Orcas 100

photo: Nick Danielson

At an advertised 350 lumens, the headlamp was meant to illuminate the trail ahead. I expected to see the ground in monochrome: the roots, the rocks, and the mud coated in white light, an alternative world compared to the moody viridescent mosses and saturated soils of this forest floor.

I wondered if I could maybe distribute the lumens differently – perhaps I only needed two hundred and fifty of them for the trail and I could use the other hundred for another purpose. In this new universe, where the forest becomes black and white shapes and shadows, I would redirect some of the light inwards through my sweat-beaded forehead, past the bone and tissue and firing synapses – a hundred lumens beaming through, distilling my thoughts into simpler terms- shapes and shadows in blacks and whites.

Of course, the 350 lumens are just the advertising. Your actual results may vary. The way the light interacts with the outside conditions certainly has something do with it.

The current conditions of the trail and my mind, as I was wondering about lumens, were similar: ten feet of visibility. A thick fog had settled through the forest and infinite droplets reflected back into the headlamp. Whatever clarity I was supposed to see in the beam of my torch was now blurred shapes that gained their definition only as I passed them by.

It was enough to keep moving. I planted my feet slowly and looked up towards tree trunks emerging from the darkness ahead, anticipating the reflection of markers. Each marker reassured me that I’m on the right trail, still delivering against the task at hand: forward progress along this set path.

I had hoped to be doing much more. Signing up for an endurance event to run one hundred miles in the middle of the northwest winter comes with a certain expectation of difficulty. I imaged the adversity as a cloaked equine phantom, floating and shape-shifting before me. I hoped to harness it, and as it bucked left and right, stay on, riding it to wherever it led. Like any feared and misunderstood beast, perhaps it was heading back to a deep lair where it was free from pitchfork-armed mobs aiming to conquer it.

At its hideaway, I would dismount and look into an obsidian featureless face to see some reflection of myself. I’d be rewarded for my tribulations with a newfound wisdom. I would find answers to weeks’ and months’ and years’ worth of questions. I believed that like so many other epiphanies, these had to be discovered with the right kind of illumination, in the right setting. On this northwest island in February, under the pressure of enduring deep fatigue and winter weather, I would find a shimmering light. It would be here.

Fifty eight miles into this race, however, there was no luxury of letting my mind wander towards some romantic ideas of bravery in the face of some dark foe. There was certainly darkness. The fog and limits of my headlamp were very real. As was the cold. The humidity was giving way to steadying rain, and the hair on my arms stood on end not from a deep fear of my envisioned beast, but from an immediate and deep chill along my skin. I reacted to a shiver with a faster pace. I needed to expend more energy and stay warm. I needed to to do more than walk, more than just move forward. It was a deliberate change, it was not intuitive, and it took all my mental capacity to force.

At first it was short steps up the hill. As the slope eased, my legs found a smoother, longer rhythm. I grit my teeth and flexed my stomach, back, and shoulders in a tense shield against the cold rain. I wasn’t battling some dark creature. I wasn’t engaging with any apparitions. I was just running, and it was hard, as promised and expected. My mind was fully occupied.

The running came together stride by stride, and soon, mile by mile. I followed the markers along a ribbon through the woods as the fog eased and waned, appeared and disappeared, like a dryad dancing from tree to tree. I was warm now, moving smoothly. Perhaps to some animal sheltered in the woods, it was I that was the apparition. A figure moving through the trees, a floating beam of white light moving left and right and forward and onward.

Now warm, the tension in my core eased. For a second, my mind eased as well – no longer singularly fixated on getting through the moment. I wondered if I had missed my chance. The visibility, the cold, the fatigue, the anxiety at whether I was lost, the forced and tense turnover of my legs, the stress: these were the exact conditions I was looking for. A stage perfectly set to meet that darkness. Yet here I was, running with ease, the moment come and gone. No beast. No epic battle of the mind. No answers.

I passed another route marker. Now out of the fog, my headlamp illuminated just as promised, and I found myself in that monochromatic world. The trees, roots, creeks, and mud-puddles passing by as abstract shapes in fleeting moments along the trail. Soon I’d get to a lodge filled with the heat of a stove and the warmth of familiar faces. I’d pick up fresh supplies, be encouraged by jovial volunteers, and continue on into the night.

The rain and cold intensified as I continued. Just as before, I focused completely. One foot in front of the other. Run, stay warm, eat food, move, repeat. No dark beast. No profound wisdom. Stride by stride. Mile by mile.

As the sun rose, the hours of darkness fading away, I took off and put away the headlamp. There was no need for any illumination. It wasn’t that I didn’t find what I was looking for. It was that it wasn’t ever there to be searched for. Not here in this forest, not on this run. The world of black and white shapes gave way to a meandering path under towering sentinels dressed in deep emerald hues. The space between trees blanketed by vibrant moss. Droplets clung and released from needles and twigs. The sound of the dripping forest was as rhythmic as my strides.

I never found the darkness or the wisdom I was seeking, but it didn’t matter. Just as the cold, fog, rain, and fatigue had consumed my entire focus earlier in the night, so too did this forest before me. I could barely believe what I was seeing as the trail unrolled before me. The light was incredible.