Some people think I am crazy for running. Some people think I am crazy for getting up early. I get extra crazy points for getting up early for the purpose of running. Then I take it to expert level crazy by getting up early to run in freezing temperatures during the dark of the year.

I take a torch with me but I rely on moonlight as much as possible. My overly familiar routes are new again as my imagination fills in the shadows. (And there is far more shadow than light before a December’s dawn.) There is a hush over the frosted grass, broken only by pairs of tawny owls trying to find one another.

The few people who are out are morning people. They are running, or going to work, or walking their dogs, or maybe on their way home after a long debauched night. The morning people are quiet year-round, whatever their reasons, caught up in their own morning thoughts. In winter they seem farther away than ever, sunk deep into the black depths of their minds.

The dogs, however, are lit up like Christmas trees. They sport blinking LED collars and prance along the pavement as if they’ve just left the best rave of their lives. I don’t know if they’ll ever come down.

On a recent run I glimpsed a shooting star arcing over Skeldergate Bridge and made a wish. I can’t tell you what it was, of course, because that would go against the Rules of Wishing, and it wouldn’t come true. In the meantime, I will keep putting one foot in front of the other, and meet my morning thoughts in the shadows.