Reenacting

I don't really know how long it has been on my mind. In 2009, when I rode my bicycle from Greenwood to Louisville, Mississippi, one of the reasons for doing so was to scope out a route. I know the dream was not new even then. I made my initial plans, I think, somewhere around 2005 or 2006. Year after year, however, something, usually a running injury, prevented me from making the attempt. I did the bicycle ride once more in 2010, again checking out roads, stores, and potential overnight places. 

Then in December of 2013, I possessed my best prospects in several years to make the trip, so I set out for a planned four-day run to Noxapater, Mississippi. You can read all about my miserable failure on this blog at "Pulling the Trigger" (12/16/2013, "And Shooting Myself in the Leg" (12/19/2013). I knew then I was marginally trained and totally inexperienced at multi-day runs when I left the house that Tuesday morning almost two years ago. But 2013 was still the best running shape I had achieved in years. 

I tried. 

I failed. 

I want to try again.

Things have brightened since. For the entire year of 2014, I ran 934.35 miles. This year, I am currently at 690 which is 306 over this same time a year ago. Now, I am not only scheming of a rematch with The Great Noxapater Journey Run, as I have named it, but I have started specific training and planning for another attempt. My excitement is becoming palpable.

Maybe a little back story will help you see why this dream refuses to die.

In the summer of my fourteenth year, I packed a little handbag with some clothes, tied it to the handlebars of my red, high fender 90 cc Honda, and headed for Louisville, Mississippi. It was a grand adventure, permitted by reluctant parents, and one that set the tone for much of my subsequent life: rambling. I rode that little Honda over 8,000 miles that summer. The next year, I went a long way towards wearing out a pickup truck (we were licensed to drive at fifteen then). I wore out a homemade wooden boat just a few years ago, running it up and down the Yazoo and Tallahatchie Rivers. Ensuing years saw me slowly transform my rambling from motor powered to body powered. The year 2010 saw me complete 37 bicycle rides of 100 or more miles. My wife complained that I was "obsessed with seeing how far you can push yourself." 

Guilty.

It has become an obsession, a compulsion, one that comes as naturally to me as breathing air. Due to running injuries (I had four straight years of Achilles problems), I swore off running time after time. I could no longer endure the emotional turmoil of my physical limitations. But every time I quit, I found myself outdoors with running shoes on and attempting to do it again. Without even thinking about it, I would get home from work, redress, and head out the door. Finally, my health and fitness started coming back to me.  

I have a friend who is big into reenacting. You know-- or maybe you don't-- around here there is a dedicated band of grown men who dress up in Confederate and Union uniforms from the 1865 era, camp out in open fields, and play army. I get it, I think. They find it interesting, fun maybe, and they learn about history in the process. Not only that, but in a way they get to participate, to relive, to experience a past they find fascinating. War may be ugly, but it is full of drama, of bravery and cowardice, of the best and worst of humanity. I think there may be something else going on. I asked my buddy what percentage of the reenactors have an ancestor who was in the war. He said all of the Sons of the Confederacy and all the Sons of the Union do. It's a requirement. He told me that maybe half of the others just like to camp out and play army.

I have come to realize that at least part of my obsession with The Great Noxapater Journey Run is sort of like that. The GNJR is an adventure run, something I have grown to love; it is a goal and a physical challenge, something I seem to need for my physical and mental health; but beyond that, it is a reenactment of my great-grandfather's epic foot journey, something I became fascinated with many years ago (see "Wonder" 5/2/2015). When George Henry Quinton was twelve-years old, his family abandoned him in Utah and he walked from the Utah Territory to Mississippi. I can't go to Utah and spend six months walking back. I can, however, run and walk from my home to his hometown in Louisville and then beyond to the little hamlet of Noxapater. 

George Henry Quinton

I need to do this, and although I have attempted to put into words why, I am aware of the profundity of my failure to convey the power this idea has over me. There is an inner impulse that will not die and will not let me rest.

I wish I could locate his parents' home at the time of his return, but that information, like so much of his story, is lost to the past. What a fitting conclusion that would make for ending the journey. What I can do and plan to do is locate his grave site in Louisville before moving on to the next town. I know the cemetery where he is buried although I have never visited his grave. I want to change that after several days of foot travel, in some small, oblique way, redoing a tiny portion of the amazing journey he was tough enough to survive thus allowing my grandfather, my mother, and me to be born many years later. Maybe it is too late to honor him. But maybe not. Maybe God will allow him to look down from heaven and watch is great-grandson attempt a symbolic parallel, a stab at replicating, at reenacting his struggle. Maybe.