Running Towards the Sun

It’s the first sunny day of the month. My body, my heart, my whole being aches to be on a trail, running through sunlight. There is a push and pull to the winter months. Short, grey, rainy days pull me towards lethargy. My body wants sugar, carbs, and a couch. But I know that to endure a west coast winter, I must push myself out the door, even if my mind and body protest, to keep running. And on any sunny day, the imperative is even stronger. Drop what you’re doing, and grab your shoes.

Mount Doug is my destination and I plod up the familiar trails, wheezing from lack of time on these rocky slopes over the last month. While Jenn and I vacationed in Baja I managed to run a few times through the desert like environs, pounding along ridges and hills, shredding my shins, knees and thighs on cactus and thorny shrubs until it looked as if I’d been in a knife fight with a two foot tall assailant, and had lost.

(Some of the rocky hills that made running in Baja so much fun)

But I drank way too much beer, and our diet seemed to include a pound of pulverized avocado ever day, which accumulated around my middle.

When we returned, Jenn fell ill, and I followed (though she got the worst of it), and then I went to Ontario, which kept me off the trails for another couple of weeks.

But this morning there are no excuses, and so I tramp along the track, slanting rays of sun warming my face, and coaxing me onwards.

It occurs to me that I’ve spent more than my share of time this winter mired in melancholia. More than just this winter, really. This last year. I’m supposed to be searching for bliss, I recall, and yet I keep finding blah. The cycles of my life continue to repeat, and time and time again I find myself trudging towards these summits with a tear stained face.

People say to break the cycles, but I don’t think I want to. Instead of breaking them, I’ll bend them, angle them upwards. As this trail I’m on winds through Garry oak forests and out over a rocky bulge that I gingerly run up, mindful of the 100 foot drop to my right, so too must I push the angel of my cycles towards the sun.

Work, family, love: it all comes down to this: every single day is an opportunity to make rich the experience of our precious time on this fragile and fleeting earth.

My body now loose, my head clear, my back warmed by the mornings dazzling light, I push over the summit and back down into the woods again. Its OK to be in the darkness now and again. I know the way. My body intuits rocks, roots, hidden obstacles. What I know for certain is this: my life now and forever is infused with the most extraordinary love I could imagine. I am deeply and profoundly grateful. The love given to me now is the greatest gift of life's myriad offerings.

I will not get in the way of this. I will relax into this ecstasy, this bliss of being loved. I will put away fear, doubt, guilt. I will run forward, upwards, towards harmony.

I will run towards the sun.