An old Friend

** Historical post originally published in late 2012 a few months after Micah’s death. An old friend (Mike Havenar) fondly recalls some good times spent with Micah. A wonderful share that offers an insight into why this man became (and is) such an inspiration to us all.**

I met Micah True on the beach at Padre Island in 1979. It was winter but not too cold that far south, and he and me and two others, Angelica Richter and Bill Cody, camped on Mustang Island for a couple of months. Micah and Cody were traveling together in Micah's old blue pick-up with a canvas over the bed, and Cody had taken a chef's job in the motel-restaurant that still is there, but "upgraded" now. I'd met Angelica a week before, and she and I were in the restaurant having a bottomless cup of coffee, when we saw them dining, and somehow all got to talking, and later we ended up in their free motel room to smoke a jay and have a beer.

Micah was running 35 miles a day then with Truedog, a good-natured palamino-toned mutt that, like Micah, never seemed to tire, and always was calm and unmoved, always ready to eat and always ready to take off running down the beach in front of this guy, who was blessed with the most beautiful smile in the galaxy. Micah was a middleweight boxer then, and probably the only longhair in the ring. He could outlast opponents because his wind was superb and because his legs were strong. Most boxers, he told me, run only five miles a day. Whenever he had a match, Cody would sit in the audience and make wolf howls to signal his appearance, and periodically during the fight, he would let one loose. I think Micah billed himself as the Lone Wolf or something, was why.

Micah had according to one account a record of eight wins and nine losses. So he wasn't the greatest fighter in Colorado but he was quick and hard to hit, a dancer, but he could also take a punch and send it back. He had a fast and powerful left hook. I thought it was a tough part of San Jose where he grew up, but a

high school girl friend straightened me out on that by saying that Micah, known to her as Mike, had grown up in a nice part of town, in no way shabby or poor. She said he had the only car of their bunch, and remembered many nice days with him at the beach. He didn't talk much about his beginnings, just that he had a mother in California. She died at 82, only shortly before Micah True was found dead in New Mexico Saturday. He told me in a Facebook message that he was on his way to her memorial service. But he apparently died four days before it took place.

We had a great time on that beach. Mustang Island, a state park, charged $5 a year and a dollar a night to camp. Micah and Cody moved out of the motel and onto the beach for the company and fresh air. There was a big picnic table chained to a concrete pad with good benches and shaded by an overhead wood latticework, and porta-potties nearby. Above the dunes were two large brickhouse bathrooms that must have had 100-gallon water heaters, because on chilly days we could stand under a powerful stream of hot water to warm up, and never run out of it.

I was in a 1962 Chevy C-10 panel truck with a red primer paint job and a missing front fender, but with good tires and an engine that I had totally rebuilt, which I usually slept in; but for this occasion I pitched my tent on the beach and used the van to work as a carpenter, or whatever. Cody pitched another tent, and did his gig at the restaurant every day. Micah sometimes worked with me and slept in his truck. Angelica slept wherever she wanted.

Angelica, who was touring America in a rented station wagon, with a bed in it, had no money worries and didn't need to work, thanks to the generosity of the German government. Her parents had been killed in a plane crash in Istanbul, and the German government therefore was obligated to pay for her and her orphaned brother's education for as long as they wanted to attend school. Her brother was teaching in an Arkansas college, and she had all the time in the world to visit him or any place in the country. She wanted to see it all, and she liked us all. She was always learning English and trying to teach us to speak German, which was a lark. Angelica was as free as a bird, as serious as a student, as pretty as any European model, and a breath of fresh air in uptight Texas. She was well-educated at 23, and curious about everything. She did what she wanted, but always was home for dinner. We had a lot of laughs together, we happy and careless four.

I know. It astonished me even back then, to learn how generous Germany was, compared with our own stingy government.

It was all pretty laid-back. Sometimes I'd get up early and fish the surf. One morning I snagged an 11.5 lb. whiting, and gave it to Cody, who weighed and cooked it and brought it back wrapped in tin foil. We ate that incredible fish through half the night with a case of beer, a few joints, and with a fire blazing of course. It was the best of times. I can still taste that fish. Truedog got his share too. I just learned a few weeks ago and more than 30 years too late that I had caught the Texas record for whiting.

