George Wyth

George Wyth State Park is a great little park near my hometown. I have some memories of going on family bike rides and some great hikes through the trees. It's well maintained and well traveled. There are miles and miles of paved and dirt trails winding through trees and near streams. 

Yesterday morning, a woman was jogging on a popular trail when a man stepped out of the trees and stabbed her in the shoulder. She somehow kept running until she could get help. Stabbed. At George Wyth. 

I run a lot by myself. Pretty much every time I run, I'm alone. I don't carry anything with me. I run in the daylight. I keep an eye on my surroundings. I run on safe and well traveled trails in town. And none of that matters on the day a deranged man steps out of the trees with a knife. I could carry a weapon. A phone. Pepper spray. But in the moment that a man steps out of the trees, do those things even matter? Would I have enough time to react and save myself from an attack? I think we all know that the answer is probably not. 

What's a runner girl to do? If a public and popular trail in a state park in Cedar Falls, Iowa is not a safe place to run, then neither is a public and popular trail in Dubuque. And neither are the streets of the city. And neither are school tracks. Public gyms. Home treadmills. They all carry the same amount of obscure risk of being attacked by a crazy person. Do I stop running? Stay in my house and hide? Certainly not. I keep doing exactly what I've been doing. I tie my shoes, set my watch, and hit the trail for another run. I keep getting stronger and faster. And I face risk head on, not stupidly with reckless abandon, but in a prepared, on guard sort of way. 

That's kind of the way life is, you know? Bad things happen in life. Some of them we can prepare for, but some of them are a lot like a deranged man with a knife. We can only react. But we can't hide away. We can protect ourselves from everything. We must keep living. And maybe because we know that bad things happen, we live a little more pointedly. A little more intentionally.  And that makes life good. And running the trails good, too.