What Human Fitness Means in the 21st Century

Running is never something you'll do with any consistency if you allow dread and cultural stereotypes to anticipate your workouts. And that’s a fairly easy thing to do. Step one: grow up in a household with multiple game consoles and more than one television. Step two: allow popular opinions to permeate your daily thoughts. Step three: listen to what a doctor has to say regarding the specifics of your athletic career. After that, it’s just a matter of buying an unnecessarily cushioned, overpriced pair of sweatshop-produced, sparkly white running shoes to stare at behind a mound of Power Bars and you’ll be well on your way to never taking a step out the door.

Staying in shape gets a bad rap, infested as the world is with Neo-healthnazis, organic grocers, and 24 hour fitness plans. That’s certainly understandable. Infomercials showcasing abdominal belts that “do the work for you,” en-route to “giving you the body you only dreamed of” should never be considered anything less than nauseating. In these commercials, in advertisements for the whole spectrum of liquid vegetables and proteins in pill form, the end goal always seems to be the same: improve your image. Make others jealous. Change your self-respect. Always they focus on the negative; always there is the underlying assumption that you are disturbed by your own image, that you harbor jealousy towards your peers, that you no longer care for yourself. They rarely take aim at the hot core of the issue, and thus they have not succeeded in lowering America’s world leading ratio of a 64% overweight populace.

The time has come to look these health schemes in the eye and tell them, on no uncertain terms, that they have failed.

They have failed, and they have failed in the worst way: by continuing to fail again and again, and reeling in easily duped customers, again and again. Always the world continues to do things the same way and yet still expects different results. Einstein said that was basic definition of insanity, and I don’t think it’s wise at this point not to trust old Al.

The first mistake of these advertisers and health planners and Neo-healthnazis is their general attitude. Always they start things on the lie that has predicated billions in annual revenue: “it’s as easy as…” The thing is, no, it’s not as easy as…nor will it ever be. And no one should endeavor to spend time or money on something that is based on a lie. The truth of the matter is, taking a body accustomed to all of the luxuries of 21^st century mechanical wonders, and transforming it into the rippling, powerful collection of flesh that it should be, will never be an easy thing. It could be the hardest thing you ever do - but that does not mean it won’t be enjoyable. One of the popular opinions that permeates the daily thoughts of the masses runs something along the lines of: “working out is so hard, and I’m really gonna hate it.” Well, if you had any chance of taking something positive from one of the most riveting emotions we as humans can experience – taking our bodies to the limit – you probably just blew it.

The best things in life are always hard to attain. Try and imagine the last thing you truly enjoyed that you didn’t really earn. It’s a cliché, but we still overlook the message it entails. Everyone can convince themselves that they have gained much from doing little, if for a short period of time. But living an entire life based on such shallow experiences? Diving into an icy cool river on a summer afternoon loses its appeal if you spend the day on your laptop within the air-conditioned confines of your office or home.

It is not just our population that is unfit – and we should not blame our individuals. It is our society which is unfit, in every way. We not only encourage a love of idleness and a hatred of physical effort, we have built a world which thrives on it. Popular conceptions of athletes are as jocks, while serious academic pursuit, or serious anything out there in the skyscraper world, has come to be viewed as directly opposed to sport. Everyone says, and it is generally agreed, that “it’s only a game” – but that statement never took into account the human motives behind and beyond the game.

I used to think, a very long time ago, that I was strange for enjoying running so much. I suspected some mystery behind my enjoyment, something beyond the fanfare of simply winning an arbitrary race. It had always been more than just athletic glory. I cared about winning races, but I cared more about something I couldn’t define as a 10 year old. I cared about the instinctual urge to explode through the wilderness, to chase down some phantom of my or my teammates’ imagination, to rip through the wild heart of the woods with a ferocity which no amount of fame or trophies could ever inspire within me.

