A Lonely New England “Sprinter”
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008“His manhood shuddered at her glistening body until he entered his wand of pleasure into her moist grotto,” read magnets attached to the refrigerator. What the hell was going on here, and more importantly, what was a grotto? I looked around a kitchen that was undoubtedly not mine and its corresponding unfamiliar apartment. Where was I? A small wooden table with two blue placemats lay near a wall. A sink, dishwasher and counter were nearby the window on the other side of the kitchen. A large wooden baseball bat rested near the door, and a spicy chili zest smell exonerated the air mixing with a pungent mildew and body odor. How did I get to this point in my life and was it where I wanted to be heading? I didn’t feel confident answering such large and looming life questions, but I felt comfortable that I was curing myself from at least one malady that had plagued me for far too long. I needed a break from New York City and my daily routine of waking up, going to work, returning home, going running, eating dinner, reading, writing and sleeping. Day in and day out I followed this schedule with some variations on the weekend. A day trip here and there; an afternoon reading at the bookstore; a night out at the bars and clubs being surrounded by older women – those were my distractions. But even these aberrations seemed repetitive and dismal after seven months. The post-college life had to be more rewarding than the mundane routine I felt trapped in, didn’t it? The reality of the “birth, school, work death” mentality was seeping into my mind and I had to get out now, even for a few days. New England wasn’t too far from New York and it allowed a natural respite to the lifestyle that was polluting my lungs and brain in Manhattan.
“Are you excited about the Earth Day marathon?” I turned to my marathon teammate, Terrell, after grabbing myself a banana covered in a black skin, but which surprisingly contained a white-yellowish interior. A year ago at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, I trained religiously for Kenyon’s Earth Day Marathon Challenge. “Crunch, crunch, crunch.” “Pat, pat pat,” my feet glided over Ohio’s rolling hills and meadows. Although I was graduating in a few weeks without a job or any idea what I was doing with my life, running provided my only solace to the chaotic world around me. Any problems with my girlfriend, or classes, or the post-college life vanished during my daily hour runs through Amish Country’s farmlands and fields. Kenyon may not have provided a lively night scene, or many cultural escapes from academia, but Gambier’s isolation provided a running experience that somehow alleviated the daily stresses and pains of being a college senior. Continuing my training into the summer after I had completed my half marathon relieved the stresses associated with unemployment, uncertainty and loneliness. From June through March running had become a drug to resolve my problems and bring my mind and body back to a happy medium, but my body needed some rest a month before my next marathon. My mind needed new stimulus and some variety.
“I don’t know, actually,” Terrell responded as she poured herself a milkless bowl of cereal. “With work taking up so much time I haven’t been able to properly train. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I’ll try my best to get in shape this month,” she turned from me slogging down her arid cereal before collecting a huge red and puffy winter jacket and her teaching materials. Frustration transfixed her face and even though life seemed to be going well for Terrell, her job was creating stresses that were wearing her thin. I can’t let this happen to me, not now, not ever.
After a night stop in Boston with Terrell I was off to Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. Surrounded by vast woods to my left, the Atlantic Ocean to my right, and stuck in the middle of a National Park, I was finally able to take a breathe after a six hour drive from Boston and 12 hours from New York. Climbing over ten-foot rocks, bounding over boulders, crossing glistening streams and walking over thin ice were my new life challenges. Building web pages, writing news stories, making phone calls and dealing with a very tentative professional future were afterthoughts that settled deep in my mind. The sweat that poured down my forehead, and ran over my nose, slowly accumulated with every passing rock. The waves whooshed along the coast, crashing into the rocks creating a white, frothy foam. The wind softly whistled through the trees. Silence surrounded me on all sides except for the crunching leaves and sudden bursts of “Hmph” and “Huff” that spewed out of my mouth.
The weather was neither cold nor warm. Caught in the limbo between winter and spring a nose-numbing breeze blew over the rocks before the suns beams provided minimal warmth. “Pow,” my legs flew out from under me and I lay on the ground, blood seeping out of my elbow and my head shook up after slipping on some ice. Gathering consciousness and stabilizing my body, I climbed down to the rocks below that were being assaulted by the crashing waves.
Acadia in the “Sprinter” may not have been ideal for most visitors, but as I gazed into the setting sun separated by miles from other park dwellers, and hundreds of miles away from New York City I couldn’t imagine a more serene and natural environment to escape to for a weekend trip.