Commute is a series about my grueling daily experience of run-commuting to and from school in the West of Ireland. Traveling 12 miles a day across Mt. Gleninagh twice was an extreme embodiment of place. It was a welcomed, albeit adverse engagement with a small patch of land.

 

Mapping by repetition – comprehension by footsteps, burned brain cartography breathing history, exhaling curious, absorbing, hail pain, taking breath by 40 mph.

 

Sunsets meet me always, despite the turbulence. Glowing eyes. Animal eyes. Mine. Limestone grykes accept, take ankles – apathetically wandering. I drift. Slick dancing, I propriocept beneath moonlight. Purple paints the air with peace. I run with strength but not resistance, I listen to the wind and my body in conversation.

​