This March, I plan on running the Lenape Trail Race, a 34-mile course through Essex County, New Jersey. It will probably take me 7+ hours. I will probably walk parts of it and take some breaks. I might not finish it. I don't really want to run an ultra-marathon, but I really want to run the whole Lenape Trail. It just happens to be 34 miles. Oh well.

I discovered the trail years ago, probably on a walk with Macy in the South Mountain Reservation.

In high school, the South Mountain Reservation was a refuge and a playground for my friends and me. If I woke up Saturday morning to someone texting "Res?" in the group chat, I knew it would be a good day. My parents thought all we did in there was smoke weed, but it was so much more than that. (And besides, it wasn't always that easy to cop a dub.) We explored, we talked, we climbed stuff, we ran, we looked at cool sticks, we got lost. A lot of my best memories of Greg, who would have turned 28 last week, were formed in the Res. There was one time when we found out that we could get to the back of the zoo and see the giraffes for free.

The Lenape Trail is marked by rectangular yellow blazes. In South Mountain, it ascends sharply from the Millburn entrance by the train station to the lookout point where George Washington spied the British in Manhattan. Then it winds its way over to Hemlock Falls and across South Orange Ave (and the S-curves where during my first driving lesson my instructor told me to go into the left lane---long story!) and into a soft-bedded pine grove (this grove and other key attractions of South Mountain Reservation were designed by the Olmsted family of Central Park fame). The trail continues through the Boy Scout campground and then up and above the Turtleback Reservoir. It took me some time to piece together that the yellow trail at the Millburn entrance was the same one by the waterfall. And then some more adventures to explore farther and farther. When I found that it kept going across Northfield Ave, I finally looked it up and discovered that it's a whopping 34 miles! I suppose you already knew that though. (ed. note - consider moving this paragraph to the beginning.)

After South Mountain Reservation, the trail continues through streets, small parks, big parks, reservoirs, patches of woods, through a power line cutout, under a highway, up a hill, along a cliff, through a downtown area, down a hill, up a hill, and through some more parks before finally ending up in Newark's Branch Brook Park. The Lenape Trail Race runs this route backwards, in my opinion, starting at Newark Broad Street and ending in Millburn.

Several summers ago, after I had discovered the full extent of the trail, my friend Gabe and I started running the whole thing, in ten-ish mile chunks, often driving our cars around for longer than the run, like fox-chicken-and-corn farmers who never heard of a cage. At the end of the summer, we walked 28 miles of it, joined by Bill. Bill, incidentally, had been drunk when he agreed to join us the night before and had no idea what he was getting into. He arrived with only a half-filled bottle of water. This March, I hope to be more prepared than Bill, but I could sure use a fraction of his fearlessness.

But anyway, as part of training for this race, I went for a run last night, even though run club was cancelled. Sunday's snow has left the sidewalks of North Brooklyn slick and slippery. Yet, somehow, the streets were clear. For readers in the Northeast, the same is probably true of your neighborhood. This might not be surprising to you, but consider this: why are your tax dollars being spent to salt and plow the way for private vehicles, but not also to clear the paths where the people go? Why is the safety of pedestrians a matter of individual responsibility when systemic changes could make things safer for everyone?

So when you're sliding across your neighbor's sidewalk this winter, sure, shake one fist at their lazy landlord, but shake the other fist at your local representative. And now you're dancing!

Move those feet.

Splat. Crack.