Friend on Facebook left a comment on a status update I’d posted as I was getting ready for an early morning long run suggesting “you witness a world most people don’t ever see on your early morning sojourns.” I don’t know what other people see, but I responded with a bit of what I’ve seen while running (mostly in the early morning, though some otherwise). Thought I’d share it here as well:
“I have seen some things… I came around the corner on a trail once and startled a fox. We ran together for a couple hundred yards before he veered into the woods. In the city, on the patio of a restaurant on Elm Street, I saw a hawk with his talons dug into a bloody pigeon. He glared at me balefully as I ran past about three feet from him; he never moved. I’ve seen a strange man with a gun. I’ve run past frozen marshes five miles from nowhere just as the sun came up and turned the hoar-frosted cattails into diamond-crusted staves. I’ve climbed hills above the city, and just at the crest, with lungs burning and a full on endorphin rush engulfing me, seen shafts of rising sunlight explode above the ridge of the valley, over the mills and stacks and the river, and felt for instant like I was connected and placed perfectly in the universe and in relation to the God who created it. But a lot of days it’s just running. I never expect anything and am always happy when it comes.“
Tags: Running
Beautifully written. I have had some similarly odd and wonderful early morning experiences, but I doubt that I’ve ever described them as vividly.
Thanks Frank! Given your weekly mileage, I imagine you’ve seen much, much more…