Navigation
Miscellaneous Great Stuff
New Discoveries
New Discoveries
By Ann Brennan
May/June 2009
For the Washington Running Report
We hear a lot about discovering ourselves - about becoming a better person through self discovery. I am a little afraid of what I might discover about me. I am not sure that I can be put into categories, as so many of my character traits seem to contradict the one before it.
For example, I am a person who has great difficulty thinking outside the box. A few years back we spent a summer in London while my husband completed an internship. Though we had a furnished apartment, I came to realize that a single man probably furnished it. Within the first few hours I discovered that there were no dishtowels and as we hadn't made a stop at the grocery store on the way in there were also no paper towels. And here is where the "not thinking outside of the box" comes in. One of the children spilled his drink and I was at a loss as to how to clean it up. Luckily, my friend Ann had no such problem. She reached down, grabbed one of the children's socks right off his foot and cleaned up the spill. It was like witnessing a miracle. How in the world had she ever thought to do that?
I am also the person who might stand dumbfounded at the gym if someone is on my treadmill. I realize that there are 15 other treadmills but that one is away from the fan which is too much for just a warm up run. It is also directly in front of the television that plays ESPN and more importantly plays the Top Ten Plays every morning for my warm up run as though it were playing it just for me.
So maybe you could describe me as rigid. But no, that wouldn't be quite right. Most of my friends are amazed at how I fly by the seat of my pants. That same summer I would wake up and have my cup of coffee and peruse the travel book I kept on the kitchen table. Should we go to the Science Museum or go see the statue of Peter Pan in Hyde Park? No, we should definitely jump on a train and head down to Brighton Beach. Fifteen minutes later, with an empty backpack and two kids in tow, we would be out the door, only phoning hubby when we were on the train. That summer we did visit the museums that London offered but we also saw the tunnels under Dover Castle and Deer Park behind Windsor Castle. And countless other far flung places, all on the spur of the moment.
A couple of years later we moved outside of London to the village of Wimbledon. I loved it. My favorite part was getting lost on runs or bikes. I would head out the front door with 20 pounds and a credit card in my pocket and just run or ride. I would go for hours. I would turn down any road that looked interesting. With running, this usually meant a trip into the city. Through Chatham and the busy traffic, along the Thames Path and around the city or out the other side into East London. On my bike I was known to go as far out as Windsor which was some 50 miles away. Either way, I would keep an eye out for towns that had train stations and use the train to get back home. Getting lost runs were the best.
I am also the person who gets excited every time my husband mentions the possibility of living in some exotic foreign country. He came home a few months ago and asked what I would think about living in Dubai. "Sure," I said, "Where is it?" Hong Kong? Let's go. Singapore? No problem.
So maybe I am a free spirit. Well, sort of, I guess. Four years ago we moved back to Maryland. Apparently, just a mile from the picturesque Severn River. I say "apparently" because four days a week for the past four years, that is 832 times, I have run out of my neighborhood and headed left. I thought I was being adventurous. No neighborhood running for me. I would head left, which would give me the option of two different trails or a small wooded park. I wouldn't be caught dead running through the streets of our neighborhood. I was too adventurous for that. Which explains why I never went right. Going right I could either run on the main road up toward the high school or cross the road into another section of our neighborhood and run on the neighborhood streets. Why on earth would I want to do that? I had never even driven in that part of the neighborhood so why would I run there?
I am not sure how the body of water on my GPS in my SUV never registered in my brain but quite clearly it did not. And then yesterday for the first time in four years I decided I wasn't really up for the same run. I could not face any of my three choices. So, gasp, I went right. I went right and ran through the other section of our neighborhood. But here is what I discovered. There is another entrance into our neighborhood that was apparently the original entrance. Wow, that was something I did not know before. But even more important discoveries were to follow.
If you go out that original entrance there is a whole world I have never seen. First of all, there are actual hills. Hills that I have been complaining about missing since we moved back from the rolling hills of Surrey. These new hills were big rolling hills that rolled their way right down to . . . you guessed it, right down to the water's edge. The minute I saw it I wanted to run home and tell my husband about my discovery but I didn't. I ran along the banks of the river and watched the geese fly low over the water. I watched the kayaks out for a just-before-dusk paddle and I marveled at my discovery. I started fantasizing about my next run. I will run at daybreak and watch the sun rise. I will run here in the summer when the water will cool the air. I will run here with my baby in the jog stroller and take my time while he hunts for the blue heron on the banks. Once I came out of my reverie, I turned around and ran as fast as my short little legs would carry me back to my house to drag my husband along the same route before the sun went down. I am proud to say that my husband was just as clueless as I had been but also just as amazed by the beauty of the discovery.
Here I am, the lady who friends call when they want to venture into DC or take a road trip to the far reaches of the Maryland, Virginia, or Pennsylvania countryside because I am the most adventurous person they know. Here I am, the lady who flies by the seat of her pants and hops a train on a moment's notice. Here I am, the lady who is not afraid to move half way across the world or to get lost in a foreign land. But here I am, the lady who lives a mile from one of the most beautiful places in the world and took four years and 832 attempts to find it. So who am I? What have I discovered? I think it is that I am a discoverer with a rigid spirit that bends only under more discoveries. So, out I will head. Out my door and around every corner to a new discovery of the world around me.
Ann Brennan runs with the Annapolis Striders. She can be reached at Brennanannie@verizon.net.