Finding Leadville Chapter 8: Ben Rolls with Jesus

The author and her friend Ben in the rain after a trail run together

Pineapple smoothie escaped from its straw and dribbled onto my chin. If you were to drive past me you’d see my feet planted on the dashboard and a grin the size of a large pizza on my face. It was January in Hawaii, the year before Colorado. Chris was driving and I was a happy passenger princess.  

The phone rang in my palm over the swoosh of tropical breeze. I didn’t look at the screen right away. I was on vacation. I was actively forgetting my concerns, chasing the sunset toward the beach. It was all new, a freshly born moment, wet with possibility and untouched by the world as I knew it. 

Newness thrills me. Beginnings reel me in like a caught fish – dangling, excitable. The starting over, once again, thrills me: the first step onto the Spanish Steps, the initial crunch of summer dirt on a loping trail, pulling up to the house that’s not yet a home. That first-day-of-school feeling with naked notebooks and an opaque ruler stuffed into a pencil case, the price tag sticker still stuck, untouched by dirty playground fingers. 

I like to wonder who I will end up becoming by choosing to arrive somewhere new. It’s electric. I get a rush just thinking about the freshness of change, and the adventures it can take me on. I’ve dumped boyfriends and gotten back together with them just so I could feel the beginning all over again. The top of a trailhead un-trekked and the maps app on my phone directing me to an address un-visited. 

What I’ve since discovered is that I can learn to like middles. The process. The bumps and the bruises from when we get knocked down, or how the new car smell loses its freshness along the way. Getting lost and having to ask for directions – because inevitably, this is where we meet others. Others on a path, a reckoning, an adventure of their own. I become part of their story and they, mine. I learned that I like the kind of people I meet in the middle. I like the plainness of it all, the browns and oranges and the rusty reds and that color that reminds you of waiting in line at the grocery store as a child. Middles are the only thing that gets us from the start to the end. 

I had yet to learn how to handle endings. 

My phone was still ringing. I scrunched my nose at the screen, the name of a running acquaintance popping up. 

“He never calls me,” I said and turned the music down, setting my smoothie into the car holder. I answered. 

“Hello?”

Time slowed. 

And then, it began to spiral, catapulting forward, and I had no choice but to tumble along with it. 

After a few brief words I hung up and pressed my forehead into my hands , hard, as if I could press my way out of that moment and into the jungle heat of the island. 

“Ben’s dead,” I said, more so that I could grasp the words than to let Chris know. Ben, my running friend, was suddenly gone.

-

Ben fell into stride with me during the Birkie Trail Marathon just a year and a half prior to the phone call. I was caught up in my head, as usual, and oblivious to the other runners. A sunrise start time meant the trees were still yawning, the birds singing them awake. My body was warming up and my breath formed clouded puffs. A bush rustled as I passed and a critter who I’ll never meet properly shot out, fleeing the chaos of stampeding humans, startling me. I quickened. Within seconds, I was behind another runner and forced to slow down because there was no room to pass on the tight path.. It was early yet and I could relax in the first few miles – although, I didn’t want to. I clawed at my pack to find a slice of gum to distract me. 

The runner turned his head as he heard me approach, “And what about you!” It was more an exclamation than a question.  

I like to listen to others talk during a run, not be the one talking. When I was in grade school, my favorite activity was to find a hiding place so I could eavesdrop on phone calls. I overheard breakups, complaints, and juicy gossip. It’s how I first learned about the world. 

“What about me?” I asked. 

“What’s your running story?” His elbows pressed back with each step forward as though they were poking me for a friendly answer. 

When I am feeling introverted on the trail, I sometimes stick to the easy answers. Only offering one or two words, to match my mood. But for some reason that day, I decided to give a little more than usual. 

“I’m one of 12 kids and well, we all ran. Hand-me-down running shoes are cheaper than hockey equipment,” I offered. “And, I grew to really love the sport. After high school and college, I kept running. Mostly marathons now. Just getting into trails.”

He all but clapped with glee. “A lifetime runner!” he exclaimed, “Covid got me into it. I started running during the lockdown.”

“I’m Ben,” he said as he sidestepped a protruding root with a playful hop, “Watch out for that!”

I laughed, “I’m Barbara.”

Question after question, we traded off leading on the single-track trail. He asked me about running, life, my faith, and my upbringing. Every so often his watch would beep and he'd slow his pace, “Heart rate!” he explained with a lopsided grin.

It wasn't long before we got into faith. "I roll with Jesus," he playfully shrugged. Religion got him through the hard times, he shared. It gave him a sense of purpose, a community to connect with, and a way to give praise for all he was grateful for. As he spoke, I imagined my parents. Two young people trying to make it in the world, seeking security and unconditional love. Catholicism, the Church, the rituals and prayers: a lifeline for them, a confinement for me. In many ways, it helped them raise 12 incredible kids.

