The Idillic Dirt Road Of My Daydreams

Last summer we met my parents at a lake house in northern Michigan. A beautiful place on a quiet, clear lake about ten miles outside a small town. Set back in the woods off a dirt road, and with stunning views of the sunset. It’s a house I’d been to several times in my childhood. Though my memories of it were jumbled with times spent at another cabin that probably isn’t too many miles away.

While we were there last summer, I wanted nothing more than to go for a long run down the peaceful, wooded dirt road circling the lake. But I was struggling with an injury and intense fatigue from what I was pretty sure were low iron levels. Plus a lot of anxiety triggered by both. So I wasn’t exactly in the best condition for the idillic dirt road run I wanted.

After much internal debate about whether or not running was a good idea, my desire to enjoy the scenery on foot won. I figured that I’d been feeling a little more energetic from the iron pills and had been resting enough that a few slow miles would be okay. On the outside, I did my best to portray confidence as I laced up my shoes. But once the door shut behind me, it was just me and my anxiety heading out on that beautiful road.

I ran slowly, trying to keep my heart rate and my anxiety in check. When I told myself out loud that I was fine, it was the first run I’d had in weeks where I was confident it was true. I was tired and more than a tad broken, but I knew I was actually fine. And I was determined to prove it to my brain. On that run, we met each other somewhere in the middle. I ran slow, taking a break at the halfway point. And my anxiety let me know it was there. But it also let me have my run.

My run that day was the best I could have hoped for, given the circumstances. It wasn’t the comfortable cruise down rolling dirt hills surrounded by woods and lake that I could picture from the moment we turned off the highway. But had our trip up north been a week earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been confident enough to go for a run at all. So, my run was actually pretty great. No qualifiers needed.

Fast forward to this week. We went back to lake house and the dirt road I’ve been daydream running down for more than a year. After the storms passed the first morning we were there, I laced up my shoes and bounded out the door. Within thirty seconds I had airplane arms with sound effects as I turned out of the driveway, a huge smile on my face. Surrounded by trees and the sound of chirping birds, my feet quietly leaving tracks on rain-soaked dirt road.

For almost a half mile, I had the idillic dirt road run experience I’d been waiting for. And as the tree coverage became more dense, it was about to get better. Except, there was a middle-age man checking his mail that stared at me one beat too long without saying anything. His car was pulled to the bottom of his driveway, and his demeanor put me on high alert.

Had that been our whole interaction, I would have shaken it off. For maybe a minute, I got back to my huge smile and floating down the rolling hills. But I heard a car coming up behind me and I knew in my gut that it was him. Driving slowly, he pulled close alongside me. So close that he could’ve touched my shoulder. He said that it was a beautiful day. I scanned my surroundings and calmly said that it sure was.

The man then drove twenty feet ahead, re-centering his car on the road. Heart pounding, I slowed my pace to keep the distance he gifted me between us. He stopped his car, saying something out his window to me. The only word I clearly heard was marathon and knew he was attempting to continue a conversation. I stopped running, still fifteen feet behind his car, then loudly and firmly said have a great day.

It was an obvious and clear signal that I was ending our interaction. That I would not engage in small talk and that I did not accept his intrusion on my day. He hesitated for just a moment while I stood watching him from the side of the road. But then he started slowly driving again, and I ran a few cautious steps forward. 

There was a blind curve just ahead of us. I remembered from last summer that it was the beginning of a section without mailboxes. Only a few minutes earlier I had been looking forward to that isolation. Now though, it made me wary. The man was driving slow enough that he did not need to slow down for the curve. But my last view of his taillights as he disappeared around the curve was break lights.

While he had been in view, it had been important to me to appear calm and confident. I didn’t want to let him see that he rattled me, in case that was something he was looking to do. But now that he was out of sight, I had a choice and I needed to make it quickly. I could continue on my run, following his car further into the isolation and hope that he wasn’t waiting around the curve. Or, I could turn and run as hard as I could back toward mailboxes and my family.

Maybe he was just a socially awkward neighbor who didn’t mean to creep me out. Maybe he didn’t realize how unnerving it is for a runner to feel cornered by a stranger, especially on an isolated stretch of road with no options to change your route. And maybe he waited around that curve for me, a crime of opportunity exciting his soul. I’ll never know for sure what of that is true. Because I turned and bolted in the direction of certain safety.

I figured that I had a two or three minute window if he was waiting along the road for me. Two minutes before he realized he had spooked me and would change his plan. And if he was just a harmless but awkward man, well then I hoped he was obliviously continuing on with his day. But because this was so early on my run, a few minutes was all I needed to change my plan.

We had packed the folding mini bike for our trip up north, thinking it would be fun to do a ride and run one of the days we were there. Not wanting my run to be stolen from me, I hoped one of my family members would be up for riding alongside me on short notice. And because they are great, all three of them volunteered the moment I asked.

With a belly full of eggs, toast, and sausage he had eaten only ten minutes before, my husband changed and unfolded the bike. And even though he hadn’t been planning on riding a bike with small wheels down a hilly, wet dirt road that morning and felt like he might throw up for the first mile, he didn’t complain about any of it. He was simply by my side for my idillic dirt road run.

The next day my dad road with me, my mom waiting to tag in if needed for me to get in a last few miles. The day after that, my husband hopped back on the bike for my last day of up north running. For three mornings in a row, I got to watch people I love cruise ahead on downhills and catch back up to them as they climbed the uphills. All while running down a glorious dirt road lined with the greenest trees and views of a beautiful blue lake.

The creepy neighbor didn’t steal anything from me. And I’m pretty sure he was more on the awkward side than truly sinister. His brief appearance in my life gave me the opportunity to share the dirt road runs of my daydreams with my family. It was time with people I love I didn’t expect to have, and an experience I didn’t expect to share. Both are pleasant additions to the memories I now have of runs taken on a dirt road that I’ll continue dreaming about.