‘Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie’
Posted on February 28th, 2008 by Todd Sears in From Routes to Roots 
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
— Robert Burns (from “To a Mouse…”)
I think I may have a solution for Michigan’s suffering economy. To get there let’s start with a quick reflection.
Back in October of last year I went up to Scotland with my family and ran the Loch Ness Marathon. It was a good, well-organized race sponsored by the Baxters company. I even got some free soup, a sack of curry paste, and some other race schwag after breaking the tape.
Unlike the mountainous Snowdonia Marathon back in ’06 (where my calves seized up at mile 26 and I had to have my friend, Mike, and a passerby massage them enough so as to let me spastically limp-jog over the finish line 2/10 of a mile down the road) this one was rather enjoyable. Crisp, cool air, minimal wind, plenty of water and carb stations, and a really enthusiastic hardass crew of runners.
I tell you this because at the end of it all I realized that particular trip was never about the race, anyway. The run was only three hours and 22 minutes of thirst, hunger, aches, self-doubt, weariness and all the expected rest of it. More interesting was the other 70 hours of the holiday and the little anecdotes that have been distilled out of the whole mash.
One of the most poignant memories I have is that of the pipers (Clan McLeod, I think) marching down from the high foggy knoll above the Start and passing through the runners right before the gun blasted the signal to commence. This was equaled only by me falling into the arms of my eldest son, Alexander, to keep me upright after the full-on tank-emptying sprint to Finish. A nice way to bracket the race.
Other little remembrances from that trip include:
- convincing my three sons to try haggis for breakfast (though Alexander insists it was his idea)
- the big burly Highland Cattle roaming the fields around our guesthouse
- post-race all-you-can-eat at Jimmy Chung’s (I had an inhuman craving for protein, and must have downed 15 of those chicken teriyaki stick things)
- grudgingly conceding that Carol is absolutely right when she says I am a bristly, anti-social pain in the ass, right before a race
- driving around the Loch and stopping at the Loch Ness Centre in Drumnadrochit
- the nearly impenetrable brogue of the Scottish northland
- trying, again, to figure out why it is that I am drawn to Scotland above all the other parts of the UK and Ireland
- an embyonic idea for way-cool commerce in Northern Michigan
Well, I’ve been injured since early December, and haven’t been able to get many long distances in lately, but am bouncing back. Running less means thinking more, however, and some of these firing neurons have led me to a potential solution for Michigan’s light wallets, developing ideas I’d had in Scotland months back.
Here it is:
……waitfrit…………………………………………………………………………Cryptids.
That’s right, cryptids. Beasts & creatures which exist only in the realm of speculation and whimsy, not empirical reality. But ones that are not in any way wee, sleek, cowering, or timorous, as the Ploughman Poet describes. No, I’m talking big, mean, hairy ones. Maybe even scaly reptilian abominations with large teeth. And dripping venom. Definitely venom.
The Scots have the Loch Ness monster, the Congolese have Mokele-mbembe, and Northern Michiganders have the Dogman. Let’s work with that.
I’ll stop here for now and continue next time on the massive potential to take Dogman lore and derivative market opportunities to new levels of crassness, cynicism, and ribaldry.
If you want to flame, unleash, or just chat, please feel free to contact me at sears.todd@gmail.com. Be well.
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