4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
37 degrees
Warmer today. Almost all of the snow has melted. Sunny, bright, shadows. Chirping birds, sparkling water, shimmering sidewalks — melted snow illuminated by sun. I went out feeling a bit overwhelmed, needing a run. It worked. By the end of the run I felt so much better.
I listened to the world around me as I ran to the falls: the birds, kids on the playground, cars whooshing by, the gushing falls. When I turned around, I put in a Billie Eilish playlist on the way back.
At the falls, I stopped at the overlook right beside the falls:
10 Things
- wet path, shimmering — is it just water, or is it super slick ice?
- most of the snow gone, only little ridges on the edges of the trail
- empty, open, iceless river
- more darting squirrels
- encountering a woman in pink running shoes twice
- the bells from the light rail ringing and dinging from across the road
- my shadow — sharp — running beside me
- a runner in a bright blue jacket
- an empty parking lot at the falls
- the potholes on the path were easier to see because they were filled in with snow while the rest of the path was bare
Thinking about the gorge and WPA walls and riprap and Gary Snyder:
Riprap/ Gary Snyder
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
I mention the limestone walls made by the WPA in the 30s and 40s in my poem. I’d like to expand on them just a little more. Each rock a word — something there to build on, I think.
riprap: loose stones used to form a foundation