Freedom

The vibrant green grass covered the desert floor, interspersed with towering cacti tiptoeing towards the clear blue sky, thorny desert shrubs and the nearly microscopic patches of newly bloomed pale wild flowers. The slight downhill was pulling me forward, granting me partial control of my body while I happily gave up the rest of the decision making to the flow of trail. The air was cool but the sun felt warm. This was the dreamy “smooth, flowy single track” that every runner dreams of… and I was enjoying every inch.

A dip was approaching in the trail, I leapt and for a moment was airborne. My breath paused… in anticipation of landing? Or in the awe of the brief feeling of flying? As my forefoot touched the ground with a slight “thawamp” I pushed slightly to keep the forward motion rolling. I rose out of the dip and up to the next bend downward.

“Gosh I love this” my body felt the words more than my brain recognized the thought. 

Recently, the GOAT of trail running itself, Courtney Dauwalter, put out a request on social media for the community to submit a word or short phrase about what trail running represents to them personally.

Since it’s nearly impossible to get most runners to stop talking about their love of the sport, she yielded a lot of results from our niche community. Over 3,100 last I checked. I sifted through the comments and decided this might be an excellent opportunity to use the followers in her comments section as participants in my own very unofficial social science research project.

How would my unwitting respondents define trail running? Would their descriptions give me a peek into what they felt was missing in their lives before they found the sport?

Several themes appeared as I scrolled, descriptions like; peace, joy, alive, play, connected, escape, healing and therapy jumped off the screen as runners shared, at times, intimate descriptions of what the trails meant to them. But out of the array of powerful adjectives there was a clear winner. Out of the 3,100 plus comments 497 mentioned Freedom (along with its synonyms). Freedom? Liberating? What were they feeling free from? What about running through the woods and deserts, near oceans and up mountains infuses people with the sense that they are free?

It resonated with me.

Is it that freedom feels like racing the downhill sections with airplane arms outstretched? That it feels like exploring the natural world in a childlike way, pointing out the wild flowers and butterflies with pure joy? I know I feel freedom when I notice the birds welcoming the morning light, giving me a reprieve from the noise of traffic or the latest notification on my phone.

Freedom also feels like letting go of pieces of emotional weight I might have been letting linger longer than was helpful. Freedom feels like the ease of sharing a smile, a hello or a bit of encouragement with strangers on the trail is a freeing feeling. The trails provide a sacred space to deepen connections with others and myself. Combining the wonder of nature and the wonder of my own body’s movement keeps my mind focused in the present, leaving little space for my inhibitions. I can share my deepest secrets and ask the questions that I know don’t have answers. Whether I am confiding to my running friends, whispering to the breeze on the mountain or praying to God Himself, this is a place I find freedom.

My mind wandered to the confining and restrictive ways in which many of us live much of our daily lives. Long days sitting at a computer in an office (home or otherwise), poor diet and sleep choices dictated by schedules packed to the brim, driven by the never satisfied desire for external validation. No doubt we often feel less than free in our physical selves. 

In addition, the mental and emotional burdens of society today seem to be weighing us down even more than the physical loads. Our day to day life is overflowing with more instant gratification and dopamine without effort than ever before, due to the ease of life combined with expert algorithms literally staring us in the face for hours each day, programmed to keep us hostage to our tiny screens. No wonder we are craving freedom.

In a world long before many of our modern day distractions the perceptive Hans Christian Anderson preached, “Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” Freedom seems like the perfect description of the sport we love so much. If we can get out in the sunshine and notice the little flowers, we can align with Anderson’s dharma and find freedom from and solutions to problems we face, if only for a few miles.