Running While Seeing

I'm not much of a runner. Running in my old burb was like running on a treadmill -- diligently maintained running path with manicured landscaping, flat as a train rail surface, friendly folks jogging and walking dogs and pushing babies...

The whole scene felt so safe that I was comfortable running blind. Now, in my new world, everything's changing; I'm even using my eyes differently.

In the summer, when we like to fry our eggs and bake our cakes on the driveway in that neck o' the woods, I typically waited until well after nightfall to do my little mile or two. I may be a Morning Girl in attitude, but the same does not apply to my aging joints. Besides, I actually see better (a very relative statement) without my glasses at night, and sans-spectacles is my preferred running mode. Who needs steamy lenses and sweaty noseguards sliding down their face?

That's right -- I, of the Nearly Nightblind variety and clearly dependent during daylight on bifocals, used to run without my glasses.

Besides the physical comfort, the main reason I ran blind was because of the resulting meditative qualities. It's a lot easier to 'om' along the path, or even zone out to the music blasting directly into your brain, when you're not distracted visually. What's the worst that would happen to someone with eyesight like mine? Squash a pile o'dog business?
 
In our new country digs, that's not the case. There's myriad reasons for my new accoutrement, that is, my glasses.

  First, there's The Dog. My sweet Cat-Killing Terrier would really like to get ahold of those darlin little deer in the backyard and my neighbor's chickens smell awfully good to him, too. So he's tethered at every step he takes out either door of this house. It's only fair that we accordingly run him at least once, if not twice, a day.

Running a dog without being able to see just generally doesn't bode well anywhere. It's one thing if I jeopardize my own safety, but it's not fair to run the dog into a parked car. Not that I see that poorly. Yet. Besides, here, the worry isn't vehicular so much as fangicular. (I just made that up.) The snakes (which are reportedly more plentiful this year than ever before) are nicely camouflaged with the dirt road we run. 

I tried to run without glasses this morning. Got down my driveway into the road when I gave up and put em back on. Can't do it.

Realizing yet another lesson in This Is The Way It Is Now, it dawned on me. Everything, in fact, dawned on me, just the way the beams creep over the horizon before you can see the sun. This was more than a matter of constantly pushing slippery metal up the bridge of my nose; running while wearing glasses equals being forced to deal with the input of visual stimuli.

While I have been known to occasionally close my eyes during a good run, I'm sure I've never done it for even as long as a minute. Since a primary goal on these country runs is to avoid canine-reptile encounters, closing my eyes won't serve me very well.

So there I am: jogging along and sweeping the road with my eyeballs, carefully surveying every patch of grey, white, and brown for patterns that merge into a triangular head with fangs or a tail with a rattle. And chanting.

My new runner's vision is occasionally misted by fog. The sun's rays can be blinding when they reflect off the shards of ground shale that make the road here. My silent chants are often disrupted by my mind's intrusions like, "Would ya look at that sunset!"
 
Sure, running while seeing affords me heart-expanding vistas and white light broken into colors through a prism of vapors. But corrected vision also affords glimpses of little deaths, tiny bodies decaying to feed other tiny bodies. And I still don't know what's over that next rise.
 

Comments

[Ginger Uselton]

Our 17 year old Basset mix loved to run. This was despite the fact that she was nearly blind and could no longer smell out things like a hound dog should.

One morning on a run through the park Trudy (our dog) ran as fast as she could over a hill. Sitting on the other side of the hill was a white fuzzy rabbit. The rabbit got scared and ran directly into our poor unsuspecting blind dog.

Trudy jumped back and HOWLED -- She knew that something evil and terrible had hit her. The rabbit looked on curiously, for a bit, before running toward some bushes.

[The Bodhisattva]

Oh, the metaphors, Ginger... Great story -- thank you for sharing!