Adventures with Bristol the Enduro-Dog, Part I

I originally presented this article at Talk20 Spartanburg, where presenters talk about 20 images for 20 seconds each.  It should take 6:40 to read.

Bristol Short Track Darlington Daytona Barrett.  Bristol's the best running partner I've ever had--he never complains, and never minds when I do, never drops me, can always go, never has to check with the wife, never wants to go for a bike ride instead.

  

We started out walking him when he was two months old, up to the end of the block and back.  The older and larger he got, the farther he went.  We started running at three and a half months.  He liked it from the start, and pushed forward except to pee.

  

Bristol took to trail running almost immediately. At four-and-a-half months old, he ran 10 miles with me in the rain. Now a year and a half later, at full-size, he mashes out miles with a swagger, rarely stopping unless I do. He marks his territory with his lungs and legs; we haven’t found the limit yet.

I was drawn to trails when I started running over 25 years ago.  I run for fitness for sure, but I run to connect with something bigger and older and wiser than I. But if I try, and if I let it, it can include me too.  There’s a rhythm I seek, running and breathing and being. 

Bristol and I run at Croft State Park, a former US military installation, training grounds for thousands of men who fought in WWI and WWII.  Before that it was farmland.  Walls and road beds remain, some now parts of the trail system.  We run through open hardwood forests, signs of a recovering ecosystem, the result of leaving things alone for 50 years.

Bristol has never chased the squirrels, nor the deer.  A turkey scared him one day, and he took passing interest in a fat black snake.  He’s learned to trust my pace for the various distances we run together.  I trust Bristol with trail finding, and watch him sway through S turns, graceful and strong.

Today’s run, a short shake-out after a busy week, led us back onto familiar trails. One skirts sharply around a wide hole, left, I imagine, by exploding ordinance. Bristol lifted off behind me, full body extended over the hole and hit the trail ahead running at full speed, an athlete reaching his prime.



We run in all weather, in all seasons.  This was another great run with the Enduro-Dog--25 degrees, brilliant sunshine, empty trails, big trees and varied terrain.  When a faint trail is obscured by leaves or snow, we trace the contours, not looking for the trail, but feeling where the trail ought to be.

 

Bristol has played a significant part in a new cycle in my running, extending distances and running almost exclusively on trails.  On trails, my run becomes elemental, exposed to heat and snow, rain and bitter cold, packed dirt and sand and mud, downed trees and rocks and lost trails.

On one run, Bristol stopped behind me.  I kept running, then looked back to see him sitting in the middle of the trail.  I kept running.  He watched me turning to look at him as I gained fifty or sixty yards on him.  Then I heard him coming, full speed along the trail. He passed me without a glance and shot ahead. 

I like to use these runs to explore new places.  There are a number of cemeteries at Croft, mostly old family grave sites in various states of upkeep.  History at Croft runs deep, and far; Bristol and I travel it on foot.

Like most good trail runners, Bristol will occasionally get into his own head.  We spend hours in the woods, and the conversations often last the entire run.  But at times, when feeling good, or bad, we drift into our own thoughts, content to let the birds and bugs take over the conversation.

I carry water for myself.  And  food.  Bristol takes neither.  He won’t drink from a squirt bottle, and food doesn’t interest him.  His metabolism never seems to fail.  In summer I plan runs to cross the many creeks at Croft as often as possible.

Bristol knows these trails as well as I do.  One day I got all turned around, and found myself in a place I didn’t expect to be.  Following a faint trail I knew died out, Bristol and I set out down the creek in the direction we wanted to go.  We traipsed through bamboo thickets, each of us searching for clear passage, for about five minutes. 

At last, after having squelched some panic myself, we found trail we knew.  Bristol bolted ahead, skipping in freedom.  I felt myself push the pace in relief.  You'll just have to imagine: two hour run in the woods with Bristol, sunshine, t-shirt, dense brush bushwhack, getting lost and finding myself again.

