Every art form has the element of the line: in painting, the artist traces a line on canvas with their brush; in poetry, writers weave lines of words on the page; in jazz, soloists improvise lines of a melody over the song structure; in theater, actors perform their lines on stage; in trail running, lines are made on maps and run over the geography of the earth.
Most of the time, when someone asks about a run, they ask two questions: (1) “how far did you go?” and (2) “how long did it take you?” To me, answering these yields about as much information as if you were to ask a musician: “how many measures does your song have?” and “how fast did you play them?” — that is, they tell you absolutely nothing about how good the song or the run was. Questions closer to the target might be “what’s the mood of the song, and what’s the melody like?” or “where did you run, and how did you feel, and what route did you take?” Now we are getting somewhere. Songs are not made better by playing them faster — otherwise, every musician would be rushing to finish their songs, and the best ones would be only seconds long. Nor are songs made better by playing the most challenging and difficult melodies and rhythms. The same is true with running. They may be hard or easy, short or long, but the best runs for me are not the ones that take difficult routes as fast as possible; they are the ones that take beautiful routes, run as beautifully as possible.
Here’s what my Gaia map looks like right now:
This is my canvas at the moment: the province of Gipuzkoa, Basque Country, Spain. Over this terrain I make my lines. It’s the sheet music for mountainous musical scores — some I’ve drawn myself, others I’ve borrowed; some are well-known, others rarely trodden; some I’ve run many times, others are plans for a future day — though now my time is running low here.
Gaia is the crucial tool, a marvel for the modern foot-traveler. On this website is nearly every road and path in existence; even the faintest of cattle trails will sometimes be registered on their map-database. Then, looking at some dots I want to connect on a run — this train station, this mountain, this waterfall, this café — I can see all the different ways of getting there and make my decisions: main road or dirt road; the steep way or the winding way; a questionable direct trail on the left or a safer bet that adds mileage to the right; etc. And the decisions get made and the lines get drawn, and hopefully they get run soon too, before my line-drawing outpaces my footsteps and I’ve got more routes than what my legs can handle.
I gather a lot of joy in dreaming up these lines and loops, almost as much maybe as I do in actually running them. They are two equally important aspects of the art: the composition and the performance. And both are arts in themselves — a maestro could take a poor sketch and turn it into a masterpiece, while a novice could take a masterwork and spoil it rotten.
In these lines, there are many stories. And in the lines you don’t see, ones I’ve drawn and erased, there are stories too. On the top in yellow, there’s the Camino de Santiago; in orange in the bottom left, there’s the famous Zegama-Aizkorri marathon; a green one in the bottom right is the route of the Elf March I ran a few months ago. Once drawn, now gone, are lines that took me through bushwhacks filled with stinging nettle, hopping barbed wire fences on non-existent trails, roads past houses with ankle-biting dogs that chased me for half a mile…
What makes a line good is an ineffable combination of components that vary according to the runner’s taste. For me, the dream lines are ones that neatly link together a bunch of geographical features or other points of interest in an aesthetically pleasing shape, taking trails of good quality over varying terrain. I’ve also got a particular penchant for a dirt path that rolls through grassy hills of green or gold. But a good line can take so many different forms. Sometimes I want to connect as many summits in one run as possible; sometimes it’s all about simple circle in the woods; other times I fancy a road run from one village to the next town over. Each has their charm, each has their day, but what counts most is the consideration, or the moment of creativity, that goes in to the line; for its thoughtful planning brings the sweetest fruit on the day of its harvest, when I go to really run it and see what gifts my pretty little map-lines bring to me on the trails of the world.
To all the walkers, runners, hikers, bikers, and sunday drivers: may your lines be beautiful, and may they take you on deep journeys full of wonder.
Peace and happy trails.
Love me some good lines
beautifully done 🏞️ beautifully run