3.15 miles
2 trails
77 degrees
dew point: 61
So warm! Still glad I went out for a run, but it was hard. My knees are sore, my legs sluggish. Heard lots of birds, a roller skier’s clicking poles, talk radio blasting from someone’s car, faint voices from below, water trickling out of a sewer pipe. Encountered bugs — mosquitos? gnats? — near the ravine. Passed by a person on the folwell bench, reading. Was greeted by one walker: good morning! As I ran on the Winchell trail I thought about the importance of giving some gesture — a greeting, eye contact, a stepping over to make room — when nearing another person. Without it, you’re saying to them, to me you don’t exist.
When I finished my run, I pulled out my phone and recited Alice Oswald’s “A Short Story of Falling.” Only two mistakes: I gave it the wrong title and I said “in a seed head” instead of “on a seed head.”
wordle challenge
Bad luck with the wordle today. I almost had it in 3, but I had too many choices that could be correct. I had 4 tries but at least 5 options.
6 failed tries: slant / dates / waste/ haste / paste / baste
TASTE
Even though I failed the challenge, I decided to do something with words: find connections to Emily Dickinson!
slant: Tell all the truth but tell it Slant
dates: I do not know the date of mine/ It feels so old a pain
waste: Just Infinites of Nought/As far as it could see/So looked the face I looked upon/ So looked itself on Me (Like Eyes That Looked on Wastes)
haste: We slowly drove—He knew no haste (Because I could not stop for Death)
paste: We play at Paste/ Till qualified, for pearl (We play at paste)
baste and taste:
Now You Too Can Bake Like Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson: A Poet in the Kitchen
swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
89 degrees
At the end of the swim another swimmer called out, these conditions are the best! (or something like that; I can’t quite remember). I agreed. Calm, pleasingly warm water, well-placed buoys. I could barely see the buoys, but I still swam to them without a problem. Lots of swans in the water, a few menacing sailboat — one with a bright orange and red sail.
I swam for a loop and a half then briefly stopped at the little beach for a quick rest. Swam another loop and a half and stopped at the big beach. Got out to go the bathroom, then one more loop. Taking a 5 or so minute break between loops 3 and 4 really helped. I should remember to do that more often.
I’m writing this swim summary the next morning. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things
- at least one plane
- half a dozen swan boats lurking at the edges
- one swan stuck in the dead zone between buoys
- streaks below me — fish?
- irritating swimmers: 2 fast women that kept swimming past me, then stopping to get their bearings, then swimming again. With my slower, steadier stroke, I kept getting passed by them, then passing them when they stopped, then getting passed by them again when they restarted their swim
- both the orange and green buoys closest to the beaches (orange to the little beach, green to the big) were not that close to the shore
- no waves
- no ducks
- breathed every 5 strokes, sometimes every three, once or twice every six
- hardly ever saw one of my landmarks from the past few years: the overturned boat at the little beach