The Best American Sports Writing 2013 (36 page)

“Has anyone been down that creek?” Molina kept asking.

The horsemen had ridden through the canyon a little ways but stopped. They knew the area well and warned Molina that the passage got pretty rough.

“Go ahead, try it,” one joked. “We'll come looking for you tomorrow.”

It was already late afternoon, and Molina wondered if it was wise to chance this hike so close to dark. But he, Jessica Haines, and Dean Bannon enjoyed egging each other on. Molina had known Bannon since the third grade. Unsettled between them were decades of debate about who was gutsier.

The creek was ankle deep in some spots, knee high in others, and about as wide as an automobile. They walked slowly because it was hard to do otherwise. The banks were narrow. The three would move over land on one side until they met an impassable thicket or an overhang from the steep canyon wall. Then they would look for the best spot to leap across the water.

They repeated this zigzag enough times to realize they may as well slosh through the creek itself. The bed was gravel and sand, but there were submerged rocks everywhere. It would have been easy to turn an ankle.

Haines, 33, works in the engine room of a ferry in Alaska. However dour the purpose of this trek, she was pleased to be in a place of such extraordinary beauty. The millenniums had intricately sculptured the canyon, and the clear stream that ran through it moved in a musical trickle. She could hear a gentle whoosh above as breezes traipsed through the treetops.

Haines was the first to spot a footprint, its outline in the mud beside the creek. They had been told True was wearing shoes with a pattern of triangles on the tread. But this print was faint and partly washed away.

They paused. They had already slogged through Little Creek for 45 minutes, and the sun was getting low. If they went much farther, they could be stuck for the night.

Still, they persisted, and 10 minutes later they found more footprints, and a few minutes after that, more again. These were better defined, and triangles were part of the design. They compared the length with their own shoes, measuring with a stick. True wore a size 11. These were about the right size.

Energized now, their hearts thumping, the three picked up the pace.

They were trotting, and each began finding more tracks.

They shouted back and forth. “Here's one, and here's another!”

Soon they were seeing so many they no longer bothered to call out.

 

Micah True had become obsessed with the Tarahumara. What did they know about running that others did not? Were they some sort of superhumans?

Tarahumara was the Spanish name. They called themselves the Rarámuri, loosely translated as the running people. They had retreated into the massive canyons of the Sierra Madre centuries ago to escape the conquistadors.

Generation after generation, they traversed the mountains and ravines along tight footpaths. Freakish endurance was required to cover the immense distances. Some chasms in the land were deeper than the Grand Canyon.

To better understand these people, True readjusted the rhythms of his life in 1994, alternating between Boulder and the Copper Canyons, still a furniture mover for half the year but a student of the Rarámuri for the rest. He built a tiny home at the bottom of a canyon in the town of Batopilas, carrying rocks from the river valley to use as a foundation and erecting walls with cement and adobe.

“The man called horse,” as he sometimes referred to himself in written musings, was rapturous with the adventure. He described getting lost in his new surroundings, scaling a rock-faced mountain, water bottle in his teeth, buzzards overhead, “crawling on his belly like a reptile” while “pulling himself upward by grasping at plants.” The canyons were stupendous, with alpine forests in the high altitudes and subtropical jungle on the valley floor.

He was careful not to intrude on the Rarámuri. Relationships developed over time. The impoverished tribe believed in kórima, their word for sharing what they could spare. They sometimes left him tortillas and pinole, a porridge of crushed corn and water. He reciprocated in kind.

Like the Rarámuri, True now ran in sandals, delighting in the simple act of self-propulsion, bounding along the undulating trails like a Neolithic hunter. He called it “moving meditation.” His motto was “run free,” and he did.

Running was essential to the human experience, he had decided. Most people undervalued its importance. Running was not merely a sound cardiovascular choice in a fitness craze; it was an ancient art, part of mankind's genetic imprint. Humans had survived across geological time because they could chase animals until the prey dropped from exhaustion.

