A mountain runner learns to redirect her energy when plans for a challenging run high in the Alps turn sour.
A train. A gondola. The thin line of a zigzagging trail leaving the cobblestoned village made by…cows? The grey cat sprawled its mass over my tiny duffel, lantern eyes shining at me, unblinking. As I sat there in the plaza, the banal thoughts of my hamster-wheel American mind set in. What in good graces would the next 10 days bring?
Guffaws broke out from locals at the bar de quartier (12 tiny tables smashed into a storefront—they spilled onto the plaza). A group of gangly 20-somethings, all loaded down by overstuffed packs, wandered nervously to the edge of the restaurant. The scruffiest one tried to flag down the barkeep: “C’est posible manger ici?”—can we eat here? Their awkward accents bounced off the plaza walls. Giddiness sliced the muggy air.
I hadn’t spoken French, really, since 2005. That was the year I came back from Spain with a Toulousain boyfriend, this adopted language of mine a link to Cataluña, the place I had then called home. After my father died the year before, I’d fled college debauchery to the land of (some of) his ancestors. Maybe discomfort would jolt me from the grief that consumed me.
The cat hadn’t stopped looking at me yet. It hunched over my small duffel, camping. I daydreamed a life where the cat and I became friends, and I abandoned real life for something like whatever lie ahead. Nearby, the backpackers had found a table, a round of beers already on its way. Where were my teammates?
I resisted the urge to glance at my phone again.
The textures of Swiss sound reflected off cobblestones. French, German, and English laughs rang out. A businessman in sensible shoes clacked by. Another birthday had just passed, two days before, while crossing the Atlantic. We planned to run through the mountains, almost nonstop, for the next week. Nothing but running, Swiss hut meals, and glaciers too beautiful to comprehend loomed ahead.
Right?
Training in the previous months proved to be just as difficult as I thought it would be. Already this year, I had spent two—was it three?—months with my mother as she navigated her cancer journey. We shuttled between endless doctor’s appointments and conversations about death to chisme (gossip) about family to the highlights of the CBS Sunday morning special. Chaos wove itself into comfortable spaces: The fecund spring air of California’s Central Valley oozed new growth.
I escaped to the nearby climbing gym for training sessions, 5 a.m. the best time to jump on the stair-stepper with a backpack. Ninety-five to 200 minutes later, I’d zip back to her home.
“How was the gym?” either she or Dontae (her assistant) would inquire. The deluge of dopamine long gone, I spluttered a generic answer each time. The detail didn’t seem to capture anyone—unless I gave a recap from a rainy trail run in the mountains. Atmospheric rivers in the Sierra foothills swept them in—photos tend to do that.
Finding balance became less easy with another human in my care, even part-time. I hoped, valiantly, that this physically demanding trip to the Alps would top up the fuel in my tank. I wanted so badly to float through the beauty, unbothered, of big mountains. I hoped, trained, and dreamed of the nine days that would be the Via Valais.
Only an adrenaline endurance weirdo thinks that running 139 miles with nearly 46K of vertical gain would be relaxing. Did I have unreasonable standards for myself? Yes. This much I knew.
My role on this project was a passive one: the twin trip leaders handled logistics. Other team members (two men) would be fellow athletes. Et moi? I’d be another athlete, just along for the ride.
I was excited to join the adventure with an open mind. How would group dynamics take shape in the pursuit of varied personal goals? I was certain I’d be the only one looking to “just enjoy the mountains”—I had no ego about fast times on the trail: a shrunken timeline (down to six days) felt like a massive sandbag. But still, I wanted to go fast. I prepared mentally. This was supposed to be fun.
Everything would be fine. The first day we set off, casual energy flowed. Even with a late start, the miles stacked up as we pushed higher from Verbier. Three thousand feet fell away, then four.
Scampering over the Col de Louvie just before dusk, thunder cracked behind our heads, lighting up the evening fog that clouded the high mountain pass. We still had 10-ish miles ahead of us, too much ground to cover before the strict 6:30 p.m. mealtime. The team padded hurriedly downtrail, to the Cabane Saint-Laurent. Against the odds, the hutkeepers granted us sanctuary. Cheese, potatoes, and red wine never tasted so good.
The next morning a team member got lost. Maps hadn’t been downloaded. The mugginess set in. We regrouped, and continued. Put that smile back on your face, I reminded myself.
“Light and easy, just keep it light and easy,” I whispered under my breath. My smooth breathing and 08:34 pace barely hit a beat when a team member began to grill me about a media project. “You spend so much time with your mother, I know you have the space to drive this project without my help. Just take my notes: That’s what my wife does.”
I kept running. A flood of memories flowed into my mind. Two steps forward: the relief, then anger, at learning her breast cancer was environmental. Another two steps: the frustration that maybe working in strawberry fields, or the Standard American Diet, could have been a root cause. Padding my feet on the ground, twice more: the guilt of abandoning Johnny and our ranchito in Colorado to take care of my mom, then to come on this trip. It all came back to me, in six strides. I kept running.
The pace didn’t change. “Light and easy, just light and easy,” continued the record in my head. We changed subjects and kept running until espressos at the next hut beckoned.
Shoes back on, we continued. There were glaciers to be seen! Hut-dwelling felines to pet! Joy to be chased!
Was it too much coffee or the cheese-pickle-cold meat buffet the night before that stopped me in my tracks? That rumble in my tummy surely wasn’t rockfall from a nearby peak. I started to question the steps that brought me here—and those which would take me to the next night’s stop.
Failure is just a series of steps in any process. Failure looks like, feels like, and sounds like many things. It’s learning to weather, with difficulty, insensitive comments. Run through the worst stomach bug you’ve had in years, and accept that you’re just going to move slower than you ever thought possible. It’s loving the fact that you took a night off your running trip to sit in a hot tub in Zinal and drink endless bottles of ginger soda water just so that you can down a real meal.
Maybe failure isn’t as black-and-white as I used to think it might be. Failure, in some ways, might be going off-route and still sending—even if it’s ugly. I might fail my family, my friends, and my lover because I could never do anything right. But maybe failure was just an idea I’d created, a distillation of external influences.
“Remember, it’s a game,” my new mantra went. To understand the field of engagement, I needed to look inwardly as much as externally. Who was I in this game? What role, really, did I play? I came to this trip with an “everything-will-be-okay” approach, which quickly became unsustainable when confronted with emotional and physical stressors. Was I being…toxically positive? Was I shutting others out if they refused to engage on the level I wanted?
The Hérens cattle locked horns as we bounded past them on the last few miles several days later. Their compact red-black masses smashing, they didn’t hurt each other because one would always yield. The force of the other cow wasn’t blocked, it was redirected.
At the Visp train station two hours later, I heard the words I needed to hear now, more than ever: “Dani, this is what it is to go big. Take it all in, all of it. Tthis is what makes it worth it. This is living.” Rob, thank you, for the kindness of these words.
Renewed for a fastpacking trip and solo run of my final few days in Switzerland, we hopped on trains in opposite directions, never again to share wisdom. As I watched Petit Vélan crumble in front of me on my second-to-last day in the Alps, I asked myself: “Why?”
Why tag a bonus peak when the red flags waved? Why smash vert to get to the 6:30 dinner? Why scamper solo on a beautiful route, a little vache alpine, on the Valsorey-Vélan route?
Because this, this, is living. The good, the bad, the ugly—and yes, the occasional lemon tart when plans go sour.
Photos by Brigette Takeuchi
