5.38 Miles, 59 degrees and gorgeous.
Happy Solstice. Hug your inner pagan. What could be more pagan than running in the woods with your dog? I have said that Buddy is my spirit guide. Some cultures believe in spirit guides. Mine is an old border collie.
I told my oldest daughter Katie last night that it was the solstice and she would have to get busy building a henge so that we could paint ourselves with ocher, build a big fire and dance about. She said she didn’t have time for that; she had to work.
In our early agri-proto-civilizations this was the time of year when such things could be built and celebrated. Mid-summer was a lull in the pastoral labor. The crops were in the ground. Now was the time to beseech the panoply of pagan gods for rain and sun and fertility.
The woods were nice and cool this morning. I felt a bit tired, but not too bad. Buddy was fine but he was lagging behind, busy with his own investigations, running his own old-dog race.
I passed that same woman from earlier in the week. She was running with her Golden retriever. I warned her that somewhere behind me was a deaf, old border collie meandering down the trail at his own pace. She seemed to be happy with that.
She’s a strong runner. About my pace. Good form. Strong.
Coincidentally our paths converged later in the loop. When I say converged I mean just that. My path merged with hers coming in from different trails at the exact same time. I think this made her nervous. She tried to distance me and I tried to let her go, but her dog and mine insisted on stopping to wallow in the same brook.
Her pace was about the same as my morning pace so it was hard for her to get separation on us. I pulled back a little and let her get some ground. Then our paths diverged as she went off one way and I back to the house to drop the dog.
I thought about all the people I have run with. Literally hundreds of thousands. And I thought of how Buddy and I had cut these trails from the forest with our feet.
Maybe today, on this mid-summer’s morn, buddy and I are the faeries. Maybe we are the spirits that haunt these woods in the thin places. Maybe this is where our ghosts will roam, hopefully with benevolence.
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
Cheers,
Chris,