Blue Shoes, Blue Scholars

Running shoe companies don't make much money on me these days. My road running shoes are Saucony Kinvaras that I bought as a birthday present for myself at the end of March 2014. They have not been lost in a closet; they have run.

They have run me back in to shape and out of 30 pounds. They have run me through a troubled soul and a restless body. They have run me through town and onto the back roads. They have run me back into a few races, from a November half-marathon, to my daughters' first 5K.

My running shoes have introduced me to Eastern Bluebirds; to roads I'd not traveled in decades; to a self I'd not known until I met myself on the road alone. I keep thinking it is time to upgrade, to replace them, but they still feel good. Plus I'm cheap :)

My Sauconys (granted that doesn't sound as cool as "My Adidas") also re-introduced me to the Blue Scholars, a Seattle-based hip hop duo that a west coast boat builder got me hip to. The Scholars are smooth, intellectual and deeply spiritual. This past Sunday, their song "Burnt Offering" came up on the shuffled playlist. The whole song listens like a sermon, an offering of hard-won wisdom. The hook goes like this:

So I give thanks to the most, the least that I can do
I wear this skin to find the me inside of you
When I dream that I'm dreaming I feel most alive
Sacrifice nights, write to survive,
Proper hand gestures, conjure ancestors,
Drinking from the bottle that was meant
For the message that was sent from the tired and the true,
I give thanks to the most, the least that I can do.

Tapping into something larger than yourself; giving thanks to the most; getting in touch with dreams; connecting to the past.

Blue has long been my color. This past year plus it has come to the forefront of my soul and my world. Blue shoes and Blue Scholars. "I give thanks to the most, the least that I can do."

Back Road Peace, Dark Wood and Rebirth

Runners are creatures of habit. For the past 10 years, I have had known running routes mapped out in my head. When I walk out the front door, I know specific routes from two miles to 20 miles and everything in between. I know where to turn around for a 10 mile route. I've tread many of them many times.

Saturday I ran a new route, on a new road. It's a road I've driven and been driven on since before kindergarten, with friends that have lived down it. But I had never run it. Back roads, tree-lined, almost full shade. During a 6-mile run, two cars and a tractor passed. Some deer. The tail end of a fox making scarce. I went without music; the roads are narrow and I didn't want to end up an unwitting hood ornament.

There is a peace on running a back country road that exists nowhere else. Most of my road miles have been run on Oxford Road or St. Michaels Road, with cars and trucks whirring past. Or through Easton with small town hustle all around.

Saturday was a reset button. A new route. Solace. Back road peace.

Dark Wood. Tree-lined roads lead my mind to Dante. After studying the Inferno in college, Dante's dark wood has stuck with me.

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.
Ah, how hard it is to tell
the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh --
the very thought of it renews my fear!
It is so bitter death is hardly more so.
But to set forth the good I found
I will recount the other things I saw.
How I came there I cannot really tell,
I was so full of sleep
when I forsook the one true way.

Dante gives us the perfect losing our way metaphor. The opening lines to the most poetic mid-life crisis in history. I have a framed print of Dante and his guide Virgil navigating the dark wood together.

I frequently have those dark wood moments. I wonder if I am on the right path; I wonder if I am lost or have wandered astray; I wonder; I wander. My paths are more meandering than direct. Rather than the one true path, I often feel like mine is a singletrack trail or a country back road. Where do back roads lead?

Rebirth. Spring gets all the credit for new life and rebirth. It's the easy sell. But fall has always been my season for rebirth. Each fall is a new school year. A new grade for the girls, the clock turned back to zero, on top of the foundations they have built in the past years. New teachers. And new students for teachers.

Cooler weather, sloughing off the tired heat of summer. Needing to pull on a sweatshirt or sweater in the evening. Stout beer salivating. My energy usually resets in the fall as well. Fall races for our running peeps. Field hockey for the girls. Football taking over Sunday televisions.

For me, fall is about rebirth. It's about new running routes. It's about reconnecting and navigating the dark wood in the journey of our life. Dante will tell you about it. But nobody named a football team after the Divine Comedy.