When Bristol and I run with others, he seems to like the inevitable competition as much as I do.  At the end of one run, we started running harder about a mile from the end. 

The pace picked up until we were rolling along at near full speed.  When we took off, Bristol sprinted to the front. He had a great run, playing as we went, but most definitely focusing on the finish as much as we were.

Bristol seems to understand how to preserve his energy.  Often, after he passes me at full tilt, he pulls off the trail to wait for me to pass, then falls in behind me.  I rarely if ever rein him in, and his focus is clear.  Christy points out that in so many pictures, he’s running straight in the middle of the trail.

Bristol is a very patient dog.  He understands “Wait” better than “Stay.”  He’s not bothered by horses, or people.  Sometimes, though, he’s just ready to go, and will start off down the trail on his own.  



There’s a peacefulness about Bristol.  When we run, we both seem to revel in the presence of all of it, to smell, breath, touch, move, in the same contours as the trails.  And it’s all a part of the greater whole, a snake, a turkey, two spike bucks running in the same lines, the trees, the creeks, the blood, the spit, the lungs. 

Happiness is good community design

originally published in the Spartanburg Journal, December 2010

Dare I say it?  “It’s cold, y’all.”  This Arctic weather that hit our fair region the past couple of weeks has been the topic of nearly all casual conversations.  I generally get the question, “Do you still ride to work in this weather?”

You bet I do!  In fact, it is this kind of weather—the extremes of heat and cold—that focuses my intent to “be out in it,” the excuse I use for my outdoor activity.  We all know what 65 degrees and sunny feels like, but how about 13 degrees and sunny?

This week, I rousted out my winter gloves, and the skull cap I wear under my helmet.  Now I take a good ten minutes to get dressed and ready to leave.  Though it’s perhaps simple and unclear to say, these days riding to work make me happy.

Happiness is a shifty target, and defining it mostly takes the form of listing what it is that makes us happy.  But it has popped up in more and more writings about the ideas of community and community design.  One blog I read quoted Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, during whose terms the murder rate in Bogota dropped 40%.   “There are a few things we can agree on about happiness,” Penalosa says. “You need to fulfill your potential as a human being. You need to walk. You need to be with other people. Most of all, you need to not feel inferior.” 

Abe Goldberg, assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina-Upstate, has correlated happiness with community involvement.  Goldberg illustrates what the data shows with a story about someone feeling depressed, whose doctor tells her, “You need to get out more, and be with people.”  But, Goldberg points out, our building patterns for the last forty or so years have created communities where being with people is more and more difficult, with houses in subdivisions featuring the garage in front and the porch in back.  Most of our streets, even in residential subdivisions, are not conducive to walking and biking, and our community feeling is weakened as a result.  We have essentially built against our own happiness.

Today, in 20 degree weather, I rode to work.  A man walking spoke to me, and we agreed that it was a good thing it wasn’t always this cold.  Another cyclist, who was on his way to take the bus to work, joked that he still had to get to work even when it’s cold.  I joked that a frozen beard is surely better than a frozen chin.

And the “feeling inferior” part of Penalosa’s definition?  Street design has for many years focused solely on automobile travel, at the expense of other forms of transportation.  We tend to look at self-propulsion as a punishment for driving while intoxicated, or for poverty—pedestrians and cyclists are suspect, and we provide few ways for them to get around safely.  In neighborhoods without sidewalks, where pedestrians are forced into the streets if they want to walk, we are told we can be here only on the automobilists’ terms.  Nothing says inferior like not being welcome.

Hazel Borys, the managing director of the community design firm Placemakers, points to a biological element to this phenomenon: “Oxytocin, the trust hormone, goes up with eye contact. We get a whole lot more of it while walking. Which is just the beginning of balm to the spirit fostered in walkable neighbourhoods.” 

There are many reasons to support a more inclusive transportation system: economic development, transportation equality, community health.  Perhaps it is the combination of all that, in one of those “sum is greater than the parts” equations, that results in our happiness.  That feeling of happiness warms the bones cold from a vigorous commute.