5.85 miles
ford loop
42 degrees / humidity: 78%
November! A day for singing a song of gray. A pale, sunless sky, some wind, lots of bare branches. The tree outside my window and a few others by the gorge were YELLOW! Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker — hey Dave! Almost tripped on a few rocks on the dirt path next to the trail on the east side. Admired the waves from the bridges: from ford, little scales and from lake, a slight current down the center — from a sandbar? Heard a chickadee — chick a dee dee dee dee — and the constant grumbling of the city beneath everything.
Thought about different time scales and how time works for me while I’m running — encountering memories of past Saras, echoing their movements. Imagining the gorge before Cleveland created the Grand Rounds, before Longfellow was a neighborhood, before the gorge was a gorge. Having no idea how much time had passed — never hearing the bells of St. Thomas or looking at my watch. Having no memory of small stretches of the trail — being lost in a thought or the motion or my effort.
10 Things
- the fast slapping of a runner’s feet passing me from behind
- the clear open view from a bluff on the east side of the river, looking over to the west side
- 3 stacked stones on the boulder
- a black stocking cap placed on the top of a pole beside the trail
- the frantic bark of a dog, bothered by a nearby leaf blower
- the barricades blocking the sidewalk in front of Governor Walz’ house
- the ravine near Shadow Falls, mostly yellow from leaves on trees and the ground
- voices from below, near Longfellow flats beach
- a sour sewer smell near the Monument
- a man call out a command — drop it! — to his dog near the south entrance of the winchell trail
While looking for something else, I came across this beautiful poem by Minnesota’s first indigenous poet laureate, Dr. Gwen Westerman:
Breathe Deep and Sing/ Gwen Westerman
We sing for the mussels,
we, the otters and beavers, the frogs and dragonflies,
the waterbirds and songbirds, the coyotes too.
We breathe deep, and sing for the mussels
who are the lungs of the Mississippi River.
Our river—polluted by
sewage and wastewater,
dredged and dammed,
pockmarked by dead zones
of chemicals and dyes,
banked by the edge
of destruction.
Our river—
A global super-flyway,
it flows through the heart of us,
flowed through the heart of us
for centuries, beyond centuries,
beyond memory.
Through wetlands and backwaters,
communities and economies,
plagued by invasive species,
invasive humans—
environmental degradation
that flowed through the heart of us.
Our river—
It calls to us, it beckons us,
our dreams flow along with it.
So, we sing for the mussels,
we, the otters and beavers, the frogs and dragonflies,
the waterbirds and songbirds, the coyotes too.
We breathe deep and sing for the mussels
who are the silent sentinels of our river.
They hold the stories and the pain of
our river—40, 70, 200 years ago.
Like the trees above them
along the banks of
our river, the rings of the mussels’ shells
are a living record of our environment
and of our river.
They mark the resilience,
the struggles, the restoration
of floodplains and river bottoms,
the restoration of health and hearts.
How do we heal our river
without healing ourselves?
Our river—
It calls to us, it beckons us,
our dreams flow along with it.
Its water shapes us, embraces us,
and is our first medicine.
So, we sing for the mussels,
we, the otters and beavers, the frogs and dragonflies,
the waterbirds and songbirds, the coyotes too.
Breathe deep and sing with us for the mussels.