5.25 miles
the flats and back
20 degrees / feels like 5 / snow
100% snow-covered
2 days ago, I mentioned that my next run should be to the flats so I could study the river surface. So that’s where I went this late morning and into the early afternoon: the flats. Unfortunately, there was no surface to study, only white. I had a late start to the run because I was trying to put my yaktrax back on. I might need a bigger size. How long did it take me to finally get them on? 10 maybe 15 or 20 minutes. That’s a long time to be sitting inside wrapped up in all my winter running layers!
Almost everything outside was white. White sky, white ground, white rock, white river. There were a few strips of worn down snow on the path, but a lot of it was lumpy and soft. I twisted my foot/ankle at least once on the uneven ground, but not hard enough to cause a problem. The conditions made it harder, but I didn’t mind too much. It was so quiet and calm and beautiful beside the gorge.
10 Things
- another running in a bright orange jacket — encountered them twice
- the bright headlights from an approaching bike
- under the I-94 bridge, 1: a few streaks of open water
- under the I-94 bridge, 2: honk honk honk — some gathered geese, gabbing
- heading north, no notice of the wind
- heading south, wind in my face
- approaching a woman — I was heading north, her south, I could see the snow flying up around her feet from the wind
- the bells of St. Thomas chiming and chiming and chiming at noon
- brightly colored (I can’t quite remember the colors — maybe pink and orange and blue?) graffiti under the bridges
- as I approached the franklin bridge from below, the wind picked up and I felt the arctic air, under the arch, a shopping cart
mental victory of the run: Even though I wanted to stop to rest my legs, sore from the uneven terrain, I kept going until I reached the bottom of the hill.
I had some success writing drafts for my m//other and g||host poems this morning before my run. During and just after the run, on my walk home, I had some thoughts about the third poem, t here involving the dotted line on the map that runs through the middle of the Mississippi River on the map indicating the dividing line between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Here’s a draft that I spoke into my phone. It needs some work!
if you look
on the map
between the
here of this
side and the
there of that
side, a dotted
line was drawn to
represent
that moment
mid-river
when one city
becomes the
other. Do
you think, if
you were to
swim across,
you could feel
this shift, could
find this place
where a there
becomes a
here and a
here becomes
a there? I’m
willing to
believe it
exists, this
space where both
here and there
dwell, a place
where both are
possible.