North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail

by Scott Jurek

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains. —Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

El Coyote had the ability to laugh when he wanted to cry, the secret to longevity in ultrarunning.

I was enjoying the simplicity of connecting these dots, feeling more like a playful, exploratory kid, the type who dreams of someday embarking on a grown-up wilderness quest. That day had arrived.

As I turned these familiar memories and feelings over in my mind, I felt them begin to change shape. My roots are the calculus of who I am, but they are not only who I am. I was in a new place, at the beginning of a vast journey, and I felt myself grow lighter.

Would he comprehend that there was joy in speed, and that speed is a relative concept in any case? Perhaps I should have told him that, even though I was covering more miles a day than most, I was also spending far more hours awake on the trail than most, so I was able to enjoy the trail and its inhabitants when it was blanketed in darkness as well as during the daylight.

I’d been neglecting to work on my why. As in: Why was I even out here in the first place? I’ve experienced my fair share of success. And I know this: You rarely ask why when you win. It’s a word you can outrun and outperform. Applause makes it hard to hear yourself. But just because you ignore it doesn’t mean it’s not there. And why doesn’t get old and tired. It catches up, and it gets louder. It churns up thoughts that are best kept down in the dark.

My pain was getting less painful—which might sound ridiculous, but you’ll know what I mean if you routinely push yourself in the gym or if you have the misfortune to live with a chronic illness or disability. Some of us are familiar with a whole bouquet of pains, each with its own special meaning and impact.

If I could just let life happen, everything could work. I didn’t have to win, not yet. I just needed to let myself run. Like all epiphanies, that one was great while it lasted.

When I successfully adopted the mind of the warrior, I felt a great sense of must-ness replace my confusion and anxiety.

I had no idea in my head beyond the overwhelming must. Keep going; it’s as easy as that. A single focal point. Keep going. Stay in the now. Every moment contains only one thing: the potential to keep going.

Don—wonderful Don—had brought exactly what I needed most in that moment: stability, authority, grace, and groundedness. He almost instantaneously shook me out of my depression, and I was grateful once again for his ability to intervene in my life and make me focus on the here and now.

Running with Knox gave a boost to my spirits. I set aside my way-of-the-warrior worldview and slipped into what might have been an even more powerful mind-set: having fun.

He read a book a week and said he would rather help a friend through a divorce than go to the wedding “because everyone will help you party but few will help you grieve.”