In Tanzania, surprises at dawn

IRINGA TOWN, Tanzania – I had an awful night. Mosquitoes kept buzzing in my ear and I kept turning on the light to hunt for them. I awoke for good at 3:30 a.m. to watch the Boston Celtics play miserably against the Miami Heat in a key playoff game; the Celtics lost badly. Still, I managed to pull myself out of a depressed haze to lace up my running shoes and explore this town in southwestern Tanzania at cold dawn.

The dirt road headed straight up and I labored trying to keep stride. Finally, it leveled off and I ran along a ridge road, passing scores of blue-uniformed primary school kids on their way to the classroom. About 10 minutes into the run, I passed by a gigantic boulder about a quarter mile above me. It was bald and majestic and formidable.




I saw a man ahead and stopped to ask how I could get to the boulder.

“You take that path just there,” he said, pointing to a trail behind him.

“Is it hard?”

“No.”

With such surety, I thought what the hell and ran to the trailhead. I ran-walked and then scrambled over tree roots and rocks for 10 minutes before I reached the base of the boulder. I had no idea how I would climb the sheer walls of the rock, but when I reached the base it became obvious. A crack about 18 inches wide split the boulder in two and hefty rocks formed stepping stones for 20 yards up. I wedged through the crack and pulled myself up and out, and made my way to the summit.

What a view – and what a surprise: Already there were two young guys of Asian descent atop the boulder. They were sitting with their backs to me and I could hear the music coming out of their earbuds. I gave a small shout so as not to spook them and one turned to wave; the other ignored me. (I thought maybe it wasn’t his idea to get up for an early morning hike.) Not wanting to intrude on their space, and giving up any hope of a nirvana-like alone-with-the-world meditative experience, I took in a last view of the valley and hills that stretched for miles – the red sun rising on the east, the white moon full in the west – and made my way back down.

I heard chirping immediately and saw to my right what looked like a pissed-off rock hyrax.

Hyraxes resemble woodchucks or groundhogs, but its closest cousins (I know this obscure fact from a long-ago safari tour) are elephants and sea cows. Anyway, it continued chirping away at me while standing on its hind legs and I could see little hyraxes scoot around the rocks behind it.
 
Apparently I was intruding on the space of all kinds of living things at dawn in Iringa town, so I ambled off, running up and down hill paths for another half hour.  All around me, blue and green and yellow birds criss-crossed like mini-rockets, skimming the tassels of golden yellow high grass. The sun warmed my back. This felt like being in Africa. I had that moment, I had worked up a sweat, I was ready to face the day, mosquitoes, Celtics, and a hyrax hissy fit overcome.

Running into Giants in Tanzania

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania -- It’s good to be running in a foreign place again. Two things happen almost without fail: I see something shocking, and I shock myself with a new thought about something at home.

This morning, the shocking sight came first. I went running at daybreak (6:30 a.m.) along the Indian Ocean along a rutted path a few miles outside Tanzania’s largest city. I passed a group of men sitting under a large shade tree, perhaps a group of elders gathering on an important topic, and the road narrowed to the width of a bicycle path.

And there, right in front of my footfall was a beautiful conical shell. I narrowly missed stepping on it, and I stopped to reach down to pick it up, when …. OMG, there was a huge ugly snail in that shell, with two twisty and GINORMOUS antennas poking out of its head.

It was the Giant African Snail. I recoiled. I inched backward. I had known about the Giants from my earlier time living in Africa.  But they had never stopped me in my tracks before.

They are so nasty that they have made a list of one of the 100 top invasive species in the world. It is a pest that eats through natural ecosystems and crops, killing commerce, and, when eaten (who would eat them?) possibly causing eosinophilic meningoencephalitis. It is a type of meningitis that causes headache, neck pain, visual disturbances, and in some cases death.

One scientist even has said that the Giant African Snail was a hazard that could cause car crashes. Really. Here’s the quote: “A. fulica are also a general nuisance when found near human habitations and can be hazardous to drivers, causing cars to skid. (Mead 1961).”

