In Here Is Our Happy Place, a small-town Wyoming native searches for the wild of New Haven. For skiers, bikers, birders, fishers, trail runners, backpackers; for the people who like the look of a sunset over mountains or a sky through tree branches, or a river in winter.
My runs to East Rock’s summit have become a daily pilgrimage. It’s an inadvertent falling-into; my mind drifts off while my legs carry me north, from the belly of Yale’s campus, down Temple Street, onto Orange Street, and up Farnam Drive. Time moves slowly against this city and its rock, and every view holds the same truths: to the south, the buildings stretch like a great pale hand, reaching out from the blinking blue of the Long Island Sound; to the west, the land bucks and boils and darkens with trees, and at sunset, the sky turns a sweet orange. Some days it’s so hot that the colors blend together, and the park’s great looming oaks turn the air green; on others, it’s so cold that it’s all hard lines, and the leaves on the trails rasp and whisper with every footfall.
It was a cold night when New Haven local Robert Tagliaferi and I ran up East Rock. From the summit, the city glowed a gentle yellow, and the rest of the scene spun and fell into a rumbling black. I took a picture. Tagliaferi did too.
“It never gets old,” Tagliaferi whispered. He and I paused and stood facing the city in a breathy silence.
***
Tagliaferi and I met in the East Rock Market the day before. He bounced about the sunlit cafe, greeting everyone before sitting down across from me. People know him. He’s known the community for a long time.
“I love it here. Especially East Rock,” he said. “Wherever you’re from, whatever community you’re from, it’s just a cool place.” He’s Connecticut through and through—grew up in Bridgeport and Fairhaven, before landing in East Rock in his 40s. He’s 62 now. Still looks like he’s 40. I quietly assume that’s the effect running ultras has on a person.
Ultramarathons are any footrace longer than the standard marathon distance of 26.2 miles. There are “backyard ultras,” which require participants to run as many loops of a course as possible over a set period of 12, 24, or 48 hours; there are 50ks, 100ks, 100-milers, 200-milers, 250-milers; there are races that traverse continents, mountain ranges, deserts, canyons, races that span weeks, races that whittle their runners down their purest selves. Regardless, all ultras are run on trails. They are long, exhausting dances with the wild.
Tagliaferi has run 39 ultras. He’s training for one this spring, a 100-miler in West Windsor, Vermont. It’ll be his first time running 100 miles.
“A lot of people are really dedicated in their religions and faith, but running is a place where I really find connection,” Tagliaferi said. He talks about running with a smile, a glow in his eye, a look of awe. “My friends make fun of me. They say, ‘we’re going to find Rob sitting on a mountain slathering himself in barbeque sauce saying ‘I’m ending it’ and letting a mountain lion come eat him.’”
Tagliateri came into running later in life—he started out with a local half marathon, that later became a marathon, and then a 50k, a 100k, and now, a 100 miler. “Most people would do a marathon and be satisfied for life,” I told him. He laughed. “Most people tell me I can’t do something, and I’m like sure, I’m going to walk on broken glass, you know what I mean?” he said. He’s a relentless man; no—he’s a man of utter devotion.
***
There’s another reason why Tagliaferi was so quickly swept into the world of ultras.
“After I did my first race, I realized it was so inclusive. Nobody cares about your background, or whatever. Everyone’s just so welcoming, of everything. And I was like ‘This is so effing cool. And I just dove into it,’” Tagliaferi said. He scrolls through his camera roll with me, pulling photos from a few of his most recent ultras. Each one is filled with smiling runners—smiling runners in tutus, smiling runners drinking Fireball in the middle of the night, smiling runners caked in mud and rain. “It’s just a party,” he said.
Tagliaferi had been searching for a place like that his whole life. “I always hated cliques and groups in school. It never made sense to me.” He began coaching hockey, skiing, cycling, and volleyball for the Connecticut Special Olympics and Vermont Adaptive soon after he started running; the two fit closely together in his mind. The 100-mile race he plans to run this spring is part of a fundraiser for Vermont Adaptive.
This openness to other people seems to be one Tagliaferi and his fellow runners have inherited from the mountains they spend so much time among. “Running is an escape—don’t get me wrong, this is an amazing place,” Tagliaferi said. I looked out past him, onto the street, where oaks lean in the watery winter sun. “But every weekend, I go away to the White Mountains, in New Hampshire. I know where I belong there. Zero judging,” he said.
Up, on top East Rock, looking out over the glowing streets, the cold night air entered me and wiped me clean. Who I was didn’t matter — what worried me, what scared me, what filled my mind and threatened to burst my skull during the day didn’t matter either. “I have to remind myself,” Tagliaferi said. “Nobody gives a fuck. You’re not even a grain of sand on a beach.”
