Hills
My soccer team used to have “hill-days”, which always seemed to coincide with auspicious weather. On these days, our team—all fifteen of us—gathered at the bottom of a daunting hill. Our dirty running shoes were on our feet, and our clean water bottles were tossed to the side. At the sound of a whistle, we ran up the hill, small clouds of dust following our tracks. At the top, we turned around and let gravity take us down. The flat soles of our shoes nearly slipped on the dry dirt.
On hill-days, we ran up and down a lot. We were accom panied by the soft chirps of the songbirds, who were blissfully unaware of our heels striking the ground. Our coach bellowed at us, admonishing us for our apparent indolence. The sun was also there—initially to warm our souls but eventually to suffocate our existence.
On the first hill-day, we learned we were quitters. We learned that our legs could shriek and our chests could heave and our souls could panic—that we could only ignore pain for so long.
After a few more hill-days, we learned which of us quit before the others, and we envied the ones who quit first. The rest of us ran while they drank—or actually, guzzled—cool water from their bottles. We all took pride in outlasting our teammates. As a teammate quit after the shrill note of a whistle, we secretly swelled with pride. In those moments, we were separated into the quitters and the prideful—the quitters gorged themselves on mouthfuls of water while the prideful indulged themselves on the knowledge that they had not quit.
Eventually though, we all quit. As we collapsed from exhaus tion, we all realized how much we despised hill-days. We were divided by the number of laps we each ran, but we were united in our unbounded hate for hill-days.
Waterfalls
Have you ever run on a waterfall? Not right on the rapids, of course, but on a bridge overlooking the waterfall. The thunder ous sounds of water envelop you. You feel so tiny watching the water cascade into huge foam bubbles. The bubbles remind you of the ones your shampoo makes when it meets the water in your shower. The air around you is rising because the mist from the waterfall keeps on floating.
You run across the bridge over and over because you’re trying to understand this immense force of nature below you. Even after the tenth time you run back and forth with your eyes af fixed on the water, you feel like you don’t understand a thing—a sensory overload. You keep on running because a force compels you. For some reason, it would be wrong to not be in motion when even the air itself is rising upwards. You keep on running.
You go faster. Crescendo.
By the thirtieth time, your calves are starting to buckle from underneath you because you’re sprinting now. It’s nonsensical, but for some reason, it feels like you and the crashing water are existing at some common tempo. The sounds of crashing water have become a thrum, like the chord of a guitar. The sounds of your heels striking the bridge have become a rain-like patter synchronized to the thrum of the water.
Even though you don’t want to stop, you don’t have a choice. Like a wind-up monkey slowing down gradually, your legs move slower and slower until you lose the common tempo. Your sneakers now muffle the sounds of your heels striking the bridge. The mist no longer embraces you totally. The thrum simply becomes crashing water. Decrescendo.
Soon, you’re almost motionless. You reach the end of the bridge, the side closer to your home. You’re about to collapse be cause you’ve been running back and forth over a bridge for what felt like hours. You could stop. It sounds really tempting.
You don’t stop. Instead, you sprint home. You think you’re sprinting, but in reality, the best you can manage is a misshapen jog, where your body is struggling to keep up with your mind’s ambition. Every time you yearn to stop, you stifle the temptation and replace it by focusing on the rhythmic way your feet meet the concrete. Right, left, right, left, right, left.
Eventually, you find yourself collapsed on the moss of your backyard. Your cotton shirt, once dry and scented only by deter gent, is now pleasantly damp and smells strangely earthy. For some reason, you expected the shirt to smell like transcendent mist. As you sit up, cushioned by the springy moss, you feel wonderful. You’re tempted to dance or sing. It’s as if the thrum of the waterfall, now muted by the normal scenery around you, is carrying you to one last smile.