A beautiful moment of irrational.

Scott and Ted’s Excellent Adventure: Part one of a journey into unknown parts.

It was a cold day. 

I was properly dressed for the occasion and our first training run together. I reached for my dead friend Teddy on the shelf.

Teddy on the shelf? Move over “Elf on the shelf” there’s a new sheriff in town.

I didn’t want Teddy to be cold. A moment of compassion for my friend. Thankfully, that had not passed, with his passing. Of course, Teddy couldn’t experience coldness, but I had unconsciously humanized that small blue urn and Teddy’s remains.

They were Ted Knutson.

A beautiful moment of irrational. 

Oddly they don’t make cold weather gear for urn’s. I found a rubber band in a desk draw, grabbed a ziplock bag, and I fashioned Teddy some protection. The Under Armour brand was started with a pair of panty hoses, so why not? It was what all the cool urns were wearing in 2021.

I put Teddy in his makeshift running gear, slipped him into my jacket pocket, and headed out into the woods. Something I would repeat endless times, but deeply understood had an expiration date.

Everything does.

I didn’t have much experience running around in the woods with my dead friends ashes. I immediately felt the weight of that urn, not unlike a 50 pound sandbag or a 40 pound pack, Teddy felt heavy and uncomfortable. I was familiar with discomfort, but I had learned through hard training and racing it’s the birth place of joy.

Unexpectedly I started speaking to Teddy, out loud, as if he was running next to me.

Not planned. Not rejected.

Just joy.

A beautiful moment of irrational.

This set into motion an ongoing, beautiful, strange, funny, loving and healing dialogue I had with Teddy, for 9 months, 8 days, 240 miles, and one morning,

and then it stopped.

I haven’t spoken to Teddy since that morning I left his ashes in Moab. The blue urn is now full of red desert sand on the same shelf. The remains of Teddy are bonding with mother nature and no longer me.

In my mind It doesn’t make sense to talk to the urn anymore and Teddy is really gone now. Try and make sense of that one, because I can’t.

And here I sit. The conversation is just me with me. I keep asking myself, how or when can I start talking to Teddy again.

I await a beautiful moment of irrational.