I'm an evening runner

There was a small guest house nestled in between a bamboo forest and a larger home on a corner street in a neighborhood near White Rock Lake in Dallas. For a year this was my home. I was in third grade, eight years old, constantly had my nose in a book and acted out made up stories in the bamboo forest. There were evenings when my mom and I would stroll through the neighborhood past large storybook homes. Somehow, I always remember these evenings happening in the summer, though I'm sure they happened throughout the year. We would walk to nearby parks. The tall trees lining the street would block out the last streaks of sun before it set. I could feel the hot, sticky air clingy to my skin. I would race my mom pushing as hard as I could against the ground, grass crunching under my feet. There were still fireflies everywhere, lighting up the evening sky. I felt free and strong and fast in these moments.

Those nights are what I think of when I can manage an evening run, setting out as the last corner of the sun kisses the horizon. The dried grass crunches under my feet, immediately taking me back to a time when I imagined a shallow stretch of bamboo to be a vast forest leading me to a magical kingdom. If I squint, headlights in the distance remind me of the flashing fireflies dancing across the night sky. Without the sun glaring down on me, the hot July air doesn't feel so unbearable.

When I was in the fourth grade, I lived on another street. This street was filled with families and chatter and the ringing of bike bells as we rode up and down the hill. I would run through the alleys with my friend Stephanie gathering seeds from the four o'clocks that lined the fences. We would pull honeysuckle flowers off their bushes and suck out the insides. I would climb the tree in my front yard, hiding from the boys as the rode by on their bikes trying to get me to laugh at them. The sun was setting when I would drag myself inside, sticky and smelling like grass and humid Texas air. Yes, humid Texas air has a smell.

I love Texas evenings. And I love the Texas evenings when I'm not working an can manage a run. I imagine expansive prairies whenever I pass undeveloped land. I imagine massive military forts whenever I pass apartment complexes. I imagine I am Laura Ingalls Wilder roaming the last frontier during her childhood. I imagine that the small rabbits pushed from their native homes by the golf course and the town homes are actually just part of Peter Rabbit's family. And when I'm approaching, I laugh when they stop, still as a garden statue, hoping I don't notice them.

Tonight I passed one of these rabbits flattened in the road. I fought back tears feeling guilty that my home had overtaken his. I felt guilty that I was still running, when he didn't run fast enough in the last moments of his life.

I ran just a little bit faster up that last hill.