My thrice weekly jog takes me down the student housing blocks on First Ave., and over the bridge to UW campus I go. It then veers into Putnam Park and through the woods, which eventually becomes a ravine clear-cut a few years back for drainage piping. This clearing has become one of Eau Claire’s interzones for solitary cruising, should that be a necessity on a particularly cotton-sky’d afternoon. Normally nobody is there.

I have met three people in that ravine either while jogging through or simply hanging out by myself. The first was a strawberry-faced drunk haplessly lost and calling me “athlete” as I ran through. “You’ll run up the whole f*$&ing hill, won’t you!”

The second person I didn’t really meet, per se, nor was he actually in the clearing. I think he was a college student (novelty t-shirt) doing the same thing I was; he stood looking back over his shoulder at me, silent. Then he walked into the underbrush where I couldn’t see him, but that moment was probably a holy one.

The last person was a girl who had probably grown tired of the river for a spell. She told me she was just going on a “hike,” and she let me have some sunscreen. Good thing, too, because the sun had me seriously considering going home.