On the Run

Each November, as daylight retreats toward the solstice and the damp chill of winter encroaches, I put away the running shoes. And each April, as the snow disappears from my ski route through the woods and the sun warms toward t-shirt weather, I pull them back out and – despite the painful protests of my hip flexors – take once again to running the back roads.

I do not love running, but I have dabbled in it, off and on, for many years.

In high school, I took to jogging between soccer and track seasons. (In the latter, I was a marginally speedy sprinter and a decent long-jumper, but never ran more than 200 yards at a time.) A couple times a week, I’d don the headphones of my yellow Walkman, pop in a mixed tape, and head out on a loop around the neighborhood, which I figure measured about a mile and a half.

During college, I often ran a route around campus on weekend mornings, when it seemed I was the only one awake. Jogging became a way to pass the time and get some exercise while I waited for my friends to wake up and go with me to the dining hall for a late breakfast.

The summer I spent in Ireland I ran occasionally, heading up the narrow road, turning down a lane that led to the beach, and coming back on the sand. I usually had the beach to myself, but the locals thought I was mad (Irish speak for coocoo) to run without the purpose of chasing a ball around a field.

In my Colorado years I left all running (except on the soccer field) behind and took to mountain biking, though I was never hardcore like many of my friends there. Still, I had my favorite loops, including one I could ride from home. It took about an hour, traversed a gentle river, passed by an old mine, and wove through a grove of aspen trees in a perfect mix of uphill, downhill, and flat.

The first summer I moved back East, I bought a road bike and learned the joys of pedaling for hours along pavement. I developed biking friends – people who liked to ride and had large blocks of free time during the warmer months to hit the road.

Sadly, that road bike sits dusty in my garage now. I haven’t given up on someday getting back into riding, but that day does not seem like it will be soon, large chunks of free time being as scarce as they are. My mountain bike, though, still sees sunlight during the summer, generally on family outings. At 20-plus years old, that bike is roughly double the age of my children.

It was after having those children that I started to run again.

I run now because it is easy – at least schedule-wise and logistically speaking. To run, I do not need to block out an hour or two or three. I don’t need to pump air into tires or remember to carry a spare tube in case of a flat. I don’t need to load the bike into the car and drive to a trailhead.

To run, I just need to lace up the running shoes, grab the dog’s leash, and head out the door. And so I run. Not far, and certainly not fast, but enough. Enough to get the heart pumping and the lungs sucking in fresh air. Enough to feel as if I am staying strong. Enough to keep track of the natural shifts in the local landscape as the seasons evolve from one to the next. Enough to clear my mind.

I don’t always love running. Indeed, sometimes it is hard to find the motivation to get started. But I am always glad, once I return home, that I have – if only for a short time and a small distance – been on the run.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the April 12, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Under the Guns

If I concentrate, I can almost block out the roar of the snow guns, which are spewing manmade snow beneath an uncharacteristically bluebird New Hampshire winter sky. Soft as silk, the snow sifts to the ground, building cover on the snow whales, which rise like cresting waves in a perfect line down the hill: swelling white whoop-de-dos that offer up continued freshies, last run’s tracks filled in again in the time it takes to ride up the chairlift.

The bottom layer of manmade is incredibly grippy underneath the top layer of fluff, the combination of firm base and fake pow like some other version of hero snow. I push off down the steep trail, chairlift to the left, tree line to the right, goggles down, zipper up against the subzero chill, the bliss of sleek turns bigger than the blaring of the guns.

Western skiers would scoff at this zest for manmade snow. I know; I lived and skied among them for five long, lovely winters. I moved west after college with a lifelong ski buddy. We’d grown up together as ski racers on the blue ice and manmade granular of a New Hampshire mountain, in an era when ski racers weren’t encouraged to ski anything other than hard pack. Early in our first Colorado winter, we hiked out to Crested Butte’s Third Bowl. The snow was waist-high, and we hadn’t a clue what to do with all that powder. We flailed. Then laughed. Then floated as we figured it out.

She’s still out there, skiing the deep stuff, while I’m in my 15^th winter back East. Turns out you can take the girl out of New England, but she just might come back to the mountains of home, despite the discrepancy in annual snowfall between there and here.

Manmade snow is an Eastern skier’s lifeblood, a necessity that allows us to carry on down the ski slopes, even if the grass is still poking through the shallow layer of white on the front lawn. Even in a season like we had last winter, where it snowed lots before Christmas, we relied on the manufactured stuff to keep skiing through a late-December rain, holding on until winter returned with a welcome and persistent vengeance.

Thankfully, manmade snow has come a long way since ski areas started lining the slopes with snow guns a half-century ago. This is not your grandma’s manmade snow. It’s soft and creamy and carve-able. I know it’s not the real stuff, the deep powder of a skier’s dreams. But with a start to winter like we’ve had this season, I’ll take manmade bliss over the alternative of no skiing at all. And while this is no powder bonanza, the skiing is good. With the super cold temperatures early this week, ski areas all over the region fired up the guns, blowing their own version of cold smoke.

My last powder day was Easter, the flakes falling fat and fast on the kids as they hunted Easter eggs. That April storm was a surprise, and we took advantage by heading out for a post-egg-hunt family ski day, introducing our third-generation Cannon kids to a favorite, slightly off-piste, not-entirely-secret stash. The kids whooped as much in delight of the new snow as in discovering an old trail through the woods, an adventure that is a local skiing rite of passage.

True to their New England roots, my kids love a good snowfall. Even a dusting of new white has them rushing out the door to sled or shovel or brush snow angels into the fluff. A mere couple of inches, in their minds, constitutes a powder day and has them clamoring to get out on the hill. And true to their New England roots, my kids are not thrown by having spent the first month of this ski season on purely manmade snow. Any day skiing is better than a day not skiing, whether powder or frozen granular, come rain or wind or snow or ice or, sometimes, cold sunshine.

I don’t know when the next powder day will be. Until then, I’m taking what I can get: a man-made blizzard, and the occasional face shot under the guns. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 8, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.