JUN-B-6
FROM A DERWOOD WEEKEND AT HOME
TO LAUNCH THE SECOND WESTERN TRIP IN A WEEK
FOR TWO PURPOSES:
THE PRE-PARTUM VISIT TO SAN ANTONIO,
TO HELP CELEBRATE MICHAEL AND JUDY’S 8TH ANNIVERSARY,
BEFORE THE DENVER TO DAYTON, WYOMING PREP FOR
THE BIG HORN ULTRA
JUN. 12, 2001
I enjoyed a rare commodity---a sunny summer weekend at home in Derwood. This meant that the chores that everyone takes for granted that I have to schedule around the far flung travel absences could be worked on—like mowing the grass (on the lookout for newborn fawns, as you might realize, being sensitized by the seasonal events recorded in Jun-A-10), getting my haircut, preparing my 2000 income tax information to be submitted for filing before August 15, making travel schedules and their revisions as I bump into other scheduled events—and, at last after multiple interruptions, a good run with Joe.
I have had four scheduled running rendezvous with Joe, each interrupted by Betty who is due almost any moment, as their third child is coming soon. Thursday there were some contractions, so they went to the doctor’s office instead. Friday, they had to get the car seats inspected to see that they were safe for three restrained kids. Saturday, it was postponed several times on Betty’s fear that she would be home alone when the events were occurring, then when they did not, she gathered with her girlfriends and they talked about babies, while Joe stayed home to baby-sit the children. On Saturday evening, Joe made a somewhat apologetic suggestion, which suited me—and got me to thinking. He asked if we could run early on Sunday morning. “Sure,” I said, “That would get us both back in time to get ready for church.” “I mean real early!”
That caused me to think as I went to bed early on Saturday night after typing up a few leftover items I should have done earlier—the completion of the Dharamsala Medical Mission—the fourth intact complete Himalayan Medical Mission in text narrative from for book editing. “Of course---it does not make any difference how early we go out, since Joe is always running in the dark!”
We have run long and well enough to have confidence that we will do well as a team even if BOTH of us are dimmed out! I had called the race director of the new Baltimore Inaugural Marathon October 20, and tried to ask if Joe and I should register as a single runner. Joe has been eager to try a long run again, and had real misgivings about a marathon distance, since we had slowly expanded up from 10 K to two successive ten miler races after a painful training ten mile run, and I had encouraged him to try a 12 miler this weekend and that later we would do an 18 miler point-to-point, possibly from Grosvernor to the Post Office late this summer.
Even though this is the month of the year’s longest days, I was up in the dark, even before the Derwood birds. When I had picked up Joe and driven over to Ken-Gar, the was a glimmer of light and the day was surely coming according to some of my favorite predictors—the whole canopy-ful of Rock Creek birds which live along the green sward that focuses around my house in the woods in Derwood. It was a magnificent chorus Joe and I stepped into at dawn. I responded to his request to identify for him the most melodious of the birds—the wood thrushes and cardinals—but then the vireos, and warblers, and earlier in the year, the migration right up the center of the city in the green canopy of the birds that overwinter in the tropics and are now headed toward Maine and beyond into the sub-Arctic—the spectacular scarlet tanagers, Baltimore Orioles, and the “Bird Parties” I had described to him from my African experience, in which one group’s calls draws another. That is, the flushing birds, that stir up the insects from the leaf litter at the forest floor—here the towhees etc, bring the gleaning birds, which pick them off the branches and leaves on which the flushed insects alight—the shrikes, etc, then the aerial acrobats which pick them off on the wing—the flycatchers, etc. They seem to start up in species waves, and here we were running through the heart of this green sward up through an urban jungle that is unfriendly to these birds which seek refuge in the green space right through the center of the city as a funnel up the Eastern Seaboard flyway.
