When I lived in Bozeman, MT, I did most of my running during the winter time. As a city employee, I had a significant discount on a membership to a local gym. The gym had a giant room with row upon row upon row of treadmills, stationary bikes, and eliptical machines. The East-facing wall was a giant bank of windows with a view of the Bridger Mountains. I primarily used my gym membership to attend yoga classes early in the morning during the spring and summer seasons. My route to the studio involved passing this room, where fanatical suburbia moms and dads and college 20-somethings chugged away on the machines, plugged into their iPods, running towards the view of the mountains. I found it infinitely depressing. The few times I was in the gym during the winter, practically every machine propelled a sweating human. Several of these individuals would, later in the day, find themselves on the lifts at either Big Sky or Bridger Bowl, standing in line to take a lift for their ski run down the mountain. So, clearly, they were not afraid of the cold. Why, then, toil on a machine when Bozeman had impeccable trails that made winter running exceedingly enjoyable?
Frankly, I didn't, and still don't, really care. Their presence in the gym meant that the trails were blissfully absent of humans. I enjoy running in the winter. This evening, while I trotted through a easterly snow storm, I was reminded of why I found it strangely satisfying to complete a run in the dawn or dusk of a winter day. Part of it is the sense of accomplishment over such clear adversity that I feel after completeing my run. Propelling myself to go for a run is hard enough, to do it when the wind is blowing the snow sideways adds a clear example of how significant it is that I went for a run that day. Another part is the winter landscape. Snow always muffles sounds, so I feel even more privacy as I squeak across the snow. The dark contributes to the sense of solitude. This evening, the a herd of approximately thirty elk were in the horse pasture below my cabin escaping the snow storm higher in the mountains. The shadowy outlines moving in the darkness kept me company, reminding me that I am not the only thing relishing the camoflague lack of light provides. Oddly enough, I also just like the cold. The icy air rushing into my lungs and rasping in my throat tells me I am breathing. The tingle of my numb skin as I warm up in the cabin is invigorating. Best of all is the warm shower bringing life back to my limbs. All of this makes running in the winter one of my favorite activities. Now, to just remember this when I'm laying under my feather comforter trying to convince myself that a run is exactly what I need.
