Maimed

The grey skies touched the ground all around obscuring the mountains. Saplings alongside the road exposed their bare naked white hearts to the world and to the elements. Would they survive the maiming? the sacrifice of limb and branch for the sake of electric line maintenance?

January's over. February will soon give way to spring. Life will again burst forth--for some. Others won't survive the long hard winter.

Sometimes I feel maimed as I struggle to run with pneumonia and bronchitis scarred lungs. Sometimes I wonder how long I'll survive.

Oh trees, oh trees, please survive and thrive.

Unfriendly Air

My lungs half filled themselves with the foggy, oppressive, heavy air this morning, and then spewed it all back out again.

"Enough of that stuff," they seemed to say.

I walked the first hill, even though I'd used my inhaler twice.

"It's going to be a long three miles," I thought.

I tried cleansing breaths. Sighs escaped unbidden. I tried running slower and slower. Nothing worked. I walked all the hills till I reached the turn-around point. And then I walked the next quarter mile. Butch turned around and ran back to check on me.

"Try using just the same effort on the hills as you do on the flat," he said.

"I am. And that seems to require a walk today. . .Oh. . .another hill already. I'm going to try hard."

He ran on ahead. I plodded on, managing a jogging pace up that incline and the next one. At the crest of the second hill, I saw a tiny white-haired lady with the typical 50-year-old hair cut wearing a duster type coat and a purse over one shoulder.

"Morning," I hollered.

"Your pace seems the more reasonable one," she said.

Cheerleaders are always welcome on a run. I picked up the pace just a tad and soon realized I could actually breathe again. Apparently my lungs decided the air, laden with heavy mist and a tad bit of wood smoke, wasn't so evil after all. I didn't have to walk any more.