Chasing the Grid

After a successful career on Wall Street, the Catskill Mountains beckoned. In Chasing the Grid, author Kenneth Posner, a seasoned corporate worker and intrepid but non-elite runner, sets out after an ultra-distance mountain-running record which nearly destroys him. Along the way, he stumbles upon an obscure peak-bagging tradition known as the "Grid," which becomes his new obsession. The Grid is a project where a determined athlete must run, hike, or climb a list of peaks in every month of the year, the purpose being to get to know the mountains intimately, in every season. For New York's Catskill Mountains, where this story takes place, the formula requires more than 400 separate ascents. For Posner, the Grid turns out to be not just another running challenge; it's a pilgrimage. It offers a retreat from the spirit of modern running, often reduced to a one-dimensional activity driven by ego and moderated by clocks, in favor of how our ancestors moved through nature in days gone by-purposefully, patiently, and mindfully. Posner emerges from the experience as a radically different kind of runner-now running barefoot across trails and shirtless in the winter, leaving behind food, water, lights, navigational gear, and even bug spray. By following Posner in his quest to complete the Grid, readers will feel sandstone fragments under bare soles; pad across a bed of moss as luxurious as a Persian carpet; squelch with him through cool black boreal mud; dance across snow and ice; and participate in discoveries about the passage of time, the energy of nature, and the sense of self.