The one inches from my finger was pretty huge -- as big as my hand. A fat boy. (Actually they are hermaphrodites, so it’s more accurate to call them fat boy-girls or fat hermies.) As I straightened up and backed away, I had the senses to look around me and there were more! Dozens more! All Giants, their tentacles slowly shifting in the air. I jumped like I was on a bed of hot coals, sidestepping them somehow in my distress, until I was in the clear.

The rest of the run didn’t quite measure that level of yuck. But I did have a revelation about one of my children, a high schooler who provides endless concern in large part due to his sloth-like, or Giant African Snail-like, behavior when it comes to school.

He just won’t study. Or rather, he will only study for an hour on the night before a test, or write a major paper for an hour the night before it’s due. Then it came to me on the run. I’ve been missing the signs all along. He is not a cousin to the Giants, he is a Savant. Must be. How else could still get very good grades? That’s the way I’ll think about him from now, throw that worry to the wayside, and believe blindly he’s on the right path. And for this newfound peace of mind, there’s only one thing to thank: the snails.

Next stop: Rural southwest Tanzania, west of Iringa. Maybe I’ll get dust in my shoes.

San Francisco: The Pacific and Death & Taxes

         
           SAN FRANCISCO – I ran to the Pacific Ocean this morning.

I ran under a canopy of stars, from the east end of the Golden Gate Park to the west, along Martin Luther King Drive for four miles, under giant pine trees, under a majestic dead pine with 20 crows in its crown silhouetted against a blue-black sky, past ponds of families of silent ducks and geese, past a fat-ass windmill, over the empty Great Highway, and onto the gray sand of Ocean Beach.

It felt good to stand still and to feel a slight breeze on my forehead. I thought about jumping in. I thought about running back after jumping in. I thought about time. I thought about distance. I stopped thinking and turned back. The Pacific would wait.

Running in the dark is a combination of peace and dread. Peace because of the comfort of being in the dark with no one around, no distractions, miles passing by with no markers. Dread because I could trip over a root or stumble in a pothole, and dread too because one of those running-free dogs that appeared every mile or so might run after me. I ran with my head down until I saw a running dog.

Eight straight days of running is this. I am in full push-back mode, trying to recapture my strength, my endurance, my waist of old. I don’t know how many days I will run consecutively, but it will be more than eight. I’m winded far too easily, I’m slower, I’m too fat.

Three days of San Francisco, a work trip, a getaway in the mornings when I run. Walking is almost as much fun. I stayed in a hotel east of the park, across from the famous Kezar Stadium, next to the Kezar Pub, which has big-screen TVs, basketball on all night, two vegetarian dishes, 12 beers on tap, two local, one dark porter Death & Taxes, which is damn good and damn good it didn’t keep me from running to the Pacific Ocean.

Lima: Running and being still

LIMA, Peru – One early morning in Lima I was running around a part of the San Isidro neighborhood (which has more policemen on bicycles per capita than anywhere I’ve ever been) when I came upon an old man standing on a street corner. As I passed him, he raised his knees up and down and moved his arms back and forth, mimicking my motion as a runner. He wasn’t moving. He was still.

I laughed, he saluted me, and it got me thinking about how being still was really important – even connected to a run.

This may sound odd, but when I think of running I break it down to many components. There is the start with some aches and the immediate adjustment to the weather outside, hot or cold. There’s finding my pace. There’s thinking about the day or people or something that just happened. And then there’s stillness – no thoughts -- in my mind as I run. I don’t know why and it’s not like being in a trance. But there is an absence of thought at times, and I enjoy it.

That’s not all for running and stillness. There are two other ways this happens to me.

One is quite literal: I am still when I stop due to traffic (I always welcome the break) or by choice when I see something so interesting I stop to check it out (this is rare).

But I did stop in a San Isidro park after I passed the old guy running in place. On the edge of the grass, the city has set up several small informational plaques about the birds in the neighborhood. I studied the photos of the Amazonian hummingbird, the Saffron finch, the Blue-black Grassquit, among a few dozen illustrations. And then I listened to the loud calls and the overwhelming number of doves or pigeons cooing to each other.

