Life has been smiling at me as of late, and I have been smiling back.

As someone who has been faithful to this blog since she started it, I have to admit I have been remiss in writing about all the smiles. Life has been happening, and I’ve been too busy living it to want to write about it. But the sky is clear, pale, and crisp blue this morning, and with coffee in hand I feel the urge to return to the anchoring space sunshine in winter provides and write something that catches this blog up with where life is.

I love the space of sunshine in winter. I have found that a blog will never judge you, will always be there waiting when you choose to interact with it, and if you keep one long enough, will turn into a photo album of words marking the passage of time. You can flip through the pages, retracing the footsteps of your own journey, watching the evolution of self. Lately there’s been a great deal of evolution, I just haven’t taken the time to stop and take a word snapshot.

I met somebody. Somebody. Back in the fall, on an Oregon trail twisting through 26.2 miles of pine trees, wet earth and waterfalls. We ran, we talked, we had coffee, we kept talking. A lot. Life smiled on us. We smiled back.

It is now 4 months later, and we find ourselves in a geographically challenged relationship, but we don’t care. We are simply happy to have met one another on such a chance encounter, which I don’t believe was really so chance at all since Life tends to work in mysterious ways.

I haven’t written much about it. In part because I simply don’t have adequate words. Carl Jung says “the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed,” and at present I haven’t found the right language to describe the reaction and transformation I have been experiencing.

I haven’t even had the desire to try to describe, lest my words somehow lessen and minimize the scope of meaning. All I can say is that I didn’t even know it was possible for me to find this and that sometimes the knowledge in your soul transcends language.

On a much less poetic, soulful level, the other part of why I haven’t been writing is I am knee deep in ultrathon training. I ran 20 miles yesterday, I have another 13 planned for today. By the time this training week is at an end I will have logged over 60 miles, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to leisurely mornings spent bandying inspired posts about.

Mostly it lends itself to early bedtimes, copious amounts of time spent on the trails and guilt free bowls of ice-cream. I’m not complaining, because I love distance running, but I will admit it is dipping into my creative time.

As an aside, speaking of the trails, Kintsugi Pup has officially earned the title of Wonder Pup having shown a natural affinity for running and the stamina of an endurance athlete. I never would have believed it about this 10 lb ball of fluff when I adopted him, but his abnormally long giraffe legs took to the trails like he was born to run, and he hasn’t looked back since. He runs like there is nothing which brings him greater joy, and in the past 2 weeks has logged an impressive amount of miles and climbed four different mountains.

I couldn’t have asked for a better furry companion to meet my needs. I’ve been gifted with a sweet ball of fluff who has a gentle spirit of kindness and a heart of a mountaineer. Life has also smiled on us. And we have smiled back, Kintsugi Pup’s marvelous snaggletooth and all.

Which brings me back to where this post originally started: Life is smiling, and so am I. Unabashedly, for it’s been a long few years. When I look back through this album of words, I see numerous occasions where Life was busy refining my heart and helping me develop into the authentic soul I desire to be. Or in less spiritual terms, Life has really sucked, and I’ve tried to not suck with it.

Today Life doesn’t suck. I’m smiling even though my legs are tired, and I don’t really want to go do the couple hour run I have planned with my best snaggletooth pal, where I will likely compose a funny post in my head about the insanity/stupidity of ultra training, which I will likely be too tired to write. I will instead choose a long, hot post run shower and giant mocha. And I will smile some more.

And as for the other? The geographically challenged relationship? Perhaps I will come up with the right words as things keep progressing, and I have a better grasp on what I have felt stirring in my spirit and soul. Or then again, maybe not. Some things really do exist beyond words. Or maybe Walt Whitman already penned them perfectly when he said, “We were together. I forget the rest.”

There is really nothing more to say.

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