Following My Compass in the Dark

Tuesday after work I headed out for an easy 4 on the Kavanaugh loop. Didn't even wear a watch. The run was fine. Uneventful. The usual post-work, head-clearing jaunt through the darkness. Sometimes I go straight up Kavanaugh and back, other days I branch off away from the traffic to explore quiet streets. There's less light but also less cars and more solitude.

Often on these nights, a favorite Kristen Hall song floats in the back of my thoughts.

"The wind is with me under coral skies
and in my wake I leave behind,
a trail of others who will never seek
and because they never seek, they never find
and they argue that
it's all a waste of time...
I'm just following my compass,
following my compass
in the dark."

There's nights when I am alert to everything around, keenly aware of sights, sounds, and smells. Other days, not so much.

Take Tuesday.

I'd come up out of the capitol parking lot and was cruising along Markham on the south sidewalk. There's no standard place where I cross Markham; usually I just wait and watch until traffic is way clear in both directions and get across wherever possible. There's sidewalk on both sides of the road so it doesn't really matter which side I'm on. Until Dennison. At the intersection of Dennison and Markham, the south sidewalk comes to an abrupt end at the 8-foot retaining wall of a house high above. So on Tuesday, since I was running right at 5 o'clockish, traffic was heavy and I just kept pacing along until I got to the sidewalk's end.

I waited to cross. And waited. You know how it feels to wait? It was probably two or three whole minutes but it felt like ten. "Someone left the gate open," my dad always used to say. I hoppity hopped. I paced a little. I peeked out around the bend to look for headlights. Steady.

Just as I was about to get really impatient, I looked up. And laughed out loud. And hollered "DAMN IT!"

Those who know this route may have already realized what was right overhead, at the intersection of Dennison and Markham: A pedestrian bridge.



Yup, an ungated, free-to-the-public, safe, bridge over trafficky water. I drive this route all the time. I run this route at least three times a week. I know this bridge. The bridge where, during last year's race, two friends bundled up in the cold to cheer and hold up signs and drop confetti on my head. I am such a doofus. Emily Saliers says, "You have to laugh at yourself, because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't."

Just then, though, there was a break in traffic, so I darted across the street and headed uphill, into the night.