6 miles
hidden falls and back
69 degrees
AQI: 67
A little cooler this morning. The AQI wasn’t that high, but there must have been some smoke in the air because the spots of light on the path looked pinkish-orange. A steady run. Felt strong, sweat a lot.
10 Things
- rowers’ voices, down below
- click clack click clack — a roller skier’s poles hitting the sidewalk
- running parallel with another runner — I was on the paved path, they were on the dirt trail near folwell
- 2 women sitting on the curb at the top of the locks and dam hill — taking a break after doing a hill workout? waiting for someone? just sitting and talking?
- running under the east river road at hidden falls, listening to the creek water rushing down then over hidden falls — what creek is this again? looked it up: Hidden Falls Creek — but, actually, it’s not a creek but a stream of storm water*
- minneapolis park workers, mowing the grass beside the trail, stopping and waiting for me to pass
- the smell of freshly cut grass
- the river, below me on the ford bridge: flat and still and empty
- spots of sunlight on the trail, stained orangish-pink
- dust or smoke, stirred up by work they were doing at the old power plant near the locks and dam
*When I looked up the name of the creek at Hidden Falls, I found a Hidden Falls Resource Management Plan from 2004 and this description:
Today, Hidden Falls Regional Park encompasses 130 acres andn1.6 miles of shoreline and is an important natural area within the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. It is an oasis of floodplain forest along the Mississippi River visited by local residents and visitors using the park’s trails throughout the year. Visitors utilizethe park for hiking, fishing, running, bicycling, dog walking, birdwatching, wildflower watching, picnics, and boating. The park is a significant stopover place for migrating songbirds and waterfowl traversing the Mississippi Flyway. The park also serves as an outflow for storm water from adjacent neighborhoods north and west of the park via storm sewers that end in the bluffs along the park’s eastern edge.
Hidden Falls Resource Management Plan, 2004
And here’s a description of where I ran as I followed the creek to an overlook of the falls:
For decades, Hidden Falls has been a nearly inaccessible trickle dripping out of a culvert behind the Ford Plant in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood. Bounded by a tight curve in the Mississippi River Boulevard (MRB), the falls offered visitors two options: a steep climb down crumbling limestone stairs or a rocky hike up from the Hidden Falls Park picnic pavilion.
This month, with the opening of a new tunnel and walkway under MRB, a new viewing platform and the partial daylighting of Hidden Falls Creek, the falls are ready to be discovered by many more visitors.
Originally, Hidden Falls Creek was fed by a natural spring located near Cleveland Avenue and Ford Parkway. The creek above the falls was buried into a culvert sometime in the past century during the development of Highland Park. Now, the falls are connected to a whole new source of water via the Highland Bridge development’s massive stormwater management system, creating a consistent flow of water over the falls.
Hidden Falls, Hidden No More
A creek, daylighted! Reading a little further in the article, I found a video from Dr. Greg Brick (I’ve read and enjoyed his great book, Subterranean Twin Cities) at the site as they were working on it a few years ago:
It was cool to watch this video and think about it the history of where I ran this morning. It’s easy to not notice or reflect on the spaces you’re moving through. Now, five years later, the evidence of the planning and the labor done to create the path under the road, the overlook on the edge, and the daylighted creek are hidden to those not giving attention.
echoes
Thinking about the daylighted creek and the work done to restore/open up the area around Hidden Falls, I’m wondering about echoes beyond the definition of sound bouncing off an object and returning to a listener. Echo as trace, vestige, evidence of what came before. My collection of poems is filled with traces/evidence of what was/is there before me: countless other living things, human and non-human. I am not alone.
Echolocation is a practical tool for navigation; using echoes/changes in sound to gain a sense of the terrain — hearing where a tree or a car or a drop-off is. I use sound in this way to supplement (enhance?) my weak central vision. But echolocation, as in, locating the echoes-as-traces-as-evidence-as-proof that others are there or have been there, is also important to me.
swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
87 degrees
AQI: 70
3 loops! No pain in my shoulder! No panicking in the middle of the lake! Only a near foot cramp at the end of loop 3 and misjudging where buoy 4 was on the first loop. A good swim. I felt strong and steady and mostly breathed every 5. There were a few patches of cold water but also patches of very warm, almost hot, water. It was 100 degrees yesterday, so that must have hotted up the lake. It was crowded — on the course, all around the beach, at Painted Turtle. I saw my sparkle friends, noticed that the water was a pale green, felt something touch my toe (a fish, I think). Heard sloshing water and other swimmers chatting near the final buoy; I was treading water to assess my cramped foot.
Overheard: one swimmer to another near the 5th buoy — I feel like I was all over that course!
Overhear: one swimmer to another, on the beach — what do you do if you can’t quite do another loop? I wish there was a half loop option!
The sky was a pale blue with a few clouds. There were kayaks and paddle boarders and a few menacing swans on the edge. No sail boat — probably because there was hardly any wind.
Swimming one day in August is coming and I think I’m ready for it!