My run begins on my street, under power lines topped with crows, a murder of them screaming. I turn left, resist the urge to throw up my middle finger when, inevitably, a car does not stop at the crosswalk flanked by flashing lights. The next car does stop, and I nod like the driver’s done me a favor instead of just following the rules.

I cross to the lake, which I will loop for my first mile. All the birds are still waking up and have something to say about it: anhinga, ibis, two small white egrets, and a great blue heron. I cannot distinguish their sounds from one another as I’m not the kind of lesbian with a bird call identifier app on my phone nor were any of these birds found where I come from in central Virginia, so they wouldn’t have been any of the ones my grandfather did teach me how to listen for. On the far side of the lake, a tall wall separates my path from the busy highway above; I can hear the cars but not see them. On the wall, my shadow, that tall bitch always running seven feet ahead of me at this hour.

Green plants reach down between the black metal fence at the top of the wall in that strangely beautiful mix of nature and concrete this place does so well, and the moon above me, still visible in the steadily brightening sunlight, is perfectly halved, what I call an orange slice moon. (If you haven’t been able to piece it together yet, I’m running in Florida.)

I finish the lake loop and run on a straight path for another mile before looping a different lake. The sun is like a threat now, but I push through. Around the second lake, I hear a bird call I do know thanks to the research I did the last time I heard it: the limpkin, whose call sounds like a woman screaming. If I could see it now, it would look almost like a cross between an anhinga and an ibis, beak long like the latter, plumage dark like the former. It’s the only living member of its taxonomical bird family; the rest are extinct. That’s not why it screams; the shrill sound is simply how it prefers to communicate, and I get that. When I’m running, everything screams.

All of these sounds in my ears—the cars, the birds, the fall of my feet, the pouch of souped-up applesauce in my left pocket that crinkles every time my right foot comes down—mean this run, like all the others, is not silent. But it is not scored by music either. I run without headphones.

I think you should try it.

***
I started running for the first time in my life in November, not so subtly inspired by spectating my younger sister’s first marathon the month before. I made fun of myself in the beginning, still do sometimes, for the cliché of picking up running—joining a run club, even!—in my early thirties. Already, the practice has altered the shape of my life. It remains my lowest-priority physical activity; tennis and strength training come first and second. But despite my disinterest in adding much distance over seven miles or improving my speed any time soon, running is changing me faster than I can keep up. I feel it constantly, even if I cannot yet put it perfectly into words. I try to figure those words out while running.

***
There are all sorts of reactions I’ve received when I tell people I run without music. The word “psycho” recurs most often. You think you know a person, one friend jokes. Several ask if I’m okay. My wife tries it out when we run together, but after a few musicless runs by my side, she goes on a solo run and comes back saying she preferred the music.

One friend misunderstands and asks if it’s because I listen to podcasts. No, I tell her, not podcasts. I tell her, laughing, how my sister downloaded a podcast about the science of pain as some light listening material for her first marathon, but my friend wants to keep the subject on me.

What do you listen to then? she asks.

Nothing, I say, and then modify: just my own thoughts.

When I share this anecdote on social media, the idea of running to one’s own internal monologue and nothing else, there seems to be a shared greater misunderstanding that this means I must have a good brain that only thinks positive thoughts. This amuses me. Imagine that! A brain without any stressful or sad or fucked-up thoughts! In 2026!

No, while my mind does turn to the shape of the sun and the call of the limpkin and the rhythm of my breathing as I run, it also cycles through its usual series of anxious and thorny thoughts. Rage sometimes, too, an emotion I have a complicated relationship with since I used to feel it most acutely when starving myself, behavior I’ve effectively escaped but not without great effort — not unlike the effort it takes to keep running when your brain tells you to stop. Sometimes the thoughts are bad, yes. But still, I think them and keep going.

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The way I see it: Running acclimates my body to the physical side effects of stress and anxiety. I’m teaching my body to function at an elevated heart rate, when breathing takes concentration, when parts of my body are screaming. Running without music, then, acclimates my mind to the mental stress. The bad thoughts emerge alone, unscored, asking me to consider them without distraction.

There is nothing to really do while running other than think. I am not used to a physical activity without the edge of competition, but I have no interest in racing, only running for fun. In tennis, there is so much to consider all the time, my head filled with strategy, adjustments, analysis of my own game and my opponent’s. There is no wandering mind. But with running, at a certain easy pace, I can think through the novel I’m working on, work through creative problems, brainstorm. Much of this essay was written in my head on an easy run.

***
I know many people can do all this with music in their ears, can let their minds wander and pay attention to their internal monologue at the same time as listening to tunes that become an ambient soundtrack to those thoughts. I do write while listening to music sometimes. I don’t regard music as a distraction; usually it adds to my creative rhythms and internal processing rather than taking away. One of my greatest joys in life is driving with music blasting, the sun roof open, scream-singing along.

But there is something that keeps me more firmly rooted in my surroundings and my thoughts when running if I do not wear headphones. I had not seen the lonely limpkin as I ran, only heard its howl. Running outside means threading into the environment and ecosystem, existing out in the world untethered. If I ever experience what they call a “runner’s high,” it’s this. Running without headphones, it’s easier to feel more limpkin than human. To be completely and totally alone with my thoughts in these moments doesn’t feel like isolation but rather deeper connection.

(In purely practical terms, it should be noted, it’s safer to run while being able to hear all of your surroundings.)

So try it, won’t you? And hey, maybe you’ll still think I’m crazy after. I can live with that.