Running

There is a sort of magic, an opening up, when it comes to running. Recently I've taken to running at night through the little city nestled at the base of the mountains in which I'm attending school. The city uses a grid system, which is liberating. While you're running, walking when you're tired, you just go. There's no direction, no reason, just a completely free and purposeless wandering through the night. I imagine it's what we felt like back in our High School days (not so far distant), hanging it with friends just to be there, to be somewhere new. You run and run until you feel you've gone where you need to go. You don't have to think about where you're going, no need to pay attention as you twist and turn haphazardly through the drizzling rain. Tonight I found myself right at the foot of the mountains staring up into the dark. It was just light enough, or perhaps it was just the glow of the city at my back, that let me just barely make out the snow-covered slopes through the mist of the low-slung clouds. At that moment, having already run a good three or four miles, I was possessed completely by the desire, the urge even, to strap on a pack with climbing gear and climb up through the rain to the snow-covered peaks. As I turned around and looked over the city I felt I was in some half-way place, some connected spot between nature and civilization, that I had touched the wild again. As I ran back, past my university and through parking lots and apartment complexes I felt myself mentally telling everyone I passed “you have no idea where I've been tonight, I've been somewhere you wouldn't think.” It's the same feeling I get when I travel, when I wandered through the beautiful green hills of Wales when I climbed a stunning, mist and forest covered Glacier in New Zealand and hiked in the wonderful forests of Upstate New York. It was the feeling of going and doing something special, of coming back into contact with Nature. It was the feeling that of exhilaration so great you can't experience it fully until you can go tell someone just how great it was.