Meeting Winter

Last weekend I tucked away my journal articles, I left the dirty dishes and the carpet covered with cat hair, I packed up my computer and I drove four and a half hours North through the golden leaves to meet Winter on his journey to Minneapolis.
It had been so long since I had seen the quiet and mysterious blue of Winter that walking out into a snowy dawn felt somewhat like discovering the tracks of a Bigfoot. Friends in the cities widen their eyes in polite amazement when I tell the story of waking up to run the Whistle Stop marathon in Ashland, WI and discovering an October snow.

The reality of winter is just as elusive to them as it was to me. Winter painted slowly over the long summer days is a gentle creature, with soft fur and rosy cheeks and a warm chocolate laugh. Winter painted in the eve of February is a viscous unforgiving beast, with heavy eyelids, scratchy wool and a runny nose. Last Saturday morning my lungs drank their first sip of cold air while I stood smoking my breath in the society of a thousand runners who wore numbers and arm socks. We all danced a few hundred precious calories away just waiting for the start, and we stood awkwardly close together, desperate to absorb some heat.

The trail on which we trotted, scrambled or scuffled the entire 26.2 miles was not the soft, forgiving, yet compact ground I had been dreaming about. Recent rain and joyriding tires of teenage four wheelers had made a loose beach out of our route. We filed into the tent at the finish line, one by one, collapsing onto the shoulders of those whose faces we would never remember. I sat on the pavement by one of the tent posts, and a woman rushed to my side.
"Are you okay??" she asked.
"Yes" I said.
"Then would you mind sitting on this bucket?" Out of nowhere, a giant white bucket, with dirt stained circular rings was hovering inches away from my eyes.
The woman's features were large and distorted. She looked worried. Was she worried about me? No,the tent. She feared I would knock down the tent. I must not lean on the post. I must...but it feels so good to lean..just a little...Suddenly I came to my senses. I pulled myself off the ground and reached for a sugar cookie from the table. I decided I needed to focus on something besides my own pain.

"HI!" I said, in a half manic shout fueled by false energy to a group of older masters runners sitting on buckets. "I'm Emily" I said, popping a miniature doughnut into my mouth. "Am I hallucinating or is that a heater you are sitting in front of?"

"wha?? I didn't even notice the heater haha" one of the runners said. "Please, pull up a bucket!"

The rest of the afternoon flew past. I forgot about missing my goal of running a sub 3:15 marathon while reveling in the joy of the 60 year old man who had just qualified for Boston for the first time. I listened to the sad story of the woman who had to drop out, regretfully, at mile 18. Fueled by the desire to achieve goals, I had become rigid with expectations. Their stories set me to thaw. Their stories were my stories. I was sitting on a bucket, in a tent, laughing and crying at myself in various caricatures. There was the time gave up, the time I succeeded, the time I just came to have fun. There was the first time, the best time, and then their was this one. This was the time that it was never easy, not even for a moment. The story falls delicately among my shuffle of persona's collected over years, which are stacked like leaves and stored like costumes perfectly fit for that one occasion.