Renewal

From an industrial estate to an alpine forest, and remembering why I run

Summer thunderstorms. The clouds cracked and burst open this morning. The smell of rain on asphalt permeates the air. I’m in the industrial part of the valley, a place that makes me shudder with feelings of grey dystopia. It’s time to go for a run.

I’ve been here for months but still can’t quite figure out how to pay for parking—a residue of my time spent in the hinterlands of the Portuguese mountains.

The rain has stopped now. The car park matches the grey of the sky. I lace up, get the dog out of the boot, and begin to follow the stream to its source. It is a subtly reluctant feeling, one that arises on those days when I forget that to run is a gift.

Trucks pass along this stretch of gravel road—workers doing their duties on the new train construction—people who are somewhat unseen by many, but without whom their lives would not function.

The gravel switches to broken asphalt, then to gravel again. Small stones crunch underfoot. As we run further up the valley, the forested walls of spruce and larch and scree begin to close in. It feels sheltered, a hideaway from the ugliness of the space in which we began.

A small farmhouse appears in the distance. It is quite rustic—different from the polished and sanitised finish of most modern Engadine houses. Lived in, worked. The sound of an axe cracking down on wood echoes from behind the wall.

Two border collies run towards us, offering their greetings. A young girl on a quad bike watches her father, who raises the axe with precision, bringing it down on the pine that rests on the edge of a metal bathtub. Crack.

He is wearing a hat that I recognise, a Tyrolean hat—forest green with a round brim, a feather on the side—one that I’ve seen local farmers wearing on rare occasions. A mountain man. It feels strangely exotic in a way that I don’t much like to admit. He doesn’t greet me. I can’t blame him. These valleys are full of tourists nowadays, people that pass through, arriving and leaving with little permanent significance.

As I go further up, the trail heads through an overgrown opening in the spruce forest. Wildflowers and shrubs grow up to the knee, the water droplets soaking into my socks and shoes. The stream has transformed into a torrent, the water pummelling rocks in the riverbed with the full force of alpine summer.

The air has changed scent. I notice it subconsciously before I can name it. It smells like flower blossom, like the warm oils from spruce and larch needles, like the moisture that evaporates from the earthy forest floor.

I remember now why I come here, and it is so easy to forget. Like a thirsty chamois finding its way to the pure mountain spring, or a bird migrating home to unconscious coordinates. The tension is real, pulled taut against the other things that need attending. Maybe I should get the Tyrolean hat, make cheese that I don’t eat, and chop wood on the Alp. Or maybe it’s another version of an escapism-fuelled fantasy.

The forest opens up from sun-dappled to wide open as we rejoin the main track. Seven kilometres in, and the valley truly reveals itself. The summer sun has broken free from its clouded constraints, and I feel like I could go on forever.

But that damn parking app has a timer, my body grows hungry, and I feel the lowlands pulling me back.