The wind blew hard on the beach, and sand could get in your food. So I tacked two pieces of plywood onto the wooden posts that supported the lattice sun shade, and as the wind changed direction, someone would get up with the hammer and move a piece of plywood to block it again. It increased our privacy, and the picnic bench became like an outdoor living room.

Everybody was smoking boo back then, even in Texas, but you had to be careful, because the law is nothing to openly flaunt in Texas, where deputies take it personally. The way it worked was this: I would come back bearing wasted fresh-cut lumber lengths for the fire from the job; Cody would bring surplus food from the restaurant; Angelica usually showed up with french bread and a bottle of wine, and Micah reliably produced the weed and the best of vibes.

Once some moldy bales of marijuana washed up on the beach, and Micah found one on his daily run, which began about nine and ended about 4 p.m. It was stinking to smoke but it did the job, and soon the stuff was all over town. Micah would run so far that he was in the part of Padre Island where only four-wheel-drive vehicles could go. It is wilder and more desolate of people, and that is what he liked. I used to wonder what he thought about while running so far, because running on a beach is different than on the rugged trail in Gila National Park, where he died. Sounds made all the difference to me when I ran.

The best place to run is near the water, where the beach is hard but wet. As you run, the sound of the surf and the birds cancels out all other sounds except your own breath and the tread of your feet. Micah got me running again, which I had not done since the Marine Corps. I got up to 10 miles a day, after he told me how to get my second wind, by just hanging in there.

"I was running up a mountain on the island of Hawaii," he said, "And I had to stop because it was so hard. There was another runner, and I told him I was done. He said, "no heart." That taught me where the power is, and I became a more serious runner."

Once, Angelica had asked me, "Do you admire him?" I had to think about it, because I wasn't accustomed to that word in relation to a man; and had to answer yes. I admired him very much. There was something about Micah that you couldn't miss or help to appreciate for its uniqueness. His calm and intelligent personality shined through his eyes. He laughed easily, and was pretty well-read. And he was a writer; a better writer than me, which frankly made me a little jealous. How come the guy with the best looks is such a natural writer too? Every word was painful for me, every paragraph a chore then; I was all involved in trying to learn the rules (that I disregard now), and Micah seemed to just sit and write, and it came out exactly like he spoke. No re-writing. One night he read us a story about a fight he'd "lost" to a hometown boy, and what his Mexican trainer had told him after the fight.

"You beat the shit out of him, amigo, but they gave it to him because he's a local hombre. You don't have to worry. Look at him. You kicked his ass, compadre. He knows it." Micah's way of conveying the Mexican's dialogue was so unique that I can't reproduce the exact quality here, or fully make you appreciate how it set us all to laughing; and the story just got better. I can't remember the end of it though.

He was something else, Micah; like a lean Greek god in beachcomber garb with his skin all browned and his hair all gold and russet-colored and flying in the wind, smiling, interested, interesting, confident and helpful in every way; but distant, apart, self-contained but not selfish; and tough-enough; but no bully. No bully at all. Micah was a good boxer, but he was too strong to have to prove his worth anywhere outside the ring. He was a gentle man. He turned up his nose at street violence and macho posturing, and remained peaceable--even when he was so drunk we had to load him like a sack of potatoes in the back of my truck in Port Aransas. He never lost his cool, not that I ever saw or heard. I can't even imagine it.

One day everything fell apart for me. Despite appearances of conviviality, I was down deep an emotional wreck for old reasons. I had a present resentment too, not against Micah, and couldn't live with it. As usual, I decided to take off. I found them in the restaurant and told them that I was leaving and why. I shook hands all around and said goodbye with smiles and regret and went out the door and drove away. I hated to do it, hated to bust us up, we were talking about going to Mexico together in mine and Micah's vehicles, but I didn't want to stay and make it worse.

