Big Foot's Big Love for Nature

I may have big feet, but they don’t really bring out the sportsperson in me…

I may travel, but I never really get outdoorsy…

When I make a trip, I have only two purposes – one to go in search of myths, legends, folklores, just about any kind of stories, another to gather my thoughts while I bask in the beauty of nature. In fact, those purposes are so strong in me, that when I travel for mere fun, it is oddly unfulfilling!

So when I told my parents I was taking off to Coorg, yet again, merely a week after I was back from my first solo trip, and that too, to run a trail of sorts, they were dumfounded. Here I was, their never-a-sports-girl-always-locked-up-in-her-room-writing-something daughter, suddenly announcing my interest in wanting to “run a 10K nature trail” 

that Amway Nutrilite was conducting in Coorg on a Sunday.  

You see, my interest in this activity all rested on the ‘nature trail’ part of it. The ‘run’ part barely mattered. But just in case, I did practise a one hour walk-and-jog (more walk than jog) exercise in the night in the preceding week. And my muse for this unexpected enthusiasm for a 10K run? The trail that was to be run: amidst coffee plantations, past waterfalls, crossing rivulets, climbing steep and rocky hills… And no, none of these brought out any kind of sportsmanship in me; they simply teased the writer in me, making my eyes yearn to see them all.

After my Big Foot and Big Bore episode and my Big Foot Spirit episode, I didn’t quite know where to place Coorg as I had barely seen it. But with this nature trail run dangling, tantalisingly, like a carrot, in front of my eyes, it seemed like Coorg wasn’t done with me, after all…