In 2013, Aspire crew Nick Triolo set off to run across Mexico’s Baja peninsula in one day. The run was centered around a locally-led campaign to end permitting for an open-pit gold mine in the Sierra Laguna Mountains. He was joined by two locals whose lack of trail running experience was outpaced by determination and motivation for the cause. Nick connects his Baja run and his experience guiding on the Wonderland trail into a fantastic read, identifying a powerful but often overlooked aspect of our running.
A Protest Run
Seven years ago, I had this idea to run across Mexico’s Baja peninsula in one day. The route, a seventy-mile transect across the peninsula’s southern bulge, was centered in a local campaign to end permitting for a Canadian open-pit gold mine in the Sierra Laguna Mountains. Though I didn’t expect many others to join in the full attempt, I knew that some might, and dozens had already pledged to run sections of the route.
At three in the morning, I arrived to the Sea of Cortez on the east side, and standing there was a large crowd of Mexican comrades ready to run the first twenty miles to the base of the mountains. Two runners looked especially nervous—Pedro and Eduardo. They’d come to attempt the full seventy-mile crossing.
I asked them in my pathetic Spanish if they’d ever traveled on foot for what might be a twenty-hour-day.
Eduardo: No.
Pedro: No.
Eduardo had only run a half marathon. Pedro, one marathon. Both appeared fantastically unprepared for running three consecutive marathons over poorly marked mountain paths. Neither had much for gear and the day’s forecast called for searing. I remember Pedro wearing a heavy-duty cotton tee with cutoff sleeves and clenching a Dasani bottle filled with what looked like Pepto Bismol. I had no idea what to expect either; no one had ever attempted such a crossing. What unfolded was a longer and more colorful story, one of ranch families lining the route in solidarity, of police escorts and hornet attacks, full-body cramps and sunburned eyelids and hot mayonnaise sandwiches.
We would make it to the Pacific Ocean eighteen hours later, arriving by headlamp to jump into the surf. Pedro and Eduardo were the true heroes of the day, for they showed up to the precipice of something wildly unknown and entrusted the land and their intentions to guide them across.
The Emergence of “X”
I share this story because it was the first time I witnessed what’s casually referred to as an “X factor,” some unquantifiable force that kicks in when conviction supersedes experience, when resolve taps in after rationality taps out, when something larger than our selves propels us beyond known contours.
This is something I’ve seen countless times while guiding Aspire trips around Mount Rainier. To be clear, this circuit asks a hell of a lot out of you. To wake up and heave your sore ass around the largest volcanic mound of earth in the Pacific Northwest for days on end—if that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is a lot.
But here’s the thing: It’s far more within grasp than you might think.
I’ve seen this fire in the eyes of dozens of runners around the Wonderland. I’ve seen it from all fitness levels, all shapes and sizes, all ages and backgrounds and racing resumes. People show up having asked: Am I ready for this? And after some deliberation, the answer almost unequivocally
seems to be: Let’s find out. Maybe I’ll surprise myself.
The Baja crossing was a surprise. I surprised myself. Pedro and Eduardo surprised themselves. They didn’t know they had it in them until deciding to wake up at an ungodly hour and try to run across their entire home state, through the spiny-hearted mountains central to mining threats. The whole campaign moved us toward something far bigger, older, and more important than ourselves, and that’s what carried us to the other side.
It’s been over seven years, and no mining permits have been granted.
Of course, The Wonderland Trail is no protest run, but here’s my point: Success defined solely by prior running experience rarely defines one’s capacity to elevate in a given circumstance. One’s resume must never dictate the potential for transcendence. Time and again, runners arrive to the Wonderland feeling unprepared, nervous, having their phantom injuries whisper sweet lies to reconsider. But then, some magic happens.
An agreement takes form
It’s unclear if it’s the power of the mountain or the financial and logistical commitments of getting there—likely a combination of both—but something shifts. After over thirty miles and twelve thousand vertical feet on day one, everyone arrives into Mowich Lake dog-ass whooped. There, you receive not only a hot, nutritious, calorie-dense meal (and an IPA, wine, or kombucha, to add), but you’re also gifted strong affirmation from the group, all circling together around something larger than themselves.
On the second day, you’re probably not feeling your best, all blisters and sore things, but most of this hurt is superficial. What’s enduring comes packaged in the passage itself, and this is where the X factor lives. It waits for us there, that ineffable force conspiring with landscape to reflect our own capacity for stitching such long days together. I’ve seen it time and again, this agreement between organism, landscape, and the why:
Why are you here, doing this, paining your way along this path?
Maybe it’s because you are getting married in a few months, your best friend is the officiate, and you two want to spend time together before the ceremony.
Maybe it’s because this is your first time sleeping in a tent by yourself after a Hiroshima-sized divorce and you’re not used to the sounds of a forest at night, alone, and so you play light, meditative nature sounds from your iPhone X to fall asleep. In your tent. In nature.
Maybe it’s because you are from the east coast and have always dreamed of heading west to apprentice with snowcapped Cascadian giants and listen to what secrets they share.
Or maybe it’s because you’re a seasoned ultrarunner, and this is the single best multi-day training block imaginable, and you wish to give it all you’ve got, supported by a readymade crew.
Whatever the case, the Wonderland is seeded with all sorts of X factor, just like we found in Baja, just like you’ve found bumbling along local trails, and in everyday life, too, when faced with something seemingly insurmountable. You trust instinct, the land, your people. You then apprentice with this X factor and see what happens next. Friend and mentor Joe Grant calls what happens next “the reveal.”
First, you perform all necessary physical and mental training to show up as ready as possible, and you let go of whatever might happen and hand your life over to the day, to see what’s revealed. You let go of any pre- determined epiphany and you go.
The wind blows hard among the pines
Toward the beginning
Of an endless past.
Listen: you’ve heard everything.
S. Takahashi
We’ve heard everything. That musty animal burrowed and gnawing inside us knows of this familiarity, in heaving afoot for days around volcanoes, that through allying more frequently with this X factor we might reclaim some of our forgotten corners, fragments of divested courage we’d previously said couldn’t possibly be ours.
And so, we prepare. We ready-steady body and mind. We train. Do our homework. Study maps. Pine over routes. We show up with our big fat dollops of curiosity and open up to the reveal, elevated all the while by the X factor, just another fancy, sharp-lettered cliché showing us the way home, back to our courageous selves.
If X indeed marks the spot, then that spot is us.
Nicholas Triolo is a writer, long-distance runner, and Wonderland guide for Aspire (2016-2018). He holds a master’s of science in environmental studies from the University of Montana, where he was senior editor for Camas Magazine. Triolo currently works as Digital Strategist for Orion Magazine, and is based in western Massachusetts. He is former associate director for the Todos Santos Writing Workshop and co-facilitator for the Freeflow Wilderness Writing Institute. His writing, films, and photography have been featured in Orion, Terrain.org, Best American Poetry Blog, Juxtaprose, Trail Runner Magazine, Patagonia’s Dirtbag Diaries, and others. More at: nicholastriolo.net