When Scott Jurek popped his now-infamous champagne at the top of Mount Katahdin this summer, celebrating his new supported speed record of 46 days, 8 hours, and 7 minutes on the Appalachian Trail, it set off a storm of debate over what pace is best for enjoying the wilderness. While legions of fans rightfully praised Jurek for the pure determination it took to push through injury, sickness and storms to beat the record, many were not impressed.
Those naysayers included Jensen Bissell, the director of Maine’s Baxter State Park, who slapped Jurek, who when it comes down to it is one of the most responsible and ethical people you will ever meet, with three tickets—one for alchohol in public, one for too big of a group on top of the hallowed peak, and one (really?) for littering, as in the champagne hitting the ground—and publicly chastised him and other runners for ruining his park [note: the littering and group size tickets were dismissed in September; Jurek, a noted Leave No Trace advocate, paid the fine for alcohol and publicly apologized for that mistake]. He even went so far as to threaten to pull Baxter and Katahdin out of the Appalachian Trail, a threat the park, which has a mandate to preserve its wilderness character, has made before.
But the folks at Baxter were not the only ones who bristled at a speed record. Mixed in with praise were many asking if Jurek had not missed the whole point of the AT, or of wilderness for that matter, by going so fast. Why not slow down and enjoy it? they asked.
Well, first off, I think most of those people are not runners; they don’t understand that there can be a heightened sense of enjoyment of the wild when you are moving in rhythm. After all, some evolutionary biologists theorize that our ability to run over long distances, to outpace prey, to escape from predators, is essential to the basic sense of who we are. Finding that pace can be a spiritual experience, too. Consider, the Tendai, the Japanese “marathon monks,” who run around Mount Hiei for 100 days as a form of purification—including a deeper, and very Jurek-sounding, challenge to run for 1,000 days. Or simply consider that charged sense of awareness, that inner space you go to, in the midst of a run.
As Topher Gaylord, an ultrarunner himself and former president of Mountain Hardwear and The North Face who accompanied Jurek on the last legs of the record-setting run told me: “It’s human nature to fulfill ones potential. The intersection of fulfilling ones potential through enhanced outdoor experiences has led to incredible outdoor accomplishments. Whether it is speed hiking the AT, or speed climbing El Cap, The Eiger or Everest, it’s about the values and ethics you bring to the outdoors, not how fast or slow you are moving.”
At the same time, however, I get the too-fast argument. We live in a culture on electronic crack. We are immersed in our devices, that though they may enhance how we experience the world, give us very little room to simply slow down. There is free WiFi at the summit of Mount Fuji. We keep expanding on our limited planet. There are no longer empty spaces on the map, no places to get truly lost. But, for me, that over-stimulated reality has very little to do with the basic urge to run, to find the limits of our own potential the way Scott Jurek has done. When it comes down to it, the pace you want to push to encounter inner wilderness is simply up to you.
Photo by Andrew Bydlon/Caveman Collective
