Color isn’t accidental.
There’s a Wicked Trail original quote I’ve shared a few times on Instagram. It goes like this: “Mountains are where weak men and women go to die. Go to the mountains.”
The first time I wrote that short line, I imagined myself atop a mountain, mission accomplished. Often during these daydreams-while-writing, it’s raining. I’m usually alone. I’m always at the top, looking back over the valley and hills and switchbacks that brought me to that peak.
I’m looking over the domain of my adventure, the physical realm I climbed and the intangible battles I fought along the way.
I am atop some throne. It’s an old, wooden throne out in the open. It’s exposed to the elements, to the rain and wind. I’d been there hundreds of times in my mind, reflecting and writing, when this frequent daydream collided with another idea I’d always entertained.
I always wanted to make a purple running hat.
It was the bold color, the daring nature of white mountains blazed on the side, with Comfort Is A Lie written across the front. I thought a 5-panel purple running hat was the perfect home for such a bold phrase, a bold commitment to discomfort.
Purple is bold, it is daring. It has a flavor of commitment, doesn’t it?
Perhaps this ‘commitment’ is the nature of purple: royalty, luxury in some cultures. In others, redemption.
By discomfort we are turned into kings and queens of some intangible, dreamlike domain, a place where our redemption from mediocrity and complacency is heavy breaths, tired legs, and blistered feet. Often times we look over this imaginary landscape during races, hard workouts, or long days working. By our commitment to fatigue and adventure (our unwillingness to bow out in the face of such hardship) we summit those tall mountains.
And upon those mountains we take the throne.
Like I said, it’s an old, wooden thing. It’s exposed to cold rain. It’s knobby and rough.
But it’s perfectly luxurious.
Can you feel it beneath you? Close your eyes.
Welcome to the Wicked Trail…
