Dispatches From Prairie Dog Town

There is not much to look at on I-90 between Big Timber and Billings. Central Montana’s Crazy Mountains are in the rear view and the Yellowstone River dips in and out of sight. Better for a driver’s mind to be focused on the jarring crosswinds than on scenery anyway.

No, not much to look at. But there is prairie dog town.

Greycliff Prairie Dog Town State Park is a 98-acre conservancy that protects black-tailed prairie dogs. The critters seem grateful for a safe space, as evidenced by constant, playful popping up from holes in the ground, like so many whack-a-moles.

Passing prairie dog town on a recent road trip, my wife thought aloud, “I wonder what their hands look like.” She reached for her phone then stopped. We’d been talking about societal collapse, agreeing it’s been caused as much by peoples’ perpetual need for pleasure as by any political policy.

We’re all to blame for the state of things, because discomfort has become a dirty word and the overlords of commerce are happy to deliver wellbeing, on-demand, in whatever package we’ll pay for. Among the tonics we use to self-soothe, easy answers are the most insidious.

We barely notice we’re addicted.

Answers provide relief from the discomfort of uncertainty. A temporary salve for a permanent condition. The lie of easy answers quickly falls apart because the most durable truth of being human is, we cannot know.

The more we try, the more we realize the futility. Stuck in a spin cycle, dying in data, floundering in the froth of ridiculous custom drink orders at Starbucks, we reach for our phones to see what prairie dog hands look like. We have lost our capacity to exist in mystery.

Running, as always, is here to show us the white space.

It doesn’t take long as a runner to realize, inputs do not equal outputs. The line does not progress cleanly up and to the right. A killer training block never guarantees a good race. Our bodies sometimes stage bizarre revolts, usually just as we’re feeling our strongest and most confident.

“The marathon is a great metaphor for life, because it’s long and painful and you ask, ‘Why?’ but get no answers and then you die.” —Mark Remy

Running offers a reprieve from seeking. Every time we lace up is the first time. We’ve never been here before, not exactly like this. Not with this body and today’s weather and this mind. We can’t know what the run will bring because it’s all new.

So, we put on our shoes and allow.

You see it now? Running is an invitation to engage with mystery. An hour a day (maybe two on Sundays) when we don’t have to reach for answers. A moment-to-moment unfolding where, if we can loosen our grip, we become more connected to intuition than thought.

I learned as a drinker how constrictive habits become. At first, the structure brings solace in the same way answers do. The outcomes are predictable, which feels safe. But habits soon shrink our world. Seeking more comfort and less ambiguity, we indulge the routine which, sensing an opening, begins to methodically crowd out everything that threatens its existence.

“Ritual is how you break a habit.” —Tom Sachs

If habits are an attempt to close the uncertainty loop, rituals are a way to open it. The two seem similar on the surface, but where one says, “I do this to get that,” the other says, “I do this to enter, then let things develop.” Ritual is showing up with intention, then sinking into experience.

At it’s best, running is ritual.

It’s a gateway to mystery and a chance to be released from human anxieties by getting comfortable with big, unsolvable puzzles.

Not knowing was once the norm. We stared at the night sky and created stories, our imaginations dancing with the stars that made us, the Universe growing larger and larger.

We ran across steppes and jungles and wondered who made them. We walked sweeping circles around great mountains, not daring to challenge the top because that’s where the gods lived.

Summits spoiled the mystery of what was above the clouds. Answers made the world smaller. Here’s your permission to let loose of certainty.

You know what to do.

Run lightly,
-mike

PS — An answer now and then doesn’t hurt: