Beyond the Turn

An impulse triggers transition (my trailrunning origin story)

15 years ago I was a dedicated road runner, training for yet another marathon. But partway through a random run, I followed an impulse and turned left instead of right, off of the road and into my first real trail run.

Here’s what I wrote about it back then (quotes are from my journal, April 10, 2009):

I had a great run last evening.  It started the same as last Thursday – dropped Lucas at soccer practice near Boalsburg, parked on the edge of Rothrock [State Forest] at Galbraith Gap, and headed out on the forest roads.

Since I’m in good shape for mileage this week, and so didn't have to worry about getting a certain distance in, I felt freer to wander… At one of the big bends in the road, I left the road onto a trail… then took the next turn and headed straight up the mountain.

I’d found Spruce Gap Trail, a rugged path that mainly follows the fall line (perpendicular to the contours, no switchbacks) for 1 mile and 1,000 feet of ascent, straight up the mouth of the gap to the top of the ridge. It turns out that it’s fairly typical of the steep and rocky single-track that abounds here in central Pennsylvania, but for me on this first encounter, it was novel and it felt remote and extreme.

Spruce Gap Trail (Rothrock State Forest, PA) | April 10, 2024 | The Rush of it All

Bottom (start) of Spruce Gap Trail (Rothrock State Forest, PA) | April 10, 2024 | The Rush of it All

I had only an hour, and though I did make it to the top of the climb before turning, there was an important feeling of incompleteness, a sense of to-be-continued that might be the most important part of the whole little adventure:

I really would have liked to go farther, because I was still not across the top to a point where I could see out to the other side.

I guess that will have to wait until next time…

Those are the facts and circumstances of it…

• that I was out there in the first place, running

• that I was tuned-in enough to notice the impulse pointing me towards something new

• that I had enough slack in my system to feel free to follow that impulse

• that the adventure was not quite finished, that it ended with “until next time”

But none of that explains the impulse itself.

My post-run analysis makes it clear this was not as random or whimsical as it seemed at the time. At some fundamental level I knew I needed something new…

I am quite pleased with myself over this experience.  For the run itself, yes, but also for the fact that I’m energized by it, that I could feel myself coming alive as I pushed myself up that mountain and as I scrambled back down.  I like that feeling, but even more I like the knowledge and the reassurance that I can still get that feeling, that it hasn’t been extinguished and that I’ve not grown out of it.

Because I guess I begin to doubt myself, doubt my own hardiness and my own sense of adventure.  I start to feel that I’m getting old and sedentary sometimes.  I notice how hard it is to get myself out the door for a run, and how I don't always feel so inspired by the running, how it doesn't seem to have the same power or draw for me that it once did.

But when I was out there last night, and for an hour afterward, I really did feel good and alive and rugged, and it was not because I was trying to feel that way or went looking for it — it just came to me naturally, honestly, and that is the thing that I find so reassuring.

I have this image of myself, or the way I would like to be, but I’m never quite sure if that is really how I am.  But a thing like this gives me the evidence I need, convinces me that I am that person on at least some level.

And I really like that person.

So I should make more of an effort to operate on that level.  I should look at that experience and figure out what was different about it compared to my normal runs.  And the answer (or at least part of the answer) is obvious — it was hard.

But mainly there is that strong feeling of capability, of knowing that I am functional on that terrain, that I can move my body across it and keep up a pace and make my body work for me and be mobile and flexible and capable and competent.  That’s really the heart of the matter.

That run, and the period of transition that it triggered (from roadrunning to trailrunning, and from marathons to ultras), marks the current halfway point in my running career. More significantly, it was the entry point to a new community, a fresh set of challenges, and a more expansive way of looking at the world and moving through it.

I’m thankful for it as one of the great blessings of my life.

So of course if I’d not made that turn that evening, I’d surely have made it some other evening on some other run, right?

Yes, of course, probably… At least I’d like to think so — that something so significant, a part of my very identity, would have found its way through, regardless of my response to that particular cue on a random Thursday-night run in April.

But there’s really no way to be sure of that, is there?

It’s a fact that small and apparently inconsequential decisions-in-the-moment can have outsized impacts on the course of our lives. That these events seem to arrive exactly on schedule to bump us onto the path we are “meant” to follow is a different thing, a matter of belief rather than fact.

Whether it’s a truth or a metaphoric illusion, that sense of “meant to be” is powerful. My pragmatism tells me to use it as a tool for navigating life with a sense of purpose.

The same instinct tells me to honor the possibility of each moment, to be open to and watching for the next signal, and to have enough slack in my system that I can follow it when it comes.

Pay attention…

Spruce Gap Trail (Rothrock State Forest, PA) | January 8, 2023 | The Rush of it All

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Related Posts

Spruce Gap is central to the trail system around the Galbraith Gap portal to Rothrock State Forest (and my “home” mountains), so it’s part of some of my oldest and dearest routes (my ceremonial 15th-anniversary run last month was my 196th time up Spruce Gap Trail).

So it’s no surprise that it shows up in some of my other essays. It was one of the main places I had in mind when I wrote Intimate Places:

…and it has a central role in What is it you plan? (a story about Carl Undercofler, the “Godfather” of trailrunning in central PA):

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Also…

My transition into trailrunning was a specific example of the rewilding I talk about here:

…and the premature turn-around at the top of Spruce Gap on that first trail run (“…I really would have liked to go farther, because I was still not across the top…”) is the kind of concession I explored here:

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