5.4 miles
franklin loop
48 degrees
drizzle, on and off
Feeling stronger and faster with every run. A overcast, rainy morning. Not gloomy, at least not to me: full of reds and yellow and oranges. Encountered Santa Claus in a bright orange, or was it yellow?, jacket. Heard lots of water everywhere, falling off the trees, gushing in the ravines, seeping out of cracks in the limestone, dripping down the steps on the bridge. I heard a lot of water just before reaching the trestle. I wondered if it was the inaccessible spring that I’ve read about.
When I started my run, the roads and sidewalks felt slippery, but I didn’t have any problems on the trail. I thought about the water section in my GGG collection — what does water do? Today, it: dripped, puddled, pooled, slid, (over)flowed, sprinkled, gushed. And, it exposed things that are difficult to see: cracks, fissures, slightly uneven ground. Water — as puddles or ice or snow — reveals what is normally hidden.
10 Things
- the river from the lake street bridge, 1: flat, smooth, pewter
- the river from the lake street bridge, 2: leaning over the railing, see the faint brown sandbar beneath the surface
- the shorter rock next to the ancient boulder almost looked like a little bear to me as I ran by — the rain had darkened the rock making it look like black fur
- still green down in the tunnel of trees
- the bright reddish-purple leaves on some trees lower to the ground
- empty benches
- on the east side, birds were chirping as I ran under the trees
- on and off, rain — mostly, I was sheltered from it by the still leafed trees, so it was difficult to tell what was rain and what was drips
- some kids laughing and yelling up on the hill
- puddles on the franklin bridge
Before sitting down to write my list, I remembered something to add to it, but by the time I started I had forgotten it. What was it? a few minutes later: this isn’t it, but I remembered something from the other day. There was a Palestinian flag made out of yarn on part of a fence somewhere on my run a few days ago. It might have been down near the tunnel of trees. I wonder if it is still there?
GGG update
During my “on this day” practice, I found some inspiration:
1 — 14 oct 2019
Looked up vista and found something interesting: “Vista is generally used today for broad sweeping views of the kind you might see from a mountaintop. But the word originally meant an avenue-like view, narrowed by a line of trees on either side. And vista has also long been used (like view and outlook) to mean a mental scan of the future—as if you were riding down a long grand avenue and what you could see a mile or so ahead of you was where you’d be in the very near future.”
My view is the opposite of these older meanings of vista in two ways: First, the narrow and tree-lined view makes me think of tunnel vision, when you only see what is straight ahead of you in your central vision. I see mostly with my peripheral. Second, my desire for a view is not in the hopes of seeing a specific future. Instead, I want to return to the past, or not the past, but to see a broader and longer view of the now, where everything exists together at the same time — maybe Mary Oliver’s eternal time?
also: there is an avenue (one article about the grand rounds and the gorge called them ornamental avenues) beside the river, but that is only the formal path to take. There’s the walking trail which meanders and (roughly) follows the terrain and is designed, not to get somewhere faster, but to engage with the gorge. And then there are dirt trails, alongside the paved trail, and deeper in the gorge, that don’t offer a clear or direct future. Not sure if this will make sense to a future Sara. I’m also thinking about Wendell Berry and the distinction he makes in “Native Hill” between roads and trails — I’ll have to find it.
Maybe I should do a You Are Here about a view, or I could call it an Overlook? Yes.
2 — 14 oct 2021
Earlier today I was thinking about pace — and only slightly in relation to running pace, more about pacing and restlessness and ghosts that haunt the path. Pace and pacing, like watches or clocks, impose limits and boundaries: a running pace uses seconds and minutes per mile (or km) and pacing involves walking back and forth in a small or confined space, retracing your steps again and again until you rub the grass away and reach dirt, or wear the carpet bare. What to do with that information? I’m not quite sure…yet.
to remember: Scott just told me that the musician, D’Angelo died today from pancreatic cancer. He was 51, my age. Scary and sad. My mom died of pancreatic cancer; it sucks.