More Exit 29, Ultrarunning, and Wilderness

Here’s another Milepost 29 post on the heels of yesterday’s post.  As I drove up Interstate 81 as part of my daily 60-mile commute (today was my day to drive the carpool) I reflected that every single drop of gasoline that we use is based upon extraction technology and is a truly finite resource.  Now this is not a new fact, but today for some reason, I truly examined that fact and it really sank in for the first time.

Once we extract that last drop, it’s gone.  There’s no more.

That fact alone should make all of us and especially our leaders shudder.  Truth is, it’s kinda stupid to continue to base our entire infrastructure and economy on fossil fuels with no Plan B, but that indeed is what we are doing.  One would think that our leaders would be calling for a full-court press, like the concerted heroic effort that placed a man on the moon in the 1960s.  But one would be wrong.

I can’t solve the energy problem, but the finiteness of extractable fossil fuels contrasts starkly with the non-consumability (within reason) of wilderness. 

Wilderness (and I use the word loosely here to mean any backcountry in which we run), unlike fossil fuels, is non-consumable in the sense that whether 1 person or 1000 people view a waterfall, the waterfall is not diminished.  Within reason, given the constraints of physics and geology--erosion, soil type, etc.--most trails can tolerate few or many folks walking/running there.  In other words, wilderness persists without diminution. 

Wilderness is relative in the degree to which it contrasts to everyday life.  The beauty of ultrarunning is that it CAN be part of everyday life, thus inextricably tying us to wilderness.

Let’s let Aldo Leopold have the last word on wilderness:

Ability to see the cultural value of  wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility.  The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.  It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise.

 

Milepost 29…and Ultrarunning

A couple of years ago, before Mister Tristan (the blog, not the 3-year old human being), I fell asleep while driving along Interstate 81 in southern PA.  Near Milepost 29, I ran off the southbound lanes onto the right shoulder, obliquely hitting and grinding to a stop along the guard rail.  My car was totaled, but there were no injuries to me nor any effect on anyone else, so it was a benign outcome to what could have been a tragic circumstance.

A couple of weeks ago I saw in the local paper that another vehicle had run off I-81 at Milepost 29.  In viewing the site, I saw where the two impact points were less than 100' apart. 

Unfortunately, in the latter accident, the angle of impact was much more acute (i.e., more perpendicular to the guard rail), so the vehicle plowed through and/or over the guard rail where a few feet down the embankment it was abruptly stopped cold by impacting a tree.  Of the three occupants, one died right there; another barely clings to life today; and the third sustained non-life threatening injuries and will survive.

I’m not claiming any special recognition here; any one of us could cite a parallel example from their personal experience where tragedy was narrowly averted by the luck of the draw.  The law of averages can both smile and frown upon us, rather randomly. 

The point is simply acknowledging another demonstration of the fragility of life.

Literally, any moment, any breath, any heartbeat could be our last (and, like it or not, that will be our fate, sooner or later).  All of us have likely seen the inspirational slogan that life is not measured by how many breaths we take, but by how many moments take our breath away.

Ultrarunning neatly fits that bill, replenishing our psyches via time spent alone--or with like-minded souls--in nature.  We recharge when we are being what the late Dr. George Sheehan referred to as “a good animal,” using our bodies efficiently and purposefully in the pursuit of physical and mental perfection out on our beloved trails. 

Being a good animal--fit, alert, aware--opens the doors for the mental enlightenment that can only come through physical challenge.  The heart revs up the mind, and in so doing we come closer to perfection than the sedentary will ever know.

 

Milepost 35...and the Twilight Zone

This is where cars come to die.  Actually it's a range of miles, say from MP 29 to 37 along Interstate 81 in south-central PA, where it seems there always is a disabled car or two on any given day.

I'm not talking about wrecked cars, just disabled cars.

North or south of this point, there may be a stray disabled car or so pulled off onto the shoulder, but nothing like the regular appearance of dead cars that seem to populate this particular stretch of highway.  It's like the Bermuda Triangle for cars.

PA State Police investigate disabled cars and tag them, giving the owner a short period (24 hours?  48 hours?) to be removed before they supposedly will be towed and impounded.  So there's a regular turnover of vehicles, a steady stream of cars that give up the ghost along this highway.

I would not be surprised if I'd see this guy out there one day.  You see, Interstate 81 replaced the old north-south major road, US Route 11:

From a chilling Twilight Zone episode, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Minor incident on Highway 11 in Pennsylvania, perhaps to be filed away under accidents you walk away from. But from this moment on, Nan Adams's companion on a trip to California will be terror; her route – fear; her destination – quite unknown.

Nan Adams, age twenty-seven. She was driving to California, to Los Angeles. She didn't make it. There was a detour, through the Twilight Zone.