This summer, Melissa Menard signed up to Walk FOR the Canal, joined six Canal community clean-up events, and participated in a brush removal event. In 2004, the High Line Canal was just a line on a map for her. When she stopped by our Canal Table in Aurora a few weeks back, she shared the story of how her appreciation of the Canal grew.
As an accomplished member of the running world – she’s completed nine marathons – Melissa kept hearing vaguely about the High Line Canal Trail, but she already had her favorite scenic hiking trails and her own neighborhood for routine training runs. She figured an urban trail along a canal would be flat and boring. And how the heck did you get on it? However, running around her neighborhood was getting boring and her scenic hiking trails required travel, so in 2004 she took the first step and located the East Orchard Road trailhead.
Melissa’s first Canal run blew her away! She had unwittingly selected a segment of the trail with rolling hills, a nature preserve, and some of the best views of the Front Range on the whole trail. From that point on the High Line Canal became part of her running life.
When she took up biking in 2012, her range on the Canal expanded, but still, she stayed largely in the familiar southern segments. Then in 2018, a friend challenged Melissa to bike 2018 miles in the year. To get that done, Melissa knew she needed to venture up to the paved northern prairie sections of the Canal.
She figured this would be flat and boring for sure. She planned her first bike ride for a Sunday to avoid the traffic she knew would be at all those road crossings. Wrong again! There was so much to see – Windsor Gardens, Expo Park, wonderfully varied neighborhoods with so many interesting people also enjoying the Canal, and Delaney Farm, where someone pointed out a bald eagle.
As Melissa travels her 71 miles in 71 days on the Canal, it is now like being with an old friend. She loves its history and its place in the history of the whole region. She loves its connectivity for both people and nature. She loves its old and now slightly unreliable mile markers, which she duly converts in her head to pace herself while running her 10-16 mile long runs – no GPS needed.
Melissa is Walking FOR the Canal because she wants to have that old friend around for a long, long time.
Thank you to our volunteer, Liz Twomey, who wrote this story on behalf of Melissa.