Although it wasn't the path I would take as an adult -- I couldn't claim to "roll with Jesus" -- I understood. And helped me get there.

-

Back in Hawaii, I looked down at my hands. The veins were pulsing blue, and my nails at the tip of each finger were short, stumped. I laced one hand into the other. I have my mother’s hands, I remember thinking. My chest swelled, a familiar ache washing through it. I pressed down on one of the protruding veins and traced it back and forth. No longer was I in a rental car on Oahu digesting news of a friend’s passing. I was in the living room of the old farmhouse, curled up on my mother’s lap as she read a story to a pile of children who were crowding her. A wood stove crackled and heaps of freshly chopped wood awaiting their fate. I was tracing her veins as she read, pressing the life force of her blue blood back and forth, back and forth. 

Chris and I spent the afternoon bent over drinks at Kalapawai Market. Just yesterday, one table over, we sat, sweaty from climbing Koko Crater – a no-longer-used railway trail up a dormant volcano. We had marveled at the task, elated with the life dripping from our bodies. Famished, we had ordered fish tacos. Drinks eased our thirst. Clinking together frothy beer and sparkling sangria, we felt invincible, alive. 

This time, we were somber. The buzz of the cafe was the same, and the drinks were the exact order from the day prior. But now, they tasted like what-the-fuck and holy-hell. My sweet sangria tasted of shock. 

-

Right around mile 13, Ben nudged me. 

“You haven’t run an ultra yet?” he exclaimed after I confessed that this marathon was my farthest endeavor to date, “You gotta run an ultra. Do Wild Duluth. It's a 50k. It’s in two weeks. You’re fit, you can totally do it.”

As we trotted onward, I mentally massaged the suggestion. His enthusiasm made the notion fathomable. The further we went down the trail, the more Ben’s light pressed its way inside of me and in that moment, I was ready to receive it. 

“I guess I’ll see you there!” My heart rate quickened at the idea and inevitably all kinds of intrusive thoughts began to try and worm their way into my mind to spoil it all. Be here now, I coached myself. 

We continued on, one foot in front of the other, sharing time. 

I took a wrong turn mid-race after surging ahead of Ben and ended up clocking around 29 miles – 3 bonus miles. It was as if the universe was trying to prove to me that I was capable. I burst into tears at the finish as Chris collected me into a giant hug.

I signed up for the Wild Duluth 50k that evening. 

Two weeks later, I showed up to the Superior Hiking Trail and took on the gnarly, winding, hilly  trails from Jay Cooke Park up to Duluth, MN. Those 50 kilometers were grueling. I wasn’t accustomed to the amount of power hiking I had to do. Hill after hill taunted me and all I could do was drive my way up, hands on my thighs, bent over my lungs. When the terrain shifted down or leveled out, I could pick up my legs and run. Someone handed me a watermelon with salt at an aid station and, later on, I led a group of runners down the wrong trail as I got distracted watching my footing. In the last mile, I fell into stride with a college kid and managed to haul it into the finish.   

Ben was at the finish line, a beer in hand. A bee landed on the lip, and I swiped it away with a weary hand. Mindless, unafraid.

It was that finish line that hooked me. The process, all those middle moments, all the relentless forward progress during the race that got me to a land of smiling, happy people with cold beers in hand and friendly dogs on leashes ready to lick the salt off me. Hours of movement and mental chatter, turning my legs over, side stepping roots and rocks, and negotiating with my mind in an effort to stay in the race – it all got me to the shore of Lake Superior underneath the inflatable finishers arch. 

I couldn’t walk right for the following two days, but I welcomed the hobble. I wore the maroon race hoodie for three days straight. And for a solid week, I leaned my race bib against a pile of books on my desk at eye level. I wanted to bask in it, keep the feeling alive and well. 

Ben and I met up to run at Lebanon Hills in Eagan, Minnesota many times after that race. We chatted about life, loss, religion, and racing. He listened to my stories, and told me some of his. He was especially excited to hear I was toying with the idea of running a hundred miler.

“Can’t wait to run Leadville with ya!” Ben crowed one morning as we ran through the pouring rain. We snapped a selfie to celebrate the moment.

That was one of our last runs together.

-

I cannot, I remember thinking. I cannot sit around. I cannot remain the same. I cannot have a year that isn’t worth remembering. I cannot, I cannot, I cannot. 

I looked up from my glass and caught Chris inspecting me carefully. 

“Let’s make the most of this trip,” I mumbled.  

I scraped the chair back and stood up, pulling the bottom of my shorts down from their scrunched position at my upper thighs. Chris took my hand, his eyes concerned, and we walked out into the final few days of our vacation.

My friend died today

A week ago 

really 

but he died 

again today. 

I went to text him 

an invite: 

“Let’s go run” 

and again 

he died, 

softly in my hands – 

delete 

delete 

delete – 

on just 

another Saturday.

Ben (left) with his running buddies at Lebanon Hills

The author's first unofficial ultra at the Birkie Marathon