The rooster crows. I roll over in my bed, tired and a little too warm. It's still completely dark outside. The rooster crows again, and I reach over and shut off my alarm. I reach over and give a kiss to my still-sleeping wife whom I can't see, and head down towards the garage. The light fixture in this room doesn't work, so I use my phone light to show me where my running clothes are- shoes, socks, shorts, shirt, house keys, iPod, and LED anklet that I put on my shoes and flashes a bright red light behind me so I don't get run over. I lock the door behind me and step outside. It's quiet.
I live in the middle of town, right by the highway. Well, I mean THE highway. Like, there's one. South of this part of town (1 mile) is another part of town (connected by a paved sidewalk that goes through a slough) and there's another highway. So, there's two, but where I live there's one. I hope that's not confusing. Everything else is gravel in case you're wondering.
Across the street, Frank the bus driver is backing up out of the bus barn. BEEEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEP pierces through the quiet night sky; no vehicles drive past on the highway. I turn on my anklet and start running north down the road. I go past elder housing, a nicely painted and fenced basketball court, some trashy looking houses, some nice looking houses, and an unfinished new school. Behind me the light of a vehicle and lights up the road.
Now, I don't know if you've ever been on a dark road by yourself, but when lights come up behind or in front of you, these things always happen in succession:
1.) You see lights behind you
2.) The road becomes illuminated
3.) As they get closer, the road becomes increasingly difficult to see
4.) Literal blindness
5.) The road comes back into view
6.) Right before the vehicle gets to you, the road takes on a really cool shadowy effect where each rock, pebble, and piece of anything is shown in stunning detail
7.) The light passes by
8.) It's dark again
Right before this vehicle passed me, I hear a little honk and it startles me. It was Frank driving bus. He's asked me before if that's me running on the road in the morning; he refers to my one LED anklet and says I have taillight out. It's 6:15am and he's driving the 37 miles to Parshall because we have students from there. Lots of open space out here, ya know.
As he drives away, I watch the flashing bus light and try to count how many miles he's driven, based on my knowledge of this mostly straight, slightly uphill road. One, two, three, four, and he's over the valley hill and gone. It's dark again. There's stars above my head, a low red dim to the east, a farm light about 2 miles to my northeast, and an open unseeable road before me. I'd be perfectly at peace if my legs took less than 4 miles to warm up.
......
I've been asked many times why I don't have a headlamp or some kind of light in front of me. Why, they ask, would you have a light behind you (the anklet), but not in front? The answer is simple: I embrace the totality of darkness. A headlamp protects you from something we spent thousands of years unable to control- blackness of dark. Now, we have street lights, car lights, house lights, phone lights, headlamp lights, and all others kinds, but this ignores the basic realities we encounter when we venture into the unknown and unable to see. For example, I have known for years now about the games your eyes play with you while it's dark. That animal running away in the ditch? That's some brush. That mountain lion about to eat you? Brush. That badger? Yeah, it's brush. In fact, one time I did run with a headlamp, and in the farm fields were all these sets of bright white lights shining back at me. Of course, they were friendly harmless deer, but that's an eerie feeling, to be sure.
Look, being in the dark is a little scary. I can't see my shoes, and the only part of the road I can actually see is the white stripe on the side, so I run near that. This gets significantly harder once it snows; the road is the same color as the ditch and the white stripe doesn't really stand out anymore. Maybe I'll break out a headlamp then.
"Nate, do you realize that running without a front light isn't safe? People driving towards you can't see you?" Great question. Yes, I've considered that. But consider this: on my ten mile runs, I normally encounter 10-15 total vehicles, or about 1 vehicle/mile. I see them coming from at least 4 miles away. In that time it takes them to get to me, I simply switch over to the other side of the road. If someone comes up behind me at the same time, I run in the ditch for a few minutes. Is it the safest? Hell no. Does it improve the overall experience? Hell yes.
I'm rambling, back to the story.
.....
It's about 7am now. I've already hit my turnaround point on the road, exactly five miles down the highway in the same direction. I don't like running down the gravel roads right now because my previous shoes were destroyed and my feet took a beating from the rocks, so they get a rest. The whole first miles climbed ever-so-slowly uphill, and I can see White Shield from here. It's a little patch of lights in a sea of quiet calmness. You can almost hear the land breathing out a well-rested sigh of relief and relaxation.
Then the rush comes.
I can see the headlights coming through White Shield, heading north at a high rate of speed. For some reason not yet known to me, around 7am there is an exodus of about 7 or 8 cars from White Shield headed north. My hypothesis is that many of these folks are doing the 1 hour drive to New Town, the site of the tribal headquarters for the reservation, but I guess I don't have adequate scientific means to test my hypothesis right now. So I dodge traffic and large grain trucks for a while, and by that time I'm rolling into town. Earlier in the year the sun would be rising now, but at this point the blood red glow of early morning has given way to a brighter yellow, heralding the return of the long-awaited sun. The days are only getting shorter right now, and the coolness of the air coupled with the lightening color of the leaves signals the same.
Before I get to town, a bus passes me on the road headed to White Shield. It's a bus headed for Garrison, the closest off-reservation school, about 25 miles east. It stops in White Shield and picks up children that families have opted to send to school in Garrison. It's a long story.
That bus is gone now, though. I head up the driveway to the house and open the door. There are a couple cars driving down the highway now. I have to be at the school in 30 minutes and I still have to stretch and eat. Fortunately for me, I live one block from the school with most of the other teachers. When your town is this far away from anything and has the stigma of being on the 'rez', it's hard to get teachers. I walk inside the house. I have school in 30 minutes. The sun hasn't peaked out yet.
I'm still travelling the quiet roads of morning, underneath the cool stars, when I walk in the school and another teacher says 'good morning'. They don't even understand.
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I'm going to try to get back into some regular posting now- sorry for how long it's been! Ya know, gettin hitched and plannin to get hitched is some crazy plannin, yo. I'm still teaching and have a new marriage, so it won't be anything like before, but I still love ND running, why not profess it a little more often? I know, I agree as well. Peace