The Rarámuri, then, did not possess any locomotive secrets. They simply retained the “genetic cellular memory” most human beings had forgotten.

“Every one of us used to be a long-distance runner,” True said.

But the Rarámuri were themselves unhinging from their ancestral past. Many of the running people no longer ran; they lived in towns and wore blue jeans and cowboy hats. Modernity now flooded into the canyons. Mining companies sent huge trucks down new roads. Marijuana thrived in the soil, and rival drug cartels were in a merciless war within the ravines.

True wanted to help the Rarámuri preserve their running heritage. In 2003, he organized a 29-mile race that was intended to be a festive celebration of local culture, a gathering of the Rarámuri from the caves and ranchos of the “mother mountains.”

To advertise it, True ran from canyon to canyon, handing out fliers and spouting enthusiasm. He hoped for a large turnout, but come race day only seven runners showed up. True finished fifth, ahead of two thirsty Rarámuri who allowed themselves to be diverted by a spectator with beer.

The event wasn't all he had wanted, but it was a start. It became an annual ultramarathon race, and in 2006, True had an exciting brainstorm. He would entice American ultrarunners to the Rarámuri's home turf. Highest on his wish list was Scott Jurek, the greatest of them all.

Organizing such a thing was difficult for a man living without a phone or electricity. True journeyed to the town of Creel, where there was a computer to borrow and a dial-up connection. He reached out through cyberspace.

As it turned out, Jurek was a metaphysical soul mate, another man who considered running a cherished legacy from primitive times. To him, racing the legendary Rarámuri in their own canyons sounded awesome.

Getting there, on the other hand, was no simple matter. Once across the border, it involved a relay of bus rides—the vehicles hugging the road through narrow switchbacks—and True was not much help with logistical advice. Seven Americans showed up, uncertain what to expect, and although they found the landscape breathtaking, the course itself was a brutal and twisting 47 miles of forbidding climbs and frightening descents.

Caballo Blanco gave each of his visitors the nickname of a spirit-animal—the deer, the bear, the young wolf, the snow hawk—and the race was held on a glorious Sunday. Crowds congregated in the town of Urique, where the race started and ended. Avid spectators risked their pesos with wagers.

First to finish was Arnulfo Quimare, the swiftest of the Rarámuri, and then came Jurek, six minutes behind. Though unused to defeat, the American acknowledged the winner with a gracious bow. The race is vividly described in
Born to Run
. McDougall, the author, not only witnessed it but also ran in it. He had his own abiding interest in the Rarámuri—and he had previously met the curious American called Caballo Blanco who lived among them.

Earlier, McDougall had an idea to write a book about four ultrarunners. But his time in the Copper Canyons pushed him toward an entirely different project. Here was a hidden tribe of superathletes who had “mastered the secret of happiness” and lived “as benignly as bodhisattvas.” Here was an American dwelling among them, a “mysterious loner with a fake name.”

This was the stuff of a mind-blowing book.

 

At one point, the canyon around Little Creek gets even narrower, and at the same time becomes straighter. Molina, Haines, and Bannon had been in the stream for 90 minutes when they saw something ahead that was blood red, a color out of harmony amid the shadings of greens and browns.

“Do you see that?” Molina asked.

He rushed ahead while Haines hesitated. She thought it could be a dead animal, and in Alaska she had been taught to be cautious when coming upon fresh kill.

Molina was not so heedful. He soon recognized that the patch of red was a shirt with limbs on either side. A surge of emotions pulsed through him. His first thought was that his old friend was alive if hurt.

But once nearer the body he knew instantly it was a corpse. True was lying face up, his eyes glossy, his jaw open. Flies were busy.

The others also forced themselves to look. True's body was reclining on an outcropping of small rocks and boulders. His legs were in 10 inches of water, and his arms were against his chest, the right one down, the left one up. One of his shoes was off, and nearby was a plastic water bottle, two-thirds empty.

