I stood in my backyard last night. Just before 1 a.m. It wasn't meant to be a symbolic moment. In truth, I was just letting the dogs out to pee before calling it a night. But in the crisp darkness and 50 degree temperature I call California-cold, I looked up at the sky and saw the three bright diagonal stars of Orion's belt blazing just above. Ptolemy named Orion one of the original 48 constellations back in the 2nd Century. Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Each is more than 1,200 light years away. I traced the asterism known as Sword of Orion, dangling straight down from the belt. If you know where to look, there is also Betelgeuse and the shoulders and the shape of a great hunter.
I just stood there, a little numb from a long day of competition and travel, gazing up at this magnificent touchstone in my life. A very long time ago I stood on the deck of a tall ship sailing across the Mediterranean. A very dark night. Inky blackness. Absolutely no ambient light. Stars hovered in the sky like enormous dinner plates (actually, not as circular. More rounded and frayed at the edges like the splat of a cow patty). I understood for the first time why the constellations were once so important. Rather than the pinpricks of light I see each night they were so enormous as to demand immediate attention. No wonder the ancients were fixated.
Orion appears in the southern sky in late-summer, coinciding with the first day of racing. By then we've spent 12 weeks training. I rise from bed at 4 a.m. that first week of September each year and get my first glimpse. Twelve weeks and 84 days of training, competition, and all the emotions comprising the journey to the State Meet, Orion is no longer a predawn constellation but something to be admired before calling it a night. Or calling it a season.
I have never coached better than I did this year. I have never enjoyed the team chemistry as much. The rest of the coaching staff has never made me feel so supported or made me laugh so hard — which is saying a lot, because the daily act of coaching, with all its observations and asides, has been cracking me up for decades.
But as Orion was reminding me, this year's cross country season is over. Boom. Done. No practice on Monday. We ran just fine at the State Meet. I've been taking what amounts to a sabbatical from writing, putting words on the page each day but far more focused on the team's training. I've watched the seniors and juniors develop from non-runners into elites over the course of the past few years. So gratifying. So amazing to watch them grow and spread their wings and run really, really fast.
If cross country season is my Christmas in autumn, as I have so many times before, today is December 26th (thanks for that reminder, Sean Zeitler). I'm not as old as Orion. But my fire burns as bright. And just as the Hunter disappears from view for months at a time, I'm going to enjoy a time of quiet before turning my eyes to the spring track season. The Long Run will appear in stores in April. I'll write the sequel. There will be travel for research and hopefully a Springsteen concert. All the while I will be awaiting the return of Orion in the morning sky and the many star-filled nights between now and the start of cross country season.