Trail Love

My husband and I are in the moving process and soon we will be living in another town.  Its about 15-20 minutes from where we live now.  Its not far enough to change doctors, or shop at a different store.  However, it is just far enough that it will make it difficult for me to get the park where I currently run every day.

I started thinking about how my days are defined by my time at the park.  In the spring, the parking lots is full of people itching to get outside for the first time in months.  When September rolls around only the self employed and retired are left at the park during the day and it seems so quiet.

After a big rain the trails are flooded and I have to run through mud and over puddles.  After the recent hurricane, there were lots of trees down.   Last summer a big rock split in two and pinned a man underneath it.

I can think back to all the victories I celebrated mentally during a run or all of the hard times I worked out in my had during a run.  Its been a place of joy and of sorrow for me.  Its been my reflection spot.

Every day I drive there with the radio going and get to run under the sun and the trees.  No matter how bad thins may seem at the time, they always feel better after having been there.  I will go back to the park.  Most likely on weekends when I have a little bit more time, but I will dearly miss my daily runs there.

Every day, I am reminded of this quote:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)