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Hometown Run

A Kansas winter sunset (photo by Brian McGuirk)
I haven't lived here for 12 years. 

One of my favorite things to do when I'm home for the holidays is to go for a run on the country roads on the edge of my hometown.  Running is a blend of nostalgia and seeing things I never noticed from behind the windshield. It always surprises me how short the distance from my parents' house to the edge of town is, when it used to seem so long.

Hubz and I went late one afternoon in the waning daylight. We had the country road all to ourselves, the quiet solitude punctuated by the rhythmic crunching of ice and gravel with every footfall. 

The blood orange hue of the setting sun, the snow-covered fields, the cold air pockets at the bottom of each hill. 

The first true winter run of the season was a sensory feast.

Happy New Year.

9 comments:

  1. I've now driven through KS twice. it's gorgeous.

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  2. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. There's something special about running through your hometown years after you leave it—the immediacy of the act of running blurs the lines between our past and present selves, and we get to just enjoy the sights. So glad you had a good trip!

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  3. This post brought back of flood of memories from my running days in Providence and Albany. The crunch of your feet on the snow. The shrinking of my hometown. Of course, I'm still trying to forget that cabin fever run at SUNY when it was 20 below and my ears became incredibly frostbitten.....

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  4. wonderful. gorgeous. keep running

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  5. This post makes me want to experience my hometown by running - having always been told that I would never be able to run I actually have never seen mine from the vantage point of a runner. That will change in 2013! Happy new year K :-)

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  6. Beautiful photo and great post! I agree. As we get old, we realize how close/small things really were when we were younger. As kids, everything seems SO BIG to us.

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  7. Very cool. I like running in my hometown too, and we just moved away from there in 2009. the nostalgia gets me every time.

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  8. Love this. We do the same thing where ever we go and I have found some of the most wonderful running paths that way. The amazing thing though is that when I go back I don't always remember why I was there in the first place but I remember exactly where I ran and why I loved it.

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  9. Happy New Year, Kirstin! Love the sound of your run - those quiet runs are magical.

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