Tag: 10 things

may 16/RUN

4.15 miles
trestle+ turn around
60 degrees
wind: 35 mph gusts

Another earlier run. Cooler and windy! Luckily, I wasn’t running straight into it for that long, or if I was, it didn’t bother me. I felt strong and relaxed and like I’m slowly getting back into the groove.

Right after my run, we drove down to St. Peter to help FWA move out of his dorm. He graduated a few weeks ago. I didn’t have time to write this entry until I got back. Can I remember 10 things?

10 Things

  1. the green has taken over the gorge, no more wide open view of the river, only a splotch of bright white through the small gap in the trees
  2. heard, not seen: a roller skier’s clicking poles
  3. Good Morning! to Mr. Morning!, twice
  4. running past the field at Minneahaha Academy, all dug up. Scott thinks they’re putting in a new irrigation system
  5. little purple flowers — not sure if it was Siberian Squill, maybe some other purple flower?
  6. empty benches
  7. passed the dirt rail near the trestle and thought about taking it but didn’t
  8. a small blue ball under the trestle
  9. most of the stones stacked on the ancient boulder — there had been 6 — were blown over in yesterday’s storms, only 2 small pebbles were still stacked
  10. the big crack just past the trestle that they’ve patched up several springs in a row is cracking again. 2 out of the 3 sections of it have big cracks, the one closest to the trestle has a big crater

I decided to stop and take a picture of it:

crack, overview / 16 may 2025
crack, close-up / 16 may 2025

Listened to the blowing wind as I ran north, my “Beaufort Scale” playlist running south.

among / between

When I read and posted Lorine Niedecker’s poem about standing among the birch last week —

For best work
you ought to put forth
some effort
to stand
in north woods
among birch.

I was struck by the word among and wondered how it was different from between. I looked it up this afternoon and, after wading through discussions about how between is used with 2 items, among with more than 2, I came across a helpful distinction in Merriam Webster:

We use between when we want to express a relation to things and have them considered as individual and usually equal entities.

Among, on the other hand is the best word to use when referring to things collectively and imprecisely.

I like among in LN’s poem, although I wonder about the effect of using between (or beside or with) instead. to stand/in north woods/between birch. Among indicates a kinship — among all of us trees, but between suggests an actual place — stand between this birch and that birch and an exchange — between us. I like both meanings. I like imaging my best work as trying to become a tree. But I also like the idea of my best work happening when I stand between birch — giving and receiving air.

I was reminded of among and between while reading this passage from Marie Howe:

That was really a big deal. I was given this place to be without any expectations really. And everything changed so that the particulars of life—this white dish, the shadow of the bottle on it—everything mattered so much more to me. And I saw what happened in these spaces. You can never even say what happened, because what happened is rarely said, but it occurs AMONG the glasses with water and lemon in them. And so you can’t say what happened but you can talk about the glasses or the lemon. And that something is in BETWEEN all that.

You can name/describe the collection of things (among), but you can’t find words to describe how their meaning has changed in that moment. Often when I think about the slight shifts in meaning between small words, like among or between, I’m reminded of an essay I read about Mary Oliver and her mousier words. I love mousy words! Meanwhiles and in-betweens and yous and wes and usses (is that the plural of us?).


…it’s tempting to be blinded by the more immediately visible parts of speech: the monolithic nouns, the dynamic verbs, the charismatic adjectives. Mousier ones—pronouns, prepositions, particles—go ignored.

Mary Oliver and the Nature-esque

may 14/RUNWALK

4.15 miles
minnehaha falls and back
68 degrees
dew point: 59

Even though it was warm and the dew point was high, my run was good. Managed to bring my heart rate back down and keep it under 170 until I reached my favorite spot at the falls — 2.25 miles in. Excellent. I’m feeling stronger, mentally and physically.

10 Things

  1. a turkey in the middle of the road, honking? squawking? yelling? at the cars unwilling to stop and let him cross
  2. a hazy green above the gorge
  3. the sun hitting the light green leaves so intensely in the distance that I thought it was a bright yellow crossing sign instead of a tree
  4. the falls were rushing, all white foam framed by green trees
  5. a steady procession of cars on the road
  6. roots and rocks hidden in the shadows on the trail — I lightly twisted both ankles, one from a root, the other a rock
  7. the tree that feel in the creek sometime last year was gray — will they remove it?
  8. a line of a dozen or more cars backed up on the parkway, stuck at the stop sign
  9. a crowded trail heading north — bikers and walkers, a few runners, strollers
  10. the water fountains have been turned on again! I stopped for a drink and to wet down my hat

Listened to the hum of traffic as I ran south, my “Doin’ Time” playlist heading back north.

before the run

Thinking about LN’s poem — that I posted yesterday — about standing in the north woods with birch, which led me to think about becoming a tree, like in Katie Farris’ “What Would Root” and Linda Pastan’s “In The Orchard” — I shall come back as a tree.

