TWENTY-ONE WINDMILLS

"Out 4 a 5 miler, c u later?" I text to an interesting woman I'd been seeing since the feast of Saint Nicholas.

"Have a good run, the electric blanket's on" she replies.

_______________

It had been a good run since sparks had started flying three weeks earlier. She was wound tight by two absentee courtiers and I was in dire need of unwinding a year after a traumatic marital separation.

"A lonely Saturday without my daughter", she posted on Facebook on a morning that I was feeling the same.

"How about a country drive to a potter's open-house?" I messaged.

"I'm in the shower."

"Be right there!"

_______________

Stretching hamstrings on my mailbox post, I spot the STOP sign in front of her house two blocks away, an inspiration to run fast to get home quickly. 

Setting out down the blacktop, I cut through a meadow where we had walked with her Brittany spaniel on a frosty Sunday morning.

Jogging back into town along Church Street, I try to avoid looking at the little yellow house that her ex-husband still lives in.

Heading out McElheny Lane, I pass the Confederate Cemetery where we had walked on the first white Christmas anyone could remember.

The sun is setting as I lean into the uphill back into town along Route 60. I stop at the western hump above Lewisburg for the 360 degree view of the Greenbrier Valley and surrounding mountains. Standing in front of the Sunset Terrace Motel, where I had slept away those first two lonely weeks after moving out, I spot fiery glints of sunlight on the distant hilltops to the north.

"It's a 21 windmill run" I quickly post onto Facebook before taking off toward town with visions of long slow nights dancing in my head.

"With many more to come" she responds before I even hit the shower.