six miles

pilgrimage- any long journey, especially one undertaken as a quest or for a votive purpose, as to pay homage.

I went for a run this morning. It was my last run in Athens, at least for now. Typically I run on the trails at the IM fields or botanical gardens, but I needed to get rid of some of the dirt caked on my shoes (white people love new balance). So I ran around campus on what turned out to be a cognitive pilgrimage of sorts.

First I ran up River Road, where I used to ride my bike home from Linguistics. I continued up East Campus Road until it intersected with Baldwin, where I took a left then a right to run between the old art school and the library, past the North Campus Parking Deck, and toward Tasty World. I made a left at Broad Street and entered North Campus by the arch, making note of the fact that this would be the last time I would go past it and not through it. I zig-zagged my way to Herty Field and made a couple of loops around the fountain before heading to Gilbert Hall and Lumpkin Street.

When I began this run, I didn't have a route in mind really, so I just allowed my memories to string together and I always sort of knew which general direction to head in next. At this point, I was heading for Brumby. I passed Caldwell Hall, which houses the department of Environmental Design and is known as the ugliest building on campus. I found a new treasure tucked between this building and Lumpkin, which, in my opinion, totally redeemed it: The Founder's House and Memorial Garden. It was beautiful, and I found myself regretting the fact that I didn't discover this place my freshman year, because I could have spent countless hours studying there on fine spring days instead of locking myself in my depressing shoebox of a dorm room to forget what the sun looked like.

I ran past the SLC, which apparently is now called the ZMLC (Zell Miller Learning Center), where I spent a great deal of time my first semester here reading for Astronomy and Educational Psychology before my late afternoon Spanish class. I crossed that intersection of Baxter and Lumpkin and ran past the Mell Community and Bolton Dining Commons before coming to the high rises: Creswell, Russell, and up that hill that never gets any easier, Brumby. I spotted my old window in room 442 on the south wing, where I spent my weekends cracking up over bad korean food with my high school sweetheart, who I had already begun to outgrow without even realizing it.

I ran past the West Campus Parking Deck and through my old parking lot and took the same backroads I used Wednesdays on my way to a night class in the Rivers Crossing building on College Station spring semester of freshmen year. When I reached South Lumpkin, I ran to Wesley and cut across between the Georgia Center and the South Campus Parking Deck. I ran past Snelling and the Pharmacy Building, where I realized that I wanted to be a Speech Pathologist during a Survey of Special Education class I took with my sister. I ran past the Turtle Garden, my very favorite place on campus and said goodbye to the turtles and coyfish, past the Forest Resource building, where I frequently slept through statistics. I ran past my climbing tree, where I did a lot of my big thinking sophomore year. I ran past Aderhold, which still looks like a giant waffle to me, and down East Campus Road until it connected with College Station Road.

When I reached the 5 mile mark, I was a little shocked, and thought for a moment that my pedometer was in kilometers instead of miles, because I was feeling really good. Finally, I ran by the health center and IM fields, past the Ramsey center and East Campus Parking Deck, and then home.

I got a really good professional idea on this run: Cognitive Maps for patients in the early stages of Dementia. I'll let you know how that goes.