The Trail of our Ancestors

We both warned each other of our fatigue and poor training habits before heading out the door for a run together. Heading for trails when we rendezvous is a mostly unspoken assumption whenever we cross paths at my mom's house, regardless the kind of shape we are in to do it. Neither of us were particularly fit for an involved excursion but we knew we had to get a little something out of our system with this short minute we had together. Those staying at home asked us what route we were planning on doing or how far, we failed to find any committal description other than cobbling together a handful of favorite directions and trails to go revisit. A couple of miles in, we felt the familiar pull to the Temple Quarry trailhead, a 7.5 mile roundtrip that we set out to do just the first mile or so of. But something happens each time we head up that stretch of the canyon that keeps us running past each creek crossing and around the next bend. In a space where the people of our ancestors mined the granite blocks for their temple, we found ourselves talking about the things we most value in life and yet are unfailingly perplexed and challenged by. We panted up snowfelled hills talking about "the American Mystic" English described Joseph Smith to be and discussed how our Mormon faith so aptly fits the description English's collegue descriped as the "love child between puritanism and romanticism" or the "fraternal twin of transcendalism." Because in a space as geographically inspiring and filled with history as that stretch of trail, one's mind treads through places of thought that lofty and far reaching.

I kept claiming "we should probably turn back soon so I have energy to finish the run home" but then a new wind offered to carry me a bit further so as to prolong this gift of time I could spend in a place and in the company of somewhere a bit far from where I now live but in the center of what will always be home. We ranted, panted and testified of the things that felt true and wrong and paradoxical and the honest direction we felt our spirits evolving as our life took each turn that it did. Each bend in the path and conversation brought us increasingly closer to the top of this place we were climbing until all at once I realized the loud roar of the creek meant we were nearing the top - a place I know I would never have made it to had I set out for it on my own. We laughed at the top with the wide smile you have that best allows sucking in deep breaths of air and did a silly fist bump with our ice cold knuckles. Then with little fanfare, started heading back down.

As we started closing in on the start of the trail, hearing the rush of traffic heading up the canyon naturally ebbed these big questions of faith and identity. We hadn't solved or even reconciled a thing but we had exchanged a great many thoughts that we needed heard and witnessed by someone we trusted. We finally left the rocky, icy trail and found footing back on the asphalt that would take us back to the home where we grew up together. And in the fatigue that finally returned once we left the trail, I thought of the further history we were building upon that trail together - carving out pieces to build our faith center that would offer us refuge as we faced the next bend in our journey and mountains ahead of us both.