joy of discovery

It doesn't matter which day of the week or what time of day I go for a run--morning, afternoon, after dark, weekday, weekend, national holiday, Wednesday around lunch--I always see other runners.

Well.

Almost always.

Last Tuesday it was raining when I woke, and just over forty degrees.  I had intended to go for a run, and I don't mind running in the cold, or in the rain, but it's hard to convince yourself to run in cold rain when you're not that motivated in the first place.  I got ready anyway, telling myself that any chump could run in good weather--it took a heartier soul to run when it was miserable.  I sometimes like bad weather, anyway.  Several years ago I had a great time wandering around Boston one morning in driving cold rain.  I was waiting for a marathon to start--you may have heard of it--but that's another story.  After I finished my usual pre-run regimen I went downstairs and opened the door to discover that in the time it had taken me to psych myself up to running in the light but steady drizzle, it had strengthened to real rain.  For the next half hour, I didn't see a single other moron running in the rain (but The Girl ran the day before Sandy made landfall and saw several runners.  Go figure.).

Planning on a shorter run, I set out with only one goal: find the secret park.  On an earlier run the week before, I had gone very near a local park and didn't realize it until I returned and mapped the run to find out how far I had gone.  There, tucked in neatly where I should have seen it, was a decent-sized park, just a green blob on Google maps.  For the next week I walked and ran through the area, but despite knowing exactly where it was, I never managed to find the park.  This time, I was armed with the knowledge of exactly where the entrance should be.

When I arrived at the designated coordinates, I still didn't see it.  I stopped running when I realized I had passed it and looked around, carefully seeking any break in the residential scenery that might offer egress from the street.

If I hadn't known it was there, I never would have found it.

A few years ago I read a book which described an entire house that couldn't be seen when you were looking at it--if you saw it at all, it was only through the corner of your eye.  Douglas Adams describes a similar concept with the Somebody Else's Problem Field.  This felt similar, except that I did have to look directly at the entrance to find it.  It was narrow, unmarked, and could easily have been the gap between two properties, overlooked during the land surveys.  If I hadn't seen the steps, well on their way to becoming invisible under the gathering leaves, I might not have noticed it at all.

The park itself was narrow, just a gap between two streets of houses, but it had a path and a stream, and I have to admit I was pretty excited to find it, though that may have been borne of triumph over challenge.  Now I refer to it as the Secret Park, and I've gone through it on every run since.