2 loops
lake nokomis main beach
76 degrees
Hooray for firing up and going over to the lake early on a Sunday morning! Mostly calm with warm air. But, cold water. Brrr! And loud, too. For the first few laps, the noise of sloshing water below the surface was so loud. Why?
10 Things
- just before I started, a vee of geese flew above me — the first geese of the season!
- a big crowd of noisy seagulls on the shore
- a seagull! a seagull! a seagull! — a kid (too) excited about spotting a seagull
- another flock of small birds flying overhead. I stopped to watch their progress across the sky
- more ghost vines — several reaching out for my wrist
- fluffy clouds in the sky
- a plane cutting through the clouds
- a metal detector dude slowly walking along the edge of the swimming area — for 45 minutes, the whole time I was swimming. What was he looking for? What was he finding?
- another swimmer — an older man who swam a little closer to shore
- cold water except for a spot near the buoy closest to the swan boats, which was warm — unsettling and welcomed at the same time
When I met up with Scott after the swim he told me that an 11 year-old girl drowned last night, right where I was swimming. Since I’ve been swimming at this lake (10+ years), I can recall about 5 people drowning. So sad and strange to think about people (usually kids) drowning in this calm, relatively shallow lake and to know that this water that brings me so much joy is a source of sorrow for others.
turkeys!
On the way back from the lake, Scott had to stop the car for a crossing turkey. It was taking its sweet ass time, strutting across, bobbing its awkward head. Scott quickly started moving again before the next turkey tried to cross the river road. Love the turkeys!
Speaking of birds (which I’ve done a lot of in this entry), I found a list by CAConrad via twitter. Here’s #2:
CROW GIFTS
During the Covid-19 lockdown, I was in Seattle, the empire of the crows. I fed them fruit, nuts, and crackers from a plastic hummus container I nailed to a window ledge. The birds came all day, different tribes moving over their city, terrorizing cats and humans who wronged them. One began to bring me gifts and would stay on the ledge to eat lunch with me, allowing me to stroke its beak. The biologist Lynn Margulis flew in the face of the neo-Darwinists because she believed evolution’s most significant steps forward have been through interspecies cooperation. I feel her theory in my body, and I wonder if you do, too.
a list from CAConrad