Dazed and confused, I quickly shut off my alarm and confirm that I haven't woken up my wife. I slip out of bed, grandpa-walk to bathroom, relieve myself, quickly pound some water, throw on my running clothes and shoes, collect GPS signals on my watch, and start off down the road. It's a little before 6:30am, and the temperature is hanging around the upper 50s, with a rapidly rising sun about to change that. The camp is calm and quiet. A few miles to the east is the dreary sound of the engine powering an irrigation system for a local corn field by the lake. It will only get louder as I get closer. A few deer stare at me from the camp entrance before dashing into the trees; one that follows behind still has spots on it, but has definitely grown quite a bit in the last few months. I run past the mailboxes and out into the open prairie, following the gravel road up and out of the Missouri River valley.
This is a ritual I've completed over and over again in the past nine years. Indeed, it's where my love for running truly began- right here under the warm North Dakota sun on a washboardy gravel road. Since the summer of 2011, I've ran on this particular road more than 500 times (possibly over 700, I didn't keep good track of runs back then), and always had to go out-and-back as is required. Back in 2011 I had just finished high school and needed to boost my mileage modestly over the summer in order to be ready for college cross country. For me, this meant that I needed to run every day when I had a chance. Working as a Bible camp counselor was grueling in and of itself, but this meant that every day I would get a 90-minute break, usually from 3:30-5:00pm. This time was often during the warmest part of the day with temperatures routinely in the 80s with no clouds, minimal wind, and full sunshine uninhibited by any sort of shade on the North Dakota prairie. This, coupled with the exhaustion of being personally responsible for a small group of tiny humans the other 22.5 hours of the day, led to even the shortest runs taxing my body. While other staff members would take naps, play video games, or shower, I was out on the gravel roads, grinding up a hill and trying not to stop. Yes, there were times that I did have to stop, but those eventually became less and less. I would usually fall asleep during end-of-week staff meetings.
I believe that this experience helped me to develop a mental toughness that paid off in college, and allowed me to greatly increase my training when I started spending more time off my feet when classes started in the fall. But what changed me the most was the new world that opened up around me. Some staff members would want to run away from camp at the end of the week because they were never able to get out, but I was off-site every day seeing the open grasslands. For a kid who grew up in the Red River Valley, this landscape of long, rolling hills, swaying grass, bulls and cows watching you from the other side of the fence, fresh wildflowers in June and July, and the humming sounds of the cicadas and crickets were an explosion of new senses. Ironically enough, the stops on the runs that made me feel weak, also caused me to recognize the intense silence hanging heavy over my head. There I would stand, in the middle of a gravel road, beads of sweat rolling down my dusty body, breathing slowly relaxing, and I would hear no sound developed by humans. The noises filling my ears were likely the same noises that I would've heard in that exact same spot 500 years ago. In these stops, I fell in love with the sights and sounds of the prairie. Now, years later as a much more developed runner, I find myself stopping without physical reason at times simply to listen to the quiet.
Those were my first two summers at Camp of the Cross. Coming back to Grand Forks for college, I'd find myself struggling to get used to running on pavement and cement, because I'd normally go 3-4 weeks at a time without running on either of those surfaces. I'd also find myself searching for every gravel backroad or any way to get out of town to do my run- I needed to feel free and alive, just like in the prairies of western North Dakota.
It came to my attention that during my third summer at Camp, I'd be joined by another college runner, one from Concordia in Moorhead, MN. Her name was Ingrid. Truth be told, it ended up being a lot of fun finally having someone to run with at camp and share the road with. It wasn't every day, because she was a counselor and I was maintenance coordinator, but we did. We laughed, pushed each other, and heard all kinds of boring North Dakota facts from me. We found a spot together that we called "the spot", and that place became special to us over the years, even to the point where I proposed to her there years later.
That's a fun story, by the way. It was spring of 2016. I had a track meet at NDSU on Saturday, and Sunday morning I got up around 5am and drove four hours west to Camp. Ingrid was working there as a year-round full-time program manager, and I was wrapping up my fifth year of college. The whole drive I kept peeking over at the passenger seat at the small white box sitting there, still not completely sure how I was going to do it, but it was happening either way. I had a 90 minute run scheduled that day, a typical long run after a race kind of thing. I hid the ring in a corner of the entryway that Ingrid didn't normally go through. My plan was this: I would say good-bye to Ingrid, go the entryway to get my GPS watch ready, grab the ring, and run out the door to go hide it at "the spot". I would run 60 minutes on my own, hiding the ring in the process, and then together Ingrid and I would run 30 minutes to where I hid the ring. Great plan, right?
It was about 40 degrees, cloudy, and pretty windy. I went out to the entryway to collect the ring, but Ingrid followed me! She was going to do laundry and wanted to walk out with me! Of course, I had no hope of getting the ring at this point. I was short and angry with her, and as I left, she said "love you!" and I literally growled back "love you". She was very confused, not realizing how she was sabotaging our engagement. I ran down the gravel road, looking behind me and watching Ingrid bring her laundry across the parking lot to the laundry room. As soon as she walked in, I turned around, sprinted with all my life back to the entryway, grabbed the ring, and sprinted back out and around the back of the building, just before she came out of the laundry room. It worked!