Next day in Corpus my van broke down. It took me a week to fix it, which consumed all my money. So I moved it under that high bridge to the mainland, camped out there, and looked for another job. I found one on a shrimp boat that paid just enough to get me back on down the road. A month had passed. Just before I headed back to Galveston, I went back to the restaurant for the first time, and the waitress told me that Micah had come back looking for me, only a week before. He, Cody and Angelica had split up in Dallas at Cody's brother's place, and Angelica had stayed with Cody who was going back to California.

Bill Cody was a tall, friendly, talkative, sandy-haired, mild-mannered guy, who loved to get high and read, and loved to cook, and Micah's longtime friend, though he did not run or box. He said he was actually a great-grandson of the Bill who hunted buffalo. He, and all of us, were pretty constant readers. We didn't spend every moment together, and sometimes in restaurants or bars one or more of us might pull out a book and withdraw.

I wrote to Cody a couple of years later when I was living in Greenwich Village, asking him to send me some seeds. He sent them, but they were crushed in the seed-crusher at the Post Office. His letter also said that he had gone on to California with Angelica, where he had been busted in San Jose for possession of pot. He told me that Micah had gone back to Padre Island. I remember that the letter said, "I was in jail for a week, and was really surprised that that chick waited around the whole time for me to get out."

I was sorry to lose track of Micah and never stopped looking for him. I knew about a place up near Big Sur where he and Cody had been before driving to Texas. They had worked in a restaurant. I had the address of the restaurant and of a couple of friends of his, including his Mexican trainer in San Diego, people that I was supposed to look up if I was ever in their area, and over the years, I wrote to them all, asking about Micah, but got no replies. Like me, they had probably moved on.

Like Dylan sang, "Everybody's got to move, somewhere."

Once in the 90s, I don't remember when or why, I was in the Big Sur region, and found the road by the ocean where the restaurant had been. While walking my dog, I ran into a man on the road who told me, yes, he was the guy who had owned the restaurant, named "John's," where Cody and Micah had worked part time, and he remembered them, but not the same way I did.

"You know that guy was crazy," he said. "He was running once with his eyes closed, and smashed into a plate glass window and broke his tooth!" I just laughed, because Micah had already told me the story of his broken front tooth. He'd said he had been feeling so good, that he just had to close his eyes and see what that felt like...

The broken tooth, a perfect imperfection, became part of the trademark of his fine smile, that we'll only see in pictures now.

Once, Micah told me, he had flown to Mexico, and at the Guadalahara airport, with Micah looking like a hippie, a man had approached and offered to sell him some grass. Micah had declined at first, but then the man said, "Purple bud, amigo." So Micah had cheerfully followed him into a field, where the man and two others in high weeds had jumped him. He was pinned on his knees and a man behind him had him in a choke hold, and they were hitting him in the head, but he had one hand free, and he could see the big balls of one of them, so he grabbed them and squeezed until the guy was screaming and out of the play. With his right hand squeezing balls, he got his left fist free and kept punching back until they saw he wasn't going to quit, so they gave up and left; but with his wallet.

"Man! You whipped three guys?" I exclaimed.

"Yeah, but they beat the shit out of me and took my money," Micah said. "My face was all beat up and I was broke. And I didn't get the weed."

It was about 2004 or five; I don't know. I was going through a cancer thing up in Maine, and after it all was over and done with, a friend had lent me his cabin in Windsor, NY, to recuperate. The cabin had an internet connection. One night I was on the net and decided to look for Micah. Within a minute there he was, mentioned in a news article in Denver, where he was rounding up a truckload of winter clothes to donate to the Rarímuri Indians ("Tarahumari") that he loved so well.

I called the reporter who had written the story, and she gave me a lead, which found me his e-mail address. I wrote and asked if he was the same guy I remembered from Padre Island. He wrote back simply, "Yup. That was me." He gave me his website and the next thing I knew I was looking at a picture of the face I remembered so well, and, to tell you the truth, I just sat there and wept for the longest time, because I was so happy to see him again. More than being a great guy, he represented one of the happiest times of my life.

We started writing and he told me that Cody had disappeared. He said that a few years later a detective that Cody's mother had hired had tracked him down to inquire, because Cody hadn't called or been home in a long time; but all Micah could tell him was about the last time that he had seen Cody somewhere.

