morning run

Any day you see the sunrise is a good day.

This morning I was out the door for a run just after 6:00. I went my usual way up Masonic en route to Crissy Field, and when I dropped down into Lover's Lane in the Presidio it was still dark. Lover's Lane is a soft, wooded path, and it's lighted, so it's one of the rare places you can run on dirt at night. I was barely onto the trail when I was met with an unreal howling, ferocious and eerie, piercing the pre-dawn quiet. Two hundred meters downhill was a tall man with an enormous German shepherd, straining at its leash and barking like crazy as all the neighborhood dogs joined in.

When I got down to the man he stopped me and said, "I wouldn't go that way if I were you." I'm not used to having to change routes, and when I asked why, he replied, "Because there's a pack of coyotes down there, and they're in a frenzy." I looked past him, and sure enough, two hundred meters off I made out a group of four or five coyotes running in frantic circles, wailing and braying. One of the coyotes jumped and twisted in the air, but each time quickly landed to rejoin his pack-mates.

I've been up close to lots of animals on runs, including horses, cows, deer, rattlesnakes, foxes, and the odd tarantula, but I've never been up close to a coyote. I've seen them many times at Rancho San Antonio and the Dish, but only at a distance, and only a brief flash of fur which vanished into the underbrush. However, this morning it was clear that if I had gotten much closer they might have ripped me to shreds.

I turned around, went up the path, and went the long way down the road to Crissy Field. At the Warming Hut, I stretched for a minute in the quiet cold and watched a container ship sail out under the Golden Gate, its engines at a deep rumble. Then I turned and ran back down along the shore as dawn broke over the city.