deep slush — and I'll say to myself, "At least I'm not in the Corridor."

Footprints

When I was a senior at the University of Utah back in 2000, I carried a full course load in English and journalism, worked 25 hours a week at a retail art supply store, and burned 20 more hours a week as a reporter for the Daily Utah Chronicle. With whatever free time I had left — minimal at best — I was fairly active in environmental causes. I contributed to the Terra Firma Club and campus recycling projects. I traveled to Southern Utah to document ATV abuse in wilderness study areas. I helped drag deadfall over illegal trails. I researched the destructive influences of the beef industry on the Utah desert. I campaigned against the Legacy Highway. And every Wednesday afternoon — my only day off work — I planted trees with Vaughn Lovejoy.

Vaughn Lovejoy is the founder of Tree Utah. In the spring of 2000, his big project was planting native species in the riparian zone of the Jordan River near 106th South. It was one of the few patches of land left in the Salt Lake Valley that hadn’t been consumed by suburban development, although the condos were encroaching fast. During one particularly warm day in April, we labored for four hours until my clothing was drenched in sweat and my hands riddled with blisters. I looked up at the new condo project going up near the freeway and casually asked Vaughn if the meadow we were re-greening was definitely going to be preserved from future development.

“I don’t know that,” Vaughn said. “The city says it is, but that may change in the future.”

“Do you think it will change?”

He looked thoughtfully toward the glistening steel beams. “Yes, I think it’s likely. Probably sooner than later.”

My 20-year-old idealism and four-hour-old blisters bristled with indignation. “Then why even bother planting trees here, if they’re just going to bulldoze them in a few years?”

Vaughn turned his thoughtful gaze toward me. I had always viewed him simply as an aging hippy, with a long white pony tail, an infectious smile and funny stories about his communal living situation, who was perhaps a little cut off from “real life” but intelligent and fun-loving. But the look in his eyes — suddenly serious and sad, but with moist flecks of joy — indicated that he was about to impart some deeper wisdom about life. I gripped my shovel tighter and listened. (And forgive me if this is biologically inaccurate or oversimplified. I’m trying to recall a conversation from 11 years ago.)

“Billions of years ago, back in the primordial soup, the Proterozoic Era, the dominant life forms were cyanobacteria," Vaughn said. "Cyanobacteria photosynthesized sunlight and produced oxygen as a waste product. Pretty soon oxygen proliferated in the atmosphere. The environment was toxic for the primitive bacteria, but it made way for all other life forms on Earth.”

Vaughn pointed to the condos and smiled. “I used to feel sadness for the path humanity is on, but now I wonder. What will this destruction we’ve wrought give way to? It will likely be disastrous for humans, but perhaps a brilliant evolutionary leap for life on Earth. What will the future look like? I don’t know, of course. But I do know that the universe will go on. With or without us, it will go on.”

I looked back toward our rows of tiny oxygen-producing trees. “I understand what you mean,” I said. “But that doesn’t really explain why you would choose to plant trees. I mean, if pollution and climate change are a kind of progress, in a way, wouldn’t planting trees go against that?”

Vaughn’s gaze turned playful again. “I love trees,” he said. “I love being out here, in the fresh air, in the sunshine, working with young people, planting trees. It’s what I love to do. It makes me happy, it makes other people happy, and maybe it will help prolong my fellow humans’ time on Earth just a little bit longer or make it a little bit better. It is a wonderful way to spend a life.”

That conversation with Vaughn Lovejoy was the catalyst for a shift in my views on environmentalism during the past decade. Yes, I still think conservation is important. So is environmental awareness, healthy habits and respectful stewardship. Because this generation, my generation, and the several that will follow need open space and clean air and nutritious food and water. But in other ways, I have, like Vaughn, come to accept a sort of eco-nihilism. What we’re doing to save the Earth from ourselves is just too little, too late.

Take everything we’re doing — the recycling, the cleaner energy sources, the efforts to preserve tiny tracts of still-natural lands — and really put it in context. Think about population growth, the developing world, and the energy needed to fuel the current rate of expansion. Spread it out in a big picture. Recycling’s not even going to make a dent, and neither are bio-fuels or technological innovations that make our consumption mere fractions of a percent more efficient. The only changes that matter are going to have to be quite drastic — as Beat likes to say, “Get fusion working. Only solution.” Only a truly impact-free energy source can spark the meaningful change the world needs to return to the way it was. Otherwise, I truly believe, we’re just planting trees in front of bulldozers.

But I also believe that shouldn’t stop us from living our lives in a meaningful, respectful way. I still recycle and contribute to conversation efforts and try to reduce my own footprint as much as possible. But I recognize that footprint is there. I’m not going to take it away by refusing to live my life. That’s why I always feel a little bit sad when I read well-meaning urgings to minimize environmental impact by minimizing activities, such as this quote from Dakota Jones, who wrote “The Oversized Footprint of Ultrarunning” on irunfar.com: “While our sport continues to grow at an unbelievable rate – while thousands more people every year realize that running 50 or 100 miles is not only possible but also fun – so our trails become crowded and our air degraded. Nobody hurts the environment with that purpose in mind, but our means of enjoying the wild places we love is killing them.”

Killing them? Really? Yes, races produce a negligible amount of waste and usually cause small amounts of trail damage. And of course many people travel to races by means of fossil-fuel- burning modes of transportation. And there are shoes, bicycles and other pieces of gear that need to be manufactured and shipped. But put that in context. There are no hard numbers for trail running or mountain biking. But in 2009, there were 41,000 Ironman finishers worldwide. In 2007, there were 400,000 marathon finishers in the United States. Regular trail runners probably number less than 200,000, and long-distance trail runners possibly less than 20,000. The potential for significant negative impact in a world of 6 billion humans is so small it’s laughable, and yet here we are, encouraging fellow outdoor enthusiasts to stay home.

In Dakota’s defense, he did encourage runners to keep running and take small steps to reduce impact, but the sentiment still lingers in his article — this idea that runners are hurting the mountains. Or cyclists. Or anyone who truly appreciates the environment as it stands, today, amid the pollution and climate change, for what it is — a beautiful place, a beautiful moment, that makes people happy. I don’t know what the world will become in the future, but I do sometimes think about Vaughn, his trees, and his serene smile toward that row of condos. I think of doing the things that make me and the people I know and love happy, while I’m alive.

As the poet Mary Oliver wrote,

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life.”