The thing about running on a sloshy spring trail is, once you quit trying to creep around the edges of what is essentially a small stream running through the forest and just plunge your foot into that ankle deep water, the worst is all behind you.
Your feet are soaked, but they can’t really get any wetter so that frees your mind up to just take in the woods you haven’t seen for a few weeks now.
Until you get to the muck that swallows you up to your ankles. Now this crazy, bottomless forest floor has really got your attention again, especially when you go sprawling, clutching your cell phone in the slow-motion train wreck so it doesn’t disappear in the quick sand.
Would you believe there’s still a small snow drift in here, at least a week after the sun dissolved all the white stuff except for those mountains at the parking lots’ edges? A current flows underneath it. The ice layer won’t hold your weight. The sun with its hair dryer setting on low can’t reach this drift, but it’s a goner just the same. The water’s taking it apart bit by bit.
So this is spring in the forest. Not much of a run, as it turns out. But we’re glad we came.
