5.8 miles
ford loop
54 degrees
Fall! Ran the ford loop (north to lake street bridge and across, south to ford ave bridge back across, north on west river road). Sunny, hardly any wind. Calm. Thought about stopping at the overlook on the st. paul side but didn’t. Next time, I hope. It’s hard for me to stop.
10 Things I Noticed
- Running down through the short steep hill just before reaching the double bridge, a glowing orange tree
- Some more slashes of red on the low-lying leaves–what are these trees? Basswood? Buckthorn? Looked it up and I think these leaves come from an ash tree
- No leaves changing in the floodplain forest yet. All green
- The river was calm and blue and empty
- Water at Shadow Falls gushing
- Mostly empty benches, often facing a wall of green — no view yet
- The small, wooded path down from the Ford Bridge was thick with leaves, dark with only a small circle of sunshine at the bottom
- Most of the shoreline was still green too
- My feet, shshshushing on the sand on the side of the path
- Two women walking, talking, one of them say sarcastically something like, “it’s just money”
Before I went out for my run, I memorized Robert Frost’s short poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay. Recited it in my head for much of the run. Tried to recite it into my phone at the end of my run and blanked on the fifth line — the word subsides — and gave up. More practice needed.
Nothing Gold Can Stay/ Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to gold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing Gold can stay.
At first I didn’t like the ABABABAB rhyme scheme, but it grew on me. It helped to listen to a recording of Frost reciting it and to repeat to myself over and over again.