The Long Miles

Today I completed my longest run since we arrived, 10 miles, out to Fort Macon along Highway 58; there was little traffic, and I only saw two other runners and a cyclist.  It's a great place to run, with the sound on one side and the ocean on the other, both out of sight behind a thick tangle of twisted trees.  But from time to time I could distinctly hear the crash of surf on one side, and from the nature trail which extends from Fort Macon on the sound side the laughing and chattering of a lively group of children.  The miles seemed especially long toward the end of this long run, and I realized that I had not gone this far in many weeks.  I was reminded of the marathons and half-marathons I have run in the past on roads like this, at Tybee Island and the Outer Banks, long flat miles, the mind wandering as far and wide as the sky, one step after another, stopping to walk at aid stations.  But I was alone today and there were no aid stations, only markers which have already become familiar to me, like the sign at the top of the "hill" (everything is relative out here on the coast) marking the Union artillery emplacement which rained down destruction on this fort in 1862.  The Wikipedia account is succinct:

Union force invested the fort with siege works and on April 25 opened an accurate fire on the fort, soon breaching the masonry walls. Within a few hours the fort's scarp began to collapse, and in late afternoon the Confederate commander, Colonel Moses J. White, ordered the raising of a white flag.  Burnside's terms of surrender were accepted, and the Federal troops took possession of the fort the next morning.

 
So even here along this peaceful shore it is hard to escape the reality of endless warfare, just as it was in 1862.  I unaccountably remembered the words of Jimi Hendrix's strange and beautiful A Merman I Should Turn to Be from Electric Ladyland:

oh say can you see its really such a mess
every inch of earth is a fighting nest
giant pencil and lip-stick tube shaped things
continue to rain and cause screaming pain
and the arctic stains
from silver blue to bloody red

These were sober thoughts for a beautiful day, but it has been hard to avoid, as noted in a previous post, the increasingly alarming twitterings of our President-Elect.  We had picked up a copy of the Carteret County News-Times two days ago expecting to learn about local music and theater, only to find a long, rambling, angry Letter to the Editor replying to an earlier letter (by some NPR listener like me, I suppose) by Capt. Steve Miller, which ended with:

So, Mr. Humphrey, I would recommend that you pin a safety pin to your lapel, crawl back into your "safe space" along with the rest of your liberal snowflakes and prepare to be amazed.  To quote a recent post on Facebook, "Suck it up, buttercup, you lost."  Now you know how we felt for the last eight years.  God bless America.

Such anger and bitterness!  And, truly, this liberal snowflake Roadrunner, who cannot help but dwell upon these things while he runs, is not preparing to be amazed.  He is preparing to be terrified.

We escaped to our "safe space" in the afternoon, the local movie theater, and watched Hidden Figures, which was uplifting and hopeful.  This was a message we needed to hear today!