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Dave Griffin On Running
The Carroll County Times – Sunday, April 26, 2009
A few times each year, the runners I coach through Flying Feet gather in Gettysburg for a run. The other day, I was on the battlefield planning the route for our next running excursion there.
After I was finished, I was getting ready to take a run myself when my cell phone rang. It was my daughter, Katie, who attends Gettysburg College.
She told me she had just received an email from the college’s President’s office, advising the students that there had been a fatal stabbing on campus. Though she wasn’t in any danger, the email had been unsettling, and I think it made her feel better knowing I was close by.
When we were done talking, I started my run. Running on the battlefield has always been peaceful for me, and I can never exactly resolve the irony that peace could be so easy to find in a place that had witnessed such violence.
Still, like every time before, within minutes I was immersed in the calm beauty of the place. I ran along Confederate Avenue, where Robert E. Lee’s army gathered before the famous attacks that were launched from Seminary Ridge.
I ran past trees that had bore witness to the battle, and by stone monuments that told the stories of men. I ran through fields where spring flowers were just starting to show themselves and by distant mountains that watched as I passed. In the final mile, I was running hard, alive with the energy that always finds me during my runs there.
That afternoon, Katie called again. Rumors about the stabbing were beginning to surface and they all seemed to involve Emily Silverstein, a girl Katie knew from her freshman year at the college. While we were on the phone, the rumors were confirmed.
Katie told me that she remembered Emily as someone who had showed her kindness at a time when kindness was something she desperately needed. As we talked, hundreds of others were sharing similar memories, each one about a giving, caring, passionate soul who left us too soon.
I wasn’t very helpful in finding answers to the questions Katie had. Listening was all I could offer.
Later, my thoughts turned to the run that morning and the enduring irony about the peace I find on the battlefield at Gettysburg. In a way, life is built around that irony. Tragedy is all around us. The trick, perhaps, is to find our own peace in the midst of it.
Discovering a reason for Emily’s death is impossible. Still, if we search, we might find meaning in her life. Life, after all, is always shorter than we expect it to be. Knowing that can help us realize the importance of the day we are living at this very moment. If Emily could somehow find her voice, I have a feeling she’d tell us something like that.
Maybe that’s why I love my runs in Gettysburg. As I pass through fields that remind me how real death is, I feel very much alive.