Spirit Run by Noé Álvarez

Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land
by Noé Álvarez
Catapult, 2020

When Noé Álvarez, crossing the Mexican border with an American passport, provided a Latino border guard with his reasoning for entering the country not as the typical business or pleasure, but instead, to run through the country on his way to Central America, he was met with a halting question: “But aren’t you running the wrong way?”

Though Central America was indeed the destination, it was hardly the start. In his memoir, Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land, Álvarez chronicles his experience traveling across the continent in a run hosted by Peace and Dignity Journeys. It is an event that happens only once every four years and lasts six months as indigenous peoples from anywhere on the continent participate in a highly symbolic run from Alaska to Panama, at which point the group will meet with a separate group of runners traveling north through South America. When pitched to Álvarez, the run was spoken about like a type of prayer, a way to spiritually connect with the land and learn “how to be human again.”

It is a yearning for both connection and escape that seems to draw the author to the run. The son of immigrant parents, he hails from Washington State, specifically Yakima, a region whose fertile soils are famous and agricultural products are abundant. Apple and cherry trees grow with ease and their fruit has been historically handled by the state’s immigrant populations. The author’s Mexican mother is one such worker, a fruit sorter whose identity at work collapses into the homogenous working machine. Both of the author’s parents urge him not to follow their path of becoming cogs in the wheel.

Through his adolescence, running becomes a means by which he can shake off his problems, if only for the duration of the run. At the same time, he has a tenuous relationship with the ground beneath his feet, a land which made steep promises to his family, but whose demands never cease. Growing up seeing his parents’ backs learn the curve of labor instilled deep resentment: “I grew to hate the land for what was done to it, and for what it had done to my parents, whose calloused hands I can never forgive, nor forget.” Álvarez, having found no solace in escaping into college life, drops out to join the run, hoping that using his feet will help him find the advertised peace and dignity.

Noé joins the runners in Canada one month after the start of the journey and feels the effects of being late. The other runners, to whom we are introduced long before the run’s beginning, in the book’s prologue, take some time to warm up to our author. Eventually, once the ice melts, we discover that each of his fellow participants has a story to tell. These individuals become major figures in the author’s experience and come to dominate the book, unsurprising given the reliance they place upon one another in the relay-style, 10-mile-per-day-minimum runs.

The challenges of the run are expectedly intense. The daily physical demands put the author’s body in a near-constant state of pain, especially after he experiences an injury, and the changing terrain presents shifting threats. Unpleasant interactions with non-runners are unavoidable as they pass through densely populated areas. Runners become target practice for rock-throwers and occasionally draw the attention of those with more sinister ideas. Even the runners, though intensely connected with one another, are not immune to in-fighting. The group’s rapport begins to go further and further south as the run does.

Throughout the book, in between presentations of the run and the runners, Álvarez deeply considers what the run represents. He notes, correctly, that the run stood in defiance of the negative connotations of running historically attached to immigrant populations:

Running, I begin to learn the hard way, is a sacred motion - different from the assumptions I had of the act growing up, when the stories I knew were only of migrants running from immigration raids, and mass deportations. That, coupled with my own experiences, back then, of running from street gangs. The motion of running to me meant a defensive act, one that arose from the fear and desperation of a vulnerable people who were running as a means of survival.

The fact that the run, in a powerful way, reclaims the act of running as a positive one, highlights the biggest shortcoming of the book; simply stated, there is not enough of the run in Spirit Run. Perhaps because the logistics are more than fifteen years in the author’s past, readers don’t get to feel enough of the repeated motion of feet hitting earth, but can instead expect the notable highlights as well as the grander lessons that have endured.

These lessons often bridge the gaps of the sometimes sparse narrative. Throughout, Álvarez delivers moments of profound insight as he re-develops his own relationship with the land, struggles to feel at home in his heritage, and, particularly in the Mexico portions, contemplates what his life may have been like if his parents never left. A reverent examination of the spiritual links to oft-trodden ground, Spirit Run stumbles at times, but still crosses the finish line.

—Olive Fellows is a young professional and Booktuber (at http://youtube.com/c/abookolive) living in Pittsburgh. Her work has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.