I love running when it's cool. Sometimes I like it downright cold - layered-up with running tights, a fleece and skull cap, the bracing air against my face. There's nothing like sub-40 degree temps to wake me up in the early morning. Unfortunately, Atlanta has been gripped in a drought, compounded by a hot and lingering summer. We are well into October and still hitting highs in the mid-80's. It feels like July. Based on the Chicago Marathon debacle last weekend, it looks like we're not alone. I've been a little irritable lately, and I think it's because my body clock is calibrated to expect occasional crisp mornings and evenings in late September, followed by a seasonal and lasting temperature drop in October. This extended summer feels unnatural, and my body is out of sync.

The prolonged hot weather hasn't delayed the cold and flu season in our house. Last night we were up with the two youngest, both battling fevers. Normally those middle of the night wake-up calls knock me off my morning training schedule, but I was up and out this morning, in part because I wanted to seize the relatively cooler segment of the day.

In the mornings I usually run a 4.8 mile course that's hillier and more varied than any organized race I'll run during the year. I pass homes, schools, churches and a couple of small fields. The start, mid-point and end of the course is my mailbox.

There's not a lot going on from 5:00 - 6:00 a.m. in our neighborhood other than a few folks walking their dogs, a couple of other runners and the occasional early bird on their way to work. It's the quiet as much as the cool that I enjoy. Unless I wear my ipod, the sounds are limited to my shoes on the pavement and sprinklers running in the pre-dawn hour in violation of the watering ban.

My body creaked a bit at the start, but after a half mile or so I had settled into a familiar cadence of breath and footfall. This morning the sky was clear - Orion high and to the southwest, Venus close to the horizon in the east.

Last night I read the story of the fall of man in Genesis. It's a familiar story - God creates a perfect Eden, places man in it to keep and cultivate, and man screws it up because he wants to be like God. But there was something else I hadn't noticed until last night. Just after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, but before their confrontation with God, they "heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." That passage resonated with me - God enjoying his creation, walking through it in the cool of the day. Adam could have been walking with him, but he was hiding in humiliation instead. His eviction from Eden followed shortly thereafter.

There's a long hill on my run. I used to dread it, but now I look forward to attacking it, to feeling the satisfying burn in my quads and increased heart rate. After I crest the hill, I charge down the other side with loping strides, each step a gratifying reminder that I am healthy and alive, with a loving family waiting at my destination. This morning on the hill, amidst the dark, cool and quiet, a sanitation truck clambered past, lights flashing, leaving the overwhelming smell of exhaust and refuse in its wake. It was a jolting reminder of the heat and toil that the rest of the day promised.

I stopped at my mailbox after the second loop and checked my time. 38:35, just about an 8 minute mile pace. I'd done better, and I'd done a lot worse. After my cool down I stopped at a wide, open place in the road where I could see both the Morning Star and Orion. For a moment I was still. I fixed my eyes on the sky between those two astronomical points and could almost perceive the slow rotation of the earth, keenly aware that I was standing on an anchorless sphere rather than a fixed and immovable plane.

I think we are occasionally given fleeting glimpses of Eden, just to remind us that the best we have here isn't worthy to be compared with what we will enjoy if we stop hiding and start looking. At least that's what I was thinking this morning as I ran toward the garden in the cool of the day.