First crisis averted. I ran my 60 minutes on the gravel, trying and failing to slow down my pace because my mind was rushing and I felt great. During the run I turned down a rutted section line leading to "the spot". When I got there, I found no decent place to hide the ring other than the inside lining of an old tractor tire. So I placed the expensive ring and dirt-free white case inside an old tractor tire in a section line in the middle of nowhere on a cold, blustery day, and then ran away from it back to the camp. I grabbed Ingrid and we started running.
Her back was in pain. And this wasn't, 'oh my back is sore, can we slow down?' pain, but 'I don't know if I'm gonna make it there' pain. I pictured where the ring was and tried to get Ingrid to keep going. I even offered at one point to drive her there, and she was confused as to why it was so important to me. We wound up doing a lot of walking and getting cold, but we eventually made it there. While sitting there, and about the time Ingrid stated that she was ready to head back because of the cold, I announced that I needed to go pee in the grass. I quickly ran to the tire, pulled out the ring, ran back, got on one knee, and the rest is history. The run back to camp on the gravel road was one of the most enjoyable times I've ever had with Ingrid.
This gravel road means a lot to me. Heat exhaustion and frostbite have both visited me while running on this road, and many times I've sweated through my entire set of clothing on long runs. One time I finished a long run and noticed a white, foaming line coming down my shorts to my shoes. Turns out that I used too much laundry detergent, and I had sweated so much I actually activated the suds and sent detergent spewing down my leg. I've rung sweat out of shirts, shorts, socks, hats, and jackets while on this road. I've started runs at 5:00am and 11:00pm, and just about every time in between. I can tell you the location of every single bump, crevasse, hill, washboard section, cow pasture, tree, and house along the road. I've had farm dogs surround me, porcupines run away from me, vultures circle above me, and cows stare at me. I've been driven past by thousands of vehicles, from huge semis that slow down and pull to the side, to Bismarck and Minot moms that zoom past in their $75,000 suburbans at 55mph, throwing rocks and dust into my face. Some people wave, some don't. Some slow down, some don't. Some move over, some don't. Most of them I personally know. I've run under the milky way, full moons, thunderstorms, and even the northern lights. I've been barraged by the wind from every direction, and a few times heard claps of thunder right overhead as I'm on a vast, treeless prairie road.
I learned how to run on this gravel road. My first couple summers I had only a $10 Walmart stopwatch to use. However, in the North Dakota countryside, every intersection is exactly 1 mile apart. I would check my watch every intersection and subtract to determine mile pace. I used this to figure out where at camp to start in order to hit 1 mile exactly at the first intersection (buffalo grass cabin). And, when I did get a GPS watch, it turned out I was dead-on. I ran my first tempos on this road. I ran my first true long run on this road. And, I ran hills for the first time on this road (sorry Red River Valley, overpasses don't count).
Most people, when coming to camp, see the 5.5 miles of gravel from the highway turn as something to travel across quickly on the way to the final destination; or, conversely, as a burden to how long it takes to get to nearby Garrison, ND from camp. I see it as something sacred. In the early morning hours of a summers day, or the late hours of a cold winters night, the road is still there. The landscape doesn't change. Each year lake water levels go up and down, new staff and campers come in and out, and the seasons go about their treacherous journey. And yet, despite all of that, I still throw on my shoes and head out the door- for nine years.
And so I find myself reflecting during my runs these last few weeks- will I run on this road again? Hopefully. But I make sure to hold my breathing sometimes while running so I can hear the quiet. I listen to the scrunching noise of my shoes pushing against the gravel. I stop at the entrance mailboxes, where I dump my shirt on my way out because I'm off of camp property, and gaze across the bluffs of the Missouri River Valley, cutting straight into the manmade Lake Sakakawea. I find myself looking back on my favorite memories, from the early morning long runs, to the bug-dodging evening runs, to the snowy winter runs. One stands out above the rest. It was 5 or 6 summers ago, I'm not quite sure. We just endured a strong afternoon thunderstorm and it had just finished clearing. While the campers were all inside having supper and making noise, I tore off for a quick run. 2 miles from the camp, I found myself needing to stop because the quiet around me was so intense that I could ignore it no longer. I paused and listened. There was a slight cool breeze from the northwest, gently rustling together the leaves of the corn in the field next to me. The air had an unspeakable clarity to it- one that only results from rain knocking all impurities out of the air. I could see the bluffs on the other side of the lake, probably 8 or 10 miles away, like they were right next to me. There were no other sounds. There was only prairie and silence. I stood and soaked it in briefly, and then turned around to head back to camp. The rest of my run was peaceful, as it always is when I take a moment to breathe and listen to the sounds of life.
Breathe and listen- it's something this gravel road has taught me.
Good bye, old friend.