To exercise is who we are instinctually are as human beings – and to run long distances is the best equivalent of that in 2009 America. John L. Parker says in the cult classic Once a Runner that the deepest hidden yearning of the runner is to “fly naked through the primal forest, run through the jungle.” Quenton Cassidy winning an Olympic silver medal may have been a key part of the story, but the climax of that book is when he runs sixty quarter-miles in training, taking his body to a place that allowed him to discover something about himself that few people ever have the privilege to know. It was what allowed him to complete the transformation from the comfortably jogging product of the healthnazis, a “pussycat stretching lazily on the carpet” to a “puma prowling the jungle for fresh red meat.”

The puma is the Plutonic ideal of cat – in the same way that the fit man is the complete version of humankind. It is not a statement meant to insult or intimidate; everyone has the capacity to be fit, barring serious health issues. We need to start by recognizing athletics as something more than athletics, and not “just a game.” Sports reflect our more primal past – a past that has been largely lost, at least in the popular sense, to the advents of modern technology and a social attitude which prizes ease over all else.

Always, the “reward” of work is leisure. Yet more and more often we are finding that what we call work – a pastime that, in Native cultures, had once been healthy for the growth of both man and culture – has become something like slave-labor. We have earned our leisure only in name. And that is the fault of a world which has become a collection of pussycats, run like robots, by our institutions. Our society of healthnazis, which will try to guilt you into exercising for the sake of their products, for the sake of easy leisure, has helped to sacrifice the individual. We never willingly parted with our healthy, primal, puma-natures. They were stripped away when it became more convenient to step away from that ideal of man – referred to by Ralph Waldo Emerson as “Man Thinking” – and become nothing more than the “parrot of other men’s thinking.” When we start to lose our original, independent thought, we lose everything that is best about us as human beings. And these days, it is almost impossible to preserve the beauty and innocence of original thought, seen occasionally in children who haven’t been taught “better” yet, and seen elsewhere like lightning, powerful but rare, in the remainder of our sadly content society.

Becoming physically fit is a shortcut past all of these problems. The process alone – aside from being the most emotional and riveting thing a person can ever do, if they only allow themselves the opportunity – will help our population reconnect with their inner spirit, with their more human natures. I want a revolution - but this time, it’s not for the sake of the evils of capitalism, or the goods of socialism, or the merits or downfalls of any world political system. It is simply for you. You as a human being. You as a living breathing thing that is not taking full advantage of life.

Academics, scholars, politicians, businessmen, may think they are excused or somehow exempt on the pretext that they already live meaningful lives. They may spend countless hours a year working a job that provides for their family and that may just contribute positively to society. But as Emerson said in his American Scholar address, “character is higher than intellect.” What we do when we live trumps what we do when we think. “Thinking is the function,” he said. “Living is the functionary.” It is the ultimate clarion call for fitness: for work over leisure, for hard over easy, for willingly throwing yourself into a fiery hell of aching legs and burning chests and spasming joints – because in no institutionally constructed, leisure-based replacement for life will you ever even catch a glimpse of that glittering orb inside you which we often think to call our true selves.

Song of the Day: 'Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear. Part Pink Floyd, part Revolver-era Beatles, part entirely unique 21st century indie rock, Grizzly Bear's new album is a landmark achievement of modern music. Veckatimest is a collection of anthems that have undoubtedly contributed to the face of a new generation of sound. The opening "Southern Point", a psychedelic-experimental cross of rhythms, sets the theme of an almost pre-apocalyptic alienation from the established world. "Our haven on/The southern point/Is calling us", reflects a draw to nature, yet the song at the same time bemoans a lost love - "You'll never find me now." Early on there is a cultural split established: one side has human touch, but also everything they seem to want to escape from, while the other side is the necessary step to safety they must take for the sake of this "haven." The remainder of the album follows in this vein, telling the story of a group on the brink of departing for the 'southern point', encouraging a final remembrance of a life past; a life that will soon fade away into the slipstream of time, into the echoing, mournful moans and powerful reverberations speaking of nostalgia for a passing world. Highlights include "Two Weeks" and "All We Ask" - but the album does not truly have a weak point, and makes a serious artistic effort from start to finish.

The version here, from the Jools Holland show, is an absolutely flawless live performance, and I think indicates that 'Grizzly Bear' will only continue to improve as they age.

