A lot of people who know me know I’ve become a sort-of avid runner. I say ‘sort of’ because although I run every day, I kind of hate it. But like a lot of runners, I’ve become addicted to it and put in my daily paces.

Warm weather permitting, there’s only one place I’ll run outside in Avon Lake: the Kopf Reservation. If you haven’t walked or run the trails, you should sometime. Just about now, everything is in full bloom and there are enough trails, many of them improved but unpaved, to keep it interesting and easy on the knees.

There is also enough nature to keep you amused. Squirrels, butterflies, chipmunks and of course deer, are all over the place. (Yes, yes, I know, the deer, the deer, THE DEER!)

The MetroPark deer are domesticated enough now to stand all of two feet away from you on the trails and give you a “so what, I’m not moving” look as you slink by them, hoping like hell they aren’t going to hoof you to death. Trust me, they’re going to stare you down until you move out of their way.

Either or, love them or hate them, it’s kind of neat to see up to a dozen of  them crossing a wooded trail while you run.

But this isn’t another article on the deer. It’s an article about a red North Face jacket, an absent-minded editor and a very honest resident.

On Monday, in 66-degree weather, I set off for the trails in running shorts, a T-shirt and a red North Face shell. It's a fleecy thing worn by chill babies when it’s 66 degrees out.

No surprise, three-quarters of a mile into the run I started to sweat and by the one-mile marker I opted to lose the jacket. I took it off and hung it on a tree and carried on for three more miles of communing with the deer.

When I got back to where I thought I hung the jacket I couldn’t find it. I swore I left it on a tree off a paved trail but it was nowhere to be seen. I ran back and forth on the trail for another half mile looking for it, scratched my head, and went home, unsure if someone took it or I had left it elsewhere in the 800 acres of parkland.

When I got home 5 minutes later, I saw something piled on the front steps.

My red North Face jacket.

Huh.  

For a few seconds I thought maybe I never took the jacket with me but then distinctly remembered putting it on the tree and naively thinking no one would take it. And since it was pretty quiet in the woods when I hung it (with the exception of the 20 - 250 deer, take your pick) I couldn't figure out how anyone would have known the jacket was mine let alone where I lived.

The mystery was pretty quickly solved when I saw a jacket pocket was open and my driver’s license was sticking out. The license with my address on it.

I thought the jacket’s pockets were empty when I hung it up, but being occasionally absent minded (but not so absent minded as to leave my company-issued iPhone on top of my car), I didn’t realize the license was in there. Or a $5 bill. Or my MasterCard.

So to the person who found my jacket and dropped it off at my house, thank you. It would have been too easy to keep the jacket, the 5 bucks, ring up my MasterCard and use my license to pass yourself off as a 5’1 chick with way too much (not-so-natural) blonde hair.

But a special delivery to my front door? Returning the money and credit card? Props. I owe someone a debt of gratitude. Or at least a cup of coffee with the $5 I didn’t even know I had.