4.5 miles
john stevens’ house and back
27 degrees
wind: 18 mph
25% ice covered path
Too cold and icy for Scott, so no Thanksgiving run together. It’s too bad we couldn’t do it, but he made the right choice. Too much wind, too much ice, too many other people running and walking. He would have been miserable. I didn’t love all the run — it was hard to run into that wind! — but I loved a lot of it. It wasn’t too cold or windy or icy for me. Winter running is back!
10 Things
- clip clop clip clop a runner approaching from behind, wearing ice spikes and running on bare pavement
- 2 runners descending on the part of the path below the road south of the double bridge, one of them in a bright orange jacket
- minnehaha falls was rushing and (almost) roaring — I stopped at my favorite spot to watch it fall fast, and in sheets, over the ledge
- sometimes a little cloudy, sometimes bright sun
- the train bells at 50th street station were chiming frantically
- a group of people paying for parking at the falls — I wish I could remember what woman said . . .
- kids voices over at longfellow house — were they sledding down the hill like RJP did, when she was a kid?
- the view above the edge of the world was open and wintery and calming — I kept my distance from the bench because there was a big branch that looked like it might fall in the strong wind
- a human, in dark clothing, and a dog, standing at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench
- the 38th street steps are blocked off for the season — today they were thick with ice
Happy to have a relaxed, drama-free Thanksgiving. The kids are doing much better, and are getting along. RJP made the stuffing this year; FWA, mac-n-cheese. I made 2 pies: apple and maple cream. And, for the first time, I made my own pie crust! I’m proud of myself for saying I was going to do it, then actually doing it. Now we just have to see how it tastes.
Found this poem today. What does the Mississippi River Gorge smell like?
Yaquina River/ Lana Hechtman
The river smells like the absence of sea,
like sky that has lost its confidence,
current wafting down the centuries from
natives who lived and died on these shores,
the breaths of children’s laughter, their songs
ripple the slow water that goes
only at the pace it is determined to go.
The river smells like bufflehead feet and goose
feathers, salmon scales and brown silt,
fallen cedar boughs, dropped fir cones,
like women brave enough to swim
and gritty motor boat bottoms.
Slick as oil, clear as rain.
The river smells like green and bronze,
the blue of berries and purple of night,
smells of floods and grief, of relief
in times of drought, of every dreamer
who ever skipped stones upon it.
The river smells of sun’s sloped shoulders
and moon’s languid kisses,
and the riverbank smells like a place
to plant myself for all my remaining years
rich delta, aroma I have come to love
despite missing the sea.