Day 2,554 —My Return to the Trail and Happy Day of Saturn (Saturday)— (with a picture of a bench)

Saturday means, “day of Saturn.” Saturn was the ancient Roman god of agriculture. He was immensely popular at one time as was the festival of Saturnalia, which was held December 17-23 each year. Like most Roman gods there is conflation with Greek gods, and Saturn’s Greek counterpart was Cronus (the father of Zeus). Cronus is often depicted with a sickle and evolved over the years to Chronos and later the enduring image of death (often in a black robe while holding a sickle). 

I wanted to run on a trail because I hadn’t in a long time. I found out yesterday that they were doing a race on part of the trail, so at first, I didn’t think I would even be able to run on the Chubb Trail, but I managed to stay on the right side. I did run into some people from the race, and I thought they were trying to take my picture.

I felt bad thinking I was somehow misrepresenting myself, so I quickly said, “I am not part of the race.” 

And the guy responded so defensively, “I am only taking a picture.” 

I don’t know if I overdid it, but I don’t like it when people are just running the same paths you are doing during a race, so I was trying to be respectful give them their space. It ended up being really muddy, but I was mostly fine. I thought I might try to do more, but I guess a 22-mile trail run is a good starting point. I will have to do more next week. Maybe I will do a 50k next Saturday.        

There is more history about Saturday that I could get into, but I don’t know how much I want to write about Saturday. I have already been thinking of so many different things I can say about the origins of Sunday, which has been a point of contention among some religious groups. I still find it shocking that most dictionaries will just tell you the names were named after the planets, but I find it difficult to believe the common people would think they were named after the planets and not the gods they would have been familiar with. Sunday has a lot of baggage because there have been so many different sun gods throughout time.