They were expected to accomplish nothing, so they could try anything. Audacity beckoned. “You ever heard of the Mountain Masochist?”

Unknown Mexico: A Record of Five Years’ Exploration Among the Tribes of the Western Sierra Madre.

Korima sounds like karma and functions the same way, except in the here and now. It’s your obligation to share whatever you can spare, instantly and with no expectations: once the gift leaves your hand, it was never yours to begin with. The Tarahumara have no monetary system, so korima is how they do business: their economy is based on trading

the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it. Scott would never again linger

To live with ghosts requires solitude. —ANNE MICHAELS, Fugitive Pieces

somewhere after all, he realized. All the hopelessness of nursing a mother who would never get better, all the frustration of chasing taunting jerks he could never catch—it had quietly bloomed into an ability to push harder and harder as things looked worse and worse. Coach Vigil would have been touched; Scott asked for nothing from his endurance,

“Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction.”

We wouldn’t be alive without love; we wouldn’t have survived without running; maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.

Steve Peterson, a member of a Colorado higher-consciousness cult called Divine Madness, which seeks nirvana through sex parties, extreme trail running, and affordable housecleaning.