When Nature Calls

The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being shore to the ocean- Holding the curve of one position, Counting an endless repetition. - Robert Frost

…You need to answer. That doesn’t mean what you think it means.

I took a sunrise run this morning, as I do many mornings. Call me shallow, but I like the way my girlish figure looks from running. I know running stresses my joints, robs me of flexibility, is not an activity I will not be able to maintain as I age, and takes time away from other varieties of exercise. But I don’t care. I do it because I love the physical, mental and spiritual results.

OK, stop rolling your eyes; I am not going to talk about that “runner’s high” or how I am training to complete some sort of quadrupalathon or anything. I am the one that all of those kinds of runners pass in the first 30 seconds of a race. The one with my earbuds in, singing out loud, embarrassing everyone around me. I am the joyful one, and do you know why? Because I get to be outside.

Let me tell you about running this morning. It is August. It is steamy and hot and I am blessed to live at the edge of the earth on the Atlantic Ocean. I put on my crappy old sneakers and my ratty running clothes and ran for 2 ½ miles along the boardwalk. The sweat kept dripping into my eyes and I had to concentrate on my breath to maintain my speed in the humid conditions. Some days are harder than others, and today I was counting the steps, the songs, the tenths of a mile until I could be done. And the whole time, the ocean was whispering to me.

The reward at the end of this small, but meaningful little struggle to accomplish my goal was the soft, cool, salty ocean. Run finished, shoes off, iPod on the sand, a fearless dive into the ocean. Running clothes and all. I didn’t think about whether or not I had a towel with me, or the fact that I wasn’t in a bathing suit, or even the look of the other runners around me. I couldn’t. Nature was calling. I had to answer.