Visions, dreams

Short hill repeats on Sugar Loaf Hill last week in the near suffocating heat and humidity. I think so this is how it is in the jungles of southeastern Asia?  Its almost hard to catch my breath after I crest the sandy hill each time and gaze out at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, forever nonplussed by any of this. My heart races bam bam bam bam bam bam bam as I turn to head back down. Today taking the narrow steeper stretch of hill fairly fast to get a bit of a feel for how I may run some parts of the terrain at Iron Mountain.

I catch site of yet another lizard that scurries like a hallucinated flash across the trail and think "the lizards are getting fat."  This amuses me, and makes me feel a bit more at peace with my surroundings. I always feel more of a communion with the animals and to some extent the vegetation when I'm running in adverse conditions such as heat, rain, snow, etc. The line that separates us becomes a bit more blurred. Life and death are essentially the same for them as it is for myself.

An easier run Sunday as the calendar tells me its less than a week until the big race. I mix in some sprints on the way back. Get in some pushups and weights later in the day. Natasha texts me that night  "what if I don't finish?"  I respond something to the extent that don't worry we will... but she reminds me of a friend, a good ultra runner who didn't finish 2 years ago. Which puts my ego a bit in check and gives me a moment of pause. Though I'd rather not think along those lines at all and instead occupy my mind with visions of running thru deep, dark woods on top of the ancient, rocky Appalachian Mountains... feeling perhaps a cool breeze tingle my skin as the late summer afternoon passes by like an ephemeral dream I had a thousand years ago...as I move forward like a flying ghost unbound by the 3d world.

Finished reading Dharma Bums again. Scenes of the boys hiking the magnificent golden, gnarly trails out west.

Me trying to get the spirituality as right as I can going into the event. Hoping the physical and mental parts have been honed and are ready for action. Storing up energy. Waiting for it all to uncoil like one mad spring let loose to wail on and on...up, down, and across the unforgiving, rugged miles and miles and miles

Rumbles in the belly. Starlit visions. Purple dawns await.