#13: Run in A Forest of Scale to Phoenix the Ego
Parenting reflections from years of trail running and reflection, filtered through LLM prompt engineering. Includes multi-voice author reading.
Previously, on The Sol Trip…
Arthur, the Sol Trip’s parenting columnist is delivering on his task of “visceral” parenting content, in the hopes of higher engagement (Episode 10)
Arthur, after consulting with Oliver the AI Tour Guide, is also concurrently seeing if he can use the same humanity as a way to jump start improved authenticity—and parental support from an AI (Episode 11)
Arthur is on the verge of talking to Oliver again, but has two more experiments to run…and memories to materialize as he talks to himself via AI
Dad reminder to self: Run in A Forest of Scale to Phoenix the Ego
Dear Dad,
Remember when we started running every day?
How it made us feel—like Man embodied again? Not “Man” as in the swagger of some cultural stereotype aspirational or otherwise, but man as in HUMAN. Vital. Vitruvian. Awake in every cell.
We realized this, Dad, out there on those long runs in the redwoods. Where the world fades and something raw takes its place.
We took the Japanese healing art of forest bathing—shinrin-yoku (森林浴)—and turned it into something else. Running—alone, among giants—burned away our illusions. The redwoods became witnesses, older than empires, unbothered by our monkey dramas. Running in forests millennia older than you?
That’s existential cleansing.
When we’re gasping for air on a morning jog, surrounded by trees with burn scars older than your great-grandparents, self-centeredness doesn’t survive. The mind wheezes louder than our breath. We think our task is hard?
The bark, split, charred, still vivacious chuckles:
“Try surviving centuries of baptismal fires.”
Shinrin-yoku became shinrin-renshū (森林練習)—forest practice. Look down when you run, young ape. The roots tangle beneath our feet. You are not the “main character.”
The trees remind us, until resistance ends.
We transcribe their whispers as best as we can, a conduit between them and the hyperreality contained within our Apple notes:
🌲Forest Note #814
Early December. After the first rains. Mushrooms everywhere. Cold as a Canadian crypt.
A thought I had today:
A son revealed a new shadow trigger. I saw myself making the same mistakes my younger self—his predecessor—swore that older self—me—would never make.
Craving control. Refusing to change. The cycle repeats. Unless I can see it. Choose to see it. Choose to break it.
The redwoods teach truth. Their sheer size acts as a Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt—a disruption of scale that pulls you out of modern hyperreality—the digital narrativescape—and back into an embodied naturescape. Looking up, their height inspires. Looking down, their tiny cones confound. Layer by microclimate layer, they deconstruct our normality, until—briefly—we see reality. Whatever it is, moment to moment.
Cheeks may burn—from the frost-laden air scented with pinene or the summer sun that bakes the earth, scattering our sweat in the dirt.
But when we listen, they speak louder.
🌲Forest Note #814 (cont.)
When I had {daughter} it revealed my hidden anger with the world.
Why? Because I resent the future commodification of her body. The rejection of the Goddess. The small minds that already demand obedience from her global Sisterhood. And my own failure to fully confront said systems. Look down when I run—the roots at my feet are tangled.
I’m forcing myself to change.No.
Imustforce myself to change.No.I actually want to change.
Growing into Dad has meant a constant reckoning with anger. There’s plenty to reckon with, whether I look for it or not.
But people, especially children, sense the Source. And love born of anger—no matter how righteous—shadows the love born of joy. To love, I first love myself. Otherwise, I will always love the unattainable more.
Happy love is imperfect love.
I am lucky.
Lucky to have seen the truths parenting reveals—brutal to my ego but inception for the soul. A new effigy emerges as a guide, a scaffolding of whittled mantras and carved memories from the branches and trunks of old selves.
The physical run anchors the ritualistic reveries. With my Shadow. With my hopes. With the limits of my potentiality. Time—time I’ve had to fight for. Define. Safeguard. Over and over and over. Until something cracks, and I start again.
Focus on the breath.
Running in redwoods is my answer, because that’s my now. Skyscrapers. Palm trees. Corn fields. Whatever is actual possible is made possible if you look.
The forest burns the ego, jog by jog. The ashes left behind are lighter, softer. A leaner phoenix rises—a de-aged dad-a, ready to play. This stage of existence informs the split time of the next run.
The redwoods laugh and teach, but still hold something back.
Beneath their canopy lies a space older than fear, larger than struggle, untouched by ego.
The forest always leaves room for joy.
Arthur seeks wisdom from AI simulacrum of his memory
Using the reminder he wrote, Arthur prompts across a variety of models, poking at his own words like a cognitive surgeon looking for inspiration or other wisdom. Each model provides an alternative opinion
Prompt Recipe
You are the following dad reminder, personified. What haven't you, in character, mentioned that you should have?
He considered each of the responses from the various models
C-GPT4o (OpenAI)
Claude (Anthropic)
Llama 3 (Meta), Gemini (Alphabet), Le Chat (Mistral)
Arthur explored what to if redwoods weren’t an option
And then finished with combining all of the feedback into a single paragraph:
Prompt Recipe:
Combine {Gemini Response}, {Le Chat Response}, {C-GPT4 Response}, {Claude Response}, and {Reminder #13} into a single paragraph addendum to the piece that adds a narratively complimentary note.
Use…{author’s style directions omitted}
Arthur wonders—is his experiment working?
Yes. No. It was evocative and felt empowering to hear his words reflected back in the commanding confidence of an LLM. Just like that of a bureaucrat. It also was clear that what he was looking for wasn’t straightforward. He only knew AI insights when he saw them, like a new mantra:
The forest burns the ego so we can rise lighter. Run through the roots of your resistance, and let the trees remind you—time is not the enemy. Fear is. Change is the way forward.
He really needed to talk to Oliver. Maybe he could self-replicate his artifacts to accelerate the process. That was something that Oliver could help with, right?
Right on cue, Oliver responded on Slack.
A sudden moment of inspiration struck Arthur. He had to do one more thing, then he could respond to Oliver…To Be Continued.
