How Running is Like Picking Blueberries

I am at my childhood summer home for the four weeks of July. During the time here I spend my days leading my non-profit organization via wireless and cell phone. While much is similar to my day-to-day in Brooklyn, there are some distinct differences, like the bugs crawling across me at as I work at my lakeside desk, a nine-mile drive to get Fedex deliveries, an occasional lunchtime swim to the float to cool off, a snake that crossed my path today while walking toward the dock for a quick break, and frustratingly poor internet and phone reception when I need it the most. The pace is a little slower and I have an opportunity I seldom have in non-summer days to clear out my in-basket, read old emails, and to think.

But mornings and evenings!

Many mornings here begin with an early run through the surrounding hills. The air is humid and filled with the smell of vegetation. The path is either uphill or downhill with nothing in between. Miles and miles of hills. Knowing that the payback for a glorious downhill glide is several miles of grueling uphill doesn't detract from either experience. My body and lungs are stronger in this place than anywhere else. I dodge insects and butterflies and push my grateful body onward. 

This evening I picked blueberries while wading at the water's edge, with rippled sandy bottom under my feet and warm blue skies and setting sun above. I joke that the blueberry picking gene is passed down from generation to generation in our family. I joke, but I believe it to be true. I am a harvester and I have always found tremendous joy and peace in these moments. Tonight my children picked by my side. Then they stopped to dig clay out from the bottom of the lake, talking to each other about finding a ridge of clay and pulling it free from its sandy habitat. 

Four decades of picking berries. Four decades of digging clay. My children's bodies are learning what mine has known for so long:  the softer feeling underfoot that signals clay; the hushed noise of water lapping against lily pads; the pleasure of wave-rippled sand; how to lower a high branch and tell which berries are blue while squinting into the sun; the throaty sound made by a bullfrog in the nearby cove. 

Only four years of running.  I sometimes think I know my running self, but my knowledge of myself as a runner pales in comparison to four decades of knowing the sounds and sensations of this lake.  Real knowing takes years. At times I am sad to have come to running so late in life. I have missed far too many runs. I am a very good beginner, but struggling through training and races, awkwardly uncertain, easily discouraged or distracted. My expectations of my running self have not been realistic and they likely make it harder for me grow as a runner.

Patience? Solitude? Years and years of it? Grasping at the lessons that I know must lie in the blueberries.