Greenbelt Running, Winter

Greenbelt Running?  What does that mean?

running in the cold

I didn’t make it up.  But I did make it my metaphor.

A few weeks ago I heard a woman use the word greenbelt to symbolize personal respite; a place and time to center, reflect, and heal.  Quiet.  Peace.  I loved her metaphor and immediately thought of running.  Running is one of my greenbelts.  I can leave the house tense and overwhelmed and sad, and come home in an hour or so refreshed and optimistic and resolved.  Or at least, if I’m grappling with really heavy impenetrable stuff, peacefully resigned to  letting go and letting it be.

Greenbelt running has become critical enough to my emotional and physical health (bless my soul) that I run right through the winter.  And am perfectly happy to brave the cold.  Winter here holds beauties both subtle and awesome, and I have fallen in love with it all.   Frostbitten rose hips, twigs with their very last leaves clinging to them,  the ever present mountains (lately snow capped…The mountains make me think of God.  Perhaps this is one reason why running is a greenbelt for me; it is my time alone with Him).

twigs and last leaves power towers and twin trees raccoon tracks, frozen lone cow

I am also learning to savor the personality of the place I live in when I run,

which has been healing.   When we first moved to Utah, I really didn’t want to be here.  At all.  I mourned.  And resented.  But on my greenbelt runs, the old barns and tidy little brick grandma houses, the persistent fields (with suburbia ever closing in) and the backyard farms and vegetable gardens tell a story that I don’t mind being a part of.  Plus, every now and then someone waves at me as they drive by.  Which makes me happy.

barn with red door

(I should clarify here that I don’t just run when I go running.  I have to give my knees a break, and so I also walk.  Occasionally, I tote a camera along.   Also, this winter hasn’t been as cold as the last, yet.  Snow before Halloween and Thanksgiving and then… just frost and rain and lots and lots of variations of brown.  This last photo is a personal demo, by me, showing how to both stretch and container garden during the winter at the same time!  so easy…most of the plants are dead. (=

stretching, or gardening?

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  • Nancy December 12, 2012, 9:29 pm

    I am enjoying your blog. It is delightful to know that I am sooo related to such a lovely talented lady. I am not sure where all of this came from but I am enjoying…basking in the
    sweetness of it all. I do plan to buy one of your paintings…eventually I will have an art gallery of my own!
    I went shopping for a dress today….total disappointment….. I will have to start sewing also.
    Keep up the good work! Love you

    • Lynaea January 15, 2013, 10:23 pm

      Thank you Mom! Just keep feeding me berries and the paintings are yours. (=