View Workout (Matthew Simonson)

Return to Log

Heartwarming Christmas Tale

January 5, 2019 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:

A Christmas Story

Today I made a series of choices which a) I would not encourage you to repeat, b) I hope to someday tell my grandchildren about, and c) almost turned me into a snowman. Where to begin? Well, it all starts with one of you…

Last night I received a Facebook message from a certain stealthy runner who shall remain nameless. This individual told me they’ve loved reading my running log over winter break, which came as a surprise given that this person had an account but never posts to running log themselves. Besides, my logs the past few weeks have been considerably less exciting than usual due to being home in DC until the day before yesterday. Naturally, I awoke the next morning feeling the need for an adventure. Granted, this is an unusual feeling for some of us, but I felt a particular urge to do something ridiculous knowing that someone out there in hopper-land was awaiting a good story. Just what that act of ridiculosity would be I did not yet know, but then again if I planned it, how could it be a true Matt Simonson Adventure? And so around 2:30pm I headed out into the snow, ready to see where the winds of whimsy would carry me.

They carried me uphill. Everything in this town is uphill. After a relaxing three days of being sick with some little respiratory virus, sleeping on a bench in Logan Airport for several hours, taking three consecutive flights and crossing six time zones, my body was overly eager for some sort of punishment for a change. I gave into its cravings not only with an uphill slog but on roads that were so slick with tire-mashed snow that progress was slowed to about the rate of a golf cart on a sand dune. It wasn’t really that cold, I soon discovered, probably somewhere in the low-to-mid 20s, and in my thick spandex pants, long-sleeved hiking shirt, and running jacket I soon began to overheat. I cursed myself for dressing too heavily for such a short run. You see, when I left I was planning to go only 40 minutes since that’s all I thought I had time for. But then my translator called telling me the next interview was canceled and there were no more commitments until tomorrow, aside from meeting with my Bosnian friends to go dancing four hours hence. No problem! I had all the time in the world…

After about 30 minutes of uphill slip-and-slide, I reached the highest point in the neighborhood of Mahmutovac where the road turns to go down and a trail splits off, heading up into the woods. I’d tried this trail one night many months before and found that after only a few steps my feet were soaked in the runoff. Luckily, this on-again-off-again stream had turned to ice and was now covered with a thick fluffy coat of snow, giving me decent traction, so I headed up into the woods following a pair of cross-country ski tracks. Where there are ski tracks there can’t be landmines, I figured. As I climbed, the trail got ever-more slippery to the point where I was having to use all fours, scrambling from tree trunk to tree trunk, with the aid on an occasional dirt clod or boulder, much as Ilana and Ana did last week on the super-long run I subjected them to (they had the help of a fence, actually, but it looks equally outlandish in the photos). Upon reaching the top, I found myself on the Trebevic-Sarajevo state highway along with several walkers headed downhill. Downhill, I knew, led to Lukavica, Dobrinja, Sunny Land amusement park… all places I’d explored many times. But uphill…

Twenty minutes later, my calves burning from both the uphill and the tire-trod layer of snow that prevented any energy rebound from the pavement, I came upon a sign that said Trebevic Peak, 8km. Now, all the Anthony Belbers, Hannah Avidons, Lucy Vogts, and other running-log-procrastinators who have been following this log all fall, may recall that Trebevic is, in fact, the mountain I ran up on my birthday, an epic 3-hour battle rewarded by beautiful views and a very satisfying nap in the sunshine. Today, in contrast, the sky was the color of bleach and I could see about as far as I could throw a baseball (and I don’t mean by throwing one off a mountain). The snow had picked and was falling pretty steadily, as was the temperature, and I had already been running for the better part of an hour with no plan for when or how to get back. Wouldn’t it be funny, I thought to myself if I tried to run this mountain road now, in these conditions? Why, it’s only 8 kilometers, haha, that’s like 40 minutes of flat ground. Then again, at worst I’ll be going, what, half my usual speed? 80 minutes doesn’t sound so bad! I started climbing.

