Authentic. A few weeks ago while reading Steve Coll's Pulitzer Prize winning Ghost Wars(every American living the dream must read this book but that is a different post) I purchased through St. Lissa, Ghost Trails(Journeys through a lifetime) by Jill Homer whose blog 'Arctic Glass' I had been following periodically ever since around about the time Dicky started his. I cannot remember exactly how I wound up there but when I did I was inspired not immediately by the person but first by the experience portrayed in the landscape photos from Alaska and the Arctic Region. Not long after seeing through these amazing windows from Charlotte into the pastoral hinterland of the Northwest corner of this continent I began to get the idea that the person doing the miles was an extraordinary life force who was in a very physical relationship with her life.
Authenticity comes to mind as I try to describe her book to you. Anyone who has ever gone on a long ride and then done it again and again should go to her blog where you can purchase through an easy pay pal transfer a signed copy for a fair price mailed to you right away. Once you go inside Ghost Trails you will be able to hear the soft powerful voice of someone with an identity of confidence, strength and humble resolve to stay true to their endangered survival instincts not to quit and/or die. In all sense of the word, enduring at a winter Arctic 350 mile Mountain Bike Race where she can even see through to the quanta of what race really is and means to her. Her story and participation in the 2008 Alaska Ultra Sport 350mile Bike Race in February connects the physical with the emotion to form an entire document that will inspire you all. I cried once, almost twice. I cannot say exactly what made me cry other than the immediate emotional transfer and parallel experience that I felt when she was handed the incoming phone call shortly after finding bloody shelter in Farewell Burn not quite at the end of her amazingly literal cold ass 350mile ride. Jill is riding the race all over again in a few short weeks, be sure to send all positive thoughts her way and the way of her man Geoff who is running, that's right running the event this year after completing the first 135 miles of last year's race on foot and becoming injured. Peace to you both, good luck and stay super tuned into the sensory, no matter what something cosmic along your push is going to happen!
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