Music

Morning walks during the last month of Daylight Savings were solidly in the dark.  I was listening to music and looking up more often, with a sense of calm and of fun during my break from running.  No pressure, no training goals.  Monsoon season was also nearly gone, so few if any clouds existed.  Orion was to the southeast, the big dipper to the north, and thousands upon thousands of smaller starts filled in all the gaps between.  How many of these are visible because of minimal to no interference from human habitation, or does the thin air of elevation allow better vantage?  It is not as many as visible from the rural coast of eastern Nova Scotia, but otherwise it is the most to which I have ever been privy.  I though of Mrs. Barr's astronomy class during PEP (2nd or 3rd grade).  The green sheets with pictures of constellations.  The nightly moon calendar we were to fill out - I over appropriated the degree of each phase; Mom offered nightly discerning observation.  Three potential Ws also filled the pre-dawn sky, but I couldn't recall its name or which was correct, if any of them.  The particularly crisp mornings offered a thin film of the Milky Way.  And daily - daily! - I'd see at least one comet shooting across the sky, most often to the east. 

October brought my year anniversary of moving to rural Colorado.  Only now did I realize how much of that year was spent adjusting to the deeper cold, the huge difference made by the sun, and how to dress for the valley's easterly winds that give half of my runs a headwind and cause drool and snot to freeze in stripes and globs on my face.  I have also learned to trust the moon, to use its light instead of automatically defaulting to a headlamp even when a mere crescent.  (I still always wear a headlamp when on the road.)  I came to trust the moon so much its absence during Bear factored into my meltdown and my need for a human voice and presence. 

I had also trusted the simple sound of my environment since 2007.  While walking I often listened to talk radio news, but I was so conditioned to relative silence that the conscious act of packing my iPod as a backup for races like Bear was wasted.  Not once did I think of donning my ear buds, even upon suggestion from my husband.  In hindsight, October also became my experiment with music.  It was the exact playlist used for Bear and for Pine to Palm the year before (where I also never used music). 

That first walk with a soundtrack illustrated the power of tunes.  Half of them did not work, even when walking in the dark with my dog and within the safe proximity of a warm house filled with kittens and a spouse.  Being alone in the dark with a gaping sky can bring peaceful meditation but also existential questioning.  Albums that normally can fill in a day's gaps with artistic humanity, like Mumford and Sons, suddenly were being skipped, and skipped, and skipped.  Broken Social Scene for the most part survived except for its melancholy contextual interludes.  David Bowie was half good but half hokey.  All but two Bob Dylan songs became annoying.  Gnarles Barkley and Talking Heads became a refreshing relief.  I was itching for Sharon Jones and Raphael Saadiq, but my iPod Shuffle apparently like to focus on all the songs I wanted to skip.

After my month off I continued to use music while running, now with a parsed out playlist.  Running itself felt much more effortless than before, but the music perked up my pace even more so that easy runs were a minute faster per mile than September.  Since Daylight Savings ended my mornings have regained sunrises of prismatic morphology to add to my music.  It is a much different experience, even with wind chills already into single digits.  I think back to Bear and laugh at myself.  At least I know I can complete challenging tasks when cognitively fried.  The morning light will only stay for a month at the most, so I am enjoying it as much as I can before the dark also brings sub-zero temperatures that regulate me to a treadmill.

Yesterday marked two weeks of having returned to running.  I still used music, though it was hard to hear over the headwind.  While trotting along forest roads to the Natural Arch I heard a horn, turned to find an SUV filled with hunters, so moved over and exchanged waves as they passed.  Turns out they had been behind me for a third of a mile, slightly farther back but still honking to pass.  Nathan, attempting to run according to heart rate, started to sprint in attempt to catch up and alert me.  In my own defense I have only encountered perhaps five cars total on that road within the last year, and there was lots of shoulder room that would allow passage of anything but a little sedan.  But they may have been amused by the few times I jammed out with my arms, oblivious to their presence.