I’m also thinking about Mary Oliver and “Can You Imagine” — surely you can’t imagine trees don’t dance from the roots up, wishing to travel a little, not cramped as much as wanting a better view, or sun, or just as avidly, more shade.

during the run

I don’t remember thinking about becoming a tree or rooting or stillness while I ran, but I remembered right after I finished and as I walked back home I recited “What Would Root” in my head. I need to practice the second half of the poem. Then I thought about the illusion of stillness and how nothing, not even rocks or trees, stand still. They’re sinking and shifting and swaying and responding to (being changed) by the world around them.

after the run

Still as not not moving but being stuck in a rut, doing the same thing again and again, as in, you’re still doing that?

Still as not needing more, content, at peace, satisfied, stilled desire or anxiety.

Nox Borealis/ Campbell McGrath

If Socrates drank his portion of hemlock willingly,
if the Appalachians have endured unending ages of erosion,
if the wind can learn to read our minds
and moonlight moonlight as a master pickpocket,
surely we can contend with contentment as our commission.

Deer in a stubble field, small birds dreaming
unimaginable dreams in hollow trees,
even the icicles, darling, even the icicles shame us
with their stoicism, their radiant resolve.

Listen to me now: think of something you love
but not too dearly, so the night will steal from us
only what we can afford to lose.

walk: 1 hour
winchell trail / edmund
77 degrees

Remembered to take Delia the dog for a walk before it got too hot. We walked to the Winchell trail than sauntered, me studying the leaves with my fuzzy vision and fingers, and Delia sniffing them with her snout. Warm in the sun, cool in the shadows.

10+ Things

  1. clumps of tallish grass growing through the mulch — a vibrant green
  2. even taller grasses growing among the flowers on the hill, creating a visual effect that was dizzying as my eyes tried to land on anything solid
  3. little bits of some sort of plant scattered along the top of the fence. It looked like it was growing there — a form of lichen? — but I couldn’t tell. It might have just fallen from a tree
  4. the pleasing, easily identifiable shape of the maple tree on the trees close to the trail
  5. sparkling, blue water
  6. blue water, blue sky, green trees
  7. the laugh of a woodpecker
  8. a yard with several bleeding heart bushes, all in bloom
  9. sprawled tree shadows on the grass
  10. the crotch of a tree — standing beside a tree that branched off into two equally sized limbs which looked like thighs to me. I imagined a person planted head first in the ground, which is what happens in “What Would Root”
  11. walking near Hiawatha Elementary, watching as a gym class “ran” around the block, studying the different approaches to “running” — a steady jog, sprint then stop then sprint, skipping, arms flailing and screaming while moving

As I walked with Delia, stopping at almost every tree or tuft of grass or clump of dirt, I thought about the differences between walking and running, this time in relation to a sense of self. Does one enable you to lose yourself or step outside of yourself more easily? I haven’t decided, but I think while walking you can be more aware of what you are doing, how you are attending to the world and noticing what is going on. While running, the attention is less deliberate; you’re too busy managing your effort to carefully study things. There was more to that thought but I lost in the time that it took me to get home.

may 10/WALK

60 minutes
winchell trail
63 degrees

A near perfect morning. Wow! Sunny with a slight breeze. Blue sky. Quiet. A slow walk with lots of stops for Delia. We walked to the winchell trail and took the worn, wooden steps down to the oak savanna, then another set of wooden steps up to an overlook. So much green everywhere — new trees popping up, tufts of grass, moss. We walked behind the mesa along the abandoned chainlink fence and I marveled at the bright green moss. At one point, I bent down and touched it — almost like carpet, but better.

10 Things

  1. the odd curve of the abandoned chainlink fence on the dirt trail behind the mesa
  2. that same fence, buried deep in the dirt and leaves, only the top was visible
  3. rowers! not seen, only heard — the coxswain calling out instructions
  4. a speed boat moving fast near the opposite shore
  5. tall grass in clumps and tufts and patches
  6. someone sitting by a tree stump, hidden in the green until they were right in front of me
  7. the clicking and scraping of a roller ski’s poles
  8. two runners, running by single-file, talking about a video game
  9. a big bird flying high in the sky
  10. on the boulevard between the river road and edmund, the grass was uneven and bare in many spots, studded with dandelions in others

The moment of the walk was when I stopped to let Delia sniff — more like she demanded to stop — and I stood on the edge of the bluff looking out at the blue water and feeling the soft, cool breeze. All around bright green leaves were fluttering. Below, the river surface was glittering. The movement was mesmerizing, meditative.

Against Lawn/ Grace Bauer

The midnight streetlight illuminating
the white of clover assures me

I am right not to manicure
my patch of grass into a dull

carpet of uniform green, but
to allow whatever will to take over.

Somewhere in that lace lies luck,
though I may never swoop down

to find it. Three, too, is
an auspicious number. And this seeing

a reminder to avoid too much taming
of what, even here, wants to be wild.

manicure – patch – carpet – uniform Great words to describe an over-managed lawn. Last night Scott and I were talking about lawns and the moral imperative to maintain your lawn to a certain standard. That is not the case as much in our neighborhood. Most people’s yards don’t have manicured grass. Partly because we live in a quirky neighborhood in the city, and partly because we’re near the river and people know that lawn chemicals get into the groundwater and then travel through the sewer to the river. I mentioned to Scott that I don’t judge people if their lawn isn’t manicured, I judge them if it is because it can only be that way if they’re treating it with chemicals — and if they’re not using chemicals, they’re still wasting water on their laws. But, I don’t want to judge anyone, so I’m trying to work on that.

