Paradise

I finished an extraterritoriality symposium at Southwestern yesterday evening and had 36 hours to kill. Who leaves Indianapolis for Southern California in November and returns home immediately? I didn't quite know what to do. Los Angeles is not, I learned, on the ocean.

This morning I cabbed it to LAX. I rented a Jeep Wrangler. I drove to Santa Barbara. Tonight I'm at a non-descript Ramada not far from downtown.

I hit the one running store in town for a hand bottle and some advice. The proprietor was just the kind of guy I've always wanted to be. Young, tan, unassuming, and exceedingly fit. And, dare I say, envious that it was I and not he who was headed for the trail. After I convinced him even easterners can run hills (surprisingly hard to do!), he sent me up Cold Springs Trail, a four-mile climb from Montecito to the top of a ridge.

I was looking for a trail run. This was that, until it wasn't. It became a full-on mountain run, with one climb so steep I could only keep from sliding downhill by rapid-stepping 2" at a time. I ran over ultra-technical rock gardens. I walked some steep stretches. I opened it up when it flattened and cooled off in the trees. I turned around to experience the view of the Pacific, and the Channel Islands, and the oil rigs(!). It was shirt-off weather, but plenty cool in the shade. I passed some other people, friendly to a one. I reached the top and looked over into the next beautiful valley; tacked on a couple of miles on the ridge-top road; gazed at the peaks getting higher to the east. With the sun lowering I headed back to the trail down.

There I saw two guys who were really, really dressed the part. Compression tights. High-end trail shoes. Tricked-out camelbacks and those cool granola-looking ballcaps. Sweet shades. The kind of guys I've known all my life, who have always been just a tad cooler than I. (I'm dressed in my racing flats, a Tuck business school ballcap, round glasses -- i.e., like a professor traveling for work.) We exchanged pleasantries. I said "take it easy, guys" and started down. I didn't think -- and when I did, I felt a little sheepish -- that we were going the same way, and the likely inference was that I thought I was faster than they.

He had to say it. "We'll see who outruns whom." I stammered a joking apology. Then we chatted for a few switchbacks about an upcoming local ultra. Then we hit a flat, and I let it go. Downhill trail running is different from any other running sport. It's closest to skiing. You separate your legs from your body; the legs follow the trail and the body follows the fall line. You don't pump the arms; you carry them high and wide, and use them to counter the centrifugal force from a turn.

And you know when the ground comes it will come hard and unexpectedly. You won't have time to think of how you will fall; you will have time exactly to realize you kicked a rock and then to realize you are on the ground. Often, just where you don't want to be. I remembered as I ran the scene in Born to Run, when Jen Shelton opened it up on the Tarahumara in Copper Canyon only to eat dirt and get passed by the group. There were parts of this trail I knew I couldn't afford to blow. On those parts the rocks were too big, to sharp and too many to avoid breaking something. But I was grooving, the light was fading, and it had been a slow run up.

I hit the ground. Three times. Hard.

As I lay on the ground the third time, just a few switchbacks above the Jeep, feeling the legs to be sure there was no injury, I couldn't stop smiling. I'm now bleeding on the keyboard, an ice pack on the knees, and wondering how and when I can get back here.

I grew up in Alaska. I've lived in Idaho. I ski every year in Utah, Wyoming or Colorado. I've hiked in the Alps. And yet I know that _this place_ is paradise.