An hour after Saturday’s slow dawn I edge into the throng at the Harold and Cynthia Anderson Reserve. On the neat lawns there’s people from across the athletic spectrum and dogs and dads with wide, black prams.

With a few hundred others I head north in the shared enterprise that is the West Beach parkrun. The congestion rapidly evaporates and peering ahead, the coloured stretch of joggers is elasticising along the esplanade.

To my right is a playground. With my teenaged boys having abandoned this age of innocence, I feel a saddening sting that comes from the despair of time moving quickly, too quickly. As I amble through, I can almost hear the spectral shrieks.

We snake by the Henley Sailing Club, all imposing and vaguely smug in its nautical whiteness. A greyish blue sea is on my left, and the trail chaperones us along the dune and among the hardy coastal vegetation. The city’s close by but we’re immersed in this surprising strip of wilderness.

Here the beach presents as serene and health-giving, somehow more encouraging of a life to be brightly lived. Then we take the bridge over Breakout Creek and the Torrens outlet. We often hear of the mighty Murray, and the mighty Mississippi; well, this is the tremendously modest Torrens but it’s our little river and makes for a fetching ecosystem.

A pair of female runners catches me, chatting about a casino win. Remember how going to a casino was once an event but now holds less ceremony than popping down to the servo in Ugg boots and shapeless trackies?

Pushing on, the Henley jetty swims into view. The talented local poet, John Malone, once wrote that jetties are umbilical cords attaching us to better versions of ourselves. Accepting this premise, every month I stride onto a jetty for the inner benefit of both gazing out to sea and back to the silent, sometimes worrying land. I think it works.

We pass the Henley Beach hotel. It’s a serviceable alehouse but fails to sunnily exploit its location. Rather than embracing the seaside and affirming breeze it seems to defy these. Maybe I should swing by soon to offer it redemption.

At Joe’s Kiosk I turn around and am southbound, encouraged by a clapping volunteer.

There’s an agreeable absence of metropolitan sounds. I’m cocooned in this calm esplanade and the solitude of running promotes a falling into yourself that’s neither acutely aware of the current slog nor meditative. This morning, running just is.

Gulf St. Vincent is gentle today and its mood washes onto me. Last week we had a rearing surf as a winter storm dumped mounds of brown seaweed. For all their ferocity, these tempests offer natural reassurance and a restoring intimacy.

Returning to the Harold and Cynthia Anderson Reserve I quicken and then cross the finish line. Knowing my time is modest I remember to focus on the act of having completed the run. The story’s narrative heave is often more important than the finale. I’m content.

Clumps of joggers again gather on the clipped lawns, their morning exercise now taken. Like me, some will disperse into satisfying and routine Saturdays. It’s the seventh birthday of West Beach parkrun so there’s cake for all. It’s a robust community.