Y’all. This will surprise no one, but I have been so in love with running these days. I mean, I always like running, but there are some times where I do it mostly because I know I will be cranky if I don’t, and then there are times where it is fully soul-filling and makes my heart want to sing.
I’m in my heart-singing phase right now:) Even on the days where I start bleary-eyed and early and it takes me like 20 minutes to actually settle into things and remember that I can actually do it, I always end up back at home afterwards in the best of moods, ready to take on anything.
In part, I think I’ve been loving it so much because I’ve been running more in Forest Park. That always feels like a wild adventure, in part because of the longer bike commute to get there (i.e. it’s an intentional trip, which makes the whole thing feel more adventurous), and also just because there are so many trails and so many miles just waiting to be run, so much potential.
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(and things like this!:)
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Balch Creek in that picture is usually an itty-bitty trickle that disappears ignomiously underground after it exits Forest Park and is then conveyed by pipe until it dumps into the Willamette River. But these days, swollen with all the rain, it feels like a legit forest river. Which, as I run along it, makes me feel like I am so far away from anything. It’s so easy to forget that I’m in a city, so easy here to lose myself in the birds and fungus and quiet.
Another thing is just that the world is so lovely and peaceful in the mornings, and as it slowly starts to get light earlier I can go for longer and longer runs before it feels like the day starts. Which I know seems weird, that getting up earlier and earlier would make me happier, but when it’s dark till 8am, it’s much harder to get much of a run in (in the daylight, anyway) before I have to be doing other things. Now that I can start at like 6:45 and be able to mostly see already, I can run and run, and it feels like the nicest of spaces just for me, space to zone out and let my mind wander without other folks around and without other obligations yet. I definitely have some of my best thoughts when I’m running, especially in the morning as both my brain and the world are waking up together.
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(this one’s not from a run, but I was standing barefoot in the middle of this road on Sauvie Island trying to find birds, heh. As I mentioned, the world has been a little soggy)
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Anyway. Life is full of early-morning runs in lots of lovely places these days, and I love it very much:)