3.35 miles
under the ford bridge and back
57 degrees!
What a morning! Sunny, low wind, only a little sliding in my knee. Noticed the river, but barely. Only a sliver of sparkle through the trees. Ran south and stopped just past the ford bridge. Took out my phone and recorded a note about a possible form for my latest set of vision poems. Listening back to the recording, I’m not sure if it makes sense. Poem 1: block text, bare/basic description of scene/situation; Poem 2: an erasure of that text that reveals more of how I adjust, navigate the situation — maybe by noticing a few key elements?; Poem 3: a haiku/tanka/cinquain that turns my adjustment into something more than almost: a new way of seeing/being? Not sure this makes sense. It’s almost there.
As I recorded, I stood at the edge of the trail, looking down on the marsh-y meadow between the small woods around the bridge and the road leading up to Wabun Park. 2 squirrels darted into the brush, making a racket from dry leaves and tall grass. At the end of summer, I remember running by this meadow and admiring the buzz and growl of the frogs and crickets and whatever else was living in it. Today, it’s pretty quiet. What’s living in there now? Raccoons? Turkeys? A fox?
After recording, I put in Lizzo’s Special, mainly to hear her sing, Hi, mother fucker, did you miss me? I’ve been home since 2020. I’ve been twerkin’ and making smoothies. It’s called healing… Then I started running. Switched to Beyoncé a couple of songs in.
9 Things I Noticed, 1 I Didn’t
- the smell of smoke near the one house that always smells like smoke in the winter — on Edmund, close to Dowling
- SO LOUD! passing by 2 trucks, about 50 feet from each other, running some sort of machine that was way too loud. I didn’t see, but I hope that the workers nearby were wearing headphones or ear plugs. Wow. I don’t think it was a cement mixer, but I’m not what else it could be — lots of rumbles and roars. Very unsettling
- freshly redone sidewalk squares, bright white, sticking out against the old, gray squares
- running on the dirt trail between edmund and the river road: a mix of roots and dead leaves and dry dirt
- a woman, a kid, a wagon — I think it was red? — heading down to the Winchell Trail at 44th
- passing a walker on the “gauntlet” — the dirt/grass patch between the lower campus of Minnehaha Academy and Becketwood that narrows near the road
- another loud noise: a rumbling motorcycle overhead, traveling across the ford bridge
- a man in a bright yellow shirt, sitting on a bench near a rock above the river
- a group of four walkers, one of them wearing a white shirt and black pants, not taking up the entire path
- what I didn’t notice: I don’t remember running down the small hill to the part of the trail that dips below the road then climbs back out. As I ran over it again, on my way back, I wondered, what was I doing when I was running on this before? how come I can’t remember anything about it? A moment lost. Love it when that happens