SHMOTOWN

I’ll round the corner by the middle school and face a mile of straight road. At the far end, I’ll see it sitting there, mocking me: Lemon Drop Hill. At 22 miles into Grandma’s Marathon, this mild incline looks like Everest. I like that hill, though, and this summer will be my seventh time up.

I’m a rookie considering it’s the 33^rd edition of this Northland tradition. In 1977, Scott Keenan, who’s still the Executive Director today, cobbled together a budget of $649 with some sponsorship from a new restaurant in Canal Park called Grandma’s Saloon. One hundred and fifty people ran from Two Harbors to Duluth that first time. Last year, 6,876 runners finished the trek, making it the thirteenth largest marathon in the United States. Not bad since Duluth-Superior is the 149^th largest metropolitan area in the country.

Runners couldn’t use their iPods during Grandma’s in 2007 and 2008. In December of 2008, USA Track and Field changed their policy to allow the use of headphones during races that they sanction. So, if you’re a racer who absolutely must motivate yourself with Metallica, you’re in luck this summer. However, the race staff encourages runners to participate without them to enhance the overall race experience. I agree. With headphones, I would miss the encouragement of all the awesome spectators. Or the whistle of the train that races you back to town. Or the exclamations of your fellow runners as they see the Aerial Lift Bridge for the first time on the course. I’ll take those sounds over Barry Manilow any day.

This year, when you think “Duluth” and “marathon”, Kara Goucher comes to mind. Kara grew up in Duluth and stormed onto the world stage by coming in third in the New York Marathon last fall, running the fastest marathon debut ever by an American woman. In her second marathon, she very nearly won the 2009 edition of the Boston Marathon after dominating the race for the last five miles. Kara Goucher is coached by Alberto Salazar who narrowly beat Dick Beardsley in the famous 1982 “Duel in the Sun” at the Boston Marathon. Dick Beardsley still holds the course record for Grandma’s Marathon, set in 1981. With all of her Duluth connections, I asked Bob Gustafson, Public Relations Director, if Kara Goucher had any plans to run Grandma’s Marathon. He said, “Kara has an invitation from our organization to compete in any of our events which might fit into her racing schedule. We are confident at some point in her running career Kara will run Grandma’s and we will be excited when that day occurs.”

In the meantime, the citizens of Duluth will have to settle for watching me struggle up Lemon Drop Hill with a smile on my face. Am I a masochist? No. I’m smiling because that’s where I’ll find my wife and two kids. They’ll give me a hug, some Lifesavers candy, and motivation to go four more miles to the finish for the lucky seventh time. For all the festivities before and after the biggest race in the Northern Wilds, check out grandmasmarathon.com.

We were flying a patrol over the President’s ranch in Texas. It was Thanksgiving week in 2002. Charlie Nelson was the flight lead and I was the wingman. At about 2 o’clock in the morning, Charlie came over the radio and said, “Got an idea.”

“Go ahead.”

“I think we should start a squadron fishing tournament on the river this summer.”

We had the inaugural tournament the next opener. Family and friends from the Minnesota Air National Guard congregated with their kids on the river for fishing and a fine shore lunch. In the years since that first gathering, Charlie has become a professional guide on the St. Louis River (stlouisriverguy.com). I’m proud to say I was there when he had the idea.

This is normal. In the halls of our fighter squadron, you’ll hear talk of bow hunting, steelhead fishing, and how your kid shot his first grouse. You’re just as likely to hear about shooting sporting clays as you are to hear about how to shoot down a MIG. There are other places to fly F-16’s. There are other places to play in the outdoors. Duluth is alone in having the best of both. We know we’ve got it good.

I’ve been to the Middle East six times. Three times in the 90s to fly in Operation Southern Watch to defend the UN sanctioned No-Fly zone in southern Iraq. Recently, I’ve served three times in Operation Iraqi Freedom with the 148^th Fighter Wing Bulldogs of the Minnesota Air National Guard. Our unit just returned to Duluth in January 2009. I was married with no-children when I deployed in the 90s. That seemed hard. Now, with two children, leaving for combat is excruciating.

So, while at home, I try to pick hobbies that allow us to have family time combined with the outdoors. We just went on our first ice fishing expedition where I hand-augered some holes into the top of Whiteface Reservoir. I learned where the fish bite there from a service buddy in the Guard. My five-year old daughter skied the same two miles her 8-year old brother did in Hartley Park in Duluth. We all went up to Billy’s Bar to watch the John Beargrease sled dog race and hung out with other Guard members doing the same. My family climbs Oberg Mountain together in the autumn. We ride our bikes along the Munger Trail and the Gitchi-Gami Trail along the North Shore. I wake everybody up at the cabin so the kids can stand on the dock and stare open mouthed at the eerie glow of the Northern Lights.

Periodically, I leave all that behind and go to war. Most of the Bulldogs have made several trips to Iraq now. We raise our hands and swear to support and defend the Constitution, but that isn’t what I think about in Iraq. When I’m under my bunk waiting out a mortar attack, I think about how much I miss my wife and kids. I remember an article I read ten years ago about cross country ski racing. The writer met an athlete who said: “In every endurance event, there’s a time when you’ll say, ‘What the ---- am I doing here?’ And you’ll just have to say, ‘This is what I do.’”

So, why do it? There are Americans on the ground where I fly in Iraq. For them, and for me, I’m fighting for our country, our land. Except now, my loved ones and I move across the land together with our skis and hiking boots and ice augers and bicycles and fishing poles. The land, my family, and the Guard are all bound together now; one and the same. I do it to come home to a safe place where I can hear the laughter of my children in the Northern Wilds. I do it so I can share the passing of the seasons outside with them. The joy I experience with them in the outdoors is greater than the pain of leaving them. It’s what I do.

From 9 March, 2009 New Yorker article titled “The Unfinished” by D. T. Max:

“Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain, because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from.”

“Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.”

“Writing fiction takes me out of time…That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.”

“I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today.”