I learned then that he'd moved to Mexico and about the Indians. He had followed them down there after five of them had beaten mostly the whole field of runners in the Colorado 100-mile marathon, wearing heavy huarachas and laughing across the finish line. They are some of the fastest runners in the world. He gave me his address and told me to look him up if I was ever around. He said that after we all had split up he had boxed more, and won eight straight fights in Denver.

"So they overmatched me with a black guy in California, and he beat the hell out of me. For the first time, I really took eight rounds of punishment. Afterward, I looked at my face and said that's enough. But I got a decent purse for it, so I came down here and built a little house."

As soon as I was stronger and had the money, I drove to Arizona. I saw my old friend Johnny Mo from the Marine Corps, stayed a week at his place in Wilcox, and sold my economical little pickup for $1,500 to some Mexicans, who got a bargain, and said goodbye and got on a bus. I went to San Miguel de Allende for a couple of months, merely waiting for Micah to return to Mexico from Boulder, where he did regular landscaping work when it was hotter than hell in Batopilas.

I didn't like San Miguel much. It was too rich, pretentious, and touristy for me. I was drinking vodka and grapefruit juice, writing in the quietest bars, and smoking cigarettes, after a radical esophogogastrictomy, with no idea of what I was doing to my stomach. One day, knowing that Micah was coming home, I split from San Miguel de Allende and took a bus north to Creel, where you have to pass before taking that long, dangerously-fast and bumpy ride down into the bottom of Copper Canyon.

I stayed overnight in that cold-assed town near the top of the canyon, which they say is 10 times the size of the Grand Canyon, though not as spectacular, and the next morning, with plenty of time for the bus, I went to Creel's only internet cafe. I was sitting at a console when I heard the guy beside me speak, and it was Micah! Ha ha ha ha! We laughed our butts off at the timing. He was as glad to see me as I was to see him. There are people who can bring joy to my heart, and all I can do is love them for it.

I wondered about Angelica from Regensburg.

"I don't know. But I hope she's happily married with a couple of kids," Micah said.

Then I saw him off on the train to Urique, and I took the bus to his place, and rented a concrete room in that thing that passes for a hotel next door, belonging to one Mario, who charged me two American dollars for a plastic cup, that I could have had for 50 cents anywhere in the US. I still have that damned cup, with my name on it, because I paid the equivalent of 20 bucks to Mario, who actually is a pretty good guy.

I stayed around a week or two, hobbling to keep up with Micah's pace, which he slowed for me. My running had ended in Seattle in the early 90s, after I tore out my left ACL. I wanted to at least hike the trail to Urique, but I couldn't even do that. My ankle kept swelling. It hurt like hell. I thought I had sprained it by falling into a hole in a dark courtyard back in San Miguel.

Micah had built a stone and cinderblock house on a small hill about 40 feet above the main (and only) road in Batopilas. A river whose name I disremember flowed swiftly past. You could wade across the current though. On the opposite bank there were a few houses, dirt trails, and the ruins of an old, abandoned mill of some kind. It was silver country once, and the whole region is laced with old tunnels. It was quiet and peaceful, except when the moteros (local marijuana growers with cars) sped their SUVs up and down the one-mile street. They had gotten some Indians to grow for them, because the corn crops had failed in those years, and the Tarahumara had to do something in order to eat, Micah told me.

He had carried every sack of cement and each stone, cinderblock and bucket of water up the steep hill, and with a little help had constructed a one-room house with windows and two doors, one leading to a small side porch, where we sat and had coffee some mornings. It had a desk and a couple of chairs, a tiled floor, a bed and a place to hang a few clothes. Micah ate a simple Indian dish of plain cornmeal mixture in the morning, and usually drank water, before starting off on a run that could go from 10 to 25 miles. Sometimes, Tarahumari who were in town would call on him, and they would sit talking softly in the Rarimuri tongue, which Micah had learned. He had won their friendship and trust simply by being himself, and was a rare outsider in their midst. They are so gentle that they don't shake hands--considering it an intrusion to grasp someone's hand--and merely touch fingers as a greeting or welcome.

