Looking Down at Stuff--and It's Boring

I noticed this evening while I was running how boring the world at your feet is in the winter. Snow and ice and sidewalk. Oh, and a pair of white socks about 10 feet apart. Near the middle school, discarded pieces of homework assignments half-melted in the snowbanks. If you get a fresh snow you might see some rabbit, squirrel or deer tracks cross the path. And light, why do I feel it is always leaving, like something, a glimpsed object, only there in the corner of the eye and gone when you turn.

Boring! I need more. I need to feel that thrill of surprise for what lies in my path.

And because I spend a lot of time in the winter months with my eyes cast down, just for the safety reason, this starts to get to me near the end of January. You can't hardly find a pretty leaf on the ground these days, though if you do and you aren't paying close attention you will slip on it and end up on your a#@!

In the nicer months, where trails in woods and parks and meadows are walkable and runnable, there is a plethora of the most interesting "stuff" just lying there, waiting, for me to see it or even stop and pick it up. I am not opposed to adding a bird feather to my hand during a run. I may even stop and look at an interesting track in the sand and mud. Admiring a wildflower or weed growing in or near the trail may be worth stopping or pointing it out to my wife for that matter. Usually, I don't stop as my wife makes me run in front when the trail is only able to accommodate single file. Sudden stops can cause a collision. I tend to be a lot like Doug the dog in the movie "Up". I'm running along and "Squirrel" will take over and seize my mind. And if you haven't seen that movie, rent it and you will understand. My wife and running companion tells me to run in the lead because she tells me I set the pace better, but I really think she thinks I would be distracted while looking at her butt. I will have to convince her it is for "safety" that I pull up the rear of the run.

Missing also from the landscape in the winter months is the animal life that is abundant the other three seasons, snakes sunning themselves in the trail, small mammals scurrying through the edge grass and lots of different bugs. Some of those bugs end up in the nose, eyes or mouth requiring picking, spitting and poking removal techniques. Deer will stand and watch you run by with that curiously scared attitude they have. Cold, hibernation and snow rob me of most of those interesting encounters. The deer seem to always be around, just not where we are forced to run when snow settles in many inches on the ground. I even try to look at the sky but that is painted by about three colors in January. Generally gray, then a slightly darker shade of gray and finally a lighter shade of gray boringness(I made this word up).

So please, Persephone, rise from your time spent in the underworld with Hades and return to thy mother Demeter, so the goddess can release the Earth from the great dearth put upon us during the months of your absence. What I really mean is I need spring.