Birds that over winter in the tropics do their flying at night, since the raptors—hawks, eagles and carrion feeders like ravens and crows—must use their eyesight in daylight for intercepting and picking off the passenger birds. So, they are roosted in the canopy by day, resting up and feeding and getting excited at dawn and dusk in the “bird parties” that flush, glean, and catch insects in forested areas—a different group of birds around the Derwood “House in the Woods”---there is a wonderful Ki-Swahili word for it that may get applied to my home in Derwood at some day when this is undisputed---“UMBAGANIS.” This is the Ki-Swahili name for “House in the Woods”, a name that the Kikuyus in the Thika Kighlands applied to Karen Blixen’s house in Kenya. So, I live in “Umbaganis” just as do many a bird and bug and buck, as well as other transients ---forest dwellers (the chickadees, titmouses, and year around seed eaters like cardinals, and migrants that use the forest for cover on their pre-programmed routes. These are not lawn birds, the robins that pull up worms, and others that are very easily spotted, since they are out in Suburban green grass. These birds---like me---live in the woods; we are fellow forest dwellers.
I explained this to Joe as we ran through the Audubon Reserve Trail on our way down from Ken-Gar toward the Stables running through Rock Creek flyway at the time the birds and we were the only creatures stirring. We had stripped off the warm up togs down to shorts and singlets, and were just perfectly adapted to the start of any endurance event—that is, we were shivering with chattering teeth. Within a few miles, we were well warmed up purring machines that should be able to run at that pace all day without overheating (I will try to prove that later this week!), whereas our later starting slugabeds would be panting after their start—even as early as 7:00 AM when it started upward toward 90* that day. As we went out the six-mile distance down toward the Stables at dawn in the glorious symphony of birdsong, we encountered one pair of runners coming up the Rock Creek Trail.
After we had watered up and turned around at the Stables and begun our run back toward Ken-Gar to complete our twelve mile excursion in under two hours, as it was getting to be after 7:00 AM (still an hour before the official start for most of the runners who could feel righteous for being p and out “early” on a Sunday morning at 8:00 AM) we encountered from three to four hundred runners on our return. The thick crowds of thirty or more in running packs were being marshaled by such platoon leaders as the “Sergeant’s Program” barking out military style marching orders—you know, the “I can’t hear you!” kind) and even more groups being led by AIDS Marathon training programs, with whole van loads of sedentary support folk with gallons of water, serving as cheering squads supporting their first time runners---passing them water from jugs about one hundred paces from the MCRRC-installed drinking fountain.
Then came waves of our own MCRRC groups, including a series of the more than two hundred entrants in the First Time Marathoners Program—feeling like they had got a jump on the others by starting up at 7:30 AM. Finally came my own MCRRC regulars having launched at 8:00 AM—the time that Joe and I were coming in to finish, with full boxes of bananas and gallons of OJ stacked in front of us for our own early cool down period. It was already hot for those just starting out. For this reason, for the magnificent chorus of birdsong at dawn, and for the additional reason that Joe is always running in the dark and does not need the late start to feel comfortable that he can see his way clear”—I will suggest we do this again at this same hour!
We both got back home early—in fact, before anyone awakened at Joe’s house, including the children born and unborn. I got showered up at home and found myself at church early, even wearing what someone might expect to be church going clothes as opposed to a wet running outfit—a pleasant change for our guest, but not a stranger-John Primus, who was here where he had been interim pastor twice, on either side of Don and Martheen’s stay. They were here in DC for high school graduations of two grandchildren
Here I am blithering about my birds while flying higher than any one of them can reach! I am heading South in contrast to their Northern migration patterns, as I am going to visit with Michael and Judy before the twins have shown any sign of coming-out to greet their grandfather---unlike Joe’s child who seems knocking on the door to greet his father, generally when he is about to go out for a run. Joe says he must resort to his good friend Mister Tread Mill, even as I am about to go out and take in the whole sweep of the BigHorn Wilderness on the “Wild and Scenic Trail Run.” If you would like to see it in some of its pictorial glory, even as I am running through it----and, unlike the recent run with Joe, I am going to both START and FINISH “in the Dark!”---Click on www.Bighornwildernessrun.crg
But, for now, I am heading toward George Bush International Airport (what happens if they want to name an airport after his son?) in Houston, to pass on to San Antonio to visit MY son, who will soon have a pair of sons of his own to name things after!
So, this is a celebratory event—with Father’s Day this Sunday, as my son is awaiting becoming a Super-Father, catching up with me quickly by having the same number of sons I have had all in one day coming soon! I arrive to help celebrate their anniversary, which, if I calculate correctly, is the 8th June 12 from their wedding day to the present, as they are making all the preparatory changes for the big events forthcoming in their lives.