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In search of wonder

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I wonder …
I wonder where it all begun. Was there ever a trail that brought me to some hiding place when I was a child? Or some mystic revelation that shone through me enriching my spirit and leaving me oblivious of what had happened but at the same time, condemning me to a constant search for other revelations?

I remember when I saw a whale for the first time, in Peninsula Valdes, Patagonia, Argentina. I was a grown man, travelling with my wife, still childless. A child myself, reminiscencing of Pinocchio and Jonas and a stupor stamped on my face such as I had never experienced in my life.
I remember saying: ‘I’ll never forget this’ and it was actually true.
There have been other moments like that. When my first son was born. It’s fully formed fingers grasping the cable that connected my wife to a monitor and that precious moment caught on camera, now a picture in B & W hanging in my office.
The astonishment. The beauty. The revelation of what makes us human. It’s simple, easily forgotten in the hundrum of daily life.
But always present, nevertheless. Like a heartbeat. Like breathing. Like a neural transmission from the brain to your hands, your legs. It turns into movement and we travel through air, time, distance. First we crawl, then we stumble, then we walk, then we run.
Running is the last piece of an evolution that starts when we are still baby. When we are still capable of stupor at virtually everything.
As we grow, we learn to walk unaided, to run if we need to or out of desire. But the ability to be mesmerised, astonished, lyrically enthused by virtually everything that surrounds us becomes harder to achieve.
It happens sometimes with a poignant book or a well-crafted movie.
It certainly happened with each of my children’s first smile or first word. The first steps. The first bicycle ride. Their first day at school.
It also happened every time I realised I was in love.
Strangely, it also made an appearance in moments of true pain and sorrow.
But how many times did you say: ‘I’ll never forget this’ and it turned out to be true?

That’s what makes me an Ultra runner. Not the stamina. Not the mental resilience. Not the miles I accummulate in training and on race day, not the blisters on my feet.
These are all real but to me, my journey into ultra running has always been accompanied by the search for something that cannot be described in words. Something that changes the way you look at the world. Something that manifests itself in the stupor in your face. Looking kind of stupid to the others, it’s another way to describe the expression.
Like a child who meets a whale, after reading Pinocchio

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