When the morning’s farmwork is done, I set off past the gardens toward the Rhône River. I strike a moderate pace—the trail along the river is steep, and at points treacherous. It’s not here that the Rhône is famous, but it’s the same Rhône, and that adds a thrill to each glimpse of the river I catch through the trees that line the path. One travels differently when one runs. This is not go here/see this/do that tourism. It’s an aimless pursuit, or rather, a pursuit that is its own aim.
When the heart races in a foreign land, that land takes on new significance. There is a bonding between the runner and the soil beneath him, and a poetic sharpness to the rays of sun, the clouds, the trees, the water. There’s nowhere better to run than beside water—I’m convinced this feeling is in our human programming, though I’m not sure how or why. But I do know that the best runs of my life have always followed the shore.
From summer jogs around Beebe Lake, where fireflies surge over the reeds at dusk, to the dusty path down the Mekong River in Vientiane, from Prospect Lake back home to here along the Rhône—the same Rhône whose wines I sold for two years, and whose teal waters now greet me every afternoon.
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