Running for Your Life: Hot Is In Your Head

I didn’t run for long today (Monday, July 2). Forty minutes – at my eight-minute mile lumber that’s five miles, which is what I did on Saturday (June 30) north of Milwaukee, Holiday Inn Express, Brown Deer, Wis., while visiting M’s mom, R, who turned 99 and a half on the weekend (when you get as close as R to 100 years old, you could the year in portions – only six months to go).

It was hot in Wisconsin. And hot in Brooklyn. In the 90s. Humid on Saturday, so I ran on the Holiday Inn Express treadmill. But a light summer breeze arose late Monday morning, so I chose an outdoor route.

When you’re fit enough you know how much you can do in the heat. When I threw open the kitchen window and felt the breeze, my mind was made up. I’d run in the park. The breezes in the shade of the trees would amplify the cool relief. Rather than run in the direct sunlight I’d run the woodland paths, connect the dots from shade to shade to shade.

Because here, in the “Summer Breeze” http://bit.ly/u8qAw of that Seals and Croft standard, hot is in your head. Your heart might be working a little harder, but, if you pay attention, the rewards are manifest. After two days of heavy humidity, the birds and squirrels are out in force. The treetops alive with sound and movement.

On this day I see a wee downy woodpecker on the forest floor and heard but didn’t see a songbird that was new to me, just missing as it darted higher into the trees.

In Wisconsin at dusk Sunday, from a picnic table in Brown Deer Park, M had told me of a blue heron she inadvertently startled into flight, and what she thought must be scarlet tanagers.

M and I are under the first full moon since being romanced by the one rising above us at Notre Dame de Paris and that night – Sunday – we are apart, and now today (Monday) after the run in the heat, where because of the breeze it didn’t feel like anything at all, just a light sheen of sweat, I think that M will be home tonight after saying goodbye for now to her mom, and we will be under a full moon once more.

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