run

I'm not exactly a runner, but I've been known to run in between looking at stuff and taking pictures.  I started out walking a few years ago, really just getting outside, and then for some reason, I picked up the pace.  I wonder why it never clicked for me earlier.  At one point in my academic career my entire PE credit hung in the balance as I struggled to make four trips around my high school football field.  I can only say that I thought that I hated to run.  

So it still comes to my surprise that I really, really love it.  I love the crunch of leaves or the smell of pine as I run through woods.  Hurtling headlong down a grassy hill is as close as I'll ever get to being seven years old again in this lifetime.  With my feet and heart and lungs otherwise occupied, my head is free to work out problems or compose haiku about squirrels or -- to become transcendentally empty.  Running is powerful medicine that I have come to crave no matter what the season and I look forward to putting on the GoreTex and fleece as much as I do to shedding it.  I don't think much about miles or time and I stop whenever to take shaky, sweaty iphone pics ... or sometimes just to take in the view.