4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
60 degrees
Warm! Green everywhere — tufts of grass on the bluff, leaves unfurling from the trees. Lots of bikers on the trail today. I ran to the falls without stopping, then took several walk breaks on the way back. My heart rate was high, my legs were sore. I think I should do a post-injury walk/run plan to ease back into moving.
As I write this on my deck, a black-capped chickadee is doing their feebee call. So loud! So constant. No answer yet.
10 Things
- Sea Salt is open at the falls — I could smell it as I ran through the park — what was the smell? fried and salty?
- a group of kids with adults — students/teacher? — below me on the winchell trail
- the falls parking lot was full of cars
- kids yelling/laughing on the playground
- a park worker driving a big mower, cutting grass on the strip between the walking and biking path — the lawn mower had a bright orange triangle on the back
- a biker in a bright yellow shirt with a matching bright yellow helmet
- someone swinging at the falls playground
- a biker biking in wide circles under the ford bridge
- flashes of white though the (already) thick green on the trail below me and beside the creek — I think it was the heads of people taking the path that leads to the river
- yellow and red tulips near a parking lot
before the run
Thank you past Sara for posting this beautiful Katie Farris poem — Ode to Money, or Patient Appealing Health Insurance for Denial of Coverage — and giving me inspiration for a May challenge with these lines:
America’s optimistic to dye its money
green. Leaves are green
because of chlorophyll, which is the machine
that turns sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into leaf, stem, and root. All
the little blades of grass left behind by the lawn mower like Civil
War soldiers. Same as cash.
Grass! A whole month with grass? Maybe a whole month with green, one week with grass? Yes! And (at least) a week with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gathering moss. Will this challenge idea go the way of last month’s steps? Forgotten after a few days? I hope not.
like Civil War soldiers — the line this is referencing in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was one of my first favorite lines from a poem:
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
I posted this section of Song of Myself on 18 may 2020. Here’s another part I want to remember:
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
And now I’m thinking about Mary Oliver and her line about rising up again like grass, and realizing that she was referencing Whitman with it. She loved Walt Whitman. Uh oh — I’m feeling a shift in direction. Will I forgo grass for a study of Walt Whitman?
during the run
As I mentioned in my 10 things list, while I was running, I encountered a park worker mowing the strip of grass between the bike and walking paths. I decided that that would be my image of grass for today. I could smell the freshly cut grass as I ran by. I wonder what the parks’ department’s schedule for mowing grass is — how often? and how many acres of grass do they maintain across the city?
after the run
1
Read Mary Oliver’s chapter in Upstream, “My Friend, Walt Whitman.” I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this line before, but I’ll do it again because it fits:
I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple–or a green field–a place to enter, and in which to feel.
2
I decided to look up information about minneapolis parks and mowing.
4,660 acres of grass/turf mowed
They divided grassy areas into 3 types: athletic fields, general park turf, reduced mowing areas.
general park turf: “We cut grass to a height of 3 inches on a regular basis as time and weather allows, but grass height may exceed 5 inches at times. This standard applies to most of the Park System including neighborhood parks, boulevards, parkways and active use areas within regional parks.”
reduced mowing areas: “We maintain some park lands through mowing on an infrequent basis. These areas include steep hillsides, erosion prone slopes, shorelines and park lands that are not intensively maintained.”
I love that the parks department posts this information!
Also wanted to add this video. It’s light on sources, especially the early history of grass, but I like the clips from commercials:
And here’s a useful resource to return to, and also to use to supplement the video:
The History of Early American Landscape Design: Lawn
And also this — Get Off My Lawn! — which has an interesting 30 minute podcast, images related to the lawn from the Smithsonian Museum.