Running with Eyes Wide Open

In a world often defined by speed and distraction, Rachel Taylor explores an approach to trail running that embraces the balance between movement and the art of noticing. Taylor, alongside photographer Jody Daunton, takes readers through a deeper focus and a mindful connection with the living world. Experiencing trail running as more than just a physical pursuit becomes a practice of tuning in to the vibrant textures, sounds and sights that reveal themselves when we move with presence. Through Taylor’s reflections and Daunton’s lens, this piece reveals the magic of discovering the world with fresh eyes, savouring the quiet beauty found in slowing down, truly seeing.

Music blares through small headphones resting in my ears. The beat keeps me moving rhythmically, my feet pounding the valley floor as my body engines along the trail. I feel almost mechanical, like a locomotive, the pulse of my music akin to the repetitive clattering of a train on its tracks. 

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I often treat myself like a machine – both while running and generally in life. Sometimes, it is easy to forget that we humans are natural beings, especially as we are plugged in for most of our waking hours: our stats available on our wrists, our lives tethered to the internet, our communications always on. I wonder, are we cyborgs already? 

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My minutes per kilometer are good today. I’m moving fast. I pull back deep gasps of air and power on in competition with myself, pushing hard up the steep rocky terrain and coasting the downhills, being careful on my knees, dodging loose shale while attempting to keep pace. 

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When I’m in such a drive, it’s hard to focus on anything other than the task at hand. My awareness draws in; my sensorial perception becomes fixated on my next foot placement, on regulating my breathing, and on the ache in my muscles that plead that I calm down. Of course, I ignore these pleas – this is the game, to keep pushing, to triumph, to beat the trail, even. I’m hungry for that flood of endorphins that accompanies the sense of achievement. 

I started running fairly young, towards the end of primary school. I was selected to represent my class in the long-distance race at sports day, and to train for it, I was invited to the cross-country running club. I despised competing with others. I would push myself too hard, often making myself vomit in the pursuit of a win.

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My family moved across the country, and I changed schools. I wasn’t really wedded to running as a sport, but it represented a part of my old self that I clung onto and used as an escape in my teenage years. Before long, it was just something I did. And if I didn’t, my muscles would itch with pent up energy and my mind would feel penned in. 

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After road-running for nearly a decade, it was pointed out to me how unhealthy it was to be inhaling vehicle exhaust fumes. So I took to the trail. Another decade later or so and I’m still trail running.

I thought I was simply exchanging smog for fresh air, but I succumbed to a whole other way of engaging with the world. Running became a medium to experience life in a very different way than I was used to, and became far more than keeping fit and sane. I swapped tarmac and cacophonous roads for forests, valleys and countryside. There is a child-like fun found in darting, dodging, ducking and diving to weave these trails, pocketed with puddles, laden with slippery mud and littered with loose rock, fallen branches and wet leaves. The trails are obstacle courses of overgrown shrubs, broken stiles, quagmires and herds and flocks of animals, some friendly and some not so much. Going for a run became playtime.

"Running became a medium to experience life in a very different way."

Or at least, this is how it started. Soon, I realised that these places aren’t just environments for my main-character syndrome to play out in – I am more than a video game character operating from play one view. When I am out on the trail, I become involved in these places. And these living places involve me, if I am open to their invitation.

There’s tension between hitting stats and surrendering to the invitation. But I choose to accept, and my pace peters slightly – enough for the thunderous pulsating of blood in my body to quieten and for my field of awareness to expand out. The urge to be competitive, to win, starts to dissipate, if somewhat uncomfortably. 

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I pull out my headphones and jolt between worlds. My previously dulled and distracted senses become infused with an ensemble of sounds, smells, sensations and sights that suddenly sharpen. My awareness ripples out, and the world bounds in. Colours become more vivid. The elements consume me as I notice the wind wrapping around me and the sun seeping into me. I see and sense the movement and life in everything.

The birds beckon me into their songs, to listen into their conversations in languages I can't understand. Their chirping, chattering and chanting entice a sensation of calm in my body that’s viscerally palpable. I listen more deeply and drift into a sort of trance. I notice that it’s not only the birds who are singing. The wind and the trees and the leaves play together in an orchestra of woodwind, with soft whistles and rustles. The river gargles melodies hardwired into us to be comforting. Frogs croak in vibrating bass-y reverberations. Goats bleat, their almost human sounds carrying across the valley. The soundscape is textured. It is a collusion. My ear zooms in and out, reaching for sounds from far and near but unable to decipher their locations among the mix. The valley likes to play games, throwing the sound in echoes that bounce off cliff faces and are caught by tree lines, absorbed into their woody bodies and leafy masses.   

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I gaze up at the uncountable leaves that shimmer in the breeze that carries scents of pine and eucalyptus – a cocktail of native and non-native beings. The wind toys with the leaves, and the leaves toy with the light, and the light toys with the shadow, in a painterly illusion of shadow play that falls on the trail floor. The dappled light is mesmerizing; its trembling turns the path to liquid. I am embroiled in the magic as the light dances on my skin, the patterns entangling me in this place, turning me liquid too. 

"The valley likes to play games, throwing the sound in echoes that bounce off cliff faces."

Tall trees tower. The trail becomes a tunnel of overarching branches, a place tucked away from sunlight and where the air is notably cooler. Reeds reach for me and graze my skin with their razored fronds, their pliable bodies bending in the breeze. I’m taken back by their touch, shocked by their interruption to my run, at their engagement with me. I spy a black bug with red markings cradled in one of the reed fronds and wonder the co-evolutionary reasons these firebugs don painted backs. Did their buggy ancestors learn to mimic other beings to avoid being eaten? How did this physical trait occur? How does this ancient wisdom get carried in the genetics of this species? I ponder on how this is true for all of us, for all beings on this planet: that we all carry ancient wisdoms in our bodies, gathered through an entirety of becoming.

Relinquishing competitive tendencies is no easy task. And I know many trail runners who would scoff at my suggestion of doing so. That’s okay – each to their own. We all have different reasons for going out there. For me, though, I’ve come to realise that I can’t have it both ways: I can’t treat myself like a machine, or a cyborg, pushing only for stats, without my awareness collapsing inward. This isn’t to say that I’m only dawdling, and I’d be lying if I said that I don’t intermittently go after the rush of euphoria and the high of endorphins that accompanies a hard push. But my runs have become so much more. 

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Heeding the invitation – time and again, each time I head out there – has changed my perception of the world. For a small window of time, I fold into life rather than exist in modernity, the latter of which has me caged in my office and chained to my computer for a huge part of my days. But despite how small that window of time out there is, it gifts me wondrous experiences. Because of them, there’s reverence in the texture and minute detail. There’s abstract thought and curiosity. I am easily spirited away into awe and wonder. Being out there has become almost spiritual; these places offer communion and grace.

"For a small window of time, I fold into life rather than exist in modernity."

They teach me to extend this grace to myself – to remember that I’m not a machine. I’ve learnt to seek balance between pushing through resistance and taking pause to notice. I’ve learnt to move slower, not just while out running but in life. With this comes spaciousness to reflect deeply, to appreciate immensely and to experience life expansively. 

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Trail running, in its way, reminds me what it means to be alive. Life isn’t only about the big moments, the gnarly triumphs and the pushing hard. It’s about the in-betweens, the subtle and gentle, the magic and wonder that can enable us to find awe and adventure in the everyday. It’s feeling awake to reality, not numbed into banality. It’s about accepting the invitation, folding into life as a living being and being open to the gifts of our world. This, to me, feels profound.