Correre con il branco

Mark Rowlands has been running and training for most of his life: for him, philosophy and running are closely linked. On the threshold of fifty, dealing with a mid-life crisis and an imminent marathon for which he has practically not trained, Rowlands finds himself thinking back to his most memorable runs in the company of his inseparable "pack": the wolf Brenin, the dogs Hugo and Nina, the wolfdog puppy Tess. From his childhood in rural Wales to running along the beaches of France to the hills of Ireland and the forests of Florida, Rowlands has learned that running does not necessarily have to serve any purpose but is an activity that has value in itself and that allows us to understand what things give meaning to existence, as well as an inexhaustible source of philosophical ideas and food for thought. Ironic and passionate, Rowlands weaves into his memories the meditations that running inspired in him on existence, aging and death: with the help of Sartre he will make us understand why running makes him feel free; because running is play, and therefore the antithesis of the fierce American work ethic; and in what sense it embodies what Plato called the form of good, the most precious thing. And, above all, he tells us why doing it at the pace of his pack has brought him closer every time to the purity and essence of wild nature, allowing him to forget, even just for a moment, the obligations and superstructures of everyday life, to rediscover the value depth of existence: a sense of freedom and fullness which, it reminds us, has always been within us, but which adult life has made us forget. «Running is a space where I can remember. Not other people's thoughts, but what I knew long ago, but was forced to forget as I grew up and became a person. I knew, even if I didn't realize it; and in this I was identical to everyone else. Running is a place of remembrance. And it is in this place that we find the meaning of the race." The philosophy of running and everything I learned from the wild nature.