4 miles
river road, north/south
50! degrees
Wow! Warm this afternoon. Ran at 3, about an hour and a half before sunset. The light was very cool. I might want to run again at this time. The best part: running above the gorge, over the river and the Winchell Trail, I was positioned just right so that I cast a shadow onto the water far below. Today my shadow got to swim. At least one of us could. Encountered some high schoolers running with sticks or ski poles or something. I couldn’t tell what they were. After I was done, I took off my visor, forgetting that I also had my bright pink headband on. A few minutes later I remembered and noticed it was gone. I retraced my steps and amazingly, was able to find it in the grass. I can’t believe I realized I had lost it, and I can’t believe I could see it in the grass.
Here’s something I read earlier today, which I love:
from Among the Trees/ Carl Phillips
SOME TREES ARE compasses, and some are flags. If a flag tells you where you are, a compass can potentially tell you how to get there or how to find someplace else. A flag, in marking a spot, seems more definitive, a form of punctuation; a compass implies movement, navigation. I know a man who, whenever he needs to write, or cry, or think—really think—goes to a willow in his local park and hides beneath its draped branches. He goes there so often, you could almost say he’s become part of the willow; he seems a willow himself; he marks a place in my life where I stopped to rest, once, but I couldn’t stay. Then there’s another man, long ago now. His body a forest when seen from the air in a small plane, so that it’s possible to get close enough to see where the oaks give way to poplar trees, or where, if you follow the pines far enough, they’ll open out to a field across which you can see the ocean. I couldn’t have found my way here without him.
I love the idea of trees as flags and compasses, and I love his description of the man who retreats to the willow. One of my favorite poems by Phillips features a willow, “And Swept All Visible Signs Away.” In it, could Phillips be referencing the willow man?
Here’s something else I read yesterday on twitter. I want to think some more about the differences between an eruption and a scattering:
when most people say their mind has been blown I think they mean like a volcano erupting but when I say it I mean my brain is a plucked dandelion someone’s scattered with their breath
@toddedilliard