Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Toes

Its raining. It started raining last night. By this morning it was a steady sleepy rhythm on my roof top. I slumbered letting it fall. As I lie in bed I couldn’t quite remember if my shoes outside my front door were up close enough the house to be under the awning. The awning - if you can really call it that - only overhangs about 8 inches so i suspected my shoes were filling with water. Still I slept. My black dress shoes and my brown dress shoes were inside, dry in my closest.

All my other shoes were out in the rain. Besides the dress shoes I own one pair of Asics Gel Nimbus running shoes, a pair of SIDI cycling shoes, one pair of flip-flops, a pair of classic white Tiger tennis shoes and pair of Sanuk hybrid sandal shoes. I also own downhill ski boots. They live in the shed. Not including my ski boots that is seven pairs of shoes. Five of them are out in the rain.

I wake and rise, as usual, before dawn. I’m wearing a sarong and an old sweatshirt with the the sleeves cut off from the Western States 100 mile run. I make my bed in the dark. Half conscious and in half-light I shuffle to the kitchen. I fill my red kettle with water, pivot and place it on the stove. I push down and twist the burner dial. I listen to it click, click click, click and then hear it catch and billow blue and hissing to life. There is a faint smell of gas. The rain is coming down harder and harder outside.

I step over to the the door and open it. The ground is dark. My shoes are there waiting for me like wet strays. My running shoes are to the left in front of a chair where i took them off after my run yesterday. Each has an twisted inside out sock sagging lethargic over the laces and tongue. My SIDI’s and my Tigers are to the right half covered. Their toes are potentially dry but the back of the shoes are totally exposed. When i pick up the biking shoes water sloshes from toe to heel. The Tigers are drenched as well.

In Asian style I don’t wear shoes in my house so my flip-flops and my Sanuks are directly in front of the door. I use them the most for my daily running around and they are the easiest to slip into an out of. They too are soaked. I gather up all my shoes except the flip-flops and bring them inside. I place them on a towel in front to the heater.

The kettle sings, the tea steeps. I open the door and step back outside and into my waiting flip-flops. I sit down in the open doorway my bare legs stretching out beyond the end of my sarong and into the rain.

All good things.
Wig

Burnt Offerings

My hands grasp for my knees, my back curls and my head drops. Water moves in two directions. Thick hot salt water pulls through my scalp, clings to my forehead, seeps down to the tip of my nose and drops heavy to the frozen sparkling ground. Vapor drifts like ground fog rising in wisps from the curved earth of my smoldering back, neck and head.Sometimes when I run I feel like I offer up my life like the burn zone I raced myself through last week on a trail run off Trail Creek Road near Sun Valley, Idaho. Sometimes I am the fire and sometimes I am the offering. Sometimes I’m just moving.

The fire came in late summer sprinting without ceremony up the side of a steep hill. On day of my run the fire is long since exhausted. It is nearly winter. The ground is black and covered with a thin sheen of frost. The trees still stand but are stripped bare. The frozen air is bitter, but fresh. Even though it is cold I can still smell hints of the fire and through my visible hot breath something metallic on my tongue.

I am struggling to run hard enough to get warm.

I pass through the burn zone. A single stride separating a stand of devastation and a stand of healthy old growth trees. I run further and feel myself finally warm up against the cold. When I turn around for home I’m finally ready to run and the cool air now plays to my advantage allowing me go faster and faster. I wisp into the burn zone and then through it like a ghost.

The next day I coerce my niece Lyndsey to come with me for a hike. I’m armed with my brothers camera. It isn’t as cold on this day but the wind is howling. I’m snapping pictures wishing it was colder and that the ground still sparkled with frost against it’s black background. Lyndsey is cursing me hood pulled over head, gazing out from the edges at the desolation. She bends down and looks closer. There in the burn zone with winter threatening she finds small green buds sprouting. Life is already returning, she says.

My hands grasp for my knees, my back curls and my head drops. Water moves in two directions. Thick hot salt water pulls through my scalp, clings to my forehead, seeps down to the tip of my nose and drops heavy to the frozen sparkling ground. Vapor drifts like ground fog rising in wisps from the curved earth of my smoldering back, neck and head.

Life is already returning.