My legs immediately thanked me for the change in terrain—this road had barely been driven on and thus the snow was firmly packed but less icy from melting and refreezing under the wheels of passing vehicles. I got about halfway up before I fully realized what I was doing. Yes, I was going to run up the top to Trebevic as I had on October 14, up the road I had come down last time, and then somehow get back down again. Back down. Huh. hadn’t really thought about that one. Of course, I’d be going down the same way I’d come, no problem, and it was sure to be a lot faster than going up. But how must faster? How long had I already been running? What time was it? Why did the light suddenly look so much more gray? Well, not turning back now, I’ve come too far for the anything the but summit to feel remotely satisfying. Better push on. I’m not even halfway? Haha, what a sick joke. Best to forget about it. Besides, I’m having fun. The landscape is beautiful. Granted, I can’t see very much of it, but there are trees in snow and I’ve always liked trees in snow. I begin reciting a Robert Frost poem:

Whose woods these are I think I know…

Perhaps I’d focused on the last two lines of that poem rather than the pretty imagery the first three stanzas I’d have made a different decision. But look! What pretty snowflakes!

After about an hour and a half of running—I can’t say exactly since I’d stopped my watch when picked up a delicate snow-coated twig to take pictures of and then forgotten to start it again—I came at last to an obstacle in my journey. Well, not an obstacle exactly, but a diversion. Off to my right, there arose a gorgeous tree-lined corridor, just beaconing to be explored. I slowed to a walk, fearing to disturb the profound silent beauty of the palace with my footsteps, not wanting to miss hearing a single snow bird’s cry or glimpsing a single shimmering pine needle. The call to prayer from distant mosques miles down below in Sarajevo echoed across the stillness, adding to the feeling of sanctity. I couldn’t remember ever having seen snowy woods so captivating. As the trail reached a fork, I noticed a sign that read “Austro-Ungarija Artiljerija…[something something]…1918.” Anyone who’s taken 10th-grade history at GDS should be able to figure out what that’s referring to. The same war that had been set off by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand down its way up here, where the Austrian-Hungarian army had set up their artillery to decimate the Serbs. Intrigued, I galloped off in that direction, further away from the road. Before long I found myself standing on the edge of a large rectangular ruin lined with stones walls half-buried in the snow that reminded me a lot of civil war trenches in Rock Creek Park at the intersection of Oregon and Military, known as Ft. De Russy. Several similar bunkers lay nearby, and I was just about to snap another photo when I noticed a warning light on my phone that said: “flash not available, battery critically low”. That’s odd, I thought, it was fully charged when I left. All I’ve done is take pictures and read another Facebook message from that unnamed runner I received 5 minutes ago. I wonder if the cold…” and with that, my phone went dark. So had the sky, I noted, looking for the first time since starting this side-trail diversion. The fingers on my gloves were dark as well as I realized that the heat from my hand had caused that harmless fluffy snow on them to melt, leaving the cotton soaked. Why had I not worn my waterproof mittens? I lamented. Oh right, ‘cause this was supposed to be a 40-minute run near home…

Retracing my steps back to the main road, I realized that the only thing to do now was to push on. Well, it wasn’t the only thing to do, and it certainly wasn’t the sane thing to do—after all, there was nothing to stop me from simply retreating down the mountain the way I’d come. Besides, now I had both 1990s Serb landmines and 1910s Austrian munitions to worry about if I ventured off the trails. But I’d come so far damn it and while discovering an old Austro-Hungarian fortification would make for a cool adventure story, reaching the peak of Trebevic in the dead of winter would be a far cooler one… and colder. The sky was the color of cement by now, probably as dark as it was gonna get given all the snow and fog in the air smearing the light around. I could still read signs easily if there were any. There weren’t any signs, however, when I reached a fork in the road and made a fateful, frosty decision to take the one less traveled… less traveled by me that is. I figured the left one was likely the road I’d taken the last time I was here coming down. And so, figuring that if I didn’t find something better at least I’d find something new (to paraphrase Voltaire this time, instead of Frost), I headed right and was spat out in short order on a trail just over the ridge. The ridge! At last, I’d made it!

