Trail Run

Took a trail run at lunch today. 2.67 miles in 40 minutes and some change.



I ran the trail "backwards" today because, well, this hill's been climbed enough. It was time to run down it today. A kind of a victory run, as it were. I needed a little victory run today. Tired of getting my butt kicked. Thought I would kick back today.

Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of work getting to the top and by the time I decided to record this part of the descent, I had already come down quite a ways. And there were two more very large hills yet to climb before I got back to the start. Impossible to get anywhere around here without climbing a hill or seven.

Today I just needed to get out in nature where nothing's in a hurry and everything's on time.

Out on the trails, the only sound heard is the wind in the trees, the birds and squirrels gossiping, the occasional "plop" of someone's fishing line as they hide in the bushes on the banks of a private lake and the huff of an old fat guy running through the woods.

Nature takes it's time out there. Took a gazillion years for every rock to find it's place, for every tree to grow and die and fall and grow again. A terribly busy place for so much to happen so slowly. And everything's right where it should be.

A place where leaves to sprout and grow and flourish and wither and die and fall and eventually find the light of day once as they push out the end of a branch all over again just as they've done a hundred or more tree rings ago.

A place where the Oak and Elm and Sassafras watch the rain peel away layers of earth like an onion, like the skin off some complicated and overly emotional ogre, like scales washing off a dragon who turns out to be an old man with a boyish heart . . . forever refusing to grow up and ancient.