Somewhere in that lace lies luck. . . What a great line!

a reminder to avoid too much taming
of what, even here, wants to be wild.

I’m always returning to this question of what it means to be wild and where the gorge fits into that. In the spring, when left alone, the small patches of grass on the bluff want to be wild. Tall blades and dandelions and little trees everywhere. Unruly, sometimes almost menacing as they creep closer to the trail, blocking out the view. Not wild, but re-wilding.

may 8/BIKE

8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
60 degrees

The first outdoor bike ride of the year. I’m always nervous, not knowing how it will go. Can I still see enough to bike? Will it be too scary? Yes, I can see! No, I wasn’t scared! I was a bit disoriented with all of the dappled light and I had to take some deep breaths a few times, but it went well. It’s a combination of: a memorized path — all of the cracks and bumps and tricky spots from years of biking; a familiarity and acceptance of not knowing or seeing everything; a few still-working cone cells and the ability to compensate with peripheral vision and other senses; and a belief that I can bike. Oh — and biking a little slower.

The lake was beautiful. I can’t wait to swim across it in a month. I signed up for open swim yesterday — signed FWA and RJP up too. Summer is almost here.

7 Grassy Things

  1. there’s a certain stretch of grass on the bike trail that separates it from the road and helps me to see where to go — I need because the gray of the trail can blend in with the gray of the road
  2. had to bike through the grass when I turned off the trail too early — I remembered biking through this grass with FWA 2 summers ago
  3. an open field between the duck and echo bridges — a beautiful green studded with bright yellow dandelions
  4. someone spread out a blanket and is sitting in that grass — how buggy is it?
  5. what a bright blue sky! a great contrast with the green trees and grass
  6. shadows of new leaves waving in the wind on the grass near lake nokomis
  7. a bright yellow trailer and half a dozen cars parked on the grassy hill between lake hiawatha and lake nokomis — they’re redoing the path and (I had to look it up) adding a pedestrian bridge: “A new pedestrian bridge over Minnehaha Creek next to Lake Hiawatha is scheduled to be installed May. The bridge will be delivered in pieces, assembled onsite and then set in place with a crane.”

Other things: someone listening to a song on their phone as they walked — a new one from Lorde?; the bog near my favorite part of the path was completely dry; a sign, loose gravel — thankfully there wasn’t any; bird shadows on the path; lots of people walking around the lake

a grounding, a frame, a context

I mentioned in my entry for 7 may that I would post a quotation from Jenny Odell about context here:

I think a really interesting mental exercise to do with anything or anyone is to think about whether they have been afforded experience, the ability to experience, which means like having a past and a future. So one of the most fascinating things that I came across in researching the book, that I talk about somewhere in the middle of the book, is a study about the lesser minds bias. It’s not something you would immediately think has to do with time, but it’s a bias that other people, especially people in out-groups—so people you don’t identify with—don’t have as rich of an emotional inner life as you do. And so in this study that I referenced, the people running the study ask the participants to think about houseless people and show that the part of their mind that has to do with theory of mind, and imagining that someone has an inner life, is not lighting up when they’re thinking about these people. And then they ask them the question, what kind of vegetable do you think they would like, this person? Just imagine that and then suddenly it is lighting up, right? And my interpretation of that in the book was, well, someone who wants something and has desire must have a past and must have hopes for the future. For something to have desire, it has to exist in time. And so it’s almost like—that participant who’s thinking about them—it’s almost like this person has entered a time with them. Like this person is now also an actor. This person has wants and needs and regrets. And I think that kind of flipping is a really helpful and interesting way to think about why we do or don’t afford that to, you know, the nonhuman world, and also many groups within the human world—like out-groups, as they were talking about in the study. And it is that relegating of part of life to the realm of the timeless—like it might be cyclical, but it’s considered timeless—that is so much at the root of the logic of extracting it. It’s lifeless. But it’s the same mechanism that’s behind dehumanizing someone, because you’re seeing a person as almost like an instance. To go back to people without housing, it’s interesting that people don’t think about how someone might go in and out of housing within their life. You know, what led to that? What might be in their future? They’re just sort of seen as they’re just there. And so I think that’s an example of what happens when you take something out of time, or it doesn’t seem to inhabit time in the same way you do.

Another Kind of Time/ Jenny Odell

As I write this, I’m listening (by pure accident) to the Rolling Stones, “Time is on my side” and now I’m thinking about returning to time. Reviewing past entries for 2025, it seems like I’m all over the place. Maybe, but I’m also orbiting around a cluster of ideas related to the gorge and my larger poem, or series of poems, about haunting the gorge. At some point, something will stick and I’ll stop to write, but for now I’ll keep moving and circling ideas.

is a really helpful and interesting way to think about why we do or don’t afford that to, you know, the nonhuman world

What is desire to the grass? And, what is the grass as a subject? One blade/leaf? A lawn? A clump in a sea of dirt? I suddenly thought about the smell of freshly cut grass, a frequent scent in May. As a kid, it was one of my favorite smells, then I read or heard somewhere that it was the grass crying or bleeding, and I stopped liking it. I decided to look it up and found a PBS segment, That Fresh Cut Grass Scent is Really a Signal of Distress. But, according to PBS, the grass isn’t crying, it’s communicating, sending out a message to other plants, or other parts of themselves, to be prepared for trouble.

