3.1 miles
locks and dam no. 1 and back
61 degrees / humidity: 80%
High today of 78. Tomorrow 72. Halloween 49. As Scott says, It’s always cold on Halloween. I felt overheated during the run. Face burning and dripping sweat. I had been planning to do a 10k — the Hidden Falls loop — but it felt too warm. Maybe on Thursday. I wore black shorts and a darkish blue short-sleeved shirt. The same thing I wore for the marathon.
I listened to an audio book, The God of the Woods, so I was distracted as I ran. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things
- an intense, sweet and sour and woody smell as I ran by a pile of wood chips at the edge of the trail
- tall piles of wet leaves at the end of the street, waiting for the city workers to return and scoop them up in their truck
- beep beep beep — a city truck backing up
- 3 or 4 stacked stones on the ancient boulder
- a group of bikers, all wearing bright yellow long-sleeved shirts
- crunch crunch crunch — my feet running through a blanket of leaves on one side of the trail
- a faint shadow on the sidewalk, cast from the light of a weak, cloud-covered sun
- someone sitting on a bench near the overlook, wearing dark clothing
- the water fountain near 36th appears to still be on — the st. paul ones are already turned off, when do they turn off the minneapolis ones?
- the clicking and clacking of a roller skier’s poles and the bright blue of their shirt — did I see this today or on my walk yesterday afternoon?
more on the water section of haunts
I’m still gathering ideas and resources for my water section. Here’s another one:
Though the river has always been dynamic, it looks very different than it did just a few centuries ago. In the past 175 years, people began making major engineering changes to the river in attempts to harness it for industry. Before we started building mills, dams and locks, the Mississippi here was a wild and free-flowing river.
Rather than the series of dammed reservoirs we have today, the river was a braided channel with at least a dozen islands between the falls and Bdóte, where the Minnesota River enters the Mississippi. The river had rocky rapids, gravel bars and beaches, fast and slow spots, deep and shallow spots and floodplains.
Meet our twin cities locks and dams
Possibly to put beside this, a line from a poem I revisited this morning:
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am
(from Let this darkness be a bell tower/ Rainer Maria Rilke)