6.1 miles
hidden falls loop
36 degrees
Wow, what a great morning for a run! All the snow has melted so the paths were clear and I don’t remember much wind. I felt strong and relaxed and grateful to be outside when everything is bare and brown and open. And that river! Half frozen with a thin layer of ice, half open with shiny, dark water. I stopped at the overlook on the ford bridge and stared down at it, admiring the variations of gray and the feeling of air and nothingness — barren, vast, other-worldly.
10 Things
- the sound of a kid either laughing when his voice bounced as he went over something bumpy or crying so hard that his voice was breaking — heard, not seen
- several runners in bright yellow shirts
- two runners in white jackets
- some kids laughing and yelling near the skate park just past the ford bridge, again heard, not seen
- the view of the valley between ford and hidden falls — bare tree branches, then endless air, then the other side
- a blue port-a-potty with the door ajar
- the sound of water rushing over concrete at the locks and dam no. 1
- a lone goose honking somewhere near the oak savanna
- the contrast of wispy, dark branches against the light gray sky
- the river — no color, some shiny, some dulled by ice
an attempt to track my train of thought
I’m working on another section of my Haunts poem (which might need a different name as I stray away from ghosts). Before my run, I was thinking about being tender and erosion and H.W.S Cleveland (Horace William Shaler) as envisioning the grand rounds and the gorge as art. Before I headed out, I gave myself a task for during the run: to think about and look for examples of erosion and how it fits in with my idea that art is about making us feel things deeply (feeling tender). This task was inspired by this section in my poem:
his pitch for parkways
was about making space
for beauty and for
feeling things deeply —
he wanted to turn
this place into art.
Grass and benches and
trees to frame open
sky and the stone that
holds a river and
all who seek it. But
up here exposed on
the bluff, it is not
only the view that
makes the girl tender.
Wind, sun, frigid air,
the effort it takes
to keep moving, a
slow wearing down of
cone cells, smooth out her
edges, peel away
her layers, create
cracks that start small then
spread.
During my run, I stopped to record three ideas into my phone:
One: I thought about the cracks and the idea of being split open and how this splitting open was not a wound that needed to be patched but something else.
Two: I can’t quite remember how I continued to think about this idea of the wound and breaking open but I do remember suddenly thinking about eroding shorelines and bluffs and how cracks and a wearing away can be harmful. At first I wanted to make a clear distinction between the erosion I was writing about, and the tenderness it allowed for, but then I realized, just before reaching the ford bridge on my way back from hidden falls, that tenderness and feeling things deeply and art as inspiring this is both wound and that something else I can’t quite name. I spoke into my phone:
Beauty as not always pretty, sometimes ugly. Art as wonder and amazement, terror and pain.
I think I was remembering some lines from a podcast episode for Off the Shelf with Dorothy Lasky, as I mentioned terror.
I don’t think beautiful things are innocent, I guess, sadly. I mean, I don’t know what “innocent” means also, but yeah, I think beautiful things are holy, and I think that those things can be awful. I guess it’s like the sublime, and those things which we have awe about is what beauty is. And I don’t think it’s always kind, sadly. You know, I wish it were. It can be, but I don’t think that’s what is really there. It overwhelms. So, it is terrifying by its nature. Like, real beauty should make you terrified.
Good for the World
Three: By the time I had crossed the ford bridge, I had another thought about erosion and my diseased eyes:
My cone cells eroding is this slow softening, but at some point, most likely, there’s going to be a break — an abrupt break [when the few remaining cone cells in my central vision die, when I won’t be able to read or rely on my central vision at all]. And that is how the gorge works. It’s the slow softening of sandstone until limestone breaks off.
Yes! This is a helpful way for me to connect the gorge with my vision. I’m not sure that this third thing fits into this section of the poem, but I will use it somewhere!
posted an hour later: I can’t believe it, but after searching through the archive of this log, I realized that I have never posted this beautiful, tender poem by Mary Oliver:
Lead/ Mary Oliver
Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.