“Walk me out in the morning dew my honey…,” sang the Grateful Dead oh so long ago. It was one of my favorite songs. Before the Dead became a touring lifestyle circus and hideout, it was a moody relatively short but touching song of love and loss, of the long nights of the soul when love is here but maybe gone too soon.
At least it was to me.
So much so that in 1979 I tried to get the rights to use it in a movie I was producing (another long story) with, among others, Levon Helm of The Band. You see, I had this image of Levon as the character “Bo”, an old time drug dealer and man of the world, worn and worn down, out of the “game but back for one last run at the big score.”
He and “Charlie”, his younger protégé, played by John Heard, sit on the balcony of Bo’s Spanish hillside house, look out over the night sea, talking over the pros and cons of the deal while Bo plays his guitar in a drifting kind of way. I had wanted him to be picking out “Morning Dew” in a “long night before the battle” scene.
After I read the script for the first time, this scene came to me before any other in the movie. Even though when I write these words I am smiling at the sheer romantic naiveté of such visions, this was my life.
I would come up with these things after long nights that required, as I saw it, the balance of a good ten miler in the early morning. The fact of a kind of compulsive obsessiveness with running and the humiliating guilt of living out all of my drugstore cowboy fantasies put me in the streets before sunrise in an arcane if deeply felt justification and balancing act. Damn if it didn’t work for a long time before the inevitable crash and burn, but that too is a story for another day.
This morning I met up with a friend who has dreams and serious plans for running an ultra marathon this year. We had decided that as silly as the barefoot or minimalist running shoe conversation has become, we — in the spirit of fair play, and a serious lack of common sense — would do today’s run barefoot.
I had seen a circular grass track down by a brand new all-season oval track, which likely meant the abandoned grass track next to it was 400 meters. I arrived shortly after he did. He was coming off the oval grass track barefoot and suggested that the nearby soccer field might be a better venue. “Gravel,” is what he said.
Down the block to the soccer fields we went. The sun was peeking over the ridge line, the sky purple streaked and orange. Off with the shoes and socks. Barefoot warriors, we headed out in the green fields of spring. It was freezing cold. The morning dew had not yet burnt off, leaving what appeared to be a diamond-like sparkling cover on the fields.
In truth, the fields were ice cold and felt a lot like running barefoot on the hockey rink. (I have done this too but, again, a story for another day.) This was not fun. “Cold,” is what he said after a minute. “Yeah,” is what I said.
We ran down the long side, turned across the bottom at the tip of the infield. The dirt had been swept and looked as if it was sound asleep in the early morning, waiting patiently for the wins and losses of yet another generation of little kids with big league dreams. At this point my feet were damn near frozen, or so it seemed, their being numb and all.
Heading back I heard, “‘Nuff for today.” “Yeah,” I replied.
We were 150 yards from home when it seemed to me that my legs were stretching out, that the stride had increased, that I was striking the ground with my midsole. I felt like I was flying. Damn! All the unwritten articles, the disorganized photos, the questionable choices of where to begin and where to leave off were gone at that moment.
Barefoot and flying I was not 63 and broken down, or, more accurately, it didn’t matter. I could sense the kick on the back stride and the lean on the front. It all made perfect sense, bare legs flashing in the rising sun; a harmony with the universe known to runners and many other athletes of all skill levels when it all fits together, the perfect stroke, the perfect tee shot, the perfect turn in the deep powder.
And more than that, it was as if I were playing hockey on the river, baseball in the street or the sandlot, hoops with a rim with no net; a memory of a time when all was possible and the game was there to be reinvented every day by me and my friends with dreams that greatly outdistanced our skills.
We finished up, wiped the grass of our still frozen feet, put on our shoes and headed back to our cars. “Nice,” he said. “Yeah,” I said.
Photo Credits
“92/365 focus on spring” orangesparraw@flickr.com Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
“Grateful Dead” Wikimedia
Errr… that would be “revel” rather than reveal”… you’re the word guy not me 🙂
“… It all made perfect sense, bare legs flashing in the rising sun; a harmony with the universe known to runners and many other athletes of all skill levels when it all fits together… ”
Priceless, you’ve found the words to describe “the moment” that we all long for, reveal in when it’s found and chase once we know it might come to us again.
Thank you for reminding me.
I love these quiet running mornings.
You actually made my toes curl with this beautifully expressed description of running with bare feet in the Icy morning dew. Brrrrr!
Such courage, but oh so gratifying.
Good for you! Bravo!