bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
76 degrees
Decided to bike to the lake for a swim while I still have the chance. An easy bike ride, with no scary moments, both there and back. I was able to successfully pass several groups of people. The road that you need to cross — Nokomis Avenue — to keep going on the creek path was open again. The pickleballers were still pickleballing — thwack! thwack!
Coming out from under 28th street, I heard the whirr of their wheels before I saw them: a mini-peloton of 8 or so riders. The first one yelled, BIKE!, when he saw me to alert the riders behind him. His voice was very sharp; it didn’t startle me, but it did make me mutter, yikes!, under my breath.
Nearing the lake, I thought about how it didn’t matter what kind of swimming I did in the water; I just wanted to be in it. Mostly just because I wanted to be in it, but partly because I’m trying to get as close to swimming 24 hours total in August. Then, I had an idea: why not interview the milfoil today (I mentioned interviewing them very early in the season)? This idea was inspired by my June entry, but also by the amazing podcast I listened to yesterday, Into a Darker Wilderness1. It’s local and I love it! At the end of each episode, the poet they’re interviewing offers a writing prompt. Here’s the one from Sean Hill (he mentioned that the prompt was originally written for Poetry Daily):
I invite you to get to know a bit more about one of your nonhuman neighbors—feathered, furred, scaled, exoskeleton-held; grown from a seed, hatched from an egg, birthed from a womb; or others; or water in its various beds, the stones around our homes. Visit a nonhuman neighbor. Introduce yourself and pay attention to your neighbor’s response. Use your body and your mind, and be attentive to them with your several senses. Appreciate their story. Try to grasp how your lives align, what narratives you share. Find other resources to broaden your knowledge and appreciation of your neighbor’s narrative. Write a poem twining those narratives.
Sean Hill
What questions could I ask the milfoil, I wondered, then thought, no questions or words, more like listening and noticing what the milfoil was communicating (or, what Robin Wall Kimmerer might say, what stories it was telling) in ways beyond words — its colors, thickness, position relative to the sun, the surface, the lake bottom. This idea of non-human living things using language without words reminds me of A.R. Ammon’s and section of his collection, garbage. I’ve written about it on here; when I have more time, I’ll try to link to it.
Leaving the lake, I felt tender and grieved the end of another swim season. Because of my congestion or allergies or bacterial infection or whatever I got that is making it hard to breathe and to swim, my season seems shorter. Was it? Yes, I checked my total swimming minutes from 2024, 2025, and 2026 summers, and this year is the lowest. But, it’s not just that getting sick in August shortened the season; it was also getting sick in July (plus wildfire smoke). Usually, July is my favorite month of the year and the one where I run and swim and bike the most. I burn about 18000 active calories in July. Not this year — my swimming and running were down and I burned less than 14000 calories. So, I guess I’m grieving for July. And, I’m grieving for future Julys that I anticipate will be negatively affected by more wildfires, more bacteria in the lake, and more random sicknesses.
swim: 1/2 loop
lake nokomis main beach
30 minutes
80 degrees
The water on the edge of the lake was laced with bright green, and the water just under the surface seemed to glow green. Not quite enough to think there were blue green algae blooms present, but enough to worry while I swam. Not much deepening and quieting of the spirit in lake today. I wasn’t worried about fish or milfoil, instead I kept asking myself, will this make it hard to breathe later today?
11 Things
- several girls far out in the water, near the faded red buoys, laughing and yelling and singing Happy Birthday to one of them
- geese overhead, flying so low I could hear their wings swishing and instinctively ducked to avoid being hit by one
- a flock of seagulls swooping down over the water
- a swimmer in a bright orange hat, the only part of him out of the water was his head, almost looking like a buoy himself — luckily his cap (swim cap? baseball cap?) was brighter than the buoys
- marco polo / marco polo / marco polo
- said to a young boy: want a sandwich? a cookie? a clementine? the boy: no / no / no thanks grandma, as he gathered something, brought it to the sand, thn gathered more, and brought that to the sand. grandma: I see you’re busy
- 2 women standing in waist-deep water, far out near the buoys, discussing different lakes around the city and whether they were safe to swim in or not
- a pale blue sky with streaks of bright blue, sometimes sun, sometimes clouds
- the milfoil below was pale yellow or faded orange and dark green
- floating in the water, using my yellow buoy as a pillow, sometimes closing my eyes and seeing red from the sun, sometimes opening them and trying to look at the sky
- a loud snapping noise — a woman shaking the sand out of her towel
- from the podcast site: “Into a Darker Wilderness podcast sits at the intersection of nature and Black history, expanding our definitions and seeking new understandings of our relationships with and through time, nature, and history.” ↩︎