Not that I look
like one (we are least able to judge our own looks; me, I’m thinking young
Roman pine, skinny with a big head) but that my body is strong, as durable as a
healthy tree.
I think about this
when I run. How the body I have now is as much about being conscious of how I
move rather than strictly what could be accounted for by nature, per se.
A gait, though, is
your own.
When I was young,
my friends and family said I walked like a farmer with exaggerated high and
long steps, as if I were striding over furrowed plantings.
I didn’t live on a
farm, but my father grew up on one.
He is justly proud
of the life skills, the hard-knock lessons he learned, so I didn’t take the
comments as an insult. Rather I thought it was part of my inheritance, an
involuntary commitment, a place of pride.
Fifty years later,
“Farmer Larry” is keeping pace in a different way. I’m slower now but no less
controlled in my gait.
Farmer Larry is
much closer to a tree than, say, a racing bike, a scooter, a skateboard. When I
run I don’t, as the kids say, get too far out on top of my skis.
I recalibrate,
feel the strike of heel to ground, share the impact from roots, to trunk, to
crown.
Watch as the tree
moves in the wind. The top waves, the trunk gives ever so, the roots are solid.
Or so it seems.
You do the best you can with what you know. Trees know more, and to be compared
to them is an honor I’m continually working to be worthy of.
Next: Running for Your Life: Emigrant Eminence
