I was up before the others, before the birds, before the sun.
I drank a cup of coffee, wolfed down a piece of toast, put on my shorts and sweatshirt,
and laced up my green running shoes, then slipped quietly out the back door.
I stretched my legs, my hamstrings, my lower back,
and groaned as I took the first few bulky steps into the cool road, into the fog.
Why is it always so hard to get started?
There were no cars, no people, no signs of life.
I was all alone, the world to myself.
The best teacher I ever had, one of the finest men I ever knew, spoke of the Oregon Trail often.
It's our birthright, he'd growl.
Our character, our fate, our DNA.
The cowards never started, and the weak died along the way.
That leaves us.Us.
Some rare strain of pioneer spirit was discovered along that trail, my teacher believed.
Some outside sense of possibility mixed with a diminished capacity for pessimism.
That foggy morning, that momentous morning in 1962,
I'd recently blazed my own trail, back home, after seven long years away.
It was strange being home again, strange being lashed again by the daily rains.
Stranger still was living again with my parents and twin sisters, sleeping in my childhood bed.
Late at night, I'd lie on my back, staring at my college textbooks