4 miles
monument and back*
65 degrees / dew point: 62
drizzle**
*a new route? Through the neighborhood, over the lake street bridge, up the summit hill, over to the Civil War Monument and back
**or as I’ve been known to say, spittin’ (does that come from the UP? the south? the midwest?)
Even though the dew point was high, the drizzle helped it feel cooler. Everything dark and quiet, calm, green. Passed the guy who is always sitting on his front stoop smoking. Also passed kids arriving at the church daycare. Pushed myself to keep running up the summit hill even though I wanted to stop. Made it!
Chanted triple berries for a mile or two. It helped distract me. raspberry / blueberry / strawberry
10 Things
- shadow falls was gushing through the trees
- the street lamps were glowing on the st. paul side
- rowers on the river! an 8-person shell. The coxswain was advising them on where to place the paddles in the high water (we have a river flood warning)
- morning! from a passing runner — good morning!
- the river was a beautiful gray blue, the trees a rich green
- so windy on the bridge heading east that I had to take my cap off and hold it
- the whining of a power saw in the distance
- alone at the monument overlook
- sometimes it was a drizzle, sometimes just a mist — difficult to tell which while running and sweating
- enveloped in dark green in the tunnel of trees — the only light was green light and a small circle of white at the top of the hill
As I looked down at the river from high above on the gorge, I thought about the rowers and their paddles and how different their experience of the water was to mine. Down there in the water, I bet it’s choppy and bumpy, with wind and spray. Up here, it’s almost flat and gray blue. No feeling of motion — no waves or the unsettling sense of being higher on water that’s on the edge of spilling over somewhere.
Yesterday I started thinking again about different bodies of water and how poets write about them: Mary Oliver (ponds), Lorine Niedecker (lakes), Alice Oswald (rivers, the sea). I also remembered Cole Swenson and their writing about the river Gave de Pau in Gave. I think I need to buy this book! Anyway, I looked up a few more of their poems and read one titled, “To Circumferate.” These lines stuck with me:
With a careful
adjustment of eye there are
no buildings. A city of trees
and hedges
As I ran back from the monument, looking left to the ravine and the trees, I thought about that line and imagined the stretches of grass, the trees, the green ravine as a city — the only city — no buildings or houses or roads or cars, only trees and tall grasses and bushes leading down to the river.
All of this thinking about different bodies of water reminded me of something I started to read but had to return to the library before I got very far, Visitation/ Jenny Erpenbeck. I took a screen-shot of the first two pages and the amazing description of water within them:
swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees / drizzle
A great swim! Now I’m cold and tired and hungry!
10 Things
- more ghost vines glowing below
- one menacing white swan
- the water below was a deep green with some blue
- the water near the shore was still clear enough to see the sandy bottom
- the sky was pale — no sun, except for a few times when it almost broke through
- it’s the free night for open swim so more bobbing buoys — yellow was the most popular color
- breathed mostly every five
- tangled in a few vines, one leaf didn’t want to go away
- stopped once or twice in the middle of the lake — calm, quiet — I should stop more
- some little speck got in my eye at the beginning of the swim — I should have stopped to fix my goggles, but I just kept swimming, now it’s still stuck in there