A curving line of fire draped across the face of Doi Nang like a ghastly grin. To the east a broken fragment of a blood red moon struggled to rise over the Phrao Mountains. Something turned in the pit of my stomach. I gulped and braced myself as I throttled out into the cold night, thinking, “I guess this is what I asked for.”
The seed for this eerie episode had unwittingly been planted a few hours earlier. That afternoon I was in my little round earth hut surrounded by Chiang Dao’s two big mountains: Doi Luang and Doi Nang. I’d been reading In the Wake of the Jomon
I put my book down and I turned a scan of the curving lime and mud plastered walls of my hut. I gazed out through simple wooden windows over the tree-lined field and the hazy brown and green mountains beyond. I mused over what fruit trees, vegetables, herbs and cereals to plant when the rainy season begins. I eyed the ridges and gulleys for future hikes. Images from my short residence in Chiang Dao – sunsets, snakes, mist and stars – came back to me. “For now, this corner of the planet is where I’ll find my adventure.” I said to myself. It was a nice thought, a comforting thought.
A column of white smoke rising up the face of Doi Nang caught my eye. Knowing that the burning season was underway did put a damper on my mood, but in that sunny day I couldn’t see any portent of real darkness. And soon I was too distracted to give adventure any more thought for the time being. That day, in our quiet corner of Thailand, a music, arts & natural living festival run by a bunch of expat Japanese hippies was kicking off. I jumped on my bike to meet some friends there and check it out. We spent the evening eating, drinking and listening to blues and bizarre Australo-Japanese trance/fusion. The Shambala In Your Heart festival seemed a happy, goofy, carefree expression of togetherness & creativity. But when the party was over and I left that tiny circle of warmth for the ride home, the night I met was cold, raw and haunting.
As soon as I turned my bike up the dirt road towards the mountain I spotted that bright sickle of flame casting its horrible pall over the black valley. It was absurdly big, seeming to stretch from peak to peak. In that still landscape with an icy, glittering canopy of stars above, the fire seemed so wrong. It was more than just a destructive natural phenomenon, its smile was a sneering desecration of my sacred space. Shoulders hunched tight against looming dread and biting cold, I rode through black fields right towards the flaming, mocking maw. That was the way home.
When I pulled through my gate half the blaze was blocked from view by a nearby foothill. Standing in front of my little hut I could see individual fires, dancing yellow tongues strung in an arcing line from low on the right all the way up to the ridge on the left. At this angle the fire looked less like a demonic smile and more like a candle-lit procession of giants solemnly ascending to the heights. It still was awe-ful, though not in a dark, ominous way. I felt like I’d stumbled on-stage into a grand drama in which I had no part and, even more, might get trampled on unawares by the mighty actors. (And no I hadn’t been smoking anything at the Japanese hippie fest, much to my disappointment).
I brought my palms together in a show of respect for the forces on the prowl that night and made a hasty retreat into my round little hobbit home. A couple of candles gave only enough light to emphasize the surrounding darkness. Inside the air of dread eased but I still suffered a kind of spooky solitude. I huddled up in all my warm clothes, sat down with my mobile phone and rode a stream of apps and emails back to the comfortable universe of electronic diversion.
Down off the mountain and back in the city, I now look back at that evening and wish I had the chance to be there again, in the shadow of gods and giants. Just hours earlier my heart had longed for a sense of the great, the bizarre, the powerful and the mysterious out there in the wild world that my day-to-day life seemed disconnected from. I’d even had the sense that it was in that very valley between Doi Luang and Doi Nang that such an experience was to be found. I hardly expected though that it would come the way it did, with Kali’s flame-dripped lips hanging over me. I’d been caught unawares. I am so tempted to blame the freaks at the Shambala festival for distracting me. But that wouldn’t be right, and they were so damned nice anyway. It was my own carelessness. I forgot that in my heart I’d called on the wild gods of the mountains. I’d asked them to smile on me. And then I wasn’t ready for the time and manner of the reply. But I did receive a lesson about mindfulness and expectations. I guess this was one of those times I got what I needed more than what I wanted.
is not your typical running book. It’s not about running for health, fitness, weight loss, competition or anything like that. The runners in the book and their personalities are extreme – barefoot ultra-marathoners, hermits, fanatics and healthy hedonists not to mention remote and reticent native tribesmen. What ties them all together is their eccentricity, their cooperative approach to competition, and most importantly their intuitive sense that running is at the primal heart of our existence – we are designed and built to run. And these extreme runners tell us that when we connect with this defining characteristic, it opens up wells of joy and fulfillment that no other activity can do. I’m tempted to believe them, I mean what else could get people to run for 50, 75 or 100 miles through the wilderness?
