My eyes shot open a little before eight in the morning. In anticipation of an exhausting trip home the next day, EA and I had decided to sleep in. My problem is parenthood has eroded my already shoddy ability to sleep past 8:30 or 9. I was left with a decision. I could try to go back to sleep—which was almost assuredly a losing battle—or I could go for one last run in Italy.
The streets—which seem like a generous term for such narrow corridors—in Venice always seem crowded. You constantly have to dodge fast moving tour groups or weave around slower pedestrians. It makes Venice seem vastly more populated than it is in reality. Yet the cobblestone ways are different just after eight in the morning. They aren’t deserted, but there aren’t many people either.
Within five minutes, I passed through one of the marble archways that leads into St. Mark’s Square. The moment felt cinematic. Here I was in a massive piazza flanked by ancient buildings and it was just me, a scattered few sweeping the square, and approximately 18,000 pigeons.
I hung a right at the tower and then took a left onto the broad walkway that runs alongside the lagoon. My feet sounded like horse hooves on the cobblestone. My rolling hills were canal bridges.
After pressing straight forward for a time, I turned back in toward the city. I crossed bridges, passed city gates, and barreled down skinny passageways. The Square was my navigation point as I criss-crossed the islands. The exploration felt great. I even passed (and took a picture of) a statue of a winged lion upon which I randomly stumbled over ten years ago. His name is Marco.
I ran to the peak of the Rialto Bridge and then navigated the labyrinth before finding myself on the other “coast.” Across the way was a cemetery island where many Venetians are buried. The whole morning felt like I had been simultaneously running back in time and through a wardrobe door.
I continued to run and slowly unfamiliarity creeped up on me. I began hitting dead ends and discovered that I was on the wrong side of the city wall. I was lost and I had not seen a sign for St. Mark’s Square in ten or fifteen minutes. I took blind turns down alleyways hoping that I would find a way to my pigeon-infested North Star. The clock was ticking down to the time when I told EA that I would return. I couldn’t even remember how to backtrack the way that I had come.
I wasn’t scared. I’m an adult. I knew I’d eventually find my way back. But there was definitely an increasing sense of powerlessness. I felt like I was going in circles. Actually all the roads are more or less straight so it’s more accurate to say I was going in polygons. About the time that I had resigned myself that my fate was to spend my days running lost through these narrow streets, I saw it. It was a sign with an arrow it read “Per S. Marco.”
Unraveling the maze, I found myself back on the broad walkway. It was now close to nine and the streets were beginning to fill up with tourists. I zipped through the crowds with a spring in my step. To borrow from the hymn, I once was lost and now was found. It was liberating. It was an unexpected gift. My legs pumped as I crossed that beautiful and now crowded St. Mark’s Square. My sprint sent pigeons flapping away in terror. Just a few minutes later, I stopped at our hotel after five miles around the islands of Venice.
When I wrote about my first run overseas, I spoke of expecting some sort of “experience.” Though it was not as goofily transcendent as I described in that entry, I did have something of that in Venice. No, I didn’t high five Jesus. But I prayed through the labyrinth just as Christians have for ages (mine was just an accidental labyrinth rather than one intentionally entered for devotional purposes).
It was a prayer of gratitude. I was grateful that I had the legs, heart, and lungs to run. I was grateful that I could run in such a unique place. I was grateful that I could see a random statue that made me smile years ago. Even as my prayer became “God, help me not to get lost” and then “God, help me get unlost” that gratitude never really vanished.
And then when I knew where I was again, I was grateful for being lost because it allowed me the joy of being found.