mourning run
dawn delvecchio
I live in a thatched bungalow by the sea. Palm trees reach skyward at my doorstep and a small cove of salty Andaman waters laps the beachside below. To the west rise a series of limestone rocks, some four to five hundred meters from the thick green jungle below. It is quiet here, but for the many long tail boats plying the waters. In the morning before the dawn, I set out for a run. The light of the sun has yet to send its rays peeking through my walls' many openings as I dress and stretch my muscles.
Out on the dirt road I begin with a slow trot through the plantation of rubber trees that borders this property. Men and women labor among their tall, thin trunks, shaded by the canopy of leaves that begins seven to 10 feet above. These rubber workers carve long channels around each tree, leading to small, half-coconut shells tied securely at waist height to its trunk. This organic cup collects the milky sap as it wends its way down along the spiraling path to sit and harden in the day's heat.
Rubber trees: tall and white barked with narrow trunks and oval shaped, shiny green leaves, pointed at the tips. Rubber trees: wars have been fought over the potential profit that trade in this resource promises. How many have died for this: row upon row of silent standing, milk-white bleeding trees?
The smell of the dripping, drying sap is sour and distinctive as I jog along, waking my mind and body while the sun climbs slowly into a new day. I run through the trees and out to the road which grades gently upward toward the next town. Here are palm plantations where yet another crop is grown for its precious inner vitality: palm oil. So different than their rubber cousins, the palm sits squat and wide, creating deep shade beneath its densely packed branches.
I run as the sun rises and the heat warms my back. Running is the time in my day when I am alone with my thoughts, my breath and the silence of the trees. Here the trees—whether rubber, palm or otherwise—are broadly green in leaf and often pale on branch and trunk. Smooth-barked and sweating from the moisture of the tropics, they are nothing like those trees among which I once ran.
I am learning to settle into this warm, wet land, and to understand the different rhythms of life among this greenery. For many years I ran through the trees of high chaparral desert in the American southwest, where the rising, lean shapes of the noble coconut palm are replaced by the gnarled, broad mass of the Ponderosa pine. Where the rich green foliage of the jungle must be cut back frequently here, there lie lands of dry scrub oak and brown grasses, the waxy blue/green of the squat Juniper and the bristly needles and rough dry bark of the pinion.
The sun is strong in the mountains of New Mexico. Rather than the sour smell of bleeding rubber, my runs in those days took me past the sweet aromas of pine needles baking slowly in the sun of any season. Those years in the desert were defined by a lifestyle of professional athleticism. They were years when my every day was filled with the physical activities of a trained fighter. As time passed and I grew weary of such a rigorous regime, I sought ways in which I could live and exercise in manners befitting my age and changing temperament. I felt dried out, exhausted, burned by the heat of the sun at high altitudes. I felt my roots could no longer reach, like a juniper in drought, deep enough to quench my thirst for new lands. I felt like a raisin long forgotten in the bottom of its little red box: hard as a rock, wrinkled, and black as only a raisin could be.
I had to leave. And leave I did.
There are many reasons why I wanted to, and eventually succeeded in leaving the mountain lands of America: a broken marriage, a grown child, and a sense of unquenchable curiosity. I couldn't breathe the way I once had, the crisp air of a winter morning's run, nor the sweet strong smell of the pines' slow bake.
Drought continues in much of the southwest. Rivers have turned to creeks, long-running creeks have dried to trickles and spring-fed streams are disappearing at an alarming rate. I watched as the creek on my own land, once filled and surrounded with life, dried up almost completely last summer. Mud flats stretched out where once kingfishers dove and splashed to catch and feed on crawdads as big as my hand. Birds that had come to nest in abundance each spring grew few and far between. Pinions died by the hundreds, leaving broad sweeps of brown across mountainside and valley. Like a growing stain the color of rust, the patches of the dead grew as spring passed to the dry heat of summer and summer turned again to autumn tide.
I was dry, too. Dried out like my beloved landscape from a life no longer resonant, a climate no longer moist enough for my aging skin.
I had to leave. And leave I did.
Here along the Andaman Sea life is quite different. I run, as I did then, but with the mellow pace so typical of a tropical life. Sprints and monitored heart rates, cross-training and other “athletic disciplines” seem superfluous to the basic pleasure of a morning run-awaking with the sun. Now I worry less about body fat composition and more about the importance of a good endorphin high. I am busy now with the activities of speaking another language rather than managing full body fitness, a business or an exhausted relationship.
But my morning runs are bittersweet, for there is not a way that I can tell, to expatriate and be free of a sense of exile. There is not a way that I can see, to leave even an unhappy marriage and not mourn the sweet memories of the better times just the same.
I miss the baking pines. Even if the trees smelled of roses rather than this sour scent of old milk, I would miss the pines. The one can not replace the other. I miss my valley where horses ran free and grazed on the tender grasses at creek's edge. I miss the beaver family and their efforts to maintain a home as the waters of their abode decreased daily. I miss collecting rose hips in winter and the pungent, crisp flavor of green onions in the summer. I miss the curve of the mountains rising to the north and the way they changed texture and depth at sunrise and sunset each day.
I miss the call of the coyote at night and the way we would call back, encouraging our dogs to howl. I miss the infrequent but always welcomed elk that wandered through the valley in search of better graze and the Great Horned owl roosting in the cottonwoods above the old shack.
I miss so much of my life in the Southwest, but there I was no longer content. I wanted to know the sour smells of the bleeding rubber tree and the sounds of the sea at my door. I wanted to hear geckoes laughing in the dark of night and the many voices of Asians speaking other tongues. I wanted a warm winter and a cold shower, spicy food, smiling faces, and palm trees in the breeze.
I needed to leave and leave I did. What I didn't and couldn't realize in my long years of yearning for this Asian wander is that it too, comes at a price. The price for me is the way I remember the sweetness of the American wilderness and a deep sense of home.
But I still run in the mornings, and the natural beauty of this land can hold its own against anywhere. It is not my home. Perhaps it never will be, but it is beautiful just the same. And there are birds and lizards, snakes and hawks and kingfishers and falcons, scurrying rodents and fish aplenty. I have left my lands for other shores, now it is up to me to delight in each moment here as once I did back home.
about the author
Dawn Delvecchio resides on the island of Phuket in Thailand, where she is the Associate Editor for Asia-Pacific Tropical Homes magazine. As a freelance writer she has published articles on Southeast Asian travel, culture and history, spa reviews, and other topics. She likes to read, do yoga, watch birds, swim and dance.
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