Flowers, A Run, And Sunset

I just lost an impromptu belching contest with Julie.

Oh well. It’s Saturday, and it’s been a good one, so I can suck it up (and yes, Buddhist academics do happily goof around). I managed to run almost 5 miles tonight, and relatively quickly, so I’m feeling good. I worked on the thesis. I blogged – about race (see below), a topic that is well outside my comfort zone, but a topic that definitely deserves attention.

Flowers, received by the above Julie, at a recent ball. And rosemary infused olive oil (part of her Valentine’s gift for me).

Tonight’s run reminded me, with each step, of just how much I love Missoula, Montana. It was a cloudy day, with the sun only peaking through here and there. But once we started running, we were treated to sunbathed hillsides to the north, sometimes to the east, and at times the sun would shine right on us as we ran.

If you check my archives back to the summers of ’07 and ’08 (and a lot of ’09) you’ll be treated to much like this. I’m a sucker for sunsets.

And one a bit zoomed out.

I honestly thought about cutting my run short at a few points to run and grab my camera, but I was determined to get my (almost) five miles in. But the sunset just got more and more beautiful and after my run I knew I had to grab the camera and get down to the bridge (just a couple blocks from our apartment) for some shots.

Not to get too philosophical about it, but there is something primordially human about sunsets, especially when you combine the sunset with water and some mountains. Humankind, no matter what race, religion, nationality, or location, resonates with this slow fading of the day into night. It’s kind of lovely, given our differences in so many ways, to know we have this (and our love of the moon), to bring us together if only we let it.

Flowers, a Run, and Sunset