OUT CATCHING HUMANITY

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

We run their land!  RUN FOR SOMETHING!   Cheers, HD Runners!

ANCIENT DAYS, RUNNING WAYS

An Oglala Sioux named Brooke Medicine Eagle once said, “Being Indian is an attitude, a state of mind, a way of being in harmony with all things and all beings. It is allowing the heart to be the distributor of energy on this planet; to allow feelings and sensitivities to determine where energy goes; bringing aliveness up from the Earth and from the Sky, putting it in and giving it out from the heart.”   It seems there is now no question at all of our ambition as long distance runners seems to revolve around these thoughts.

It would be safe to say that through recent days I have been thinking about what people; such as you and I; were up to on the same land we run.  That is, what the people of ancient days were up to, and how they lived.  I wonder how their need which circled around a nomadic lifestyle has translated through time to the need which exists within our own distance running blood.  Efficiency has never been something new, and never been something which has gone out of style.  The items above are items I have recently found while running in woodland near my home!

Artifacts, such as these, fuel an internal fire to unify my nomadic design… to explore our commonality as human beings.  Even more than finding these historic “tools”, the very knowledge of their location and the evidence of Native American being, thrusts my consciousness into a shared existence as I run through the NC woodland. 

The land you and I run, and the earth we cover, has always been shared… or should have been.  The land we know was well set with human life and design far before this post-modern society now.  These people were in every respect, just as we are… possibly much more simple.  Tribes were nomadic and traveling long distances afoot was second nature.  They were loving, caring, industrious, creative, noble and intelligent.  Here in the States they were the Native Americans… and they were long distance runners! 

Now I run better through these woods I know and through the trails I sift along.  For these people have been here before I.  They were under our feet before we acknowledge them, and lived with such great effect!  They had balance and order and passion for life as they lived it.  They even had true and noble example for post-modern man.  Yes, they had no industry, no “might" and possessed no technology in comparison… yet these are NOT they which make a man!

A man is made beautiful by his own expression of living and NEVER by the greatness of his possessions.   

So, let’s remember together the feet which have run the land we run and the lives that have passed this way before us.  Together we can embrace the humility required to explore and admire the expression of their lives… if for only one reason: they found the essence to sustain their lives and culture, with beautiful balance and surviving order, for multiplied thousands of years!  In contrast, we have now ourselves to face most dire struggle, disunity, human despair,  unrestrained hatred and greed… all in the modern space of two to three hundred years!  Ouch!

There is something great to be gained in the study of good peoples’ lives.  Running this land, as the Native Americans did, is my beginning.  Distance running is a celebration of our primitive design.  Doing so with heart and thought… with empathy… is an enhancement to our humanity.  Now go and cover your land with joy and with LIFE!

Consistency of LIFE & RUNNING

I believe we all think about the improvement of life quite a bit... especially the distance runners.  However, the nature of someone who favors holistic distance running is to not ONLY to "think" about improvement in life or in running, yet to within their running expression, ACT towards seeing improvement come to pass!  These two quotes from Leo Tolstoy's, The Law of Love, will be great to join the following thoughts...

If only instead of wishing to save the world, people looked to save themselves, to liberate themselves rather than humanity, they would be doing so much more for the salvation of the world and the freedom of humanity. ~ Herzen

In both personal and public life there is only one law: if you wish to improve life, be prepared to sacrifice it. ~ UA

It is amazing to me how much time the average distance runner thinks about the days they get to run... the consistency of their running... even how many days they might have been consecutively running.  I believe part of this drive and desire for consistency is rooted in our hunger for improvement.  It is natural.  But what does the holistic distance runner look to improve MOST?  Certainly our running efficiency, yes... but more-so and more honorably, OUR HUMANITY.  Ego aside.  

Sure, we have our devotions to distance running and they are ardent and thorough, but while employing all the means needed to deliver us again and again to the trail and road, we also concede to the revolution of our own humanity.  We all should remember the words of the late Dr. George Sheehan, "Running has made this new me.  Taken the raw material and honed it and delivered it back ready to do the work of a human being".  Indeed!  His book Running and Being was a first in the exploration of holistic aspects in distance running!  We need not let that go!

There is a fantastic quality I look to encourage in distance runners as often as possible... their independent, consistent pressure 'to liberate themselves rather than humanity'.  That is their non-need to change others!  With the consistency we love and desire, in covering miles on foot, we are usually also in pursuit of the continual internal revolution which is inseparable from such efforts.  Distance running is indeed a type of sacrifice, often such a COMPLETE sacrifice, and our desire to improve life for ourselves and for others, often begins with THIS sacrifice!  And it is as simple as one foot in front of the other!  Cheers HD Runners!