Beauty in our Backyards

by Barbara Basbanes Richter

Running outside this time of year is a special treat, especially when we’re graced with a proper cold winter. Bonus points if there’s snow. (I’ve forgotten how much I once took for granted that snow would stay on the ground until spring.) Letting loose on local trails offers an excuse to slow way down: speeding through icy paths could lead to a sprained ankle or worse. Slowing down is also an opportunity to look up and around. The deer are out in force. Non-migrating robins plunder holly bushes of their precious berries. And the squirrels? They’re strict NDO types, forever stuffing themselves with whatever provisions they can find.

Sometimes there’s another hardy human or two out there. I’m torn about the paucity of winter trail runners: when I’m alone, especially at dawn, I feel like the world is mine, that the sunrise and the goose honks are gifts just for me. Only once this season have I had to cut a run short when my ice spikes and poles were just no match for the ice sheet beneath me.

There are so many benefits to running in nature (see this NYTimes piece from June How to Start Trail Running - The New York Times). Daylight is a natural mood-booster, and combine that with some shuffling in the woods and you’ve got a winning recipe for supercharging your endorphins.

But even if you have no desire to run fast or long, running in nature offers tremendous rewards. I suspect we could all use a little boost right now.

The trails may look forbidding right now: bare branches, frozen ground, that bite in the air. Precisely what makes them worth exploring.

Robert Frost understood winter landscapes stripped of their summer glory offer something essential to the human experience: ‘As near a paradise as it can be / And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.’ Come find out for yourself.