The Woodberry Harrier 2012: Volume 1

The truth of the ground…

When I was recently asked to explain The Harrier, I suddenly realized that my interrogator probably thought it a curious---if not downright odd--publication.   I was reminded of giving one of them to my dad last year and watching him read a paragraph or two before looking puzzled and asking where the news was (and if you are already wondering this, it’s at the end).  The Harrier began, a long time ago, as a pretty typical sports blog (though no one had heard the word “blog” when the first one came out as part rip-off of and part homage to the publication my old mentor and friend Reed Finlay produced for his teams).  But sitting down each week to write about what was happening on the team got me thinking more and more about what we were really doing out there besides trying to win a plaque and some medals, and the more I wondered that, the more I began to see how subtle and complex and complicated this simple seeming sport is.   And more and more this subtext seemed (still seems) ultimately more urgent and compelling than “the news.” 

Sports talk forms a substrate of our collective conversation (from bars to church parking lots) and I am told that the sports section may be the thing which saves print newspapers from extinction.   Seems we can’t get enough of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.  We never tire of the underdog narrative, never cease to thrill at the praise of talent, forever flame up over prognostications, passionately hate Duke or Auburn or whoever our “enemy” happens to be.   And so sports, which ought to elevate us in the same way art does, seems too often a descent into a hearty banality.  

In a recent long morning in the dentist’s chair, I watched Skip Bayless and Stephen Smith fill a vapid ESPN2 hour in a speed-talking tussle about whether or not the other players in the NFL were surprised by Tim Tebow’s signing, and once they’d had that out, they took up quarreling over whether or not Shaquille O’Neal is as good a businessman as Michael Jordan.  (They never saw the need to establish who could or should care a whit about either "issue.")  If the sound had been turned up, I may have been caught up in the drama conjured by the emphatic rapidity of talking-head talk, but reading the words on closed caption you can’t help but see this “conversation” for what it is:  (very) minor celebrities performing roles in a staged drama which propagates the cults of major celebrities.  Had I not been pinned to the chair by two people with large instruments, I would have fled the room or changed the channel.

So I close my eyes and think back three days to the side of Pompey’s Mountain deep in the Blue Ridge.  My expertly engineered mountain bike is useless on the wet rocks which make a tight obstacle course up the steep slope, and I know I have lost my head start when I hear breathing behind me.  I get to the side just in time for the first runners to pass.  So focused are they on their climb that they show no sign of seeing me.  I am just another shape in the clouds covering the mountain, another oddly shaped rock or deformed tree.  I call after them not to get lost, and before I struggle much farther pushing my worthless contraption, the next group passes. 

Finally I get mad (not angry but mad---in other words, a little crazy) as I fulminate against the rocks thwarting me.  As I watch myself do this, I marvel at how illogical I am being, my deafness to my own sensible reminders that the rocks on this mountain have been here since the plates collided 200-million years ago, that (to resort to simple bumper-sticker wisdom) it is what it is.  Neither geologic history nor the laws of physics will rewrite themselves for my impatience. Finally I laugh out loud.

I am feeling in my cramping arms and in my agitated head the very lesson we have driven all this way to learn:  what you might call “the truth of the ground.”  It can be level or steep, soft or hard, solid or slick, level or canted, but it does not negotiate.  (And is our life on this earth not subject to the very same law in all its variations?)   The ground is the first and primary opponent of a runner, and he is worthless against any human opponent until he has tested his wits and courage against it.   This elemental struggle is what separates cross country from track, which takes place on a surface so carefully engineered that gravity and muscle contraction are about all that’s left of the ancient struggle with the earth, which was as familiar to Zulu impis as it was to Celtic kerns.  And elemental struggles require elemental courage, a tough-minded acceptance of the unchangeable---and ultimately seeing that as neither cause neither to flee nor merely to endure but rather an invitation, a challenge, and ultimately, a humbling, bracing joy. 

It has been fourteen days now since the boys arrived, and they have settled into an easy camaraderie and a disciplined routine.   We had a splendid time at camp over in Rockbridge County, training on forest roads and trails, cooking big meals, playing monopoly, talking about training and racing, getting to know one another.  This was my twentieth camp, and I really think it was the best one we ever had. They have done well since, too, in transferring all that we did back to this crazy busy campus, where we will have to take care not to be distracted by both the music and the noise, where I hope cross country can be the place where their roots can reach deep and anchor them to life in the right ways and draw the right kind of nourishment up into their limbs and hearts.

The great mythologist Josesph Campbell talks about what he calls “world naval sites” (in myths and legends).  It’s a strange phrase but very apt when you think about it.  These are the places where the power of the universe enters the story, the places where the cosmic enters---and transforms---the mundane.  The Burning Bush, the Boa Tree, Calvary, the stone where Excalibur sticks.   These are once-ordinary places where the once-ordinary hero becomes something greater. I like to think of cross country as just such a place, for it is indeed more a place where we dwell and work than something that we do.  We talked a great deal at camp about mindfulness, about staying present in the moment and in the task, and if the boys remain alert and awake to all that’s happening as this season unfolds---from the most tedious workouts to the most exciting meets—they will connect with something far more profound than anything ESPN's Talking Heads could ever begin to imagine.  

But, of course, we are here to race also.  And each of the guys raced--and defeated--a large number of opponents at Fork Union last Saturday.  I was pleased with the performances.  Here are the results: 

	Fork Union Invitational
	Hardy 3-Mile Course, Fork Union
	8 September, 2012
	Place:  14th out of 16 teams 1-5  spread:  1:06
	Colonial Division	Time	Place out of 112 runners
	Liles	17:44	50th	a 2:05 improvement from last year!!
	Shelton	17:54	57th
	Singleton	17:55	59th	an amazing performance for a ninth grader in his first WFS race
	Flory	18:13	71st	a 2:26 improvement from last year!
	Evans	18:50	90th
	Osterman	19:23	104th
	Patriot Division		Place out of 256 runners
	Hammond	18:12	22nd	In the first cross country race of his life!
	Neath	20:29	128th
Dameron		20:54	156th	In his first race at Woodberry

We saw also some of the formidable competition we face.  The Strehler brothers of Trinity finished 2nd and 3^rd, and the Lomong brothers of Fork Union finished 7^thand 8^th.  We will have to train with relentless determination and race with nerve and focus, we will have to get everything right, we will have to waste no miles.  What a wonderful gift this challenge is.  I hope they embrace it the way that embraced Pompey's Mountain.

And this weekend we host the 37^th Woodberry Forest Invitational, where we will race on the State Meet course.  Please wish us luck!