RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

That which was once lost...

Now found

A memory long forgotten...

Now collected

Life touches life.

~ BH

In this pressing world of digital communication and electronic contact, we have still had the "other" things which have needed our attention.  LIFE!  Our loved ones, our hopes & ambitions and the many every day things which make up our life-way... jobs, hobbies and play!  Time clicks forward and months take the place of weeks.  I have been away too long!  As for Holistic distance running!??!  Let's take a look!

 

Well, I have been covering the land the ground running upwards of 250 miles a month, so a continued turn to a closer look at areas has been natural!  After many great "finds" I will never again simply “run the white line”!  Sure I ran the road this past week in Concord.  It was about 28 degrees... it was cold!  I was forced to run the roads being a complete stranger there!!!   Anyway, finding & collecting Indian Artifacts would not come into my consciousness until the very end of 2011!!!  Now before back-tracking to lay out the desire to collect... combined with the love for distance running, I will also share this:  I have covered the land/roads all around my home, now representing some 44 prime artifact sites for nine years… through seasons and seasons of agriculture and good conditions… where all I would have had to do was venture more off road and find something!  This was some 18,000 miles – AND DIDN’T KNOW TO COLLECT!!!  It just did not dawn on me! 

NOW the “setting” as to what got me interested and why I connect with collecting!  The understanding of the plight and life of Native Americans since European contact has contributed greatly in my desire to save the evidence of their heritage.  Nomadic by nature, the Indian tribes were a unique and awesome example to minimalist ability!  ALSO, since recent (last two years) in-depth pre-Columbian North American Indian studies, I have only grown more fascinated, more devotional and more happy to find the evidence of their life.  More in a second…  A favorite quote I often read says it best, “The desert winds would salt their ruins and there would be nothing, no spirit or scribe, to tell any pilgrim in his passing how it was that people had lived in this place and in this place had died.”  ~ Cormack McCarthy 

I opened Indian Trace. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtPsjWl4n0dO06oFwIAjy-A/videos) last week!  The video documentaries increase in quality and the criteria of the artifacts through the progression of entries. I never expected to even make them public… I thought the evidence might one day be precious to someone… a loved one or not.  For the last year my requirement to myself in documenting were simple… keep the video under two minutes, and ONLY film with significant, full artifacts.  Of course the mileages I cover as a distance runner contribute heavily to this success. 

Okay!  As to the roots of my heart’s hunger to represent the Indians before us!  I call the Indian’s the Majority Race.  From a day about two years ago when I accidentally ran across a crystal arrowhead, all my life & studies confirmed a new set of possibilities!  Here is how it sets up easy: I moved to live directly with the Navajo Indians in NM through 4/5^th grade… and then back to Upstate NY; through this exposure and through influences of my parents social consciousness for the plight of the Native American, I always had an initial interest in their social welfare.  Soon after graduate school and becoming a History & Civics teacher (of middle & high school) I began serious study moving back through the Indian Wars and through European contact beginning in 1200AD-1500AD; you can now imagine as I made the discovery of tangible pre-Columbian evidence in the arrowheads I have now!!!  Of course my pre-Columbian studies took off!    

In conclusion!!  I am sad for the state of affairs and what has happen through untold ages of human history with respects to all Nations… greed and selfishness have readily often spun into hate and then genocide.  Here in the United States it was all unavoidable… human nature aside from God is weak.  The collision of the wild, precious, expressive, creative and instinctive Indian Tribes {inherently hunter gatherers}, met people groups steeped in religion, ideology and greed.  There were not just hundreds of years of difference in our respective “life-ways”, yet multiplied thousands of years difference!!  It is hard to imagine such a thing!  Because the realities of our North American history are so rich and mind-blowing, I feel I help myself honor and cherish their memory with so many holistic distance running efforts, and why not collect the evidence of their lives too!  

Connected By Sociology

How we have all been socialized! Every eye which now reads these words, every runner which keep a regular practice, every social habit, good or bad; we are all a product of our environment. In this truth there is no alternative, no other way of development - for every human is a unique design with highly impressionable social capacity. In all the people this world holds, different social and cultural groups, there are common social traits that do connect us all. There is a Designed, Universal Consciousness. The distance runner runs to celebrate these exact connections woven into the fabric of our social Identity. The holistic distance runner naturally reflects on the greater humanity when running, while someone running for mere fitness or social benefit runs with their ego in mind.

Most mature distance runners employ their running as a tool to broaden their capacities. Most Master distance runners employ running as a method of becoming more of a human being. Though the latter is seldom practiced for selfish reasons. You see, Holistic Distance Running carries a price with it far too costly for the novice... an effort to ardent. Distance running is primarily a "self" sacrificing practice. Yes, there are satisfactions and a sense of accomplishment, but they are not at all natural. The established distance runner is such a rarity because it removes a person from superficiality. The physiological demands of distance running are always very broad, and never a two the same. Distance running is indeed a social practice in and on every continent of the world... though in a post modern world it is a choice and not a life demand. It can be a "hobby" and not a matter of life or death.

To be connected by Universal sociology in upholding the simplicity of the running life is a great inclusion of one’s personhood to humanity. For we all are designed for motion. The majority of the world’s population naturally employs traveling distances on foot as an inseparable part of their social fabric. Traveling great distance on foot daily is common. Indeed humanity in these demands is unable; as we so readily do; to separate themselves in their activities. They live fully; spirit, mind and body; being unable to leave off any part of themselves for their own daily need. 

THE GREAT EGO KILLER

When given an acceptable heart; that Universal spiritual awareness that every man has; the holistic distance runner chooses what they believe to be the greater good in confrontation: Daily facing their real and perceived potential. In most every case our “real” potential is hidden behind presumption, socialization and culture. The potential “presumed” is nothing more than a slight pulling force towards a desired actuality. So, in every quest outward there stands a ready ego killer fronting the distance runner with human limitation.

However, most distance runners will never get to the real “walls” erected by our genetic potential. Why won’t these many distance runners reach their genetic potential? Lack of vision, understanding and intelligence. We are confronted with the vital reality of these each time when we set off down the road. Why a “regular” or “normal” person would dare continually subject themselves to such a vivid glimpse of themselves. This is precisely my point, the holistic distance runner if firstly not “regular”. Secondly, it is the distance runners cardinal duty to face themselves, their conceptions, ignorance’s and lack of vision. It is duty to grow as human beings.

Moving forward one can clearly see that distance running will regularly and consistently acquaint the practitioner with experience. Volumes of experience! As we have inevitably crossed paths with in our own running lives, we have experience with failure, experience with unaccomplished goals and experience with confronting our limitations. It is not that these experiences have been blissful or pleasurable; it is they are vital bridges to personal fulfillment. These experiences will be intimate, unavoidable facts in every distance running life.  Now here is the question... How do you think Christopher here below confronted his ego?