It appeared that True had taken a bad tumble at some point. There were abrasions on his legs and the backs of his arms. The middle finger of his left hand was bent and purplish. It looked to be broken.

“Oh, man,” Molina said softly, and he realized he was weeping.

The task now was to get the word out, but they had no radio. Nor did they know exactly where they were. They had no GPS device.

They discussed what to do. Perhaps someone should stay with the body while the others went back. But that seemed too spooky to contemplate further: out there, in the dark, alone with the body. Mountain lions were mentioned.

No, they decided, they would all go. Yet other images crept into their minds. Molina wondered if they should place rocks on the body to keep animals from dragging it off—either that or cover it up with reeds and branches.

But they decided this too was unwise. They shouldn't contaminate the scene. The medical examiner would want things untouched.

So they turned back toward where they had entered the canyon.

And this time they ran as fast as they could.

 

Born to Run
begins with McDougall, its author, going to Mexico's Copper Canyons, which he calls “a kind of shorebound Bermuda Triangle known for swallowing the misfits and desperadoes who stray inside.” He hopes to find the “phantom” Caballo Blanco, who seems to be “a ghost among ghosts.”

For a while, some of True's friends in Boulder were particularly fond of quoting that passage. He had been a well-known fixture in the city for 25 years. Now, when he would stop in at the Trident Café or the Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery, they would genially feign surprise, shocked by the presence of the phantom.

Becoming the central character in a best-selling book is a monumental life-changer, especially if it happens unwittingly to a man who made a sacrament of living simply. A thousand conflicting feelings eddied in his head.

True told people the book contained exaggerations and inaccuracies. For one, the Tarahumara lived no such idyllic life. Then he retreated from those criticisms, praising and thanking McDougall; then he alleged more flaws.

The book was flattering, surely. But that itself was a source of unease. True did not see himself as anywhere near so eccentric and amazing. He oftentimes felt two forces were in a tug-of-war for his identity: was he the person inside his own skin or the person inside the pages of
Born to Run?

Much of the book's significance rested in its assertion that cushioned running shoes were a hazard to the human foot. But what made
Born to Run
a superb read was the story line in Mexico. Many readers wanted to meet the celebrated Caballo Blanco, and they seemed to expect a guru or a shaman or a fleet-footed saint. “I feel like I always have to live up to the expectations of the book,” True complained.

But fame was enjoyable as well. True may never have wanted the world to beat a path to his door, but now he encouraged people to follow him on Facebook. He spent hours online tending to his messages, either at the Boulder public library or in the municipal building in Urique, Mexico.

Within months of the book's publication, two Facebook friends became love interests. One was Kati Bell, a runner who worked in corporate marketing. “I told him: ‘You're a celebrity now. You can make money out of this,'” Bell said.

That was an intriguing notion, though not for his own sake but for the Rarámuri. The Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon was beginning to fulfill his grand vision. The number of participants was multiplying. There were cash prizes for the winners, and every finisher received 500 pounds of corn. True was not only reviving the running culture but also feeding the hungry.

The race needed infusions of cash to sustain itself, and he agreed to a small number of personal appearances, Bell said, although he was appalled when she suggested they hold dinners and charge $100 a head.

“Let people donate whatever they want,” he insisted.

True proved to be an amiable and amusing speaker. He needed no notes to tell his stories, although a few beers helped. He was shaving his head now, a look that made his face all the more striking, the large ears and lips, the protruding chin, the deep crow's feet at the corners of his eyes.

Audiences were reliably friendly, won over well before he uttered word one. True would smile at them even in mid-jeremiad. “Long after we're gone, long after greed blows everything up, the Rarámuri are still going to be subsisting,” he said. “They know how to survive, they know how to endure.”

A nonprofit group, Norawas de Rarámuri, was set up to handle donations. Every dollar would benefit the Rarámuri, as True demanded.

But were others willing to demonstrate the same selflessness? True was certain of his own integrity but deeply suspicious of everyone else's.