To put things in perspective, you can put me anywhere that I do not traverse very regularly, turn me around once, and I will be lost. It’s an embarrassing fact. That is why I take my guide with me so much. One could wonder, though, if he takes advantage of this … like yesterday, for instance.
My weekly long run became the family outing for Betharoni’s birthday. Maybe I should have taken more time to contemplate that I was going out into vast open spaces with
- two cross country stars,
- a rabbit chasing dog,
- a daughter who has played the whole soccer field for the team since she was 9 years old, and
- a husband who comes back from his runs encrusted in his own body salt.
Instead, I naively put on my Moc3’s and climbed as a willing captive into the truck at 4 PM on a Saturday afternoon.
I did recognize the road we took off of the main highway (Hwy 45 south out of Nampa, turn right on Hwy 78, then 3 miles to Wilson Creek Road, I’m told) But then, the guide seems to always take a different dirt road, and there are a lot of dirt roads up there. He looks at some invisible landmarks to decide where to park and tells us we have arrived. For some reason, I always get out of the vehicle.
This time, I was given my usual head start, but was soon passed by the two cross country (XC) stars, one on her birthday bike, since she had had XC practice that morning. My guide did some running back and forth between groups. The younger girls would turn around when he caught up to them, then all would loop back past me, giving me simple directions about where to turn. “Stay left.” “Go right.” After the first turn, I was completely at his mercy.
About 30 minutes into the run, I innocently asked, “Are we going to a turn around point or are we making a loop?” I saw a light twinkle in Wild Greg’s eyes, and knew I may have made a mistake. 10 minutes later we reached the edge of a steep canyon and he began looking for “a way to loop around to the truck.” He went on a short scouting trip. I began taking pictures, so that if anyone found my body, they might have a record of what happened to us.
The road that we now followed might have been as old as the Oregon Trail, it was so overgrown. The two wheel tracks were difficult to distinguish from the normal spaces between sage brush plants. When it disappeared, we kept going. Wild Greg and the bicycle “rider” took turns carrying the bike.
He gave the other XC star instructions to “find a road,” but then she was out of sight so quickly that we had no idea which direction she had gone. There were a few tense moments while the guide tracked and yelled her down. The terrain might be treeless, but the rolling hills and sage brush could hide an army right under your nose.
Or jack rabbits! BIG jack rabbits. The doggy chased them. The tireless XC star chased them. One bounced out right under my nose, but behind the dog. What else was lurking in the sage brush?!
My shadow was growing so tall that it was over the hills before I started up them. But I kept running. I wondered how cold it got out in the Owyhee desert at night and if the coyotes would think of me as weak.
We crawled under a barbed wire fence, picked our way through thicker stands of sage brush, and found bones. Lots of dry, white bones. Any temptation I had to walk evaporated. My overall pace wasn’t too bad, but up the hills was sometimes so slow that the dog lay down to rest, waiting for me to get to the top. So much for being my best friend.
I have not run that far since my college days. I think the amazement of not having collapsed or cramped up yet gave me motivation for the last mile. That and the smell of cows. We had parked near a lot of cows, so the smell meant we had to be somewhere close, at least within a mile! Plus, the road was flat and distinct. Once again, a lesson in perspective. When the stench means homeward bound and the road is comparatively easy, be happy!
Wild Greg says I ran 8.5 to 9 miles that day. I had told him my goal was 6.5 miles. I’ll have to emphasize the “6” next time… I think he just wants me to run a half marathon “with him” next summer, so is figuring out how to show me that I CAN run that far. Regardless, I know he will show me the way home sooner or later.
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(a couple more pictures of our group on this tour of the Owyhees below)