A Jaunt Through Dixie and The Gut of America

I just returned from my inaugural jaunt through Dixie and the ‘real’ South. It is in every way the gut of America. Not gut as in fat or dirty or even nasty or anything like that. But just real, in a way things around here don’t feel very real anymore. Dixie is uniquely American in a way that nothing I’ve ever seen is American. By that I mean there are places in New Jersey and California and Florida and Maine that are not all that dissimilar from things on the other side of the globe. There is no Dixie in Turkey.

I came across the phrase ‘gut of America’ during my first run from Jesse Stuart Lodge at Greenbo Lake in Kentucky. I was on the Michael Tygart trail, ostensibly a 7.8 mile loop which circled the lake and the park boundary (park-folk down there measure trail lengths with a ruler on a map, not taking into account mileage accumulated by switchbacks and winding turns). At the entrance to The Tygart, as I came to call it so that I could try to convince myself it was some kind of Amazonian tribal path – such self-inflicted delusions are part of what makes running exciting – there was a large sign with detailed rattlesnake warnings, and an extensive description of how to tell a nonpoisonous snake from a poisonous one. Kentucky is rattlesnake capital of the continent. Even Jesse Stuart, the writer for whom the lodge was named, dealt extensively with the way his county had a rattlesnake culture, human and lizard affected equally by the other.

Immediately below the description read: “Treat the fauna of the park with respect. Do not approach any wild animal. If it has to change its behavior because of you, then you have already caused damage to the balance of Greenbo ecosystem.” Which got me to thinking, then why the hell do you go through the trouble of examining the difference? Because yes, when I am bit by a rattlesnake, the first thing I’m going to do is bend my face down closer to its likely-neurotoxic fangs to examine whether or not the slit in its eyes is vertical or horizontal. Not to mention the paradoxical side effects of claiming nature is only natural when humans are absent from it (see William Cronon).

The first run through a new and strange wilderness is always intimidating. Last summer, running up the steep, sandy path at John Muir Beach outside San Francisco, there was a sign with an even more dire warning: “Marin County is home to a variety of wildlife. Bobcats, coyotes, and rattlesnakes are all frequent occurrences within the Marin Headlands. Please use caution at all times.” They never tell you the statistical odds of even sighting dangerous wildlife are miniscule – that’s not important. Rather, they do what America has always done best – scare you – except this time it’s actually something you have cause to be scared about. Not to mention the more people which that sign turns around, the less there are wandering the wilderness, which is always a good thing.

At Muir, when you crested the summit of the coastal cliff after a mile and a half of winding trail, you came to a flat mesa and a view of the Pacific Ocean that made you no longer care about your chances of stepping on a rattler’s rattle or being mauled in the face by a mountain lion. When you see something like the biggest ocean on the planet from a thousand feet above, your perspective starts to change. Not only are little things no longer important. But even big things are no longer important. For a few seconds I seriously did not care if I was killed by wildlife during the run to Pirate’s Canyon, the cove a few miles down the coastline that was my ultimate destination.

Back to the Tygart. I stopped stepping with caution at Muir because the natural spectacle was literally overwhelming and life-changing. In the American South, such views may exist in well established, accessible-by-car, crowded-with-day-tripping-family parks like Shenandoah, or along Skyline Drive and the infamous Blue Ridge Parkway. But that is not the gut of America. The gut is down in the heavy and thickened green woods, where there isn’t a sightline for miles, where you always seem to be going up or down without end, where the deerflies swarm your every movement, where a cloud of humidity makes the air heavy to breathe in your lungs and sweat covers you like an extra blanket.

At the Marin Headlands, you may feel in the presence of God – even for the hardened atheist, it is difficult to not marvel like a child. But in Dixie, in Americana, you are human. Unadulterated human. You feel real again. Every feeling is magnified, everything good, everything bad, every pain and pleasure is magnified to the realer proportions which Northern civilization has forgotten in the midst of their cities and technologies. There is nothing to rescue you down here. The Tygart trail borders farmland which stretches green and undulating and spotted with hayseed for miles – so many miles that if I were bitten by a rattlesnake I would not know where to find the farmhouse.