The idea that the grass is crying, or screaming, still abounds. Here’s the opening line from an article for Lawnstarter, a lawn care company:

Inhale deeply. That heavenly fresh-cut grass smell you savor while mowing your back 40 is actually your lawn screaming in pain from the hell of a hurtful haircut.

Fresh cut grass is your lawn’s shriek of despair, science says

Science (not scientists, or a scientific study), says? Wow. Anyway, I’m struck by how the idea that grass is communicating (the PBS clip) offers more agency to the grass than depicting them as shrieking or screaming in despair (the article). The article offers some of the science, then moves onto a discussion of why we might like the smell of freshly mown grass and then gives examples of how that love is depicted in song.

I wrote in my Plague Notebook, vol. 25, what is the root system for grass. Looked it up and found this helpful resource: How does Grass Grow?

Grass typically has a fibrous root system, characterized by a dense network of fine, thread-like roots that spread outward and downward.

Fibrous? I posted something a poet said about being fibrous a year or so ago. Can I find it again? No. It had something to do with someone thinking of themselves as made up of fibers, of their idea of the self as fibrous? I wish I could remember!

One last thing: Over the past weeks, I’ve encountered references to Dads and their obsessions with the lawn, how lawn maintenance is gendered male. I found this interesting site when I searched “gender lawn” from Lady Science: Liberate Your Lawn from the Legacy of Masculine Science.

In Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Kenneth T. Jackson shows that the American Neighbor’s attachment to his lawn, since its takeover of the suburban consciousness after the Second World War, is the result of the affluence and financial security that the lawn represents. The lawn is a simple status symbol that signals to the little-n neighbors that The Neighbor has achieved a level of economic comfort that affords him both the money to pay his exorbitant water bill and the free time to mow thrice weekly in the summer. I think, however, if we want to break the American Neighbor of the lawn — and we should, because it’s not good for the environment that 2 percent of the land in the U.S is taken up by monocultural swathes of ornamental grass — we might consider that the lure of the lawn is deeper.

Hmm. . . this crabgrass book looks interesting.

may 5/RUNWALK

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
59 degrees

Warm! Nothing hurt, it was just hard. My heart rate was higher. Who cares? No back or calf or hip pain! I’m trying to ease back in. Today I ran 4 minutes/walked 1, 8 times. I was proud of myself for sticking with it, even as my heart rate climbed. Yes, I’m ready for some mental toughness!

10 Things

  1. an abundance of sparkles on the river
  2. more green leaves crawling up the trunks of trees
  3. fee bee fee bee
  4. shadow, 1: a straight-ish line on the path from the fence
  5. shadow, 2: soft, sprawling branches
  6. shadow, 3: me — sharp, upright, satisfied
  7. the faint, slightly off tune dinging of the train bell
  8. flowing falls
  9. park workers had the one set of stairs blocked off — I heard water, were they spraying down the steps?
  10. passing another runner from behind, they were dressed warmly in long pants and a a jacket and breathing heavily

enoughness / contentment / not scarcity

Moss lifeways offer a strong contrast to the ways we’ve organized our society, which prioritizes relentless growth as the metric of well-being: always getting bigger, producing more, having more. Infinite growth is ecologically impossible and exceedingly destructive, as it demands the transformation of the lives of other beings into raw materials to feed the fiction. Mosses show us another way—the abundance that emanates from self-restraint, from enoughness. Mosses have lived too long on this planet to be seduced by the nonsense of accumulation, the delusion of permanence, the endless striving for productivity. Maybe our heartbeats slow when we sit with mosses because they remind us that contentment could be ours.

Ancient Green/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Summer Day/ Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

When I think of green, I think of another concept Robin Wall Kimmerer promotes: abundance — as in, a gift economy and a challenge to the (mostly) myth of scarcity. In May, green is almost too abundant — a gift that is not scarce!

walk: 45 minutes
winchell trail (ravine) / tunnel of trees / edmund
76 degrees

Took Delia out for a walk in the afternoon. The green is taking over. The view from above in the tunnel of trees was only green — no dirt trail below, no sliver of river, no exposed sewer pipe. Just green. As we walked, I thought about another passage I read from RWK in “Ancient Green” this afternoon:

They [green moss] cover the inanimate with the animate. Without judgment, they cover our mistakes, with an unconditional acceptance of their responsibility for healing.

Ancient Green/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Everywhere green — not moss, but leaves — were covering bare branches, sewer pipes, the gorge. A green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return of the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Did I feel that way about the green I was encountering today? Somewhat, but I also felt it taking over, transforming the floodplain forest in ways I didn’t like: too hidden.

overheard: music from car radios! Someone blasting “Bohemian Rhapsody,” someone else “Rhapsody in Blue.” Until typing these 2, I didn’t make the rhapsody connection.