His sponsorship of the Ultramarathon in Copper Canyon, his devoted hard work, brought hundreds of good runners to the area over a too-brief span of years, who spent their money in the local economy, learned something that they didn't know about Mexico and Indians, and ran with Micah through the astounding landscape, each race providing tons of free seed corn and beans as donated or purchased prizes, valuable to them, whose traditional crops were dying in droughts. They also won money and even a pickup truck once, by racing against the gringos. Even the stingy Mexican government started sending aid. And Micah's fame began to grow. But he cared nothing for fame, power or wealth. I know this for a fact. He was surprised by the sudden and unsought fame which the book had given him; but then saw how it could further his cause, and accepted it with grace and humility.

Micah was apolitical; but he had political opinions that he sometimes voiced, but didn't argue about. He was against war, capitalism, and for peace and love and respect for nature. He didn't trust politicians or businessmen to do the right thing. He was going to stay out of their games and off their grid as much as possible. But, when he had to deal with them, as we all must, he was cautious and principled.

Once recently he told me about a demonstration at the Nevada Test Site, where he had protested about something. I forget the issue. Micah left the demo and intruded onto government property, which set the police to chasing him. He ran circles around them in the sagebrush desert, laughing and neighing like the white horse of his nickname, "Caballo Blanco." The whole demonstration laughed while he ran close to them neighing, and then galloped away. After several futile attempts to catch him, the deputies gave up. Then Micah ran up to the boundary, and after a brief negotiation filled with goodwill and even some laughs from the cops, they had let him back into the demonstration, without an arrest.

Ha, ha! They would have needed a helicopter or an ATV to catch Micah True!

His name wasn't really Micah True. It was Michael something else; I forget. (See Wikipedia.) He chose the name from the biblical prophet, and because he wanted his life and purpose to be true; to be rooted in truth. He will always be Micah True to us.

Micah was off loping to Urique again, when the pain got too bad to put up with, so I left him a letter and took a long bus ride to El Paso, and a long taxi ride to the Air Force-VA hospital there. When a doctor finally saw it seven hours later, she ordered me to "lie flat on that table and don't move." It was a big blood clot in my femoral area, a Deep Vein Thrombosis, as it goes. Oh well. It's all better now. It put an end to my Mexico dream though. I had wanted to find a cheap place on that long beach from Baja to Patagonia, and just write until I died, hopefully not in pain, while watching every sunset on the way.

But the visit with Micah, and getting caught up again, or simply having a beer with him in the evening at the small flower-shaded cantina there, or eating a good meal in what actually is a woman's home in Batopilas, whom he called "grandmother," and hearing him telling all present with a big happy grin in fractured Spanish, to answer a question why he wasn't married: that he was too macho for most women, who couldn't keep up with him; plus he liked to be alone in nature a lot, and anyway, he had a good girlfriend up north, and why should they ruin a good relationship by getting married? Those moments and others made the whole trip worth it. He was so good-natured and open, so honest and friendly, so unflinchingly faithful to his principles, and so strong and vital, that it makes you wonder why people like him have to leave us so soon. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, he must be a Buddha by now.

Somehow, after being in New Orleans for a couple of years, I ended up in Brooklyn. (I can't convey the irony here.) I was back to driving a yellow cab, when Micah came through on the tour that finally took him all over the country and to Europe, to promote the book, "Born to Run," in which he was a central character in a non-fiction format. I went to his talk at an athletic store on Madison Avenue, and we had a hug and a couple of laughs. I wanted to give him the tour of New York that only a taxi driver like me can give, but his schedule was tight, in the hands of tour managers, and anyway, it was just another big noisy city to him.

That was the last time I saw him

It was a very successful tour. There is no telling where it might have gone. His fame was growing even against his will, runners all over the world had become aware of him, ultramarathons were becoming the thing, he had nearly 5,000 Facebook friends, and he was at the top of his game.

His game was helping the Indians and getting people of good will together. I don't know how anybody could see Micah talk or meet him and not like him. I just can't even imagine it. He was the most beautiful dude I ever met. Many runners and friends, who share his code, are weeping tonight.

I am crying my heart out that he's gone. I know that he died while "running free," the way he wanted it; and that he will never have to suffer the indignities of old age, but it is no consolation for me.