"Off the Beaten Path" - Poetry/Trail Running Mini-Camp - Recap - Courtesy of The Sasquatch Navel Gazers

"...Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse." 

  - from Walt Whitman's O Me! O Life!

Question. 
What the heck is this "Off the Beaten Path"?
(AKA, What the heck is this Studio S Poetry/ Trail Running Mini-Camp"?)

Until this fall, I never hosted a trail running camp before. I didn't have interest or energy for coaching trail running. Maybe that's because I perceived it to be too exercisey or too lessony. Too regimented, mostly, for the otherwise luxurious beauty of a typical fall day in Cincinnati. But then I figured that it might be pretty gnarly if I could mix in some ass-kickin' poetry. That might be something worthwhile. Looking back on it, I have to say that it was way more rewarding than I had anticipated. 

I needed this trail running camp to really DO POETRY. Write it, read it, tattoo it, sweat it, or just DO ANYTHING POETIC for two to three hours on four Saturday mornings. I wanted an adventuresome crew to really DO AUTUMN -- exploring our parks, covered in mud, totally sweaty, wandering around, being irreverent, getting inspired, sharing some laughs, maybe some tears. 

If no one signed up, fine -- I'd have fun by myself, in a usual way. But if I had even just one person along for the ride, then it would be phase-shifting. It would be exponentially better because it would add an element of surprise, extra iterations of contribution, and permutations of co-creative recreation. It could no longer be solely, what I alone imagined it to be, but suddenly, we would be a group, grasping for interpersonal meaning and fun. 

I never considered that there could be a learning curve to the "sport" of trail running, but there is. (It's funny to even call it that. I mean, if trail running is a "sport", then that's like saying squirrels are really keen sportsmen and they have overtaken the soccer possums.) Over the years at the Studio, I've gotten to chumming it up with enough folks from the marathon training teams and group fitness classes that it started to sound like a broken record - equal parts excuses and deep longing. "I really want to get into trail running, BUT..."

The common excuses are legitimate and I've mostly overlooked them because I haven't mastered putting myself in other people's shoes. They sound something like this:
- "I don't know where the good parks are."
- "I don't know where the trailheads are."
- "I don't know how far the trails go."
- "I don't feel safe when I'm alone."
- "I don't know what shoes to wear."

Even though I don't have the same valid reservations, I definitely share that deep sense of longing for the beauty, wildness, and pure freedom that comes from the woods. And poetry!

THE FORMAT
It was simple and more-or-less repeated for 4 weeks:
- Pick a local park with unpaved trails -- 4-6 pre-marked miles that could entertain various levels of running experience
- Pick a poem, so steeped in carpe diemness that you can practically smell its adventury B.O.
- Bring some friends
- Share some real food (homemade trail snacks)
- Bushwack
- Loaf around stretching, micro-journaling, chatting, philosophize on life,  and the Revolution
- Do some hip-stabilizers (we all know we need 'em)
- Leave the campsite cleaner than we found it
- Finish in time for brunch or coffee 

 

CONCLUSIONS
The past four "trail poetry slams" indulged me with a palpable sense of the Mystery. To me, it felt like we circled Mystery, as we ran. Never held it. Maybe dipped our toes in. But mostly jumped from shadow to shadow as its gentle rays filtered through the canopy.

Under a humid gazebo at the Cincinnati Nature Center on the third morning, Steve shared a selection from the indomitable Emily Dickinson and proclaimed, "Right now, the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up." Then that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up! Then Crystal practically channeled the ghost of Emily Dickinson and totally hybridized astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson.

After our final bone-chilling session, at a wonderfully sloppy Idlewild Park, Rachel, who is not so easily impressed, had only to say, "It could really only be made better with a hot cup of coffee to finish... and more sweet potato cakes." 

The grand-daddy of all kudos came when Jonathan let it be known that our little Saturday trail running poetry experiment had "just the right level of cultiness. Like in Dead Poets Society, when they're in the cave."

 

What more can we possibly say about this sequence of weekend micro-adventures? Everything could be better said with a poem. Or with a run in the woods with friends -- where so much becomes self-evident. Or as Thoreau might say, where "[We, the Sasquatch Navel Gazers] live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

 

I will ABSOLUTELY be rallying another group of awesome people for some more marrow-suckin' poetry/trail running/space exploring adventures. Next time, I'm thinking we double up on the interstellar space studies with some good ol fashioned night running with head lamps + bonfire!! I was going to add drum circle to that equation, but I should quit while I'm ahead.

 

Happy trails, amigos!

...Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd
the earth much?

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

- From Walt Whitman's Song of Myself