quotidian odyssey

  Having always loved to run because it has the quality of an odyssey—silver spikes in

  the dirt, bunches of trees shaped like oars or sirens or a cyclops with his wooden eye—

  I was glad to find Emilie racing and flying through the earthy journey, her appearance

  changed by the rain. The course was carpeted with the so-called race arrows, in reality

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  the Cross Country course. Like the white foam on the ocean, they made a narrow line

  of bone white through the green of the fields, here and there washing around a cluster

  of trees. During off-season the Cross Country arrows are gone: washed away and no

  longer directing. Now, bleaching the grass and defying the rain like small shields, they

  were clear and instructive. Emilie delighted in the grassy texture, running across on

  long legs to win, and crying out and shouting at the whipping, battered flags of the

  finish line with tears of exertion.

  - inspired by Rachel Carson’s A Sense of Wonder