Leave no Hill unturned....

Running is a psychological therapist.  It exposes the deepest roots of your psyche.

You find out so many things about yourself, the real truth about yourself.  It causes you to face your limits and fears.  It shows you your weaknesses and then surprises you and puts a spotlight on your hidden strengths.  It makes you listen to thoughts from your unconscious memory that you keep yourself too busy to think of usually, but while your Ipod music fades from consciousness for a few minutes, there they are.  All pretense evaporates in the company of a run.

That's why I love 'the Hill" that is positioned not far from where I run on my trail.

This is not "the Hill" - it is however, very much like it.

It stands there totally exposed to the morning gleaming sun, while the rest of the area is shaded with Oak Trees.  Sometimes, it glistens with morning dew or has a thin haze of fog hovering over it's grass and when it does...it calls to me.

Yes, I said it calls to me.

Hills call to me.  They always have.

Don't ask me why.  They just do.  Not every Hill, just Hills that seem to have a cover that is undisturbed.  Like the morning dew.   It's so compelling.  Even if I have run a few miles already, if the Hill looks right and I have to finish my run with a few passes over it.  It really is a compulsion.  Thus, running at my particular running trail, with the Hill,  has made this all the more clear to me.  I must experience the Hill.

It's not like I didn't know it before.  I have many times lost all ability to control myself and taken "for the Hills" before.

Once on a Ski Trip with our Florida Youth Group, it began to snow relentlessly and my husband had to put snow chains on our church vans to get up the mountain to our cabins.  As we were parked at this gas station, he had made it clear in no uncertain terms that everyone was to stay in the van while he took care of the snow chains with the station attendant.  You know how young people are restless and he left me in one of the vans to keep an eye on them.  But as I sat there in that van I looked over across the street to this amazing hill with a foot of freshly driven snow from top to bottom and then it happened.  Yes, it happened - the Hill called for me.  It cried out for me to jump out of that van across the street and as fast as I could and run to the top and back.  I was not a runner back then but I did it.  I don't think I consciously gave it a logical thought because by the time I got back to the van in what seemed only like 30 thrilling seconds, my legs were like wet noodles under me.  I think I even fell at the bottom when I got to the flat surface of the road.

My husband told me later he was so angry as he looked over at some "youth" running up the hill against his explicit instructions and then heard someone call to him that it was me. He couldn't believe it!  Little, and young at that time, quiet, intimidated and insecure Carmen had bolted in freezing cold snowing weather to a hill while the group of young people stared out the van windows!

That's what running does.  It draws something deep out of you that seems to not even be there.  But running finds it, makes you realize it and live and breathe it!

And so my Hill reminds me every time I see it who I really am.  I am a woman who likes to run where no one else has before.  To make my own mark.  To conquer even if my legs give out on me.

What's your hill?