HOME

Home is rhythm.

It’s a groggy wakeup - pitting my pillow’s magnetism against cups of coffee. It’s excuses. Too dark, too cold, too hot, too rainy, too dry. My back, leg, toe, hip, groin…. It’s the long dawdle to find bottles, gels - so many gels.

And finally I’m out of excuses. With running vest and crusty morning face, I creep like snail unwillingly to the door. I start a workout on my watch and that’s it - fully committed.

Walk into run. Road into trail. I push into the hills behind my house. Thousands of hours in this place, doing this silly thing. Legs roll, rhythm takes hold and carries me forward. Covering ground pulls me from thought, beyond language, down to something carnal and raw. The simple fact of forward.

From the zen of footfall, I look up. Expectations from a thousand yesterdays wash away, and I find something new. Maybe it’s cloud-slip down the range, or a glassed ocean spanning out below.

And that first taste of majesty hits.

Then, a wild flying descent - right between rapture and wipeout.

This flying, falling, magical rush brings me back to my doorstep. To my family. To myself.

An overwhelming - almost incapacitating - flow of gratitude. That I can run. That I have time.

That I belong to this place.

I come home - I am home.