I place my left hand against the slab of grayish-black, water-polished rock. It is 3:46 PM Mountain Standard Time on March 20, 2025, and I’m somewhere deep in the Grand Canyon. The rock beneath my hand belongs to the Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite, which sounds like the title of an orchestral piece by Ferde Grofé, rather than a series of geological strata roughly 1.75 billion years old, give or take a few million years.

 I’ve been thinking a lot about running recently—and doing a fair amount of it along the way. It’s helped keep the Covid-craziness and my restlessness at bay, provided some normalcy and pleasure at a time when I desperately need them. (Electoral angst, anyone?) To paraphrase from a song by Wye Oak: “I have to run / […]