The Cloud Runners

Today, the first thing you see when you drive into the small town of McFarland, California, is a welcome poster. “Home of the State Champions,” it says proudly. Written across the bottom are the names of the members of the running teams that have brought McFarland nine state championships over the past twenty years. Today, this little farming town is the “home of champions”, but things weren’t always like this.

It all began with a group of seven young men, who were McFarland High School’s first running team. They were called “cloud runners” because it looked like they were floating on a brown cloud of dust as they carved paths through the surrounding fields.

They weren’t a very good team. But the turning point came one hot summer afternoon when the young men were doing hill practice. As there were no hills in McFarland, their coach, Jim White, made them run up and down large piles of nut shells covered in white plastic sheets.

“Enough!” one of the young men cried. The sound of breaking shells could be heard as he beat his fists on the sheet. The plastic tore and a river of nut shells poured out. “Do you know what these are, Mr White? They’re almond(巴旦木)shells. Do you know where they come from? My family has been working on farms picking almonds for forty years. You and your family, living in your big comfortable home, eat these without giving a single thought to where they came from. And now you are making us run on them! I’ve had enough!”

“We’re losers, Mr White, not winners,” another young man continued, his face wet with tears and sweat. “Nothing has changed here for forty years and nothing’s ever going to change! Running is for rich kids in private schools in the big city, not for us poor farm boys. We can’t even afford real shoes for running. We belong in the fields, picking. We’re ‘pickers’. I’m going home!”

Something in Jim White’s heart changed that day. He went into the fields and worked with the “pickers”. He bought running shoes for the boys. He spent evenings having dinner with the boys’ families. His wife baked and sold cookies to raise money. One small act of kindness led to another. Other families began to take notice, and slowly, the entire town came to support Mr White as he helped these young men change from farm workers to champions.

A nine-year-old kid was sitting at his desk when suddenly there was a puddle（水潭、泥坑） between his feet and the front of his trousers was wet．He thought his heart was going to stop because he couldn't possibly imagine how this had happened．It had never happened before, and he knew that when the boys found out he would never hear the end of it. When the girls found out, they would never speak to him again as long as he lived．

He prayed this prayer, "Dear God, I need help   now! Five minutes from now I'm dead meat!" He looked up from his prayer and here came the teacher with a look in her eyes that said he had been discovered．As the teacher was walking toward him, a classmate named Susie was carrying a goldfish bowl full of water．Susie tripped （绊倒） in front of the teacher and dumped （倒） the bowl of water in the boy's lap．The boy pretended to be angry, but all the while was saying to himself, "Thank you．Lord!"

Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy was the object of sympathy．The teacher rushed him downstairs and gave him gym shorts to put on while his trousers dried out．All the other children were on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk．The sympathy was wonderful．But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his had been transferred （转移） to someone else+—Susie．She tried to help, but they told her to get out．

When school was over, the boy walked over to Susie and whispered, "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Susie whispered back, "I wet my trousers once, too!"

Flora always had an adventurous spirit but in 2020 she began her biggest adventure yet.

Born and raised in the Minnesota, she also lived in Bahrain and Egypt and moved to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in 2002. As an enthusiastic hiker and mountain climber, she had struggled to find like-minded people to trek (远足) with her, so in 2011 she started a weekend hiking group. A few years later she turned it into a business called Flora UAE Trekkers, running weekend hikes while she continued teaching English in the week. When she lost her job in 2020, she decided to focus her energies on Flora UAE Trekkers, which has now attracted 50,000 followers on social media and offered guided hikes to over 80,000 people.

No longer working a nine-to-five at the university, she regularly wakes up at 3 a.m. on weekdays to lead treks around some of the most breathtaking scenery surrounding Dubai. She even offers a specialist sunset hike across the Liwa desert in Abu Dhabi — used as location for filming Dune: Part Two. “I knew that I wanted to create something that encouraged people to get outside and explore what Dubai had to offer outside of the city. From there, it rocketed,” Flora says. “A lot of people in Dubai don’t know there’s anything else outside the city and that   there’s so much nature here.”

However, the road to success was not always smooth. “Our early challenges were to overcome the stereotype (偏见) of what a hiking guide should look like,” Flora says. “The stereotypical guide has physical strength and places an emphasis on hiking as a tool to improve your fitness, physique and speed.” Going against the grain, Flora employed current and former educators as well as mothers, like herself, as guides. “We really wanted to remove   that competitive atmosphere and satisfy all levels, not only for the strong.” Flora says.