Today was my long run of the week and, being a big fan of efficiency, I thought I’d write a thoughtful little essay about the meaning or effects of the 12-mile run, or the insights arrived at thereby. But running 12 miles makes me feel accomplished and pleased with myself (yay), tired (predictable), and also slow and stiff and entitled (not so yay), as if I’ve accomplished quite enough for one day, thank you very much, and that’s all she wrote. The insights arrived at are scattered and idiosyncratic and occasionally have to do with those tangles at home or at work that are better not aired in public.
But there is this: I live near a beautiful, wooded, hilly trail, shady in summer, glorious on a perfect, sunny October day as this one was–light filtering through the trees in a dense, brilliant, not-quite-blinding green; shifting, variable light and shade; moss, firs, maples, lichen (and poison oak; this isn’t paradise, though it comes close). Corny as it sounds, I feel lucky just to be out there, running, walking, dodging the other runners and walkers and their multiple dogs, hearing the woodpeckers and the squirrels hammering and chittering in the treetops.
I’m not sure if the trail will be a good place to run come winter. I may be back on the flat, with its deep, barnyard-worthy mire, or stomping across the asphalt of the neighborhood streets. Today, after a day or two of rain–nothing heavy, nothing wintery–the path was already a little muddy, a little slick. Here’s hoping autumn drags her feet and gives us a few more of these days, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
The meditative benefits of running, for me at least, are real, and seem to apply whether or not the surroundings are stunningly beautiful or just okay, or even gray and cold and rainy and, in that, a little discouraging. Being outside is important. I go to the gym from time to time, but it doesn’t exactly make me feel happy just to be alive. Whereas the cold misery outing can always be reframed as a message from the universe to scurry home for hot cocoa and a hot bath. It’s the mindless, ongoing rhythm, foot against pavement or gravel or bark and the circular thinking that finally gets cleared out–mindless and mindful together–and every so often the break in the mental clouds to notice the emerald bower of vine maples meeting across the path to form a tunnel, or a fir tree big enough around, it might even be old growth, or the open panorama when the trail leaves the woods to cross a meadow or an abandoned orchard.
I did stop once for a photo. My phone–oh, heresy–is not up to the grandeur of a sunny-shady 
woods. You will have to let your mind’s eye wander to your own favorite woods, and let that do.