“In Israel young fanatics with explosives strapped to their bodies were wiping themselves and busloads of hated strangers off the planet; insect species were being extinguished every five minutes in the Amazon forest; military coups were being bloodily launched in Africa; dams were being built in China, making tens of thousands homeless; but in Keldo Woods, alone and immune and having slipped his clerical collar, Gideon Mack was running.

“Yes, even then I suspected what I now know to be true: that life itself is not wholly real. Existence is one thing, life quite another: it is the ghost that haunts existence, the spirit that animates. Running, whether in rain or sun, felt like life.”

Doesn’t this excerpt from James Robertson’s The Testament of Gideon Mack wonderfully summate the simultaneous solitude (now there’s a tongue twister!) and invigoration that running brings?