It was 7° Tuesday morning when I went running. A stark number. I had every bit of flesh covered except for the strip around my eyes. My face was warm with my own breath, my hands and feet warm from running. I love being out on the edge of the day like this. I got to watch the sun rise and turn the frost on the ground from hematite to gold to silver. My breath gathered frozen on my eyelashes and for the length of my run I saw the world framed in ice, wreathed in light. The feeling of seeing like that lingered for hours, the way dreams sometimes do.
* * *
I can’t exactly explain myself, but last week I signed up to run a half marathon. A couple of friends have been encouraging me and I blame them at least partly. Amy offered the goal of a ten-mile race in October, Ashley suggested the half marathon this spring. And because they think I can do it, I want to try. I want to learn what I can do.
This is, I should tell you, not in the usual realm of things I set out to do.
I have dropped in and out of the habit of running for years. Usually I hit a point where I either get too sick or feel too busy to keep it going, but here it is the dead of winter and I am still running.
There are many reasons, I think. I started taking a daily asthma medication for the first time in my life last fall, and all I can say is, I had no idea. What I took for normal lung capacity apparently wasn’t. Then there is the fact that pretty much daily I feel like I cannot keep up the pace of my own life, daily I feel like I do not have the strength. I want to know more about endurance. I am convinced that the physical exercise helps me cope better emotionally and spiritually.
Running is not just a tool for coping or a new-found strength, though. There is something about the time, about being quiet with myself, about the physical connection. When I am running, I can let everything flow—my thoughts, my imagination, my burdens, the world around me. All of it can wash up and over, and I am free to let it happen—to feel it all, name what I can, and acknowledge the rest. I can know that this is me, real and alive, physical and spiritual, mental and emotional—all of it connected and working at once in this quiet, raw way.
Each day has a different personality. I see the sun rise or set, I watch the seasons change, I witness skies that are fiery or stony or beatific. I have run in cold and heat and rain and snow, and all of it mixes with whatever is happening in my head and heart each day. I wish I could explain to you what that does. I admit things I could never admit, I think crazy thoughts, I have epiphanies. I run towards and away.
* * *
The ice stayed on my eyelashes for my entire run until, a block from home, the warmth of my breath made them melt. They felt like tears sliding down my cheeks, except for their coolness. Even after they were gone, though, I carried them with me, let the light drift alongside me as long as I could through the day.
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