For many years, in the middle of a rich Miami suburb, stood a fifty-foot statue of a parrot. Think of the great assembled bones of Tyrannosaurus Rex that loom over visitors to the Smithsonian, but now imagine something twice as tall, and in the form of an obnoxious talking bird. It is perhaps an ambivalent testament to our town’s dubious sense and worse taste that nobody ever really noticed that so extravagant a monument perched in his backyard. Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

To be sure, the parrot was considerably less tacky than most of the houses in its neighborhood (do you receive sexual satisfaction from the thought of granite countertops? Move to Pinecrest…), and could rival the Pietá if compared to anything issuing from the warped imagination of the abominable Romero Britto. In fact, ever since the 20-ton bird flew the coup, as it were, things have only gotten worse.

That, however, is another story for another time. Let us return to the bird, and to a crowd of skinny high schoolers in tiny shorts who sit in its shadow, preparing for something grand.

I was thirteen when my coach first brought me there. It was poetry: teams from all over town assembled by the big bird, as did weekend warriors and the occasional professional runner. We’d run a course marked by spray-painted numbers every half mile, a course that wound beneath the shady oaks that line the South Gables’s back ways, a course that ran us along the blooming Vine Pergola of Fairchild Gardens and through the hardwood forests of Matheson Hammock – our first chance for water on the route. The trail took us north along Old Cutler, the road that follows the shoreline and connects Deering to Viscaya, and beneath the cathedral buttresses of the banyans that open to Cartagena Plaza (Cartagena is Coral Gables’s sister city, in memoriam of which we built a pretty square, and then dropped in its center a mammoth pair of bronze shoes).

Here, by the bridge from which you can watch the sun rising out of the sea, was – and is – a most remarkable thing: for decades, the Huseby family has put out large coolers of water, stocked said coolers with cups, and invited all runners on the trail to stop and take a drink. Most do. The parrot is long gone; she’s on Miami Beach, where all bad decisions end up. The runners I grew up with are mostly gone, too; early weight gain, or busy schedules, or one too many knee surgeries took them off the trail. But the coolers remain – every Saturday morning, rain or shine. And I still visit the old meeting place at the corner of Red and Killian before I hit the trail. Come autumn, a new crop of runners is there, ready for the new season, and we stretch and joke and tease one another before we all lope and bound away together under the morning light.

To run the trail, start at Pinecrest Gardens (formerly Parrot Jungle) on the northwest corner of 57th avenue and SW 112 street. Cross the street immediately to the east, and begin running north on the bike trail. Within 400 meters, a small bridge will take you east over the canal and into a residential neighborhood. Bear left (or better yet: follow a runner). You’ll cut your way northeast until you come out at a small gate before a busier road (Old Cutler). Cross the road, and hang a left at the bike path. You’ll stay on the path as it cuts through a stone wall with a wooden gate, and takes you through a dense hardwood hammock (look down: mile marker 1.5 is spray-painted there for you). Keep on the path for another mile until you come to a large circular plaza with a park at its northern extreme. Grab a cup of water, courtesy of the Huseby family, enjoy the view from the bridge, and continue down Edgewater Drive, the road curving northeast from the northern edge of the park. Edgewater will take you into the Grove. You can follow the trail through Village of Coconut Grove, and finally out to Bayshore Drive, where you can run north to the Rickenbacker Causeway, a large (and steep… so… pace yourself…) bridge leading you into the island of Key Biscayne. Run all of Key Biscayne until you run out of land and have to turn back around.