Describe A Place

            It was the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. The sun had just begun to make its daily appearance, and the thick rows of trees huddled together as if surrounding me, blocking any and all visible light that was slowly creeping its way up the sky from clearing my vision. Everything in my field of view – the slippery wet dirt, the tall grass lining the path, the towering tree trunks – became a dark, muddled mass. I strained to see what was right in front of me. The roaring of the cicadas in the trees and the feeling of hidden forest creatures watching me from afar only amplified the tension in my body. Fortunately, the path was somewhat familiar to me by then. I had run the trail when the sunrise was earlier in the morning and there was more light at this time; however, almost a month had passed since I arrived in Iowa and first set my unsteady feet – inexperienced with trail running − on the rocky, bumpy routes winding through Hickory Hill Park, and by that day the sunrise had delayed further and further into the morning.

Be careful. Be careful. Be careful. The words played on a loop like my own personal mantra, like a bicycle wheel going around and around and around again. I wasn’t wearing my glasses, and while they technically weren’t necessary for me to see, they certainly would’ve helped steer me through the blackness. I remembered how I told myself that morning that I would run long, much longer than usual, in the hopes of preparing for the half-marathon I signed up for and was to be expecting in October. But no long run was worth getting hurt over; I could barely manage to see three feet in front of me, what with the trees shading me from the growing sunlight, and as much as I wanted to explore the trails, I decided to wait another day. I can go later in the afternoon some other time, I thought to myself. Today, I’ll run somewhere else.

Finally, I found the turn that would take me back around to the entrance from which I came. All I had to do was turn left, force myself up the steady incline, and loop back around to the exit. The pungent smell of fresh mud stung my nose, making me more eager to escape the wooded maze. But something caught my eye just ahead of the turn. A pool of yellow light beamed through what looked to be a clearing. I had never gone farther than the loop in the trails, so any clearing that existed beyond where I stood was unknown to me. The path was now illuminated in front of me; the light that had been hiding behind the trees was now released from the walls holding it back, preventing it from reaching me. I jogged a few feet ahead and turned right to find the entrance to a wide open prairie just before me; the entrance lay before me like a gateway to a new world. The sun had made its full appearance in the sky, penetrating the small, puffy clouds with rays of orange and yellow; the longer I looked at them, the more I felt them not only piercing the clouds, but piercing my soul. The odor of wet dirt stayed behind me in the dark; where the light was, the scents of grass and morning dew filled my nostrils. I pressed pause on the app tracking my run; the music stopped playing, my distance and my pace no longer mattered, and I savored the fact that I was completely alone. The only sounds I heard where the faint buzzing of the cicadas and the hum of crickets chirping, slightly muffled by the long weeds of the prairie. I marveled at the simple beauty of the sunrise, the undisturbed morning air, the calming sound of silence. The ground felt soft beneath my feet; I had the overwhelming urge to take my sneakers off and press my toes into the dirt, stamping my presence like a cat would mark its territory. The field was truly a gem, a thousand miles away from the city it resided in; just as the prairie itself, I felt untouched by the world around me that was just beginning to wake up. I turned around and ran back into the forest covered by shade and shadow, holding the warmth and the glow of the light in my heart.