It’s May Day. I hope you find an opportunity to walk near a garden, into a garden, a place a little bit untamed, wild, and a place to find a quiet place to feel safe.

When I was a teenager, I used to sneak out of the house at night. I suppose a lot of teens did that back in the day. Maybe some still do. I didn’t sneak out to be with a boyfriend or any friend. I didn’t go to parties or score drugs. I walked to be alone and think. I went walking in the dark entirely by myself because I was miserable most of my high school years and walking in the dark was a comfort. I’d walk a few miles on the gravel shoulders of suburban roads and go home to bed.

As a teacher, I used to assure my students that high school was not the high point of their lives. All their other teachers had played sports in high school and recalled those experiences with great fondness. Here’s where I point out that most teens do not play sports in high school and their lives turn out just fine. (One year, a student chose as their senior research paper thesis that sports were necessary to later success in life. She couldn’t prove that because it simply isn’t true. She had to alter her thesis to prove that sports could be an element contributing to a positive high school experience and to later success. You see the difference?]

Many of my students were told by loving family that they should be having a great time because these were the “best years of your life.” “It’s a lie,” told them. “Life does not go downhill after age 18.” Independence, love, maybe travel and marriage and children. A career, friendships… the entire world is waiting and you get to taste all sorts of wonderful things! “Maybe it’s true for a few people that high school was the very best time of their lives. Think how sad that is for them.”

I remembered.

That’s why I went walking all alone in the middle of the night. I walked miles, hid in shadows when I heard a car coming or people’s voices. Maybe it was dangerous, what I did, but the only time I was scared was the middle of the night opening my front door and there was my dad waiting for me on the sofa. Where had I been? Who was I with. It didn’t occur to me to lie, so I told him. “You won’t do this again, and we won’t tell your mother.”

The first year I ran the Hood to Coast, I was first out of the second van and ran a bit over six miles in 96°; runners dropped in that heat and I realized I’d never run in heat before. I was fine. Some twelve hours later, my second run was in the dark, in the Coast range, also over six miles, and rated “very hard” for hills. I was required to wear a reflective vest and carry a flashlight. For most of that run, no other runners were nearby and I turned my flashlight off because I found I loved running in the dark. Why was I surprised? Truth is, I made no connection to my earlier walks. (I’d been running only a few years and had stepped in to run for someone who was pregnant with a daughter who would later become a favorite student.) That first year, locals in one area were furious about runners pissing in their gardens the previous year. I was so high on running in the dark that when the guys in the pickup threw urine at runners in front of me, I laughed. It wasn’t funny; I was happy. I’d been warned and didn’t feel threatened. It was the longest of three legs I ran on the Hood to Coast and instantly became and remained my favorite for the following years.

I was 15 and 16 when I walked suburban streets in the middle of the night. I was in my 40s those years I ran the Hood to Coast. I’m 73 today and in the past five years, I’ve run city streets in Portland, Oregon, usually just after dawn. I run past drunks and sleeping homeless, turned up streets to avoid screaming men, and said “Good morning” to homeless men, nurses and construction workers on their way to work, and many people walking their dogs. I am careful not to come up behind dogs because they rarely hear me, so intent are they on their business. I will cross the street to avoid running close to a tent, and I have even run a few blocks out of my neighborhood.

In all these walks and runs, I have never been threatened; I have never felt genuinely scared. I was careful. There are places I would not go alone, that I will not run or walk alone. I know my neighborhood. The man who shouts the F-word in the middle of the night, one of the people Gary and I rudely term “night zombies”, is the same man I can greet in the morning. I wouldn’t cross him in the dark, but by 6am while he’s chatting with the man who buys him a muffin, I’ll smile.

I’ve been looking for a tai chi class I can walk to, but the only one recommended to me is in the Lan Su Garden, a walled Chinese paradise, a beautiful place, stunning! It’s only a little over a mile from our condo in Portland, but I wouldn’t feel safe walking there alone or even in company at night. It is also six blocks from where someone was shot in the mid-morning last weekend. So maybe not so much in broad daylight. I don’t fear someone shooting me. I am a harmless, white-haired old white lady. But bullets stray, don’t they.

So I will continue to work on my running unless something else falls into my lap. Because often enough, something interesting does.