2.6 miles
river road, south/north
28 degrees
25% ice-covered
A beautiful morning for a run! Sunny, warmer, clearer trails. There was some ice, but most of it had been sprinkled with dirt so it wasn’t slick and dangerous — there’s a metaphor there, right? I was glad to be out on the trail, albeit with some anxiety. Two days ago, at my annual check-up, my blood pressure was in the high zone. High enough to need to monitor it daily for a month to see if I need to go on medication. Some other test results were “abnormal,” too: high cholesterol, high thyroid, low ferritin. Bad test results make me anxious, or is my potentially out-of-whack thyroid? Or maybe it’s just living in a city occupied by ICE for more than 2 months and living under a federal administration that is careening towards full totalitarianism vile evil unhinged extremely dangerous falling apart and is desperate to hold onto power. I’m struggling to find the words to effectively describe this administration. So, yes, I was worried as I ran, wondering if my heart rate should sky-rocket the more I ran. Thankfully it didn’t. The run wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t the big escape I had hoped for, but it did bring me some delight and some beautiful moments to look to when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Can I find 10?
10 Moments of Beauty
- the sizzling sound of wind moving through the brittle leaves still remaining on a tree
- quiet, then the softest knocking cutting through — a woodpecker somewhere close by?
- yes! looking up at a tree, I could actually see the white underwing of a downy woodpecker, it’s tiny head hammering a branch
- wide stretches of clear, dry trail
- stopping at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, looking out at the frozen river, wondering what Rachel would do in this moment, then believing she would be part of this amazing love spreading across the city, the state, the country
- a good morning from a passing walker
- a feeling of movement below me, then spotting a walker on the Winchell Trail, the remembering running down there, nearer to the river on a warm day
- the rhythmic clicking of a passing runner’s snow spikes on the bare pavement — click click click
- running over the slick ice and not slipping or sliding because Minneapolis Parks had sprinkled dirt — and not salt — on it recently
- speaking — out loud, but softly — the words to Alice Oswald’s “The Story of Falling” that I re-memorized earlier this morning — It is the story of the falling rain/to turn into a leaf and fall again/It is the secret of a summer’s shower/to steal the light and hide it in a flower
Just writing this list, and the words preceding it, have made me feel better, more relaxed!
Get Out Ice
Even if I’ve written this before, I’ll write it again: I am finding that focusing on the fierce love and care that Minneapolis is practicing and de-centering/quieting the endless examples of ICE awfulness is helping me to endure this time. Well, more than endure. The love I am witnessing, and attempting to practice in my own way, is inspiring and making me hopeful about possible futures. It is also restoring my belief in democracy.
Here are 2 examples I shared on Facebook today:
1 — Rebecca Solnit post
One of the nuts things about organizing in the Twin Cities right now is that even the most long term organizers who’ve been here for decades can’t keep keep track of all the resistance that is going on. There are so many self-organizing crews just doing work that in any conversation with someone from another neighborhood you might stumble over a whole collective of people resisting in ways you didn’t think of. There’s a crew of carpenters just going around fixing kicked-in doors. There are tow truck drivers taking cars of detained people away for free. People delivering food to families in hiding. So many local rapid response groups that the number is uncertain but somewhere between 80 and the low hundreds . . . .
Rebecca Solnit on Facebook
2 — @terileigh via Liz May
every restaurant, church, karate dojo, dance studio, school, barber shop, and other small business has created their own underground grassroots supportive network to protect their neighbors, get people to and from work, and raise funds to pay everyday bills.
@terileigh