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Of Northland Seasons by Mike Gangwer

Running in Central Michigan is not so different than running in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Rise. Dress. Strap on shoes. Slip gloves on hands and Chap Stick on lips. Press start button and place one foot in front of another.

Oh if that were just the case.

Of living in a new place, the Northland of Michigan, where there are seasons, real seasons, is but one change that entered my career as a runner last year.

For in this place, Gratiot County, there are corn and soybean fields. I am an agricultural scientist, working with soils and crops and water as resources. Yet I am, as Einstein once stated, part of the Field, for as scientists we must come to the realization that the more we know the more we do not know.

Except that as runners we can be poets, and for me, running here in Michigan is poetry enough, if the words are entered here on this page.

So, a year of seasons.....

But let me set the stage, planimetrically. The coordinate plane of this place is defined by gravel roads in square mile grids. Where traffic is more plentiful, there is asphalt. But 80 percent of the roads are barely two lanes covered with remnants of gravel and course sand. As a runner, this presents somewhat of a challenging path, for after an intense rainstorm washouts and ruts exist. On roads of heavy farm traffic, tractors can leave large chuckholes that if one is not careful, misalign running cadence. One huge benefit is having ready-made mile lengths at each intersection. So we can easily track pace without going to the track so often. [Even though Alma College track is two miles from our home, thankfully!]

The beauty of spring begins our story. A logical place, for birth and newfound warmth push the last of snow away, and trees turn green away from naked bark. Farmers enter fields as water tables move deeper. Birds, rabbits, and larger wildlife appear as creatures out of the woodlands. Darting across the roadway as I pitter pat stepwise towards them.

Michigan is a flat land carved level from glaciers, the ice flow ebbs onward or retreating leaving glacial till, and overland sands from aggregate friction. Landowners have dug drainage ditches moving water into streams and rivers, so that crops will grow where once wetlands ruled. Roots, like runners, breath, require oxygen, discharge carbon dioxide.

Spring is a time when insects are scarce, diesel fumes fill our nostrils, and ditches might own remnants of snow, shaded, where upon the thermal flux of heat has yet to melt and decay the ice of winter. Ice lattices all.

And further into spring when plants rise out of the ground, afternoons are warm enough to run without a shirt. I can imagine what the soybean farmer living next to our house must think?

"What on earth is this white haired man running down this gravel road with nothing on except a pair of short shorts on?"

I wave, and so does he.

Summer arrives.

So do insects, humidity, dust, travel trailers, and fisherman. Summer is a time of growth for crops, as well as rainfall. The Midwest is a huge agricultural area because rainfall occurs at the same time, as crops require water for evapotranspiration, so most fields are not irrigated.

Humidity, a function of water volume per unit degree of temperature, is high enough that one cannot run a ten mile training run without water somewhere stashed at the turn around point, or upon your very body in the form of a bottle. I have done both.

I entered the ten-mile trainer, my base distance every day, several times without water in the hottest of summer. Something about testing myself. Not wise. I left that place a wreck, and vowed never to test the sweat function and my ability to fight it, again. I raced a marathon the end of July in Saginaw, Michigan, began at 6:00 a.m., and already we had 90 percent humidity and 80 degrees. We drank everything we could, believe me.

But crops do leave the vegetation period; begin maturing, the fertilization complete and seeds form, bean seed in a pod or kernels surrounding a corncob. That means harvest season is near.

Fall arrives.

Of all seasons in Michigan this one is for runners. The insects have gone away to prepare for cooler weather. The farmers have begun combining corn and soybeans, and less than a mile from our house, a field of sugar beets was all dug in one night. Imagine that one day I run by a field of beets, all green and quite lovely, and then the very next morning they are all gone, only disturbed soil is left. No wonder Jake, our yellow Labrador, barked all night. He knew something was going on.

The race season in fall is packed. Every weekend is busy with all distances. But for us slower runners that prefer the long distances, this is Marathon season. Chicago, Detroit, Omaha, Quad Cities. And some smaller ones too. The humidity is gone, and the mornings are no longer warm. Once again the layers come out and we get the gloves out of the drawer. The shorts take their place. And then we get a snowflake. Then another one.

Winter arrives.

As runners we shift gears. My daily commute to Michigan State University takes longer. The damn salt has become a source of cancer for my old station wagon. Woe do I wish for mass transit, but not in Michigan, the home of cars and trucks and all those jobs.

I often wonder why so many buy treadmills and enter the comfort of a static place, except for a rubber belt, round and round, getting you no where. What folly. I drive by a gym near campus and there are all these beautiful women in their shiny jogging outfits, stomping away on a treadmill. They have moved indoors for the winter.

I do not. I bundle up the best I can, stocking hat and layers of polyester, tights and wind pants, and two pairs of socks, and join falling snow.

Quite a lovely place, this snow land. Whereupon everything is white, a cleansing place, virginal early in the morning until I make the first steps on Winans Road, our gravel road, and today, my gravel road. I am the first here. Except for a rabbit that has left its prints.

Every step is a wonder. The snowy land, a carpet of white upon naked tree limbs, yellow grass stems, and the old bone yard of farm equipment near us covers up all seasons, washes them into a place of Coventry, where I discover rapture with every step.

Why on earth would one spend time with a treadmill, when upon entering snowyland, you can be a discoverer, entering the path whereupon even a snowpiow or salt truck has not gone.

I have played this game. How far can I run down this gravel until the first car breaks apart the evenness of the snow? I have run for miles this way. Oh should there be a clear sky, and below zero temperatures on a day when the lunar orb is so grand and bright that upon a fallen snow I can run forever. Up and down these grids, discovering and ascending, dreaming and writing poetry, almost as if I have wings strapped on and there is no effort, no work, no pain, except that this run must end.

The loveliness of a long distance runner, oh save that grandness for our solitude and sublimity, for to those who do not know this, we cannot explain it. Yet in winter, here in the Northlands, I am one with this place. I cannot be anywhere else.

Yet I fall. I have fallen down and I hurt. I am thinking now about my growing up when I used to run and fell down. I get back up and go. Here it is no different. Yet I hurt a little longer, and at times, question all of this.

However, there was a special moment in Michigan that I end this piece with.

At a very small race in Milford, Michigan, a 30K that was poorly organized and a course we all got lost on, we, as strangers, all 34 of us, gathered together, held hands and indeed might admit to a tear, after a moment of silence granted for all those who died and survived September 11th, we entered the familiar place of the race.

And you know, somehow each of us came to realize that there is something much bigger than running. We found it individually, and after that race we found it collectively.

Thus, running in Michigan, the Northland, the snowyland, the land of seasons, is duly reported for one year of my life.