Everything yearns to be cleaned: the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, and three weeks worth of sweat-dabbed laundry. After more than a month of busy weekends and busier weekdays, my life needs not just a cleaning, but a scourging. I contemplated my plan of purification as I drank my morning tea at 7am on Saturday morning. Mr. P had gone off to his sprint triathlon, which I had begged out of attending on the premise that I would dredge our domestic depot and return it to habitable environs. Such is the plight of my sex. We are not obligated, but we are obliged.
So, to prevent this little seed of resentment from blossoming into full-tilt feminine rage as I scrubbed mysterious tomato sauce splatters from the back of the refrigerator, I needed to do something for myself to take the edge off. I threw on a sports bra and jogging shorts and decided to go to the Middlesex Fells for early-morning trail training. Machu Picchu, after all, looms.
I drove the 10 minutes to the Fells and parked on the periphery of the 2500 acre park. Despite having been to the Fells well over two dozen times, I still don’t know my way around the intricate network of official and unofficial trails. My spatial intelligence is about as honed as a pile of sand, so I rely on Mr. P’s uncanny sense of direction to navigate us. Even he has gotten us lost several times, requiring us to backtrack until something jogs his memory. “Ah, I know where we are!” he’ll say, pointing at some nondescript rock. Whatever. He’s my GPS.
Of course I started on the same trail we always start on. I bounded uphills and streaked downhills. I glided over rocks and roots. I ducked under branches. I found some Atmosphere on my iPod nano. Occasionally I broke into a trot. I don’t run regularly, but sometimes I run, just to make sure I still can. Conceivably, I could be in a situation where my survival depends upon my ability to run. There could be a pack of rabid dogs bearing down on me, or a knife-wielding maniac, or a tsunami wave. Is it possible to outrun a tsunami wave?
Wait… I’ve never seen that stone boundary wall before. I suddenly came upon a unfamiliar grove of pine trees. Evidently, I had missed a turn, or taken a wrong turn. Oh well. I’m not an idiot. If I pay attention, I can find my way back to the car. Right turn at the fallen tree… left turn onto the Cross Fells Trail. Left onto the Skyline Trail, where the trail began to oscillate with outcrops of dusty blue-tinged rocks. I turned my attention to my footing. Up, down, up, up still. With Arcade Fire bellowing in my ear, I reached a flat smooth part of the trail and began to ran.
Then — airborne. My foot had caught the tip of a rock and I flew forward. My hands instinctively stretched in front of my torso. My knees jutted forward, taking the brunt of the impact on my lower body as I belly flop onto the ground. A split second. A blur. That’s how these things happen, these accidents. For once, the body usurps control from the mind.
The impact triggered the Shake feature in my iPod nano, and so it automatically shuffled songs. Next thing I know, the Overture for The Thieving Magpie erupted into my ears, with its regal snare drums, pompous strings, and grandiose brass. Goodness. I’m laying face-down in the dust listening to Rossini in the middle of the woods, all by my lonesome, with a vague idea of how to return to my car.
Luckily, nothing was broken and nothing was bleeding… profusely. My knees were alarmingly red, but it looked like the tough knee skin did its job. My right elbow had a pencil eraser-sized cut that oozed blood. I was doused in dirt. And in my ears, Rossini reached a frenzied crescendo. Maybe I should have stayed home and cleaned the stove.
