On | The spirit of paradoxes
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”
– Albert Einstein
You know when you meet someone and you’re intrigued by their energy, their aura? They seem to navigate life in a manner that’s hard to describe and the universe seems to coalesce around them. It is this mysteriousness that drives our curiosity to know more about folks we meet through our LoveBeyond adventures. Meet Aaron. Paradox in human form.
Somewhere near the sleepy town of Clarkdale, with its copper art museum and divine marble Santa Maria statue, past the ancient sandy Tuzigoot ruins and beyond a somewhat deep river crossing in lands that connect Sedona to the volcanic San Francisco mountains in the north of Arizona, the course meandered among trees and along a riverbed. It was dirty. And dusty. And not the most beautiful thing I had seen since starting this endeavor three days prior. Mostly it was reminiscent of the polluted city creek beds where I spent my youth catching crawdads and cleaning up trash.
Secretly I was searching for a spot to lay down my head for a fifteen-minute trail nap. It was a futile effort. So I allowed my mind to wander. Words and songs swirled vibrantly. And then, Becca {who was mostly my “keeper” at that stage in the adventure}, started in on a question… probably to quicken the pace: “Hey, what do -” But before she could finish, out he popped: a bearded man with a bright blue tee perfectly harmonized to his eyes. He was sporting longish shorts that seemed either tattered or filthy, probably both. Except for the fact that he was wearing a running vest, I would have taken him for a homeless gent, hiding Creekside to drink cheap whiskey or smoke crack.
With his jolly “hey,” we were at once startled and simultaneously entertained. It had been a while since we’d encountered anyone else along the trail.
Aaron.
He had just stopped in the woods for a shit. And post marijuana gummy and a beer he was seemingly in good spirits. Nearly halfway into this 255-mile foot race, he was fueled by anything other than proper running nutrition. And he was smiling, jovial.
A conundrum, really.
The songs in my head were quickly replaced by internal dialogue: “who is this guy? Is he for real?”
And those questions lingered. They still linger. We spent the next hours sharing the trail with this human who contradicted every notion I had of what we were doing out there. We were running a foot race.
And he was just moving forward. He wasn’t in a hurry. He wasn’t carrying much. And that is just how he is: he will cast away the definition others cling to, in service of his truth. In service to the opposition.
He can be in pain and crack a joke. He can be terrified and relish in the horror.
He is random. Entirely surreal; grounded and very much real… all, at the very same time. Aaron is one great big human paradox. He is also a chameleon of sorts. A human… being, ever doing. That is, being fully in all his doings.
He is what happens when impossibility meets redefining.
Aaron grew up near Detroit, and that deep rooted American, heart of the automotive industry, dark and gritty, Motor City feel runs through his veins. The dream and aspiration, the grandeur and heart of a revolution and the sounds of Motown, pump inside him alongside the pain, despair and heartbreak of a city fractured by competition and a flailing economy. But like the city of his birth, he is not broken. He is what happens when impossibility meets redefining. He is that place where anything becomes possible. Because there is nothing to lose. He is impractical and far from any singular definition.
As we made our way out of the creek bed and up into Dead Horse state park, the trees started to thin. Grasses lined the sand. And rolling brown hills gave way to rocky red plateaus. I could feel myself ready to reach the next checkpoint, an aid station at mile 135. I was ready for a hot taco meal. It was Cinco de Mayo after all. I needed fresh clothes and maybe a few minutes’ nap. But as we lingered on the trail, I was fascinated by this human creature. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that if I passed him on the street, I would take him for a philosophy professor or trash collector. They seemed equally fitting. With his bushy beard and baseball hat cocked half sideways, it was hard to discern whether he was a serious academic or total slacker. I asked Aaron what he was doing out there, the essential question for the mostly crazy humans choosing on their own accord to run two-hundred-and-fifty miles.
I put it simply. There was no energy for segues or small talk really. Get to the point.
“Why are you here?” I flung the words directly at him. I expected him to respond with something grand. Some big reason or thing he’s chasing or running away from.
Instead, he chuckled, and let out a vibrant merry sigh: “Oh this? Well, it’s training for the Triple Crown.” He was referring to the Triple Crown of 200’s. That is, three 200-mile races, all completed over four months.
Matter of fact. And truth. This. 255 miles from Phoenix to Flagstaff – as a training run?? Humans are never what we expect.
