Early Breakfast Run With Carl

Waking up in a strange place… you start to piece together where you are – a hotel room – and what’s outside, what‘s been calling to you, what woke you up: a desert mountain. You watched it through the previous evening from your poolside recliner with a cool drink in your hand, priming your dreams. Quickly but quietly you throw on whatever clothes you can find at the top of your bag in the dark room and step out into the cool morning, a waning half moon hovering overhead. The morning mountain takes its place in the now, another layer over the memory from the night before, from the vision that called you out of bed. You’ve never been here before and you don’t know where you’re going, but you go, you just go, and you breathe and you run and you let yourself be led – and soon, after a few twists and turns you find yourself at a trailhead. The sun is cresting the eastern horizon, just warming up for its one hundred degree day, but there’re still shadows of cool behind the ridges of rock on the ascent. At a comfortable turn around point on the trail, a saddle, the golden valley stretches out forever, and you turn to notice a memorial plaque secured to what must have been a very special place: “Carl Rose, 1914 – 1988, He loved this place” – of course he did, you think, as a tear starts to well up. A quick peace sign to the heart for respect and love and then you’re running back down the trail, suddenly knowing this place, loving this place, too, and knowing you’ll be back again the next morning, to run with Carl again. And somehow those cups of coffee and continental breakfast bar back at the hotel feel a little more real or appreciated or shared, even though you’ve still got it all to yourself.