july 4/RUN

4.1 miles
minnehaha falls and back
72 degrees
humidity: 97% / dew point: 70!
11:00 am

Scott and I were supposed to run the Red, White, and Boom 4 mile race this morning, but they cancelled it because of bad weather (thunderstorms). After the storm, which wasn’t really that bad, at least here in south Minneapolis, I decided to go out and run my 4 miles. It was hot and sticky and the dew point was terrible, but I had a good run. I was inspired by Jorie Graham’s line from her poem, “All”:

After the rain stops you can hear the rained-on.

When I was running, I couldn’t quite think of the line; I didn’t remember it being specific to hearing, so I tried to notice all evidence — visual, aural, etc — of the rained-on.

10 Things: Evidence of the Rained-on

  1. sound: a constant drip drip drip
  2. branches of trees and flowers bent down, heavy with rain
  3. running too close to the vines on the side of the trail, getting my shorts wet
  4. running under some dripping trees, 1: feeling like it’s raining again
  5. running under some dripping trees, 2: hearing a loud ping ping ping
  6. my feet striking the grit makes a deeper, heavier sound than when the grit/dirt is dry
  7. the slick whoosh of wet tires
  8. the roar of the falls, the rush in the ravine
  9. puddles on the path, and on the edge between the sidewalk and the road
  10. sometimes the grass was beaded with drips, othertimes it squished under my feet

Around the 5k point, I stopped to record some thoughts into my phone. Here’s a transcript:

I had a thought about next week’s lecture, which is on wonder and delight. I was thinking about this idea of wonder as knowing and 2 important moments of it, as least for me.

  1. `There’s the wonder and curiosity, where you wonder about something because you don’t know about it, and there’s this kind of magical time before you find out what it is — there’s room for all these possibilities. Of course, what you find out that it is, isn’t necessarily what it actually is, but what we’ve determined it is. This is the moment of possibility. It’s important to not shut this down, to leave room for speculating and imagining possibilities.
  2. When you wonder about something and then go in search of answers for your questions, and instead of delivering certainty to you, it just raises more questions, and enables you to see that what you thought was magical and amazing is even moreso. In fact, learning things, becoming more familiar with them, doesn’t have to make them boring and settled. It can open up more questions and doors into wondering about them.