Running Again

This morning, after taking a ten-day layoff prescribed by my doctor, I began running again.  And what a glorious day it was in Highlands! - Memorial Day weekend, and people everywhere.  I started up Chestnut Street and decided it might be more prudent to run an easy three or four miles, but I paused at the base of Big Bearpen Road and suddenly realized that that was where I wanted run, here on my first run - my sixth day in a row to climb this awesome mountain that has been my friend this past week.

There are four glorious views at the top, and this is the first, to the west:

Then, running counter-clockwise (as on a track), there are the views to the south-west and the south-east, and finally the view looking out to the east on Whiteside Mountain and Highlands Falls.

It felt good to be running again, and I don't think I have lost much fitness, although the six mile run made me feel later in the day as if I had run eight or ten miles.  So walking hard, uphill, is a good way to stay in relatively good condition.

When I descended back into Town, I saw crowds of people on Chestnut Street, walking with cameras and taking photographs of the gorgeous rhododendron at the height of their bloom (which I would have photographed myself except I don't carry my phone while I run).  As church bells rang downtown (it was Sunday morning) I could hear the bagpipes playing, no doubt Dave Landis calling the Presbyterians to worship on Memorial Day weekend.  I thought to myself that those people on Chestnut Street were worshiping, too, as if they were taking photos of famous stained-glass windows in some European cathedral of great antiquity.  Praise God!

As I was adding a little to my last mile, running to the end of Fifth Street past Hickory Street and back, I passed a young woman with binoculars watching birds high in the trees.  "I'm sorry," I said, "I'm probably scaring away the birds.  I'll tiptoe away as quickly as I can!"

"That's OK," she replied.  "They don't take much notice of us down here anyway."