Sometimes you gotta breathe the open air. There’s nothing like screeching out the front door, thirty minutes before dinner, to catch the run you planned to do earlier, but were held captive by needy dishes. Knappy hair masquerading in a runner’s ponytail, a shirt sporting a chocolate smear, and your favorite Spartan pants, with a betraying patch of worn polyester, are the best you can manage. After careening down the Olympian-grade hill from your house, you move into cruise control with rhythmic breaths. The gravel road crunches, like your husband’s favorite Juanita chips, the birds warble 8 the quiet evening, and oxygen seeps into every crease of your brain.

Your feet choose the path to the left, past a tall white shop with a pastoral scene of cows in a field below, only slightly curious at the upside down trampoline waving its warped legs in the placid pond. Further on, a red gate stands guard over the dusty road….or is the real sentry that giant carving of a rat armed with a chainsaw nearby?! Sneaking by both, you continue on unscathed, till the silence is abruptly shattered by the scolding of an arrogant little mutt, who has caused you tempory tachycardia countless times over the last five years. You show your resilience by not visibly twitching a muscle and carry on to your point of turn-around. You always take in the most beauty when passing by the expansive lawn of a friendly neighbor, studded with trees, laden with well-placed flowers, and crowned with the most eclectic assortment of yard art- a metallic green lizard climbing a tree, two meer cats standing in conversation on a dirt mound, a majestic steed rearing out of a flower pot. You breathe in deeply the scent of earth and flowers….and a sizeable winged bug. It is bitter and tangy, like diluted Dawn soap, and will travel neither up nor down, not blocking airflow, just clinging to the windpipe with paper wings and dainty legs. You know you are good at multitasking. You maintain your pace, breathe through the bug, and concentrate on not tasting it, till gravity prevails (on the bug, of course).

Sometimes home seems farther away on the return trip, because it is all uphill. You occupy your mind with oxygen; the life-giving thoughts and ponderings that will fuel your evening, spur your writing, and remind you of the eternal. The last hill conquered, your hand finds a familiar doorknob, and you enter, inhaling the familiar, yet joyfully infused with the calm that comes from breathing in air alive with freedom.