The gyms are closed, but the trails are open, and on Saturday, I laced up my shoes and went for a run. The sun shone brightly (as it does most days now) but the temperatures are still cool enough that snow and ice linger in the longest shadows. Along the warmest, most sheltered sections, I saw a chipmunk scurry across the path into the trees, butterflies fluttering about in golden streams of light, a small garter snake bathing in the warming rays of the sun, and a blue heron lift majestically into the air above the river, flowing parallel. I couldn't help but wonder,"What if we are the infection, and the Earth is just trying to heal herself?"

*****

I am a runner, and have been since my Freshman year in high school. You'll never hear my name in association with winning any medals, or breaking any records or once thought human barriers. But those feats, although impressive and worthy of admiration, do not make one a runner. It's something infinitely more personal and far more simple, and yet, complicated, all at the same time. I run. Therefore, I am a runner.

My legs become restless when they have gone too long between miles. My feet ache as much to feel the Earth rising up to meet them, as they do when she has met them over and over again and again, forming callouses on their soles and blisters on my toes that never seem to heal. For the Earth has never failed to catch me when I fall, as so many others have. And so, I return to her trails, and roads - the scars we have carved into her face - to feel her rising up to meet me, again.

My mind finds more clarity with each familiar step, as I reach my stride, and then

peace as thoughts, which once plagued me, fall away and I am left with only the task of navigating the terrain that lies immediately in front of me.

My heart beats within my chest, and blood flows through my veins, rich with the oxygen my lungs take in with each carefully trained breath. My entire body, makes the transition from my usual momentum to the pace of my run as easily as a fish slips back into the sea, when released from the fisherman's hook. Running is not my second nature. It is not just something I do. It is something I am. It is as much a part of me as the very body which makes it possible. I am a runner.