Orcasional Musings | Are the Olympics coming to Orcas?

||| ORCASIONAL MUSINGS BY STEVE HENIGSON |||

Wednesday afternoon, Jean and I wandered over to scope out Orcas High School’s new running track. We were very deeply impressed by what we saw. It looked as if it were ready for the next Olympics.

First of all, there’s the track itself. It boasts a grabby and resilient, dark red surface which even seemed a little bouncy when we tested it. We thought that the surface might be made of recycled rubber, maybe from old tires. The six running lanes are clearly marked in silvery, reflective white, and other various points around the track, where starts and stops are to be made, are coded in blue, green, and yellow. There are two separate sets of distance-compensating starting lanes as well.

There’s space for a couple of grandstands, a place to put equipment that’s ready for use but not yet required, and a gravelled, rectangular hole that will probably become a jumping pit. The whole thing is surrounded by a “please keep off” fence, not high enough to be forbidding, but obtrusive enough to be a good reminder. The track is supposed to be used by the entire community, and, when we were there, two Orcasians were indeed using it.

The new track encloses a central field, appropriately sized and equipped for both football and soccer. In order to accomplish that, a whole lot of dirt had to be dumped on one side of a hill, and then tamped down hard, to level the huge space out. The one thing that puzzled us was how football and soccer players were going to cross the track to get to the central field, without tearing the track surface up with their cleats. Shoes off?

We knew someone who was a track-and-field guy in high school and college, and who continued to run during the rest of his life, for pleasure, for health, and for a quiet time for thinking. He was of the opinion that track-and-field sports developed better people, and he thought that all high schools should have running tracks.

Well, he should’ve seen Orcas High School’s new track. He would’ve been impressed. So we stood there, ourselves too old and decrepit to take a lap at any meaningful pace, thinking about our running friend, and marvelling at the Olympic-class track that all of us Orcasians will now get to use.