Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations. ~ Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux Chief
This spectacular quote is from a race of humanity which then was at the pinnacle of their nature. Certainly, those who have survived as the generations of the Native American are no less noble, yet they have unjustly suffered the hand of poor government and the greed of modern man. Their race of men left so much guiding richness of the way ‘of truth, honesty, generosity, equity and brotherhood’. Still today, I am sure they strive for the effects of these principles. Recently when I have been running in the wild, I have been out catching humanity… catching and collecting artifacts that have rested in this land through ages untold. These are the last evidence of the Great Tribes and People who once knew the land as we strive to experience in distance running.
When I run, I am out catching their humanity because they did not simply enjoy nature and use it for the good of their families… they felt themselves to be a part of nature. INDEED WE ARE! We have always been an intimate part of the elemental experience, just as they knew so well for thousands of years. However, we have found a course of life which ceases to demand of us the “need” to know and understand nature. Now sadly nature has become foreign to modern man, and we associate “wildness” with evil and darkness, when “wildness” is the light of this world.
As long distance runners we have been designed for the wildness the Native Americans knew so intimately. In our modernity a famed writer even said, “In wildness is the preservation of the world”. (Thoreau) So! I often run off, catching humanity and the trace of these people under my feet! I go out after their tools of provision, but more, after the representation of their lives. Traces of their race left in stone to remind me. I go out after the beauty of their nobility through the soil and through the waters, after the principles of their people. I go with the hope of understanding their nomadic life with my own feet and motion. I go hoping to catch a glimpse of the way they merged with the earth, flowed with the water and rode the wind.
Through my running days in wind, rain, cold and heat, I wonder… what did they see different through their eyes in these passing millennium? How did they feel differently covering miles just as I? They ran because it was who they were, and what they needed… they gathered, hunted and lived in love. They understood the brevity of life, when we have been the ones who TRY to make it last forever.
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath
of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~ Eagle Chief (Letakos-Lesa) Pawnee
of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~ Eagle Chief (Letakos-Lesa) Pawnee
We run their land! RUN FOR SOMETHING! Cheers, HD Runners!