It must be this rhapsody or none,
The rhapsody of things as they are.
(The Man with the Blue Guitar/ Wallace Stevens)

rhapsody: a portion of an epic poem adapted for recitation

may 4/WALK

40 minutes
winchell trail
66 degrees

What a beautiful morning! This year winter was a blur. It’s hard to believe that we’re only a month away from open swim season. Walked with Scott and Delia down the worn wooden steps to the winchell trail. Took the trail that winds below the mesa. Scott wondered what the trees near the 36th street parking lot were. According to his app, plum trees. He was dubious. We talked about FWA and RJP and the big changes in their lives — one graduating from college, the other moving into their first apartment. After seeing the rowers I wondered, would FWA like rowing? or canoeing? or kayaking? I think he might. Just asked him and his response: Nah. Oh well.

10 Things

  1. the water in the ravine was gushing — heard it first, then saw it — not drip drip dripping, but rushing out of sewer pipe
  2. the hillside that leads up to the trail in the oak savanna was covered in green — more of our view of above, blocked. Last week I was still able to see whole people running and biking above. Today, only the flash of movement through the trees — at first, I thought it was a bird, then I realized it was a biker
  3. 2 bikers on the street — one on a tall bike, the other on a fat tire
  4. so many new leaves on the branches — as I noticed them I thought, a slick new leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm — a line from Ada Limôn
  5. voices . . . a bullhorn . . . rowers! An 8 person shell + the white motorized boat with the instructor giving instructions to a new class
  6. the annual walk-a-thon was happening — as we ascended the 38th street steps, we saw that the road was blocked off and that there was a row of a dozen port-a-potties
  7. a sharp, whistled call in the savanna — what bird is that?
  8. a cloud of bugs right outside our front door — yuck!
  9. so many tulips in a front yard, causing Scott to quip, we’re living in Holland!
  10. in the stretch between the savanna and the 38th street steps, the chainlink fence was leaning over to the ground, buried in mulch and leaves

Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Succession

A few days ago, I encountered the concept of succession in ecology. A meadow becomes a thicket. A thicket becomes a forest. Today I noticed that one of RWK’s chapters in Gathering Moss was titled, “Binding Up the Wounds: Mosses in Ecological Succession,” so I decided to read it. RWK is discussing an area of the Adirondacks blighted by a now defunct mine and abandoned. One of her students is doing her thesis on some moss in the area and whether or not they might help seeds, then trees, establish a home in the otherwise inhospitable tailings (the waste material of a mine: sandy, dry soil, slashes of rock).

succession defined: Ecological succession is the process by which the mix of species and habitat in an area changes over time. Gradually, these communities replace one another until a “climax community”—like a mature forest—is reached, or until a disturbance, like a fire, occurs (source).

Out of the carpet of living moss came a crowd of seedlings, the next step in binding up the wounds of the land.

. . . a little grove of aspens that had somehow gotten started in this desolate place that everyone wanted to cover in garbage. We know now that these aspens originated from seeds caught on a patch of moss, and the whole island of shade began to grow from there. The trees brought birds and the birds brought berries which now blossom around us.

Gathering Moss/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Out of the waste of an abandoned mine, moss. From moss, a seed, then a tree. With a tree, birds and berries and blossoms and shade.

may 1/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
60 degrees

Warm! Green everywhere — tufts of grass on the bluff, leaves unfurling from the trees. Lots of bikers on the trail today. I ran to the falls without stopping, then took several walk breaks on the way back. My heart rate was high, my legs were sore. I think I should do a post-injury walk/run plan to ease back into moving.

As I write this on my deck, a black-capped chickadee is doing their feebee call. So loud! So constant. No answer yet.

10 Things

  1. Sea Salt is open at the falls — I could smell it as I ran through the park — what was the smell? fried and salty?
  2. a group of kids with adults — students/teacher? — below me on the winchell trail
  3. the falls parking lot was full of cars
  4. kids yelling/laughing on the playground
  5. a park worker driving a big mower, cutting grass on the strip between the walking and biking path — the lawn mower had a bright orange triangle on the back
  6. a biker in a bright yellow shirt with a matching bright yellow helmet
  7. someone swinging at the falls playground
  8. a biker biking in wide circles under the ford bridge
  9. flashes of white though the (already) thick green on the trail below me and beside the creek — I think it was the heads of people taking the path that leads to the river
  10. yellow and red tulips near a parking lot

before the run

Thank you past Sara for posting this beautiful Katie Farris poem — Ode to Money, or Patient Appealing Health Insurance for Denial of Coverage — and giving me inspiration for a May challenge with these lines:

America’s optimistic to dye its money
green. Leaves are green
because of chlorophyll, which is the machine
that turns sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into leaf, stem, and root. All
the little blades of grass left behind by the lawn mower like Civil
War soldiers. Same as cash.