I saw some Blue-black Grassquits as I made my way around and even was lucky later to even to see a Saffron finch (an all-yellow bird with a slight orange tinge near the head of a male). Unfortunately, the hummingbirds stay out of sight.

I also stopped during my runs around Lima to take in small acts of beauty. People in the capital, from the poor neighborhoods to the more upscale ones, love to plant small gardens in front of their homes. Often they plant roses. The city even puts flower boxes on the exterior walls of some parking garages. Roses and cars: I never imagined the two together. (See the photo at the top of the post).  

The second experience of stillness happens at the end of almost all my runs. I do some stretching exercises that I learned from an acu-therapist in Miami some 20 years ago that I still use for my lower back and muscles around my neck and shoulders, and then I lie down and assume the corpse pose used in yoga.

I focus on my breathing and that cuts out all the noises around me. I am still. I experience a moment of peace; I collect myself. I generally feel ready for the day.

I am so still that passers by sometimes gasp. Some even shout out, “Are you OK?” They think I have passed out, or worse. On these occasions, I raise my head (sometimes startling them even more) and I assure them that I am well. I tell them, I am just being still.

Running in Lima: Loving baby Jesus

      
            LIMA, Peru – Here, when I run, I cross myself.

It’s not the danger of getting more blood clots in my legs (although that will worry me for quite some time). It’s not the fear of getting hit by a car. It’s not the pollution. Rather, it’s the number of Jesus statues and Nativity scenes everywhere.

Fifteen days after Christmas, Christmas is going strong in Lima.

The Christmas lights are still strung all over this vast city, up and down palm trees, on light poles, on hotel fronts, on city signs, and, of course, around all the manger scenes – the thousands of manger scenes, most of them with flashing colored lights forming an unnatural border.

The truth is, there is no greater love here than the love for baby Jesus, and I saw that firsthand over the weekend at the National Children’s Hospital, where outside the children’s tuberculosis ward over the weekend the staff held their traditional (and sad) ceremony to take down the manger.

They called out for everyone on the ward to witness the scene. Children with TB who could walk came out. The staff and their children filed around. Doctors, nurses, and family members all gathered around. 

Two things happened. One was that everyone was invited to take out one of the 300 figures in the manger scene (from tiny lambs to large cows to the very heavy statues of Mary and Joseph) and then to put a coin in a collection box.

The second was that the baby Jesus could not just be simply packed away.

No, baby Jesus would linger outside the cardboard box that held all the other figures. He was passed from nurse to nurse, child to child, doctor to doctor. The nurses, though, didn’t want to let him go. They cradled him in their arms like he was the baby Jesus, kissing him on the forehead, whispering words of prayer, squeezing him to their bosoms, some shedding tears, and ever so reluctantly and carefully passing the baby to another’s arms, and the whole loving baby Jesus started over again. I stood in awe.

            I know this is a running blog. And I’ll write about the running in Lima in the next post. For now, the reverence for the meaning of the season, the birth of Jesus, is more than enough for me. I don’t think I’ll look at a manger scene the same ever again.

Rangeley, Maine: ‘All my pores are open’

For the last several Christmas breaks, we’ve traveled to Peaks Island, Maine, off Portland, for a pre-Christmas stop with my parents and then driven with them to the northern Maine town of Rangeley. Rangeley is home not only to Saddleback ski area, but it also has many other small-town charms, including a great ice skating pond in the middle of town and a great sledding hill in the middle of a golf course.

I haven’t been running much since I had an episode of deep-vein thrombosis after a long flight to Manila in mid-November, but, now cleared by doctors to exercise on all sports that don’t include the risk of head injury (there goes downhill skiing), I’ve been slowly building back.

This morning, I checked the local Rangeley map and found a route along the Harold Ross Road, named after the legendary New Yorker editor who had the good sense to hire E.B. White. I admit to running slowly before reaching Harold Ross Road; to get there I had to run a good three-quarters of a mile along the Saddleback access road, and it was steep, befitting the beginnings of a good mountain road.