Well, sort of, except that getting to a ridge is not so grand an accomplishment unless you’ve reached the highest point of it. After all, this same ridge I could have reached in a mere 25 minutes from my house if I’d angled my run toward where the ridge runs down into the foothills. No way I could stop now, I had to aim for the summit.

It was at this point that my adventure ceased to be a run and devolved into some combination of a hike, scramble, bear crawl, snow swim, and eventually butt sledding escapade. Let me explain. The ridge trail was not so much a trail as a set of footprints someone had left hours or days before suggesting where a trail might once have been before it was consumed by the last ice age. There were clearly frozen boots marks, sometimes a deep chasm where either another trail crossed the ridge of the previous day’s idiot had slipped, and the occasional frosty boulder to be clutched at for support. Clutching was a challenge however since my fingers were fully retracted into the palms of my gloves by now, huddling together for warmth. My right hand was a bit warmer than the left on account of a brace the doctor had told me to start wearing after I injured my thumb falling on a fun 4 weeks ago (back when rushing rainwater rather than ice was the primary mountainside hazard). The downside was that I couldn’t really retract my thumb deeper into the damp cotton glove along with the other fingers. Furthermore, when I fell, which was about every fifth step, the brace constrained my hand in such a way that to break my fall I ended up overextending my wrist.

Fortunately, I had more urgent concerns than carpal tunnel syndrome. For one thing, this was this incessant howling coming from the other side of the ridge that I was now exposed to. No, it wasn’t wolves, though I admit that would have been pretty cool. It was the wind, bringing with it an ominous Mordorian darkness that brought with it flashbacks of Into Thin Air, a 1990s memoir about an expedition stranded on Everest I’d read at summer camp when I was 14. This is how mountain-climbers perish, I thought, wonder just for a moment if I’d done something truly stupid. Well, yes, I had, but I wasn’t in all that much danger I told myself, seeing as I had a road at my disposal whereas most mountain climbers do not. Where was that road anyway? I was pretty sure I could find it again if I retraced my steps, but that would be a last resort. Even if the goal of reaching a summit which I, and hundreds of thousands of other people, had already reached, no longer seemed quite as sexy as it had 5 minutes ago, the notion of backtracking in this mush struck me as truly depressing. And so, with that cheery motivation to guide me, I pushed on, boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly by the ice, plunging into snow up to my shoulders, climbing out onto another bounder, re-straining my wrist, stumbling a few more feet, cursing the mountain, apologizing the mountain, and all the time wondering where the damn summit was. After all, this mountain is famous for having an iconic TV tower at the top the looks like a cross between an air-traffic control tower and a ski lodge. The darn thing was probably 70 feet high and wide as a railroad car. Where the heck was it? I grew more and more tired, my motivation ebbing and then flowing further downhill, hoping to find some satisfactory rock I could declare to “my” summit.

Just then, out of the fog, the tower emerged. Not cause I’d gotten any closer to it mind you, at least not more than a few feet, but because the Arctic wind had shifted the mist just enough that what moments ago had looked to be two drones hovering implausibly over the void revealed themselves to be aircraft safety lights atop a mighty structure. Why, the damn thing was half a freakin’ mile away! My road less traveled had led me to the wrong peak! It was the same mountain of course, but the peak in the distance looked to be significantly higher than the one I was currently on and to get there I’d have to go down a bit before going up again. I’d had it. This was peaky enough. Maybe it even had its own name. Mini Trebevic perhaps. I knew from last time that the second road, the one I should have taken, led directly to the tower. If I gave up the ridge and plunged down into the bowl before me I’d likely intercept it. In fact, I could see a BMX bike jump down there which I was sure lay pretty near the road. But how to get there? If I abandoned the rocky ridge and its occasional hints of a trail, I’d be waist deep in snow. Way too deep to run. There was only one solution…

Rollin’ in the deeee-eee-eep! After managing scoot/sled partway down the hill on my butt, I realized it would be far more efficient to roll. Securing my now-useless phone in my coat pocket, forgetting about the landmines, and reconnecting with a prime skillset I’ve rarely called upon since class picnics in elementary school, I pitched myself leg over leg down the hill. I’m not generally one to brag, but do feel compelled to make an exception just this once: I am an excellent down-the-hill roller. Thoroughly covered in snow from head to toe, I stopped just shy of the trees and then made my way crawling or skipping, I no memory of how, to the BMX jump. There, for the first time in over half an hour, I found reasonably solid ground.

