How I Found Myself Again on the Trail After Loss and Heartbreak

It took me a long time to fall asleep in my car, and not just because of the cold. I was parked at a trailhead in Colorado’s Indian Peaks, more than 10,000 feet above sea level, curled up under a puffy jacket and a quilt. It was midnight, and my mind had been racing for more than an hour. In four hours, my alarm would go off. I’d stir instant coffee into cold water, struggle into my running vest, and hit the trail. In truth, I didn’t want to wake up early, or even go running. I just didn’t know what else to do.

I learned to run in high school on neighborhood jogs with my dad. Ten years later, when he was put on life support after a heart attack, I ran laps around the hospital grounds. I ran laps when he stopped getting better. I ran laps when he died.

I fell out of love with running when I moved to Colorado. Surrounded by legions of cardio superstars, I felt pressure to keep up—to run at a certain pace or go a certain distance for the workout to count. I started leaving my fitness watch at home just because I was ashamed to look at it. Then, I started doing it on purpose. No watch, no data. If there was no data, then no one—not even me—knew how fast or far I’d gone.

It was liberating. Soon, running stopped being a sport and became a practice. I’d never been able to sit still enough to master meditation or yoga. But somehow, the runs were enough to dampen the mental noise. My thought tornado slowed. My head cleared. As long as my feet were moving, I could stop thinking in circles and start thinking in a straight line.

Then, this summer, I got my heart broken to bits. The details don’t matter. Only that I fell in love by accident, and then he moved away. I’ve ended relationships and had them end, but this one hit me like a box truck. Then, within a few months, five other friends moved, chasing job prospects and school programs in Alaska, California, Germany, and Pennsylvania. I stopped running. I stopped sleeping.

My friends all shook their heads as they left. “Here we have the kind of community people spend their whole lives looking for,” they said. “What a shame to leave something so beautiful.”

At the end of the summer, I went to the taco joint where we used to laugh ourselves to tears. I ordered my usual, and I sat at a table alone. As I ate, I scrolled the New York Times and then the Israel Times, scanning for updates about the war. And then, I put my phone down.

Nothing made sense. Not the war. Not the politics. Not the tanking economy. Not the fact that a half-dozen people had found the one thing in life that mattered and chose to leave anyway. It felt like someone had broken the world and screwed it back together upside down and backward. My heart felt that way, too.

I told my therapist this, and she frowned. I couldn’t tell if she felt sorry for me or if she was tired of the self-pity. Probably a mix of both.

“What’s one thing you do that makes you feel like yourself?” she asked. Spears of sunlight slatted through the blinds onto the carpet of her office. I thought for a moment.

“Running.”

“Then maybe you should do that more.”

So, that night, I stuffed some bars and gels into my little running pack and drove into the mountains. That morning, I stepped onto the trail with no plan in mind. Maybe I’d just walk. OK, fine, maybe I’d run a mile. Maybe just two. My only goal was to move until I could feel the burning blood in my legs and the thin, cold wind on my cheeks. This high up, it didn’t take long.

After a mile, I found my rhythm. After two, I was nodding to the music in my headphones. For the first time in weeks, I was in my body and not in my head. I was out of service—unplugged from the news, the emails, the texts, the updates. The world was falling apart, but at least I had air in my lungs and solid ground under my feet. Maybe that was enough.

Then, I rounded a corner, and I saw a glimmer on the horizon.

Dawn had finally come.

About the writer: Corey Buhay is a Colorado-based editor and writer. She’s a climber and previously authored Outside‘s Basecamp Confidential, a column about the behind-the-scenes work of outdoor jobs. where she 

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