Je Est un Autre: Reflections on Running in Le Tour
By Haley Littleton | Top photo: Kim Strom, Other photos: Haley Littleton
Haley Littleton‘s “Je Est un Autre” is the winning story from the first Run the Alps Writers Residency Contest in partnership with Like the Wind magazine. Stories from the runners-up will follow shortly. It was an honor to read so many submissions, and we thank everyone who shared their writing with us.
I am hunched over my bright pink carbon poles searching for a breath as I watch the sweat from my bangs drip in a steady stream onto the gneiss rock just below my chin.
It is August on the Refuge Albert Premier trail, and I have never been this soaked with sweat in my life – which is saying something considering my childhood summers spent in the sticky South Carolinian swamp.
The nice Norwegian dad, with what I’m sure is a god-like VO2 max, that traipsed through the cow field with me to find the start of the VK has long since ditched me. I take a deep breath and start back to picking my way through the steep and rocky trail, with a half scramble-half lurching sort of motion.
The grass is so verdant with the pink-pop of thistles/chadrons that it’s nearly dizzying, and I disguise stopping out of pure pain as a reason to take my thousandth photo of the valley. This is what the writers must have been speaking of as they wrote about the pastoral ideal. I am nearly compelled to break out into the Sound of Music. And I would – if I had the breath.
I crest the craggy rock to find myself in a throng of people on a streambed plateau under the last quarter mile and 500 ft to the Refuge. I have merged with those who took the chairlift up Le Tour and followed the balcony trail from the Col de Balme to the Refuge. I am not annoyed at the crowd – more apologetic to look like a drowned rat dragging itself across the rock in an effort to get a personal best in the vertical kilometre – but I am severely bonking and not entirely aware of my surroundings.
“BATON! BATON!” someone yells to shake me from my carb and salt deprived haze, and I realize that I have indeed lightly stabbed an older French man with my poles. “Déso-[huff]-lée,” I respond breathlessly. After three years of learning, my French has started to take hold, and I won’t translate what I think he said, but it was fair.
As I hoist myself onto the deck of the Albert 1er Refuge, my vision is starting to shake a little, and all I can think of is sugar. It wasn’t until I started to spend time in the Alps that I learned that sometimes a Coca-Cola on a col is the closest you can get to God.
I, for one, am a big fan of alpine huts and refuges. My western slope Colorado friends and I often have this debate of the domestication of nature – the Muirian concept of strict wilderness versus the Gifford Pinchot-Euro style of access. I would never try to speak for those who live in the Alps, but, from my Coloradan perspective, I find nature here to be interwoven into whatever life you’d like to live.
In Chamonix, nature is the leisure of a chairlift, the remoteness of the aiguilles that dot the skyline, the risk of the glaciated terrain, the tranquillity of a glittering lake, the suffering of a VK in the sweltering August sun, and the delicious tarte de myrtille.
It can contain multitudes expansive enough for all of ours, as it has for thousands of years. Je est un autre, Rimbaud wrote. “I is another,” a place where all selves can coexist.
While I love the remoteness of a trail run deep into the basins of the San Juans with only myself, the trail, and its animal inhabitants for miles, I appreciate the proximity that Chamonix offers – with certainly no reduction in self-selected suffering.
I think of this as I wolf down a homemade brownie with whipped cream in a sort of frenzy that certainly reinforces my nationality. Behind me, I hear some British men mocking the group of Americans in front of me fumbling with their mountaineering gear, commenting that “they don’t belong up here.”
Who does belong up here? Those who take a tram or a chairlift to cut off some of the vert or those of us who climb nearly 4,000 ft in under 3 miles to get here? In America, that seems to matter to me. Here, for some reason, I don’t care that much – though I do care to respond to the men behind me.
I willingly chose this route, this suffering and sweat. In every ultramarathon that I run, I always remind myself: you chose this and that in itself is a privilege. There is a futility in suffering that outsiders looking into this sport marvel at, and, if I’m honest, I love their marveling.
As I veer towards the balcony to the Col de Balme, I want others to know what I have done to get here. I want them to know that I have chosen the harder path – like some sort of Buddha or martyr. I am extremely high on my own supply careening down the slope towards the Refuge du Col de Balme. I exaggerate the extension of my stride as I pass those coming up, imagining how graceful I must look.
And then an errant rock sent by the god of ego death bucks me into the hillside with a sommersault. I quickly shoot up, brushing the gravel off my shorts and shirt, checking for onlookers and then for scrapes. Not much more is hurt than my pride but still I limp into Refuge du Col de Blame for another conciliatory Coke – this time more like a repentance.
As the caffeine kicks in like a soothing balm, I stand and peer down the trail that cuts gently back and forth along the ski resort. It’s about 3 miles and 2500 feet to the bottom. My already trashed quads tremble at the thought. I steady myself and begin to move forward…
Straight onto the chairlift that I blissly ride down to the bottom. What can I say? Je est un autre – I contain multitudes.
Haley Littleton is a writer, trail runner, and environmental advocate based in Denver, Colorado. She has a masters in literature and creative writing from the University of Denver and has been featured in publications like TEDx, REI’s Uncommon Path, Outside Online, Dwell Magazine Online, and Elevation Outdoors. Haley works for a conservation organization advocating for policies that protect land, air, and water across the Western United States.