Taper: “gradually decreasing in size toward a point.” Fewer miles, fewer days of training, in anticipation (in less than two weeks) of the many miles and long day to come. A return to the canyon, the dawn piercing and painting the walls like Indian pottery, bearing witness to the mad laughter of coyotes, baby rattlesnakes coiled together in a big ball to keep warm.
The weather for the taper has turned gray and cool, and the trees across the pond outside my office window are slowly giving up green for red, a splash of new color amidst monochrome. I ran late last night into a gently blowing mist and noted we are heading, however reluctantly, into fall. This part of the country does not give up summer easily, and the sky has growled and muttered on occasion, like a dog reluctant to relinquish a bone. And bone it most certainly has become: summer has left only the barest pickings and leavings, and the weather searches among it for warm scraps.
There is change all around me, if not so much in me – at least, not as apparent. My own inner changes rarely seem as dramatic as the weather. Like the transformation of summer into fall, it feels like a constant slow turning. By the time we notice the color of the leaves changing, the change has already passed.
I have often sat in zazen recently to the sound of water falling, dripping, pooling. Sometimes it feels like cheating at zazen to have the rain as a symphony in the background, but I have been glad for it. Rain, after all, is another kind of silence.
I’ve started having pre-race dreams, which is not unusual for me, but they are something other than the routine anxiety narratives (not getting to the starting line in time, getting hopelessly lost on the course) … I can’t remember too many specific details, only a vaguely pleasant experience of running and chatting with other runners in the rain on a single-track trail, and also something having to do with me doing a lot of driving in an open landscape – but no anxiety over being lost or having to get somewhere. Just enjoying an odd and perhaps not entirely expected journey.
We’ll see what waits in the canyon.
