Welcome to Running: A FEVER. My name is Michael Davis. This is a podcast about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. If that’s you’re goal, you’re in the right place. We’ll get there together.

Now you can see we are on the Turkey Springs trail at Mt. Magazine State Park in Arkansas. .3 miles. Level of difficulty not specified. So we’ll see how it goes. This is supposed to be an old wagon road, as described. It does look a little wider than the Greenfield trail we did yesterday. And folks, it is cold out here. You can’t tell, we’ve got the sun shining there. It is cold. Now, down in Paris, which is the nearest town, still like 20 miles away or something, it is 51 degrees. Up here on Mt. Magazine — 37 degrees today. Not the coldest weather I’ve been walking in, but it’s pretty chilly. I don’t know what the wind chill is, but the real feel down in Paris is 40 degrees, so I know it’s colder up here because of the wind.

We have a little shelter from the wind because we’ve got trees here, but we also don’t have the sun. I’m feeling pretty good today. I had a little back pain this morning. I took some Advil, and I feel pretty good right now. I thought my legs would be sore from yesterday, but no, I feel fine. It was a pretty steep climb yesterday for me. And a long one, that’s why I’m taking the short one today. And it looks like, so far, it’s pretty level, knock on a tree. I’m wearing gloves today made by master knitter Henrietta Davis, and they are toasty warm, or they will be eventually. It took four minutes for my truck to warm up this morning. It usually only takes a minute in my garage.

This is a lovely, flat, wide trail. I can move a lot faster. And we’re going to Turkey Springs. We’re going to see what that’s like. Probably wet. Maybe frozen over. I had ice on my windshield this morning. I’ve got the hood up, gloves on. I probably should have worn a couple of extra layers. I also don’t have laundry facilities in the house like I did last time I was here. But cabin 13… now it’s starting to get a little rougher. At cabin 13, you can see sunrise and sunset from the back deck at this time of year. I got a video of the sunrise this morning, and I will show you that right now. Beautiful, isn’t it? Oh, that was a big step. Yeah, getting a little rocky here. Pretty tough for a mule trying to get up here, or a horse.

So I did get some still photos of the sunset last night, but tonight I’m going to get video of it, and maybe I’ll show it to you tomorrow, perhaps today. It will look a little more interesting than the Turkey Springs trail here. It’s pretty, the sun coming through the trees. I hope it warms up. Of course, I could have taken this trip in the afternoon, but I prefer mornings. I just keep thinking about the hot tub. Hot tub is on my mind. 104 degrees. It’s going to be really nice.

We do have some wind today. Hopefully, it won’t affect my ability to have a fire this evening. We’ll see. Well, look at that. Some nice colorful leaves that weren’t blown down by the windstorm. It’s amazing. They are big, red, and orange leaves. Lovely. I didn’t think I would see any of that on this trip after the windstorm we had. There’s some over there, too. Look greenish, maybe gold. The watch says I’ve been walking for ten minutes. That should be half a mile on level ground. This may be the springs coming up here. I see some changes in the terrain. Of course, if you were camping up here or something. If you couldn’t get through the mountains. It makes sense you’d come to a spring and maybe set up camp here.

And here we are. I don’t see any trail heading off anywhere else. So this must be Turkey Springs. There’s a little well there, I guess you’d call it. Well, that’s it. Turkey Springs. You’ve now seen it.

Yesterday it was beautiful. Very little wind, blue skies. I say blue skies, and it was blue skies, but we’re actually above the clouds here, so when I looked at the forecast. Not sure if it was for Paris or Magazine, which is also nearby. For some reason, they don’t have a weather station up on the mountain. I would think they did, but they don’t. Either they don’t, or I can’t figure out what it’s named. The prediction was for cloudy weather all week long. And I realized it could be cloudy weather for Paris and Magazine, but not cloudy here because we’re above the clouds, and all we see is blue sky. Except for Monday, of course. The rain was certainly high enough, so there were clouds above us. But yesterday I looked down at the clouds, so there you go. The prediction was for it to get down to 32 on Thursday, a low of 32 on Thursday, so freezing. But if it’s really, let’s see, 51 — live math here folks, don’t use any of these numbers — 51 minus 37 I believe is 14 degrees cooler on the mountain. And that means we’re in for 22…18 degrees is the low for Thursday. I’d better save some firewood for Thursday. Wow. We’ll see. We’ll see what it turns out to be.

There’s another little, uh, what do you call something smaller than a creek? A branch? Bourbon and branch water. But you know what, it feels good. It still feels good out here, once you get warmed up. It’s brisk, crisp, fresh air. Ah, yes. Leaves, nature. This is it. Psychologically healthy, I want to put that in the Medical Department. But you know, it’s really that happy part of the long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. We’re going through the rough area right now. Because, you know, happy is relaxed. Okay, this is that big step. I’ll try to go around it and not get hurt. Lots of rocks here. It looks like some kind of dwelling or nest built by something, but I don’t know. It could just be happenstance. I think some of these little piles of leaves have rocks under them, and when it’s blowing around in here, they cling to the rocks.

So that’s the happy part. You know, we talk a lot about the long part, we talk about the healthy part, we talk about the active part. We don’t talk much about the happy part. Maybe because it can be so elusive, it’s not something you can just read a book on. Although I’m sure there are books on it. And I will probably read them. But they are probably written by psychologists or something like that, but we’ll see. I’m going to pick up the pace here. It looks more like a wagon road, wide and flat, with fewer rocks.

They found a relatively flat part of the mountain here, and somebody found out about the spring, and that’s where they’re going. Now, the trail that goes by my house that we’ve been walking on, and I’ve got some video of, I’m calling the Spring Creek trail because it goes right by the Spring Creek. That’s what it’s named, Spring Creek. It seems unimaginative. When you think of turkey springs, it makes you wonder. Were turkeys roaming around here? They might like mountainous areas. I don’t know much about turkeys. But I remember going to this famous rock in Arkansas. I can’t think of its name; it’s dome-shaped. Anyway, turkeys were roaming all over the place. It was close to Thanksgiving then, too, like it is now. But I don’t see any turkeys here now.

Maybe they followed the turkeys to the springs, so they called them Turkey Springs. Or maybe they brought the turkey up here for Thanksgiving and ate it there at the springs, and that’s why they call it Turkey Springs. Instead of calling it Thanksgiving Springs, it was just turkey. It’s all about the turkey.

Well, coming to the end of the Turkey Springs trail at Mt. Magazine State Park in Arkansas. Remember, if you’ve got the fever, keep it. And if you don’t, catch the fever, and I will see you next time on Running: A FEVER.