I wasn’t an athletic child. The first 18 years of my life were, shall we say, challenging. I didn’t play sports in school and I didn’t start running until well into adulthood. In fact, I only got serious about it when I moved (far) away from home.
And yet, in many ways growing up on the prairies provided me with everything I needed to become an ultra runner one day. I grew up reading Little House on the Prairie and admiring Laura Ingalls Wilder. Although I didn’t need to, I’d get up before dawn and visit my animal friends at the neighbors’. I played outside all day, every day: inventing games for my sister and adventures for myself. My dreams were of a life of self-sufficiency; a life in harmony with nature.
At the time, I imagined I’d find myself on a farm. I was a tiny back-to-the-lander, before it was a thing. But that’s not how life played out. Instead, my yearning for challenge, isolation and the experience of nature in the raw found its perfect outlet in trail running.
Over the past few years, I’ve been living my dream of running in many wild places on this beautiful planet of ours. On foot I’ve explored rainforest and desert, circumnavigated islands and climbed many mountains. But there’s no place quite like home.
Whenever we’re back in my small hometown, I want to get out immediately. But not quite in the way you’d think. I’m drawn outside, onto the gravel roads where you can see – and run – for miles. Where I can be completely alone with my thoughts – and the occasional deer, rabbit or hawk. The wheat fields, sunlit and swaying in the breeze, remind me of the sea at sunset.
The prairies have a unique, understated beauty on a fair weather day; one that draws everyone out to play in his our her own way. But I think this landscape is at its best on a stormy day. Watching the storm clouds gather and blacken at the horizon, feeling the tension in the air rise along with the wind. Sprinting away from a sheet of fast-falling raindrops with thunder as your soundtrack is nothing short of exhilarating.
And then there’s winter on the prairies. The fields, covered in snow, are the purest white; untouched for acres. With all the world sparkling and bleached, sounds take on new meaning. A distant crack could indicate a hoof breaking through ice, or frost thawing on branches. Underfoot, the crunching and crackling of snow tells the story of a fresh snowfall, or a recent melt. The air is so crisp and so clean, and I fill up my lungs like I’m thirsty for it.
Of course, I’m not immune to the charms of summer. Summer is my favorite season – and the most common time for me to visit my once and forever home. I love it when the sun is fierce in that vast open sky. I embrace the humidity that comes from living in a land of lakes and swamps. When there’s lush green leaves on the shelter-belt trees, and the wheat is ripening in a way you can smell, I’m home – and I’m happy. Try to stop me from entering a field of nodding sunflowers on a midsummer’s day!
The prairies don’t often make travel headlines. In a sense, that’s a shame for those who will never know what they’re missing. On the other hand, maybe the pleasure of the prairies is a well-kept secret that doesn’t need to be touted to be true. Delight comes in many forms to those who seek it. Sunny or stormy, I find delight in the prairies on my every run there.
