Friday Adventure Run: "It was fun until it wasn't"

My goal was to be running by 6:30 a.m. I made it out the door at 6:38. The air had a touch of cool to it, and I looked forward few hours of adventure running. I had seen from the highway and found on Google Maps a road I had never traveled. Beside Heartland Catfish is a road that looked like it would go through to the paved road that runs east and west from Highway 49 East to Highway 49 West. I had to go there. I needed to go there. So I went there.

I got on the levee near home and ran west, across Poplar, across Grand Blvd, and eventually I crossed Highway 82. On West Claiborne Extended, I begin to get that feeling, that feeling of being free. I love that.

I crossed the river channel and headed out the busy highway. I used to hate running on the side of a busy highway. Now I only dislike it. That is progress; that is character development. Eventually I made it to Heartland Catfish, and I ran onto the road that I had never travelled. The road crosses a heavily treed ditch and on the other side of the ditch, I found something: an enclave of houses that is not visible from the highway. I counted four trailers and fifteen houses. Full of illegals I bet. But not my business, not my concern.

When I passed the hidden subdivision, the road turned dirt, turned into a four-lane turnrow. Huh? Yeah, check out the picture. I stopped a passing farm hand and asked him if this road would take me through to the paved road over there, I pointed. He answered for me to follow it on around. Around? Turns out that the road turns ninety degrees and passes two houses and some grain bins. 

The four-lane turnrow. Really, you
have to see it to believe it.

Then I found a small, inviting road that went north. It was tree lined, narrow, shady and the kind of place I like to run. I was afraid, however, that it might be a driveway. I took the chance and found that the road only went about a mile or less before coming out on the paved road I was looking for. 

The delightful little road that took me
where I was going.

There I turned right (east) and headed back towards Highway 49. Out there I again got the feeling of being free and of the delta's feeling of space, a feeling you can't get just anywhere. On my left was a rice field that seemed to go on forever. It reminded me of a song we used to sing in grade school, back when Americans were proud to be Americans.

 

"Oh beautiful for spacious skies/
For amber waves of grain . . ."

I shuffled down that road until I came to Highway 49 and then crossed over onto a little road that runs to the river. From there the road turned back north, but I turned south onto a rough turnrow. That led me to a disced field that I walked across to get to a little patch of trees that I believed covered an Indain mound with maybe some graves on top.

If you live around here, you have seen this
just north of Greenwood off Highway 49.

I walked the freshly disced earth and pryed my way into and through the vegetation and found an eight-foot high mound with a series of graves on top. I did not look at them all. I did, however, notice that one was buried there in 1880. The biggest headstone is pictured below. 

All I can say is that I found this interesting.

From there I tried to get to that church, the one in the corner of Highway 82 and 49. I had some difficulty, however, due to the fact that the turnrow disappeared which meant I had to walk though the freshly plowed ground back to the highway. I eventually did make it to the church where I layed my sweat-soaked shirt out on the front porch of the church to let it dry. I lay down and then the weariness of the day hit hard like a pitcher's misdirected baseball on a batter's body. I had covered a little over 13 miles. That might not sound like much, but I had been up early every moring, had run 8.9 on Tuesday, and lifted big for the legs on Wednesday, and was cutting calories at night. Not only that, but I was almost out of fluid.

Whom could I call? When my shirt dried, I headed back to the highway and began a slow shuffle over the bridge and back towards town. On the bridge, my tired legs had trouble balancing me on the tiny catwalk against the wind with eighteen-wheeleters passing inches away from my right shoulder. On the frontage road at Fort Pemeberton, I knew I needed a ride. All my friend were at work. My brother-on-law lives in Minter City. I thought about Katie Jones. I didn't want to bother her on her day off, however. I couldn't call my wife at work and ask her to come get me. That would get me beaten up. I used to call my dad, but he died in 2013.

Then I remembered: Vicki. I bet she will come get me. I sent the text. She picked me up and drove me home. On the ride to Crockett she asked why I do these things. "Fun," was my response. 

"You don't look like you had much fun," she looked at me sideways. I was sweaty, my legs covered with dust, and I'm sure I looked like I was about to pass out.

"Well, it was fun until it wasn't."

And that's the way it is. I traveled some new roads, I took some cool pics, I saw some nice views. And I had fun until I didn't. Yeah, I'll do it again. Just give me a little time.