Trails

Trails:

I’ve spent a lot of time on trails, racing and training, adding my footsteps to the infinite numbers before mine, and all the while it’s been without a true destination. It’s an odd thing to consider in a race, especially one of longer distance, that it’s traveling on the trail itself that’s the victory, being present to wherever we are between the point of start and finish, and that right here, the step we’re taking now, is always exactly where we’re meant to be. If we think of trails only as a line that marks our journey across a landscape, or that it’s simply a racecourse that provides our steps a challenge, we miss out on the most meaningful aspect of all…

trails are our connection to earth, and that each footstep is our only sure destination. Trails aren’t a pathway across distance, although that certainly is the appearance, the reality is that we are called to travel them not by footsteps alone but by heart as well, by soul really, with the only true connection being a deep belonging to the earth, each step a reassurance that we’re already home, an arrival without start or finish. The trail is it’s own destination.

here’ now…known by every footstep.

and that’s the urge of every trail and pathway, not to travel, or at least not primarily so, but to place ourselves in the midst of our own present landscape. Nothing else is asked of us, not to reach a final point, or to see how fast or far our travel, to just be conscious of where we are in the only way we’re truly meant to be…

that the trail itself is our connection.

there is nowhere else but here.

now, always, only,

now.

~

Peace, Eric