But the fear I felt first stepping on to the Tygart slowly slipped away as I ran, and there was no scenic view. Running in any new place is a matter of becoming, of accepting. Of the new land accepting you as a part of it and of you accepting the new land as part of you. You almost feel, once this transformation is complete, that now you are untouchable, invulnerable. You are a cemented-in part of the landscape, and no longer a stranger. Once you have assured the woods that you are nonthreatening, there no longer looms the danger of a Timber rattler beneath every clump of rocks. Maybe the feeling comes from nothing more than a few good miles without seeing a snake, of establishing a familiarity, with feeling nothing but the buzz of the flies drowning in the sweat by your ear. The danger you sense upon entering is a warning, a test of merit, a cautionary measure. For both place and person.

Everyone undergoes a similar test the first time they encounter new surroundings, even if it be a city or a town. Something in the mystery is not exactly unfriendly, but somehow cold in its unfamiliarity. Multiply that several times over and you have Dixie.

To get out of Dixie is not easy by foot. I see at as a valley, a huge gap running in and amongst the larger foothills and mountains of Appalachia. To escape you must go up – straight up for as long as you can, avoiding all downhills if you can – and eventually the landscape starts to change. The forest which was once impenetrably thick begins to open, the sky is suddenly a reality beyond the foggy canopy of misty branches covering the wood, the earth is open and clear and there is no place for black bears or even rattlers to hide. In Kentucky itself there are few such places. It wasn’t until I penetrated further south to the Roan Highlands in Tennessee that I saw real mountains, and a way out of this new and harsher world.

Southerners live in the wilderness, but in the forested hills, not the mountains. As you go up you see why. The terrain is very difficult. Original settlers, after displacing many of the local Cherokee tribe (white folk have graciously split the Roan Highlands into Tennessee’s “Cherokee National Forest” and North Carolina’s “Pisgah National Forest”, as Carver’s Gap, near the peak of Roan itself, actually straddles the two states), did not desire to move farther west for fear of the Appalachians. They are not mountains as you would imagine a mountain would exist in the eastern United States. I of course did not believe this. Part of me was bitter that I was running up an Eastern mountain, because of course nothing could compare to the Rockies or the landscape in the American West.

My first morning in the Roan I woke up to the 8:30 shining sun, with the moon still shining palely, almost phosphorescent in the blue sky. I was being very arrogant about the whole deal. I had planned my route out the night before and did not bring a map with me even though I had never been to these woods before, nevermind Dixie itself. I’d gone at least 12 miles when I came to the foot of the Chestnut Ridge trail, the one which billed itself as the most difficult in the Highlands and which warned that only experienced hikers should continue forth. Even though at that point I should have known better, I made the sharp turn up the hill.

I consider myself a mountain goat (while running – otherwise it is of course mountain ‘monkey’) but I was soon having trouble staying on my feet. The trail began on a winding mile long climb over jagged granite, mossy scree and rich, black Dixie mud. What I was doing was a poor excuse for running and I was humiliated into stopping on a few occasions (stopping on a run for me is like if you were in a foul shooting competition and made twenty in a row and then started intentionally missing shots – that’s the best metaphor I can imagine up) and literally crawling. Then the trail began to head downhill, sharply downhill, which was discouraging as I knew I would have run back up the downhill on the return journey. At no point could I see the summit I was running towards. Halfway up the Chestnut I was hoping for rattlesnake bite, because then I truly would not be able to run.

I had been very foolish but I did not yet realize just how foolish I had been. I forced myself to the top, still feeling arrogant and thinking thoughts like ‘I can run as far as feel like, it does not matter how tired I get, there are no more college races to save my body for’ – and the sheen of invincibility that had been wearing thin was reengaged. When I did reach the top, dripping and gasping and my body pulsing and numbed by the effort, I knew instantly that I had for the first time truly escaped Dixie. The view of the Highlands was incredible, the air was cooler, the humidity vanished with the winds blowing off the top of the bald earth. Far below was the gut of America, below in the heavy air and the thickening green that contains the most thoroughly diverse ecosystem on the North American continent.

