What follows is excerpts from our days in Bentonville, our 2022 Winter Camp, and the accompanying photos. These are photos and words that I like. But moreover, they are honest.

I was greedy this fall—a bit stupid too. I developed a stress fracture in my foot in early November. Currently I’m in rather crap shape and slowly building mileage to get to where I was. It has not been easy or smooth and sometimes that is reflected in these excerpts despite my best intentions to record Northwood’s happenings from an objective eye. I am very much in the thick of things and very much invested.

I hope you enjoy this look into what it’s like to be at camp with the five of us: Ben, Sarah, Dan, Haak and Fred.

Bentonville: Entry 001

01.15 - It’s been a slow morning. Ben wouldn’t have it any other way. Oatmeal and coffee for five please—a comb through the fabricated drama of the hour: a discussion of God, His country, the South, how to behave online (you can’t strike down every fourteen year-old commenting on your socials like you wield a higher power). It’s the usual nonsense painted lightly with humor and supposed intellect. Muscles are stretched. Then stretching bands. Then Haak takes to his morning nap. Buddy rumbles and snores in his sleep from the corner of the living room. Nothing moves. The town sleeps and the men of Northwoods let the time pass. There’s little rush before those first steps.

01.16 - The morning starts when Sarah and Haak wake. My earplugs fell out some time during the night. They’re prone to do so. I’m tired—hollow even. An erratic snow angel or two later and I’ve found them. I roll the plugs between my fingers and slip them back into place.

The dirt roads are filled with clay, red and brown, and finished with ice. The wind moves against us and I shaved yesterday. My face hurts. Dan says we should’ve gone to California. I almost lose it. I feel like shit and we’re not running slow.

The hill bends to our right. An American flag hangs limp on a pole above the roof now poking over the crest. The longhorns run the length of their corral when they see us. The trees are naked and practically silhouetted against the highlighted gloom. The whole Earth crunches under our step. Dogs litter every yard and they bark as you come and they bark as you go—maybe extra then, their victory assured.

01.17 - The roads were thick—clumps of brown and red adobe tracking on your shoes, loose pebbles soaring with the arc of a back-kick. The sun shone. It made me giddy to start in a t-shirt. I left Ben and Dan to their 12 mile loop some 23 minutes in. But I was by my lonesome for only a moment. An overweight Black Labrador and a Boston terrier emerged beneath a fence or out of the mud or maybe I simply wished for them to be and then they were.

They followed in my wake, on the wrong side of the road, in the middle of the oncoming lane—anywhere they weren’t meant to be. They disrupted trucks and I wanted to yell. These aren’t my dogs! But I told the pair good job every few minutes over the steady beat of their rapid breaths. It made me happy. 

They followed me some 3.5 miles back to my car and with little prompting were soon inside the trunk. The Boston Terrier immediately took to the backseat and then to the bagel bag. A stubborn boy, he would not relent the asiago bagel he had fished from the bunch. I gave up and why shouldn’t I? I respected him and still do. An impromptu run from his front door with a stranger with no promise of a return? He deserved that bagel and he deserved to get home. Did he deserve the second after he’d finished the first? Well, now that we can debate. 

01.18 - The wind found us and it was only exacerbated by our route. Ben went twelve. Dan, Sarah, and I logged half that—though Sarah probably earned an extra mile or two pushing Haak. Essentially flat, the dirt roads to the north may as well have been transplanted from Boulder. But if you head south, the roads drop and fall into a forested, ochre hollow. Ben found that out on foot. Dan and I found that out in the car when we went searching for Ben—our cameras in hand. 

We found ourselves side by side with a sturdy horse halfway through our route. It took to a strong gallop—wasting no time to rise or fall—pulling the whole of the Earth beneath its hooves. No workouts, no PR’s, no heroics between all six of our legs could compete with that. We were soon left behind and it slowed as it reached the end of its fenced domain, peering over its shoulder, maybe jealous that we had yet to run the full length of our own.

Lunch is a mess. Five people want to eat. And we have a kitchen for one or two. I opt to pop the card from my old Nikon and get started on some quick edits from the captured morning moments. After a few, Ben will sit down and remind me to eat and to take care of myself and I’ll motion to the kitchen and say something about the chaos in there. And he’ll give me a look—a Ben True look, which means it’s about 90% eyebrows—before taking to his sandwich.

01.19 - We ran from the track today—a drab, five-lane oval lit with street lights until 11pm. It’s convenient, but if you run around enough tracks, a backdrop of suburbia and a center of utterly dead grass won’t do it for you.

We got lost on the city streets almost immediately and ran through the suburbs of Bentonville until we reached downtown and righted ourselves to our mental map. We took the bike path north past the sculpture park, before getting lost on a rather unbelievable maze of mountain biking trails. My ankle felt like crap the whole time and I called the run 7 miles into what was meant to be 8. Dan did a handful of strides and 200s. Ben stuck to strides. It was cold. It was windy. 

I’m not sure it’s right to complain about a day in which I’ve run my furthest since November, but I am. I know what it’s supposed to feel like. And I drove halfway across the country at the end of a trying couple months to feel that. This cold, brown wasteland doesn’t offer enough to replace that.

01.20 - When Ben and Dan set out for their workouts around 3pm, the air’s real feel was 14 degrees. The pipes in our house had froze overnight. The day is titled “Frozone” in my photo folder. I played support crew while Dan and Ben worked through a 4 mile tempo and some minuters, and an 8 mile tempo, respectively. That put me on the bike with two layers of gloves, a handful of long sleeves, a jacket, a beanie—the works—plus a sweatshirt tied around my chest for Dan once he finished his tempo.

The day went well. The guys got out hot in the cold and coursed over the sidewalks and bike paths somewhere in the 4:50s. It’s hardly a glorious route, cornering in front of the Dollar General and swinging into the road to avoid a sidewalk someone had carelessly covered in ice. If that hadn’t been enough, the two bustling intersection crossings would’ve long doomed the route in my eyes. But Ben values ease over most things. Given the choice, he’d run from home everyday.

01.22 - Osage Mills, a mix of cattle farms and new housing developments, is still host to miles of dirt. We met Jordan, a local runner, at Evening Star Elementary to click off some miles and get the local runner’s scoop.

The top layer of road had turned from mud to dust. It coated the grass. It billowed from behind the cars. But it wasn’t hot. The air was crisp and cold enough to warrant long sleeves and tights. The roads roll, but not much. It’s a dangerous recipe that is conducive to hammering.

I didn’t see my canine companions from a few days back and so I spent much of my short run solo before scouring the roads that outline the fields for the trio I’d started with. When I get my ankle going again, with more rehab than running, I’ll join them for somewhere between 12 and 18 miles, but for now I’ll leave it to them.