"I have slipped the surly bonds of earth"

I went out for a 10 mile run at lunch today… 

 

I left behind the pack… and the heartrate monitor… and training plan for the day…  and I just ran…  just me shirtless in the Florida sunshine with just an iPod shuffle clipped to my shorts…

 

And I just ran…  and ya know… it was awesome. It was one of those runs where everything felt good… even upping the pace only smoothed out my stride.

 

Now some folks run for the medals… or the T-Shirt…  or the camaraderie of friends.

 

For me…. It's the joy of movement…  the sun on my bare skin…  moving with the rhythm of the music in my ears…  thoughtlessly repeating the steps to a dance I know so well… and love so deeply…

 

And now hours later… I have a slight fatigue in my legs…  and joy in my soul

 

The poem below was written by John Gillespie Magee, an American pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He went to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of nineteen in December 1941 during a training flight.

 

I kinda turned the words of his poem over in my mind today while I ran… I may never pilot a plane…   and this fella may not have been a runner but I think we both get it.

 

High Flight
By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds -
and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

"Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God."