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June 7, 2006
The Prayer of the Pronghorn
I have now and then mentioned the diversity of wildlife that I see whilst out running, and the pronghorn antelope is one I often enjoy seeing. Many times, pronghorn stand and graze in the field next to the dirt road or trail as I run past, ignoring me and focusing their full attention on the grass underfoot. Other times, I seem to sneak up on them, and they snap up surprised from grazing, only to take off across the fields in full sprints. Once, just once, years ago in south central Wyoming, a small herd of pronghorn ran along next to me as I did a tempo workout on a dirt road.
As I ran along a trail today, I spotted two pronghorn up ahead, watching me cautiously. When I got too close for their comfort, they bounced in a few graceful steps up the steep hill adjacent to the trail. As they moved, the bushes next to the trail rustled and two munchkin pronghorn climbed awkwardly out. These were tiny little pronghorn, perhaps even less than a day old, and they made several futile attempts to scale the hill their mothers had agilely climbed. After these unsuccessful attempts, they found themselves about five feet above the trail with nowhere else to go. Me, I was equally stuck. I didn't wish to uneccessarily frighten these tiny creatures, but with a steep up and a steep down on either side of the trail, I had nowhere else to go but past them.
I passed them as quickly and quietly as I could as their mothers watched carefully from the hilltop above. The two pronghorn made desperate efforts to camouflage and hide themselves. They bent their back legs, kept their front legs straight, bowed down with quivering, gangly gestures, and tucked their heads between their legs. Their bow was, at the same time, almost prayer-like but also representative of their terror. I very much wanted to stand there and look at these little beings, but I knew that my presence made them wish they could return to the womb from which they had just dropped. So, I ran on, but this image of the bowing baby pronghorn is blazed across my mind right now.
As for my actual running, I ran 6 easy on Monday, rested from running on Tuesday, and ran 8 today with 4 miles at half marathon pace. In cross training, I did a lactate threshold workout on the road bike on Tuesday, on my trainer using a DVD. Today, I also did a 4.5 mile short hike to the top of a little nub of a hill near my house that I've been meaning to climb since the snow cleared.
Posted by Meghan at June 7, 2006 8:23 PM
Comments
pronghorns: richly inspirational writeup with a tenderly maternal side, also on the link in the "Built for Speed" section. I love the part where it says that gulping for air as they do when running, does not mean they are tired but they are optimizing their intake... cheers corrado
Posted by: corrado giambalvo at June 8, 2006 4:08 AM