Away We Go: Finding the Backtrack

I am lost.

I’m on my morning run and this campground has trails; always take the trail, says a whisper from Robert Frost. At the top of the hill, the trail is divided and I can’t remember which one I’d taken up. One thing about trail running is that to really enjoy the scenery you have to stop. Otherwise my eyes are mostly on the ground to keep the ankles unbroken and knees intact.

In the dawn light I choose left and hope it’s the right one. After a minute I see the many-circled pattern from my shoe and feel instantly better. I am going the right way. I remember teaching my boys this trick on a hike a few weeks ago and hearing them use it at a similar fork in the road. Now it’s a comfort to know I am returning to where I came.

But after a minute I’m struck by the oddness of feeling good by covering ground I’ve tread before. Going back the way you came isn’t always the best path. It’s really the opposite of what we’re doing here. Traveling almost every day to a new place. Seeing canyons and mountains and snow that have never been a part of our daily Oklahoma experience. It’s serving me well, I’ve felt better in the last few months of peripatetic life than I have in the last few years in a home that doesn’t move.

But finding your footsteps is a kind of comfort. Maybe exploring and then coming back to base allows absorption of the new. I suppose at its core it is what we are doing out here. My surroundings are different every day but I’m returning to the me that knows its best place is moving, outdoors, with paths to walk and mountains to climb, every day. This is a fundamental element of the times and places I’ve been happiest. I’m opening a book on a self that had been shelved for years.

So I did pick the right path.

I cover my outgoing footsteps in sync with my breath and emerge from the trail as the layers of color on the horizon blaze.

This story based on an experience in Cactus Flat, Arizona.