If your idea of pure joy is a trail race involving a lot of mud, rain, stream wadings, steep and seemingly endless hills, inching through a pitch black 300 metre long limestone cave, and navigating 22 or 35 kms (depending on your degree of insanity) of slippery farm tracks, you’d have loved our recent April 28th adventure competing in the Waitomo Caves Trail Run in New Zealand’s North Island.
Five runners from the Auckland Sri Chinmoy Centre recently competed in this great event and enjoyed themselves immensely, traversing the amazing limestone studded hills with their outcrops of wind sculpted stone.
The spirit and power of place was overwhelming and humbling – the landscape seemed like an ancient battlefield, filled with giants and Titans and strange Beings turned to stone. Across the green landscapes and ridgelines the fists of rock reared up into the sky, resembling fleeing invaders lurching back to the sea after some mythological battle, now frozen mute and turned to stone by some fatal curse. Were they stranded there at daybreak, a raiding party from some barbaric underworld undone by the sudden dawn, or defectors from the faraway mountain fortresses seeking refuge in the dark forests? It was Lord of the Rings stuff! But the mute limestone features would not soften or speak as we passed.

Mother Nature threw everything at our brave few – rain, wind, cold – but our runners relished the challenges and placed well in the event. Movement and meditation belong together. We were exulting in the freedom of wellbeing, the beauty of landscaps, the wonderful camaraderie of the running fraternity, the silence of the hills, the dance of this wonderful life.