I reached the top and breathed in thin air, quickly, my heart pounding because the effort had been so great. I turned around slowly and smiled.
This body that society and even some fellow trail runners viewed as a black hole of incapability is a rich center of power and strength, if not speed. This body is deemed a failure to many who judge it by its face value. It is devalued even, protested, and placed in the category of the unseemly. But take her out in the wild and she proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that instead of embodying burden, she is a powerful force. She may move slowly up the mountain, each heavy step deliberate and calculating, but she moves nonetheless. She belongs on those lodgepole-choked trails on this hulking protrusion of earth.