So Much

So much, Brother Lion. So much.

Overwhelmed, I am. With satisfaction, satiated am I by this company we keep, near and far. The cul-de-sac crew, as you'll recall Anna calls it. Our commune people, Kaerlek and I joked. Kerrtopia is how she most often refers to our chosen company, the family we make as we go.

A hundred-mile race was our given, simplest reason. The sheer wonder of travel might be worth slightly more, in explanation, but remains no less incomplete. In any regard: so much was seen, so much was treasured, so much will we remember. Among our lessons will be that of time: the bulk of these places could easily have swallowed a week, and only then might we have said we knew them, and through them, better would we know ourselves. But time was perhaps the only treasure we did not have; with good company and laughter and those other most priceless jewels were we rich. Other lessons: the beauty of movement is lost without the still, and quiet, and contemplative; we've need of downtime in which to run and write and read and process; the sea, beautiful as she may be, is no match for high alpine lakes and big peak, big sky vistas.

In the midst of so much beauty, tears are inevitable, probably. At mile fifty-five, so choked up was he: "It's... just... so... hard." Of course, we'd been overwhelmed by the start ("Big shotgun blast, & up they surge... hours - & a hundred miles later - to Auburn. Beautiful & brilliant," I noted then); that he'd run fifty-five miles first was something of an astonishment. No matter if he walked the last thirty; he'd his silver buckle, and more so, the honor of achieving something beautiful and hard and indescribably perfect in the effort required.

Overwhelmed, yes. Every day there's more beauty than the world.