4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
61 degrees
humidity: 91% / dew point: 64
It rained last night, so everything was wet, even the air. Puddles, mud, slick leaves. Gushing sewer pipes, a roaring creek, fast-falling water.
I’m working on a series of chants for Girl Ghost Gorge. All triples. One for rock (a 2-syllable word/1 syllable word). One for river (3 1-syllable words). And one for air (1 3-syllable word).
During the first mile, I chanted for air:
industry
convenience
resilience
persistence
underground
neighborhood
During the second mile, I chanted for rock:
paddle/wheel
roaring/creek
paving/stone
During the third mile, I chanted for water:
drip drip drip
drop drop drop
drip drop drip
drip drip drop
My plan for the chants is to use 1, 2, and 3 syllable words from my long poems for the chants. Right now I’m sorting them out.
10 Things
- wet red leaves scattered near the trail
- the smell of tar as I passed a park worker patching the trail (yay! they’re fixing the terrible spot on the bike path finally!)
- one woman to another: my ex-husband makes over a million dollars in his new job
- the yellow-vested park working, leaning and looking at his phone while he waited for the tar to be ready to smooth
- the squeak of a bike’s brakes
- bare branches poking out of the top of a tree
- the white froth from the falls
- 2 people sitting on the ledge of the bridge, their feet dangling over the falls
- a circle of bright water and sky, made by a break in the trees
- the smell of almost-cilantro from the tall grass surrounding the stone etched with Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha”