5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
15 degrees / feels like 6
light snow
Brrr. I’m pretty sure that this is the coldest run of the season. I wore almost all of the layers: double tights, double gloves, double socks, a buff, a fleece cap, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, jacket. No frozen toes or fingers, only a few frozen eyelashes.
It was snowing lightly. I barely felt the flakes but I could see them collecting in the cracks of the path and on the road. Not slippery. When I reached the park I noticed faint paw prints on the path.
Passing the parking lot, 2 adults were trying unsuccessfully to calm down a kid losing it — did the kid not want to be at the falls, or did they not want to leave it?
By the gorge, the ground is a rich brown carpet of dead leaves and dirt. A few bushes — buckthorn? — seem to have new, bright green leaves. A runner passed me in a bright yellow vest, almost as bright as the crosswalk sign at 38th.
I noticed dark forms moving below me, on the winchell trail. A coyote or turkey or . . . ? Looking longer I finally saw 2 runners.
The river! Mostly white with wide slashes of exposed, dark water. The falls! Still gushing but covered in thick columns of ice. Winter is here.
All the steps at the falls and on the trails are still open. Will they close them this week?
Running south, between 42nd and 44th, I noticed a bench with an open view of the river and the other side. Decided I would stop on my way back north. I did. Beautiful. And right above the edge of the world.
10 Things
- a distracted squirrel in the middle of the trail — gathering a nut?
- a smoke smell on edmund, probably from a chimney
- a gently sloping hill leading down to the river just past the double bridge, filled with tree trunks and dead leaves
- mostly the river was white — ice covered with a thin layer of snow, but there were random patches of dark water. Some of them were thick slashes, others looked like geometric shapes — trapezoids, rectangles, triangles, but not a circle in sight
- voices below me — who is there? some hikers, deep in and beyond the winchell trail
- the small wood between the 44th street parking lot and the winchell trail, usually hidden, was exposed to reveal a short dirt path
- birds! not seen, but heard — sweet tweets and chirps, sounding like spring
- a fat tire with a faint, flickering headlight
- the fake bells from the light rail train, followed by some quick horn taps
- a woman reaching the falls overlook and exclaiming in delight and wonder — wow!
the start of another haunts section?
Before I went out for my run, I did a little research on the bike/walking trails along the river. Deeper digging is required. Maybe a trip to the central library, or an email? Anyway, I learned that they created paved trails above the gorge and beside the river parkway in the fall of 1973. The main trail I use is only 6 months older than me! That seems like it would make a good line for a section that features the trails, either just the paved ones above, or the ones below too.
Mostly the girl stays
above on a trail
as old as she is.
Paved in seventy
three, when gas prices
and an interest in
conservation were
high.
Here’s a wonderful poem from Carl Phillips:
Speak Low/ Carl Phillips (from Speak Low)
The wind stirred–the water beneath it stirred accordingly …
The wind’s pattern was its won, and the wter’s also. The
water in that sense was the wind’s reflection. The wind was,
to the water, what the water was to the light that fell there,
or appeared to fall, spilling as if the light were a liquid, or as
if the light and the water it spilled across
were now the same
It is true that the light, like the water, assumed the pattern of
what acted upon it. But the water assumed also the shape
of what contained it, while the light did not. The light seemed
fugitive, a restiveness, the less-than-clear distance between
everything we know we should do, and all the rest–all
the rest that we do stirring, as the wind stirred it, the water
was water–was a form of clarity itself, a window we’ve
no sooner looked through than we’ve abandoned it for what
lies past that: a view, and then what comes
into view, or might,
if we watch patiently enough, steadily–so we believe, wishing
for what, by now, even we can’t put a name to, but feel certain
we’ll recognize, having done so before. It olled, didn’t it,
just like harmlessness. A small wind. Some light on water.