Grass! A whole month with grass? Maybe a whole month with green, one week with grass? Yes! And (at least) a week with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gathering moss. Will this challenge idea go the way of last month’s steps? Forgotten after a few days? I hope not.

like Civil War soldiers — the line this is referencing in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was one of my first favorite lines from a poem:

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

I posted this section of Song of Myself on 18 may 2020. Here’s another part I want to remember:

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

And now I’m thinking about Mary Oliver and her line about rising up again like grass, and realizing that she was referencing Whitman with it. She loved Walt Whitman. Uh oh — I’m feeling a shift in direction. Will I forgo grass for a study of Walt Whitman?

during the run

As I mentioned in my 10 things list, while I was running, I encountered a park worker mowing the strip of grass between the bike and walking paths. I decided that that would be my image of grass for today. I could smell the freshly cut grass as I ran by. I wonder what the parks’ department’s schedule for mowing grass is — how often? and how many acres of grass do they maintain across the city?

after the run

1

Read Mary Oliver’s chapter in Upstream, “My Friend, Walt Whitman.” I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this line before, but I’ll do it again because it fits:

I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple–or a green field–a place to enter, and in which to feel.

2

I decided to look up information about minneapolis parks and mowing.

4,660 acres of grass/turf mowed

They divided grassy areas into 3 types: athletic fields, general park turf, reduced mowing areas.

general park turf: “We cut grass to a height of 3 inches on a regular basis as time and weather allows, but grass height may exceed 5 inches at times. This standard applies to most of the Park System including neighborhood parks, boulevards, parkways and active use areas within regional parks.”

reduced mowing areas: “We maintain some park lands through mowing on an infrequent basis. These areas include steep hillsides, erosion prone slopes, shorelines and park lands that are not intensively maintained.”

I love that the parks department posts this information!

Also wanted to add this video. It’s light on sources, especially the early history of grass, but I like the clips from commercials:

And here’s a useful resource to return to, and also to use to supplement the video:

The History of Early American Landscape Design: Lawn

And also this — Get Off My Lawn! — which has an interesting 30 minute podcast, images related to the lawn from the Smithsonian Museum.

april 29/WALKRUN

walk: 25 minutes
neighborhood
52 degrees

Took a walk with Delia the dog through the neighborhood. The sky was very blue, with no clouds. Had the wind blown them all away?

A beautiful contrast: a silvery birch (or aspen?) with no leaves against the bright blue sky

Earlier today, I bent over too far and tweaked my back (see below). As I walked, I felt stiff and too cautious. Everything tight and anxious, like when I’m walking on a sidewalk covered with ice.

A favorite moment: turning a corner and walking under the bright green leaves of an enormous willow tree

before the walk

No tornadoes! No 85 mph wind! No golf ball sized hall or thunder or giant trees crashing down! No damaged roofs or freaked out dogs or power outages! Not even rain. Several tornadoes touched down in southern Minnesota, south of FWA, but by the time the line of storms reached the edge of the twin cities, it split in two, with one section angling north of us, and one angling south. Whew.

Whatever has been happening with my back/piriformis/glutes/? seems to have turned a corner. Not fully healed, but feeling much stronger. A new problem: a dull, restless ache in my left hamstring. It doesn’t hurt that much, just feels uncomfortable. If it’s a muscle, I think it’s my semitendinosus or maybe the satorius?

20 minutes later: Ever since I bent over and experienced a burst of sharp pain in my lower back 2 days ago, I’ve been trying to avoid bending over with my legs straight. Reaching down to put a baking sheet away, I forgot. Ouch! oh oh oh oh oh oh — that’s what I chanted after it happened. Damn, that’s some pain. Now, reverberations. Boo. Decided to call and make an appointment with a spine specialist — May 23rd. I hope everything is better before then!

Doing some more research about running and herniated discs (I think that’s what I might have), I read that low-impact running might help — something about the movement producing spinal fluid? So, with some trepidation, I decided to go out for a short run —

run: 2.4 miles
2 trails
54 degrees

I was very nervous to take the first few steps, but after a block, I started to feel good. My back and legs didn’t hurt at all and it was wonderful to be out moving beside the gorge. No pain at all during the run! (I walked some, too)

10 Things

  1. a turkey on the edge of the path near the Horace Cleveland Overlook
  2. a roller skier and a biker
  3. several of the benches along the trail were occupied
  4. the soft, sprawling shadows of tree branches
  5. a runner moving fast, working hard with slapping feet and jagged breaths
  6. kids laughing and yelling at the playground across the road
  7. swarming gnats near the 42nd entrance to the winchell trail
  8. someone in a big white hat, below me, on a path closer to the river
  9. a bird — but not a cardinal — calling out the same note in quick succession, maybe 15 or so times
  10. soft purple flowers on the edge of the trail — not Siberian squill

The Bog Wife

Down to the wire. I had to finish this wonderful book by the end of the day before it was automatically returned. I did it! What a wonderful ending, and so fitting for my thinking about entanglement. A beautiful story about a history of compacts with the land.

compact: an agreement or covenant, to knit or draw together

the compact / The Bog Wife

april 25/WALK

52 minutes
winchell / ravine / steps / longfellow / river trail
55 degrees

A great afternoon walk with Delia the dog. Sometimes there was sun, but mostly it was cloudy and overcast. Some wind. Bright green everywhere, even on the felled trees in the floodplain forest. Heard lots of singing birds, people talking, a sharp clanging noise. When it was sunny, I admired the soft shadows of tree limbs and Delia’s stubby legs and long body.

