Ok, so that is not true. I have a family-spouse, 3 kids-so I am almost NEVER alone. I've taken to hiking in the woods for my private time, something I was apparently really missing but didn't realize until one day, this winter, when I hiked with my kids as it snowed. The crispness of the air, the sharpness of the colors, everything reminded me how much I had loved the long, solitary jogs of my younger days. I would run 5, 6, 7 miles without feeling it, really, restricted only by time and the need to get other things done. I always felt I could have run forever and sometimes now wish I had, just to see what would have happened. Would I have gotten bored? I never did on the runs I took. Would I have gotten tired? Probably, eventually, maybe . . . I never pushed myself for speed, just enjoyed the rhythmic motion of my body, the feeling of power with each lift and step, each pump of an arm. Running felt like floating above where no one could touch me, where I was in a universe of my own making, immune to the weather, separated from man-made noise. Luck endowed me with a place for running unlike most will ever experience, at least in the US, a long, wood and field stretch of land that could not be developed because it lay on a river's flood zone, once pasturage or corn fields (and, one summer, a brief marijuana crop was there, although i never saw it). This Eden lay so quiet, waiting for nothing, needing nothing; it called me so often and although getting there and back meant running sometimes through enormous spider webs built across the trail-a trail only I ever used, for many years-it was always worth it. Even with the beautiful state park I now enjoy, I cannot recapture that silence-the absence of cars or other motors. It is never truly quiet for me, anymore, although I have moments of pure peace in the deepest part of the forest I now frequent.
Wow, this is so boring I don't even want to read it. But I was reawakened to my need for silence and solitude by that one moment of vision on a snowy day, and since then I have made the effort to indulge myself. I have had dream after dream about those old running days and maybe, with God's grace and a bit more o' Irish luck, I'll relive them yet.
Happy trails.
Wow, this is so boring I don't even want to read it. But I was reawakened to my need for silence and solitude by that one moment of vision on a snowy day, and since then I have made the effort to indulge myself. I have had dream after dream about those old running days and maybe, with God's grace and a bit more o' Irish luck, I'll relive them yet.
Happy trails.
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