The rest of the run was uneventful, save for one final twist I’m saving for the end. I grew increasingly bored and somewhat lonely without anyone to talk to, nothing much pretty to look at on account of the dark, and no podcasts to listen to. I realized after 20 minutes or so of “running” (it was really more likely shuffling or skate skiing without skis), that I wasn’t really hurting from sore muscles or anything running related—more a combination of cold and sleepiness, exacerbated by boredom. Boredom can worsen any misery. To fix that, I began going through the names of all my Green Acres middle school classmates, clique by clique, and before long I was transported to another world of daily bus rides and class field trips and mixed-up interlocking notions of romance, popularity, and self-worth, an awful stew to simmer in at the time but great entertainment for distracting oneself twenty years later. Before I knew it I’d descended several more switchbacks, my legs on autopilot. This was easy now.

Headlights up ahead. My fantasies of warm apple pie by an open fire fled like waking from a cozy dream. Why was there a car on this lonely, snow-covered mountain road and what was that fuzzy clump of vegetation tied to the roof? As I neared, I saw one of the occupants had gotten out and was taking pictures of the car and his buddies inside. The young men hailed me in Bosnian as I passed.

“Hey there! What are you doing up here? Where are you going? Where you from? Let us ask you some other questions in a language you can still barely understand despite 12 weeks of arduous study!”

“Running” I replied in Bosnian. “I run from peak of Trebevic to there. Down here. 3 hour is. Until 2:30pm from now ran I. Is long. Yes. I America am is from is. Washington Born. Live here. Yes. Yes. Haha. Yes.” At, least, that’s how I imagine I sounded.

“We're picking out a tree for Christmas!” they told me. “Our Christmas is tomorrow.” Eastern Orthodox Christians maintain the old Julian calendar for religious holidays, so Christmas for Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, and in this case, Serbs, occurs on the 7th of January. Festivities, I suppose, begin on the eve, which I guess is what they meant by “Christmas” since tomorrow is, in fact, the 6th. I wished them a Merry Christmas and continued on down the mountain while they continued up for reasons I still cannot fathom, given they already had a tree, or at least modest shrubbery with tree-like pretentions, strapped to their roof and another sprig of greenery inside. Perhaps they were simply looking for a place to turn the car around, for they soon caught up to me, just as I was reaching the state highway and trying to decide whether the run another mile uphill to possibly-closed motel to beg the owners to call a taxi or running 3-4 more miles down into the city where I could hail one myself (given my soaked gloves, running all the way home wasn’t even on the table). They offered me a ride and I eagerly hopped in. Before I knew it they were passing a bottle of rakia around, friending me on Facebook, posting selfies of the four of us and said shrubbery to Instagram, and asking me what I thought of the girls here in Bosnia (what a surprise). One of them knew a little English, and I knew a little Serbian (i.e. Bosnian), and that was enough to keep up a raucous conversation all the way down the mountain. The not-quite-English speaker worked for the border police on near Mostar and was home for the holidays, picking out a tree with his high school buddies. I knew the three of them were Bosnian Serbs before I got in the car from their reference to Christmas, but my stereotypes about Serbs being hostile to Americans here were instantly drowned out in a deluge of friendliness. We even touched briefly on politics—“very bad” they said (one point on which Bosnians of all religions seem to agree)—and they were impressed that I knew where the border between the Serb and Muslim-Croat provinces lay. They were headed toward Lukavica, pretty far from where I lived, but kindly dropped me at a gas station near the provincial border. I ran a half mile or so over the ridge (yes, the same ridge I’d just come from but essentially the lower end of it) and down into the heart of Sarajevo where I found a cab to take me home. Back in my apartment, a warm fire (well, a radiator) and hot apple pie (technically strudel, which I had to heat myself) were “waiting” for me.

Merry Serbian Christmas!