Fire On the Mountain

In July of 2007 my high school cross country team traveled to just outside of Boone, North Carolina for a week long training camp. It was nothing official; in fact, we could not technically refer to it as training, or even a team event, as FHSAA rules prevented practice before a certain date. It was officially just a group of friends who all happened to be on the same cross country team, traveling with a few parents and another man who just happened to be their coach.

We piled into a transport van, schlepped the 10 hours up from Florida, and eventually pulled into a rental cabin nestled in the woods by a stream. We had morning and afternoon practices everyday, which mainly consisted of interval training, pacing exercises, and hill work. In between practices, we spent our time exploring the forest, swinging on a rope swing into a nearby river, and generally goofing around as teenagers on an unofficial trip do. We put in a lot of miles that week, but no workout was as tough as our mountain climb. One morning, we drove a few miles from our cabin to the base of Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi River. Our coach’s directive: run to the top. 

It was a slog. The uphills were brutal, and the occasional descents were treacherous. Yet the mountain’s forested beauty was breathtaking, and it was on that ascent that I first felt a real bond being formed between me and my other teammates, especially one who would go on to be a lifelong friend. 

About halfway up we came to the state park from which the rest of the trail continued. Yet we had already been running for hours, and we were exhausted. Our coach mercifully decided that we had already proven ourselves and offered to shuttle us back to the cabin. We gladly took up his offer. As a means of celebrating our efforts, Coach’s soundtrack on the way back was the Grateful Dead song “Fire On the Mountain.” It was extremely apropos: not only had we felt the fire in our legs and lungs as we ran up the mount, but the song also begins with the immortal lines “Long distance runner, what you standin’ there for? / Get up, get out, get out of the door.”  

The song is not really about distance running; it’s more of a call to action in regards to personal realization. To our high school ears the music was goofy, with a loping beat that did not lend itself to running. Yet for the rest of the week, whether during warm ups or during a run (in which Coach would drive next to us), we heard that song. It became the theme song for our entire season, and I still have my ‘07 Chamberlain High School XC shirt with FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN emblazoned across the back. I knew that the song would become a nostalgic memory for me through the trip and our collective experience as a team, but at the time I was unaware of the significance that the band who performed it would come to have in my life.