3.1 miles
river road, south/north
77 degrees / dew point: 75
Heat advisory. Today is one of those days that makes me glad that fall is coming, especially since I can’t swim anymore. I’m looking forward to cooler runs — please come soon. I heard a pro runner say once that humidity is a poor man’s altitude. I wonder, since my body doesn’t tolerate humidity well, would it be the same with altitude? Probably.
Today is RJP’s first day of college classes. It has worked out for her to regroup and not stay in the dorms until she’s ready because her dorm doesn’t have air conditioning. Even if she was enjoying the dorm, she probably would have come home until the heat breaks anyway.
10 Things
- exposed roots everywhere on the dirt trail, difficult to navigate
- one short stretch of the trail had loose, sandy dirt that my feet sunk into
- forecast predicted partly cloudy, but the sky was cloudless and burned a bright blue
- car after car after car on the river road — this is often the case at 8, which is when I started my run
- loud waves of cicada buzz
- noisy bullfrogs and crickets in the marshy meadow just past the ford bridge
- more bikes than walkers or runners
- the dirt path into the small wood by the ford bridge: a deep, cool green
- a flushed, sweaty face
- a woman in a big straw hat and a pink something — I can’t remember if it was her shoes or pants or a shirt; I just remember pink — sitting on a bench, her back to the gorge
today’s view from my window
On august 26, 2023, I wrote about a big spider outside of my window. She’s back. She’s huge. And she’s just hanging there in mid-air. I know there’s a web, but I can’t see it, so I like imaging she’s levitating. I was going to write that she’s not moving, but then the wind stirred her, and then I noticed a small fly caught in her web. Soon, she crawled to it and now she’s doing whatever spiders do to their prey. If it didn’t hurt my head to stare and try to see what is happening, I could watch her for hours.
I looked for a Mary Oliver poem about spiders, but instead found a blog post talking about spiders and their patience and referencing a poem by MO that I haven’t read before:
The Messenger/ Mary Oliver
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.