Experts say we are both nature – pre-wired by our genes – and nurture – the product of life experiences. So in Aaron, a quandary of a human – which part of him is which? Was he born this way? Or did his life bring him to some a-ha where days without sleep, traversing lands by foot – is approached somewhat like a walk thru a park on a summer day?
It is clear he was born with something inside him. Maybe a little something, or a lot of something that is “off.” Off by society’s standards. That, plus whatever Detroit and time threw at him, catapulted this person into living a life of paradox wherein between contrary existences, anything could be possible.
Light. And dark. Easy and hard. He is entirely one. Living. Breathing. Contradiction.
When we arrived at the aid station, I felt elation, an emotional catharsis. I needed to let go of what felt like suffering – wading through streams and then waves of desert dust magnetically covering my legs up to my thighs. I was tired of the dry heat and wanted to escape the filth of three days out there moving day and night. Aaron was nonchalant, unmoved by the arrival at this thirteenth checkpoint along the journey.
With a “see ya out there,” we high-fived and parted ways on that day. We both knew we would see each other again. Sooner rather than later. After all, we had another 120 miles left to run into one another somewhere on the trail leading northward.
After hugging my crew, I sat down in a folding chair to remove my shoes and socks. My toes longed for freedom, air, anything. Beating my socks ferociously against a rock, I was desperate to remove any speck of silt that might lead to a dreaded and ruinous blister. And while I sat there slaying the dirt dragons, I hypothesized that this Aaron character is the human version of my favorite made up conjunction: but/and. Perhaps I had finally met the person that doesn’t hide from the fact that we are existing in dual worlds of “but” and “and…” at the very same time. He embraced it with such nonchalance, when the rest of us snuff at the notions that things exist entirely in contradiction all the time. Aaron, it seemed, can be both part of, and apart from, two seemingly opposing natural states.
I thought to myself: “did that really just happen?” After all, ultra-running is notorious for hallucinations, among other unworldly experiences.
But it was true. Aaron is not at all what he seems and he is exactly as he appears; he’s like that wandering man on the corner, obviously a panhandler, but wait. No. He is just standing there enjoying the sunlight, unaware of his disheveled appearance, waiting patiently to cross the road and enter the building where he will take the elevator up to his corner office on the ninth floor.
The depths of the paradoxes Aaron typifies are boundless and untamed. He just lives his life his own way, by his own rules, with unconscious disregard for what society says is acceptable while simultaneously holding reverence for the convention of the Universe. That is, after all, entirely aligned with the state of existence that is required to journey hundreds of miles by foot: balancing patience with impatience, collaboration with independence.
I saw Aaron a few more times over the next 115-ish miles to Flagstaff. Each time, he was blasé and unconcerned. “Yeah,” he’d say, “I’m good.” Meanwhile, carnage everywhere – injuries, blisters, dehydration, hypothermia, exhaustion, sleep deprivation. And there he’d be – like he’s strolling on a beach with steel drums calypso-ing in the background: laid-back, relaxed, merry. He would fling juxtaposing worlds like confetti, at everyone in his vicinity. I decided at some point in those hundreds of miles: Aaron is either insane or unafraid of failure, but more probably he is both.
I wondered if maybe that’s his recipe for joy; that elusive thing we are all chasing. And the ultimate reason why 250 brave souls showed up to face the unknown, over hundreds of miles across the Arizona desert – simply, in search of happiness. It seemed ironic, as I climbed Mount Elden to the finish line on that early May morning. It was dark and cold. Gaining 2,300 feet over rocky, boulder filled steps, with outcroppings and cliffs leading off into the cloud covered night sky. I hiked slowly with Becca, matching breaths to steps. Inhale, exhale. The mantra in my head: “just keep moving.” I could feel my lungs in my throat and the increasing dampness of my brim as beads of sweat found their way from my forehead into the folded flap of my cap.
Then, as I came over the other side of the peak, fierce winds gusted in my direction and in an instant I saw Aaron’s world. I understood something he would later tell me over the phone, something I had known all along; something about paradoxes. I found that place deep inside where meaning is made; that place where there is pain, that place where simultaneously all the beauty lives, that place where what “hurts me also blesses me.” That place on top of that mountain, after days and nights enduring and hundreds of miles traversing, with the wind in my face and exhaustion consuming every ounce of my being… that place where nothing but the fullness of life resides.
Written by Courtney Sawyer
Art by Becca Williams