But once I reached the turnoff, I relaxed and fell into a steady rhythm. It had snowed an inch or two overnight and that made for the best type of winter running. I had soft landings. My footfalls were almost silent, save for a slightly squeaky land and push-off. The north wind pushed me south.

I registered only a few things along the way: some street signs – my favorite was Stub and Luraine’s Lane -- and also animal tracks. The deeper I ran down Harold Ross, the greater the number of tracks. I was running on a deserted road as well as an animal highway.

The most common track was moose. I stopped and put my running shoe next to a hoof print, and the hoof was significantly longer than my shoe, probably a size 12 man’s. I paced off the distance between prints, and one stretched five feet. I started out again and ran along the ridge, up and down, over streams, and pass pine wood, looking for but not finding moose.

Fifty-five minutes after my start, I returned back to our rented house on Rangeley Lake, called Windy Cross, perhaps because of the wind and also all the crosses in the house. I found my father, Mike. I had tried to persuade him the night before to go into the hot tub next to the house, and he had demurred, saying “let’s wait until morning.”

He was carrying bags to his car, getting ready to return home with my mother, Mary.

“Want to go in the hot tub, Dad?”

“Sure!” he said.

Five minutes later, we opened the hot tub and stripped down to our shorts. Barefoot, we made the short walk across snow and ice before submerging in the warm water. It was wonderful. (Check out the video.) Afterward, I asked my father how he felt and he said, “All my pores are open.”

How does that feel?

“I am feeling generous and benign,” he said.

We laughed, and he and I understood exactly what he meant. All is good.

Estonia: Running in the deep dark

During winter, I often run on weekdays in the dark. For the past few days in Estonia, in the far Baltic north, I’ve been running not in the dark but the deep dark. Night here in mid-December stretches for close to 17 hours; the sun sinks by 3:30 p.m.

Maybe it’s all in my head, but when I set off at 6:45, as I have in the last few days, it feels like late in the night, not early in the morning. The sun won’t rise until after 9 a.m. So when I set off, there’s no dawn peeking around the corner.

I’m in the university town of Tartu, and it feels very European. Fanciful truffles are in the windows of shops. Women wear thigh-length wool coats and knee-high black boots, brightly colored scarves knotted around their necks. Men, hair stringy, rush by in suits, scarves, cigarettes between their fingers.  They all watch their steps along the narrow cobblestone streets of Old Town or along the bridges that are for pedestrians not cars. Christmas lights are everywhere, strung up on lamp posts and bridge posts and high in the air above Town Square.

The Christmas lights don’t only raise holiday spirits, but they also raise spirits, period, it seems. They provide light. This morning, I ran underneath a string of holiday lights along the Mother River and up and over an impressive pedestrian bridge, passed by a few bikers wearing winter coats and scarves that flew behind them, flapping in the breeze. Then I headed along the river again on a long stretch of blackness.

When it’s dark, I often feel a lightness of being. I’m concentrating on not falling and I watch the ground for holes or humps. I’m not thinking. That is freeing mentally and sometimes, when my pace is just right, I can run for a mile or two and not realize it. Night makes you feel invisible. Night also makes others invisible, of course, which can be a problem. But when you see an occasional person, and when it's exceptionally cold (as it is in Tartu), and when wind is cutting across your stride, it is possible to relax into a rhythm and lose yourself.

On the run this morning, I retreated into this zombie-state and only snapped out of it when I looked up the sky and saw light. It was limited to a large circle in a bank of low-lying clouds. I couldn’t figure it out at first. But then it dawned on me that the lights from the street, Christmas decorations, and a nearby mall had reflected upon the clouds. It reminded me of one of those spaceship movies in which the scene is all black until shafts of light reach to the ground. Only in Tartu, the direction of the light is up, not down.

I don’t know why, but the scene almost made me laugh. It was entirely a man-made phenomenon, and it seemed a rare one. I thought to myself it’s not often on a run when you think of nothing in the dark and then you look up and think of spaceships.