Fresh Tracks

My heart is hammering in my chest.  The sound of my exhausted inhalations nearly drown out the music in my ears.  My legs are heavy, so heavy.  I plunge forward, at places the snow line grasps at my knees.  That familiar primal feeling, almost indescribable, pools in my stomach.  It is only here, on a trail run, absorbed into the landscape that I feel it..  I am swallowed by a sea of dry, dead grass.   I am half digested in the shadow of the approaching wood.  Miles lay behind me and before me.  I am tired and on edge.  Watching the rhythmic clobber of my feet in a hypnotized gaze, it's as if my consciousness has taken a seat deeper behind my eyes.  In my wake I leave the only tracks.  Not the only tracks, the only human tracks.  Under foot, through my glazed panoramic vision weave the fragile foot falls of the birds.  The shifting prints of rabbits lay enmeshed with the memory of frantic stabbing deer hoofs.  In places wind cuts scars in the snow.  In others, it builds drifts that spill over like white-watered shore-break.  I am alone and exhausted.  Electrically alive.