Snowy Run

I run so I don't run away.

Some days that's true. Most days it's only partly true. I don't know how I made it through the gray Ohio Valley winters before I ran. It was more difficult.

It gets dicey when our road ices up, and the township doesn't do a thing about it. The whole thing turns into a skating rink. And then, much as I need to get out, I have a deathly fear of breaking something and being sidelined.

Chet seems to share that fear. On this day I try three times, and three times I fail to get him to accompany me. He apologizes with ears pasted against his little grapefruit head, wide googly eyes. I am sorry, so sorry. But this is not fit weather for man or beast. I am staying home, swaddled in fleece, to wait for you. 

And he turns tail and heads for the house. His tracks, a picture of canine indecision.

He lowtails it to the house, stands on the porch and waits for me to plod back and let him in. Then watches me leave from the foyer window, his little black and white cowface forlorn but resolute. I won't beg anyone to come running with me. I don't beg anyone to do anything with me. I miss them, but I'm fine alone, too.

I go back out the driveway. Damn, I miss that red oak on snowy empty days, almost as much as I miss her on hot summer mornings. She left a hole in my heart when she fell.

On days like this when our road looks like this I pick my way over this horrible icy mess and

  run the main roads, on the wet salt and cinders. And as I go slowly along I think about how lucky I am to have these landscapes to consider. I think about how much they change day by day, month by month, season by season.

Here's late December.

And as unbelievable as it seems now, here's a Sunday in mid-September.

I didn't mean to plant myself in exactly the same spot. I just stand where the picture happens to be.

It all just blows me away. I wonder how I manage to stay inside for a minute on a sunny day in September. The answer is: I don't. I drink it all in as if it were life itself. Because it is.


As it looks now.

And at dawn in August.

But the cold winter air is life itself, too, and I have learned to appreciate its narrow gifts. December can't give the luscious fruit that September does, but it has its stark beauty. I could paint this scene, oh yes I could. Much more easily and effectively than I could produce a September scene.

The warm crimson of this barn against the silver gray hills, its weathered doors almost a continuation of the color and pattern of the forested hill behind...ohhh.

I have to bring a camera along now and then, especially when the new snow has fallen.

 A hayrake sits out, tines stirring snowflakes.

I decide to climb to an old country church and check out its cemetery. It's not just running, it's aesthetic exercise. Next time...gravestones, and a few more of my favorite things. Snowflakes on mittens and whiskers on kittens. Or something like that.

Half moon on one hand
Sun rising on the other
Twenty-two. Walking.
Ice so treacherous
It could snap bone, and with it
Close-kept sanity.