walk: 60 minutes
winchell trail
57 degrees
A slow walk with Delia the dog. Stopping and sniffing and pooping and peeing and listening nervously to rumbling trucks and roofers. On the Winchell Trail, a black capped chickadee just overhead feebeed and chickadeedeedeed at us. Only a few remnants of the snow remain. A mix of dry path with puddles and mud.
Near the end of the walk I decided that what I really needed to do with my back was loosen it up by walking faster. Maybe I’m tensing up too much? Also decided that I’d try a short run.
run: 2 miles
just north of lake street
59 degrees
Ran past the ancient boulder and down through the tunnel of trees. The floodplain forest looks barren — no snow or leaves on the trees, only brittle and brown on the ground. Felt pretty relaxed and a little awkward — not quite a hitch in my step, but not smooth either. That got better as I warmed up. Listened to the breeze passing through the trees, and voices running north. I put in my “Doin’ Time” playlist for my run south. Heard: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is; A Summer Wasting; Suspended in Time. All three offering visions of life outside the clock/capitalist time.
I almost forgot: I wore shorts today!
10 Things from my Walk and Run
- park workers in orange vests getting reading to do some work — trim trees? clear out brush? (walk)
- after weeks, they’re finally doing something about the gushing water on the corner of 46th! the barricades were gone, and so was the sound of water gone wild (run)
- chick a dee dee dee — a black capped chickadee in a tree just above my head — what I saw: a small dark flurry of movement on a branch (walk)
- the soft, energetic din of kids on the playground at Dowling Elementary (walk)
- a line of snow — a lump, not big enough to be a wall — stretched across the walking path (run)
- the river: open, shimmering, blue (walk)
- the tree line on the other side, a golden glow
- a slight slip in mud on the boulevard between edmund and the river road (walk)
- the soft shadows of gnarled oak tree branches on the grass (run)
- 4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder (run)
circumambulation
Returning to circumambulation and the ceremony/ritual of looping around the gorge. A thought: when I swim at the lake I do multiple loops, but beside the gorge, I only do one loop. What’s the difference (mentally, spiritually, physically) between a loop vs. multiple loops. Also, where do my there and back runs — trestle turn around or the franklin hill and back or the falls and back — fit in? What sort of ritual are they?
Loosely, the structure of Gary Snyder’s “The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais” is:
- a brief description of place
- a sacred chant/mantra
- a further description — more details, directions, feelings/reflections/encounters
I’ll try this structure. I think I want to do the 8 loop that combines the ford and franklin loops. But, I’m taking it easy with the running right now, so maybe I should wait to do this until next month?
but now we really hear chanting
we can’t decode–Don’t
be so rational–a congregate speech
from the redtrembling sprigs, a
vascular language prior to our
breathed language, corporeal, chemical,
drawing our sound into its harmonic, tuning
us to what we’ve yet seen, the surround
calling us, theory-less, toward an inference
of horizontal connections there at
ground level
(Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais/Forrest Gander)
Some chants I might include:
I am the wind and the wind is invisible
All trees are just trees
In every part of every living thing/is stuff that once was rock
Listen, I don’t think we’re going to rise/in gauze and halos./Maybe as grass, and slowly. Maybe as the long-leaved, beautiful grass
Life is but Life, and Death is but Death. Joy is but Joy, and Breath is but Breath.