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| I think this illustrates why I'm so obsessed pretty well. |
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| My son on a run up Lewis Peak with me. |
The best run I’ve ever done like this was Gannett Peak in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. I did it with my regular partner in crime, Gary. We started at the Green River Lakes, followed a perfect rolling trail for ten miles, and then cut cross-country (read: bushwhacking, boulder hopping, dodging man-eating spiders, glacier crossing, snow field climbing, and scrambling) to reach the summit of Gannett Peak and then ran back. It was a long and difficult 16 hour “run” with a few sections of genuine suffering, but I loved it.
There's a video of our Gannett Peak run here:
The third type of run is pure exploration. In a type three run you head out on new trails or off trail with no real goal in mind and no idea where you’re going. I call it “looking for trouble”. You just say to yourself, “Huh, that looks fun, let’s see where it goes.” No destination, no real time limit or particular mileage in mind, just wandering aimlessly through the mountains. You might think, because of what I said about my love for exploration, that this is the best kind of run. Wrong. They’re almost always lame. There’s no sense of purpose without a goal in mind. You constantly have this nagging feeling that you’re “lost” even if you’re not. You’re always wondering if there was a better way you could have gone. I have had a few successful runs like this, but they are rare and pale in comparison to something like the Gannett Peak run. Type three runs are not without worth, however. Often, I use the trails I discover on a run like this to come back later and turn it into an excellent “type two” run.
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| My good friend Gary finding some trouble on one of our more creative "runs". |
I also often go to the opposite extreme, like the third kind of trail run, with no idea what exactly I’m trying to accomplish. I just start the brush moving across the canvas with no plan whatsoever beyond just wanting to see what happens. Or I start writing a story without knowing what it’s going to be about or where it’s going. Every once in a while, these turn into something interesting, but not too often. Usually they just fizzle out. However, just like the type three run, these experiments are not totally without worth. I often use this technique to get some ideas and then use them in other works where I have a specific goal in mind.
It’s a little like someone dropping you off in the middle of a vast empty plane (the salt flats here in Utah, for instance) and saying, “You can do whatever you want! There’s no limits!” You might be amazed by the openness, at first. You’d probably run around a little, taking it all in. Then you’d slowly get bored, maybe try to walk home, run out of water, collapse, and die. Just like our creative works do when we have too much freedom.
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| The Bonneville Salt Flats: One of the most beautiful (and boring) places I've ever been. Photo from the Natural History Museum of Utah. |
Though it may at first seem paradoxical, our odds of successfully engaging our creativity are increased when we impose limitations and set a goal. There’s something about the absolute freedom of saying, “I want to get from point A to…well, um…I don’t know exactly,” that puts our creativity and motivation to sleep. Instead we need to say, “I want to get from point A to point B, and avoid getting eaten by a pack of rabid kangaroos while I’m at it,” that causes our creativity to rev up like a chainsaw as we struggle to overcome obstacles.
