What is it you plan?
What is it you plan?
A memory of Carl Undercofler from a Cold Moon night run in Rothrock
No prescience was involved when I touched on the idea of good death in my essay “Intimate Places”1 I was only voicing a common and very old aspiration — the ideal of a good death in a special place:
If you’re like me, you might come to realize that you can’t imagine a better exit from this world than during a run (someday, in the distant future) here in this place you know so well. Maybe it’s near the summit of your favorite climb, familiar trees standing guard, your heart pounding, legs aching, sweat (and maybe a spiderweb) in your eyes, a smile on your face (and in your soul).
I was certainly not anticipating the momentous passing, several months later, of Carl Undercofler, the “godfather” of central Pennsylvania’s trailrunning community, at the Hyner Trail Challenge.
In case you don’t know the story…
This brave and happy man, octogenarian veteran of at least 80 trail races, set out with about 1,500 of his closest friends to once again complete our annual rite of spring on the hard trails of Clinton County, as he’d done so many times before. This time, at the top of one of the most iconic climbs in Pennsylvania, past the Hyner View wall and under the flag, he paused, smiled, commented on the climb, and passed from this world.
Other than races, I ran with Carl only once, on December 17, 2013.
It was the night of Cold Moon, the last full moon of the year, four days before the solstice. Craig Fleming hosted a small group that included Carl, Renee and I, Thad Will, and probably a few others (it was the first of a long series of Tuesday-night group runs in Rothrock State Forest). We did the classic Galbraith Gap route: up Spruce Gap Trail, down Old Laurel Trail. There was new snow on the ground, a deep and fluffy powder, and that full moon was bright on the whiteness, casting moon shadows, making our headlamps redundant. If you’ve ever run the first fresh powder of the season, you know the sensation, the joy and liberation of it. The full moon only intensifies that feeling.
I stayed at the back of the pack to follow Craig and Carl down Old Laurel, and the feelings and images of that run will stay with me forever.
At that point I’d been running “seriously” for about sixteen years, and I think I was starting to feel old, burned out and tired. But how could that feeling last, how could I possibly justify it? Here on this cold night in the deep snow was this man, 25 years my elder, frolicking down the mountain like a child in the moonlight. It’s an image to hold onto.
I offer no guidance or advice here at the end of this, only an old, old thought, best phrased by Mary Oliver in her immortal challenge-disguised-as-a-question (from her poem “The Summer Day”):
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Originally published in the Fall 2020 issue of Eat Clean, Run Dirty Magazine as “In the Long Run”