run: 2.25 miles
river road up above, south/down below, north
63 degrees
So beautiful this morning! Sunny, calm, cool, low humidity. Decided to do a quick, easy run. Stayed up above, next to the road running south and took the lower, rougher trail on the way back, running north. Noticed the boulders and the split trail fence that stretched alongside the walking path up above. Heard some yelling, laughing kids at a school. Running back, on the lower path, I payed attention to the wrought iron fence and how bushes and vines and wildflowers were reaching through the bars. Will this be trimmed back anytime soon and who will do it, volunteers or the parks department?
bike: 4.3 miles
lake nokomis
Biking by Minnehaha Falls park the parkway was so crowded. Very happy to be on a bike and not in a car! Also, noticed as I turned onto the lake biking path that the flooding is over and the walking path is open again. All that’s left is a mucky mess.
swim: 1.5 miles
lake nokomis
70 degrees (air and water)
A great second open swim at lake nokomis. Decided that 2 loops with one extra trip around the first buoy (an extra 200 yards) was enough. Cold in the water without a wetsuit. The water felt very thick and slow at the beginning–extra dense, which is strange because I think that’s supposed to happen when the water is warmer. Couldn’t really see the buoys at all on the way back because of the sun but it didn’t matter because I could see the tops of the building at the big beach. Saw several swimmers swimming way off course and realized that I swim straighter than a lot of people who can see much better than me. Coolest thing I remember: watching the bubbles from my hand slicing into the water make funky shapes and lines.
Looking for a poem about lakes, I found this one. I like the idea of wind and the sound of wind being two separate things and the soft, simple way this poem reveals itself–oh and the line: “these creatures robed/in your parents’ skins.”
At the Lake House
BY JON LOOMIS
Wind and the sound of wind—
across the bay a chainsaw revs
and stalls. I’ve come here to write,
but instead I’ve been thinking
about my father, who, in his last year,
after his surgery, told my mother
he wasn’t sorry—that he’d cried
when the other woman left him,
that his time with her
had made him happier than anything
he’d ever done. And my mother,
who’d cooked and cleaned for him
all those years, cared for him
after his heart attack, could not
understand why he liked the other
woman more than her,
but he did. And she told me
that after he died she never went
to visit his grave—not once.
You think you know them,
these creatures robed
in your parents’ skins. Well,
you don’t. Any more than you know
what the pines want from the wind,
if the lake’s content with this pale
smear of sunset, if the loon calls
for its mate, or for another.