January 23, 2010, journal entry, 63 Steps

15 miles.

I have an idea of how long I want to run today. Sometimes I plan for ten but run 13 miles, and other times, I know I will go 13 and yet finish only eight. I believe in the length of my leg muscles as much I believe the deep-breaths running the expanse of my lungs remember what it feels like to go the distance. The feeling of endurance.

I choose to go right and left, to head straight. I visit ancient shaped rocks and my grove of stately oak trees. Their dropped leaves are not only losses, I remind myself as I see branch buds ready to uncoil like ribbon in their quiet vibrancy that lives through Winter. They simply know how to bide their time. That they must bide their time. Endure. Even through warmth’s temporary thaws.

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Hosts of sparrows light from winter bushes and coagulate again within the safety of their green Winter-white playground-like structures.

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The added miles become a deliberate and delicately crafted path much like a delicious red wine’s blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon fine grapes rather than a collection of potluck leftovers.

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A trusted one helps me find my way through roads to a stair-stepped grey hill off a well-travelled road. I have sped past its entrance many times, but today, I turn and face it. A series of grey stair steps, 63 of them, straight up where yellow and green moss curl up in the couch of the grey cement sides, and light leans over its edge like a child’s face peering out a window.





























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I head out the door later in the morning than usual. No rain today. No dark, no mist and sharp-stinging crystals of snow today. I don’t need to pause to scrape my glasses to see my next step and the distance ahead of me. It’s the first time in quite some time on a long run that I don’t squint at some point to find my way.

This doesn’t mean I prefer the later hour over early the morning moment for my run when I consort with the ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning Moon measuring finger-length above my mittened hand I hold out before my eyes. I am drawn to Dawn’s crepuscular light and its confident stillness, where Dark and Dawn blend and merge in the dusk I love.

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Rarely, rarely, do I regret an early morning run although often when I awaken, my closed eyes wish they were fugitive birds hiding in thick dark branches.

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I loved my New Year’s Day run at 5:30 in the morning when stillness became my movement. Everyone was fast asleep, and it was hours before their awakening, yet I ran down the dark middle of a usually busy road, bright yellow lines sporadic like the wax of dripping candles, thick daubs of color.

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Blue darns holes in clouds of sky.

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It has been warmer the past few weeks as Light’s spool unrolls like an unclenching fist, yet darkness IS essential. Buds’ invitation for leaves to unfurl and certain varieties of moths in cocoons rely on the timing of dark and light for their own Spring eclosion ceremonies.

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So today, I honor Season’s Spinning Wheel, and, while listening to the Spring birds’ chanting of seep seep suuu, seep seep suuu, seep seep suuu, I bow to Winter.

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63 Steps through BlackBerry Viewfinder

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The winter moon:
A temple without a gate,~
How high the sky!
Buson haiku

GL, 1/23/2010. Prevail.