Running across the summit I soon realized that I literally had no energy left. The run up had been rewarding, but it was very draining to try to leave Dixie. I had not had good respect for just how draining it would be. I had underestimated the mountains very much. I do not know how long I was able to run for after that. I managed to stumble down the mountain and with a great effort make it back over most of the Forest Road Trail that returned to the highway. I tried to take a shortcut on the roads and immediately found myself in a trailer park, swaddled by Seventh Day Adventist and Southern Baptist congregations, both fully in session.

I had to walk then. Maybe something about seeing all the earnest church folk made me lose my faith in myself. But my head was swimming now and I thought of the boy who was going to run for William and Mary and was running a workout in the middle of the summer before along a country road and collapsed in the bushes from heat exhaustion. He wasn’t found until he was dead. I saw a picture once and he looked exactly like me.

My return journey was a long, lonesome, shameful walk through the heart of Dixie. Above me the peak of Strawberry was invisible and I was surrounded on all sides by a cavernous thicket of ancient pines and sweetgums. I had run twenty-five miles, thirteen more than I intended to, but some part of me realized, soon after I had water again an hour later at the tent, that near death experiences are what make up a good life. I’ve never felt more completely evaporated of every scrap of energy, never been so ravaged by an attack on a landscape which backfired so spectacularly. And I've (almost) never been so happy with myself lying down to sleep at night.

I knew that it had not been only a near death experience. Like Tyler Durden might say, it had been a near life experience as well. Things like that are hard to come by around here. Stay in Dixie a week and the gut of America is bound to show you something you won’t forget.



Song of the Day: Although the Fleet Foxes do provide an endless soundtrack that will never leave your mind on a long sojourn in the wilds of Dixie, for the sake of diversity I must go with First Aid Kit's cover of Fleet Foxes' "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song." This First Aid Kit is not to be confused with the earlier version - this one is founded by two Swedish teenage sisters influenced by Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, Conor Oberst, and the more recent phenomona of bands like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver. Like Fleet Foxes, they have a sound that seems to come from the earth, and their narrative lyrics echo themes both timeless and natural. To cap it all off, they even sing in the woods outside of their home near Stockholm. They have a number of excellent original songs, which is highlighted by "Jagadamba You Might", a cross of many of their influencing sounds that comes out as an original achievement. It is almost unthinkable that they are only 19 and 16. For a comparison, look at what present 19 and 16 year old American singers deem important.

The song itself, penned by Robin Pecknold of FF, follows a main character, a 'Tiger Mountain Peasant' who has lost someone dear to him and is searching in the forest for remnants of the deceased's spirit. Throughout the song his wanderings seem to be his way of coping with the loss. The peasant feels his loss as closely tied to nature, as the tall grass and the birds "do not know you anymore" implying that they once were a part of him. The peasant seems to ponder the meaning of death, feeling himself becoming a kind of "demon" as he confronts that harsh realities of this other, colder, more overlooked side of nature.

At the top of Strawberry Mountain in Tennessee, the terminating point of the ruthless and brutal Chestnut Ridge Trail, there is a cemetery in the tall and waving grass that makes up part of the "bald" peak. The graves are unmarked and fenced in by small, shin-level wood posts. When I reached the little mountaintop prarie, free from the embrace of the trees for the first time in weeks, I was dizzy and weak with sweat and exhaustion. This song was still running through my mind. As if it was coming straight from the graves. As if the people that were now a part of the earth were singing their mournful, searching death-knell to the wanderer passing in the morning light. I may have been staggering through premonitions of my death, but Dixie is no place to die. Not for a born and bred Northerner. Ice-fields and glaciers in the Arctic and Alaska may have called my name in that moment. I like to think so. If nothing else it gave me a moment's coolness to dry the sweat on my forehead before heading back down the dark green path - thinking, wondering oh dear shadow alive and well, how can the body die? - and scared now that I might've seen a glimpse of the answer.