10 Things

  1. creeeaakkk — the tall trees in the floodplain forest were swaying in the wind and some branches were rubbing together to make a soft (and sinister) creaking noise
  2. the top step of the stone steps had a big puddle of water — watch out!
  3. stopping to wait for a trail runner to pass before heading back up the steps. They looked too warm and had a sweatshirt wrapped around their waist
  4. the soft lapping of the water against a log on the edge of the shore
  5. someone in a bright orange jacket following behind, talking to someone on a phone
  6. the sky above the forest was more open than usual, the ground more cluttered with tree trunks
  7. the gentle curve of a tree trunk, almost like an arched back
  8. a loud splash in the water, then a flash of movement — a fish jumping out of the water?
  9. a retaining wall in the oak savanna, across the ravine, was painted bright colors — blue, yellow, red
  10. someone on a scooter, someone else on a bike, both masked and on the walking trail

before the walk

Woke up stiff and sore, which I’ve been doing for the past month. Most of me is okay, only my lower glutes and hips and hamstrings hurt, especially when I leaned down to throw something away in the organics. Ouch! After a few minutes, it should get better. Is it worse this morning because of yesterday’s biking? I don’t think so.

Other things I woke up to:

  • a thought: I have to wheel the recycling bin down before the truck comes!
  • a rejection: “After careful consideration, we decided this submission is not the right fit for us”
  • green green green grass from all the rain yesterday and early this morning

Rejections are not fun. Even though I know how difficult it is to get something published — less than 5% acceptance rate + your poem needs to fit with the others already selected — it still stings. But only for a few minutes. Now I’m thinking about grass and spring and noisy birds outside my window — the torpedoed call of a cardinal. I wish I would have counted their repeated chirps — 10 or 12 or more in a row!

A video came up on YouTube about piriformis syndrome, which I may or may not have, but probably don’t because it’s very rare — 6% chance: Piriformis Syndrome — STOP Stretching. I checked it out, and I’m willing to try the 2 exercises it suggests for contracting/strengthening my piriformis muscle instead of stretching/lengthening it. Will it work? I’m not sure, but I don’t think it will hurt to do them as I wait for my far off doctor appointment.

I’ve come a long way in my reactions to injury over the years. I’m not freaking out or in despair, even though I haven’t been able to run for 10 days. The pain isn’t making me anxious, like it did last year with my calf. I’m sure my more relaxed attitude is partly due to more experience with injury, less fear over tight glutes than knots in calves, and the lexapro. Whatever it is, I’m grateful to not be in constant panic mode.

So, is it piriformis syndrome? Who knows. What else could it be? Time to get out the scrabble tiles and make some anagrams!

P I R I F O R M I S S Y N D R O M E is tough one —

  • In moss drip form (not used: I R E Y)
  • Permission from Id (not used: Y R)
  • Osprey mind forms (not used: R I I)
  • Spry of mind, I rise (M O R)

after the walk

I’m continuing to read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry. I think I might need to buy it. The part I’m currently reading is about ecological economics.

We’ve created a system such that we self-identify as consumers first before understanding ourselves as ecosystem citizens. In ecological economics, the focus is on creating an economy that provides for a just and sustaianable future in which both human life and nonhuman life can flourish.

The Serviceberry/ RWK

competition is not the primary force regulating evolutionary success

competition only makes sense when we consider the unit of evolution to be the individual. When the focus shifts to the level of a group. cooperation is a better modle not only for surviving but for thriving.

since competition reduces the carrying capacity for all concerned, natural selection favors those who can avoid competition. Oftentimes this avoidance is achieved by shifting one’s needs away from whatever is in short supply, as though evolution were suggestion “If there’s not enough of what you want, then want something else.”

april 23/WALKBIKE

60 minutes
winchell trail / dowling community garden / neighborhood
61 degrees

Even better than yesterday! What a wonderful late morning. Delia and I walked to the Winchell trail, then up to the mesa in the oak savanna. More winchell until the folwell bench, then across the road through the 1960s neighborhood and into the community garden. So many birds! Lots of green and white flowers too, blooming all over the hillside in the oak savanna. I found out what these white blossoms were called a few years ago, but I can’t remember — maybe it’s one of these?

10 Things

  1. a steady dripping down in the ravine
  2. 2 dark holes — caves in the rock
  3. more of the chainlink fence is ripped away from the posts
  4. yesterday I noticed ugly red graffiti on the 38th street steps. Was it still there today? I forgot to check, but surely I would have noticed, right?
  5. less mud, more dirt
  6. sometimes sunny, sometimes overcast / sometimes blue, sometimes light brown
  7. in a wood near the community garden: 2 (or more?) birds making a racket up in a tree, sounding like the drum at the beginning of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” — nice!
  8. the river: patches of smooth water, patches of rougher water — not from wind, but from sandbars?
  9. calm, still, the water was barely moving — only after staring at it for a moment could I see a slight shimmer out of the corner of my eye
  10. a woman in bright pink, sitting near the 38th street steps, silent except for the repeated clearing of her throat

before the run

Reading through my entires from april of 2022, I’m returning to thoughts of entanglement and mushrooms and precarity and ruins. Here is today’s inspiration from 23 april 2022:

  • a different sort of We, not a me or an I, but a we, an us
  • a different way of looking/sensing/becoming aware: not seeing straight on, but feeling, looking across and to the side, down, beneath and below
  • stop looking up to the heavens, start feeling/sensing what’s below
  • a hope that is not predicated on evidence, when evidence = seeing and Knowing and fully understanding (seeing things as parts or discrete categories or individual things)
  • entangled is not separate or pure but messy and enmeshed

this is why we are all here — from my haibun and what I heard coming out of the little old lady’s phone

this 
why 
we 
all
here

why = curiosity, wonder

The why is not an explanation — this is why/this is THE reason — but an invitation to imagine differently, expansively, wildly.

we all = ecosystems, organisms, networks, asemblages

Organisms are ecosystems. 
I find myself surrounded by patchiness, that is, a mosaic of open-ended assemblages of entangled ways of life, with each further opening into a mosaic of temporal rhythms and spatial arcs (Tsing, 4) .

here = a place, located in history, a specific place, not transferable or easily translatable, can’t be scaled up or turned into assets

I picked up Mushrooms at the End of the World, and found this in the preface:

The time has come for new ways of telling stories beyond . . . Man and Nature . . , such stories might be simultaneously true and fabulous. How else can we account for the fact that anything is alive in the mess we have made?

The Mushrooms at the End of the World/ Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (viii)

fabulous = resembling or suggesting a fable : of an incredible, astonishing, or exaggerated nature

invented and true

[about this book] what follows a riot of short chapters. I wanted them to be like the flashes of mushrooms that come up after a rain: an over-the-top bounty; a temptation to explore; an always too many.

explosion / too much, too many / after the rain eruptions of excess

This explosion bit reminded me of Arthur Sze in an interview with David Naiman:

I began to think I love this idea that the mycelium is below the surface. It’s like the subconscious, then when the mushroom fruits pops up above ground, maybe that’s like this spontaneous outpouring of a poem or whatever.

during the run

I thought about something else I read in the entry with this Sze passage. It’s a fragment of a poem I wrote in response to Sze and a few Mary Oliver lines:

Maybe like mushrooms, we rise
or not rise, flare
brief burst from below
then return 
to swim in the dirt…

I was thinking about not wanting to swim in the dirt, but be out in the air, exposed, vulnerable to erosion and rust/ing.

after the run

In The Mushrooms at the End of the World, Tsing discusses how matsutake mushrooms develop their fungi networks in locations of ruin — edges of volcanos, forest destroyed by logging and lumber companies. So, there’s a relationship between the flare/the fruit (the mushroom) and decay/ruin/erosion. Now I’m thinking about my version of what the moment of ruin can produce, where the moment of ruin = ruined eyes. What poetry might burst forth as I reckon with my dying/dead cone cells?

Mushrooms came up in the fiction book I’m reading, too: The Bog Wife.

But when he returned to the bog, he found a row of trespassers sprouting where the swale met the hinged door to the Cranberry River. These trespassers retained their heads, and Percy knew as soon as he saw them that his suspicions were correct; they were mushrooms. His heart sank. He sometimes saw mushrooms in the sparse forest on the west end of the property, modest white-headed clumps strewn across the soil or fringed gray dishes sticking out like frills from the trunks of trees. But he had never seen any of their ilk here, where the soil was not mushroom soil because it was bog soil, a dense wet batter that supported only the shallow-rooted and perpetually thirsty.

They would never tolerate any of the mushrooms, Percy thought. The mushrooms had all been trespassers. He tore out the orange mushrooms and gathered up the torn stems for burning, but he knew it wouldn’t make a difference. Mushrooms could not be dug up. They could not be evicted.

The Bog Wife/ Kay Chronister

I’m reading Emily Dickinson’s “The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants” and refreshing my memorizing of Sylvia Plath’s “Mushrooms.” Nobody sees us, stops us — SP envisions mushrooms as trespassers.

And here are a few more passages from Mushrooms at the End of the World, that I want to archive:

a network of (mostly) invisible influences

Below the forest floor, fungal bodies extend themselves in nets and skein, binding roots and mineral soils, long before producing mushrooms. All books emerge from similarly hidden collaborations.

The Mushrooms at the End of the World/ ALT

a gift and a guide

The uncontrolled lives of mushrooms are a gift — and a guide — when the uncontrolled world we thought we had fails.

promise and ruin, promise and ruin

This is a story we need to know. Industrial transformation turned out to be a bubble of promise followed by lost livelihoods and damaged landscapes. And yet: such documents are not enough. If we end the story with decay, we abandon all hope—or turn our attention to other sites of promise and ruin, promise and ruin.

bike: 20 minutes
basement

It was definitely nice enough to bike outside today, but I wanted to test out how riding a bike would feel on my back/hips/glutes for taking my bike off the stand and carrying upstairs. Plus I wanted to watch more of The Residence. Great show!

Almost 2 hours later, my back feels okay. We’ll see how it is when I want to go to sleep. If it’s okay, I might try biking outside tomorrow!