Tag: 10 things

sept 10/RUN

5 miles
bottom franklin hill and back
68 degrees

A relaxed run. Warm, windy. Thought about wild as the (not quite) opposite of still. At the beginning of my walk, an idea: wild is not only a place, but a feeling — movement, untamed, uncontrolled, frantic frenzied jittery non-stop, restless. Stillness is controlled, steady, a nothing that is something, the core, a straight spine. Then I started thinking about my diseased eyes as wild — uncontrollable — which led to the idea that my eyes aren’t wild but undergoing a re-wilding. The aftermath of a catastrophe — a forest fire — where new (and different) growth occurs. Here I’m thinking about fungi and how they grow in places that have been destroyed, especially how Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing describes them in Mushrooms at the End of the World: On the Possibility of LIfe in Capitalist Ruins.

For the last mile and a half of my run, I put in my headphones and synched up my steps to a metronome set at 175 bpm. It took a minute to settle into the stillness at the center of the beat. At first, I was on the edge, my foot striking slightly before or just after the beat. Then I locked in and it felt like my feet were making the clicking noise. click click click click. No effort, no thinking, no doubting, just moving and being and breathing and singing a steady song.

10 Things

  1. screaming bluejays
  2. chirping crickets
  3. a tweeting bird, repeating tweet tweet tweet tweet
  4. buzzing cicadas
  5. 2 shirtless runners — runner 1: I need to stop at the porta potty
  6. chalked on the trail, honor the river
  7. goldenrod on the edge
  8. water, seen but not studied — did it sparkle? was it blue? empty? moving? I didn’t notice
  9. a few slashes of red and orange in the bushes
  10. voices below — rowers? hikers?

I was inspired to think about the wild because of a recent book I just finished reading, Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds. So good! Here are a few passages I marked to remember. I checked this ebook out from the library, but I’m wondering if I want to buy it — so many good passages.

what seems to be scattered by nature was not

She wondered why she could see the beautiful rise of old trees all the way up and down the hills, and why there was no bramble or brush to grab at her and tear holes in her clothing. But she could not find an answer.

For nothing in her ken would allow her to imagine that it was the piscataway, the people of these parts, who so carefully burned the small brush away, and the saplings, too, to better see their game through the trees. She did not know that many of the trees around her were hickory and chestnut and hazelnut and walnut, and that, should she dig below the leaf litter, she would find ample nuts to sustain her even in these hungry times after the winter and before the full bursting-forth of spring. And that these trees, too, had been planted by the gardeners of this place. For here understanding of gardeners was limited to the ones of the city, and the ones of the city loved a straight line and a neat border, and looking out upon the trees seeming scattered there by the hand of nature itself, she did not recognize the human genius and planning in the wild abundance.

The Vaster Wilds/ Lauren Groff

the slow movement of stones

And the stones, with their lives so slow that to all impatient moving creatures of animated life they did appear unmoving, but even the stones she understood now did meet and mate, did erupt and splinter, did rub to powder stone upon stone and stone upon water and stone upon air, so that in the long scale of their lives the stones saw within themselves incredible vitality.

The Vaster Wilds/ Lauren Groff

Back to stillness, especially as nothing. Yesterday the poem of the day on poets.org was by a friend and amazing poet, Carolina Ebeid. Here’s a fitting excerpt from it:

No, nothing, no thing, no where—  
the o of no blinks open 

Assume the Role of Cassandra, Wearing a Mask, Speaking into the Camera/ Carolina Ebeid

The o of no blinks open. The openness of no — not a closing off but an opening into. Into what? This line was in my head at the end of my run and I thought, the gorge. No rock, just open air space a place filled with birds and bugs and possibilities and that shapes my stories of running outside and noticing.

Here’s another line that I love:

Can you hear the low pulse tree-growth consuming the fence?

Assume the Role of Cassandra, Wearing a Mask, Speaking into the Camera/ Carolina Ebeid

More than leaves or vines, I imagine this tree-growth as the trunk, rings thickening, growing through the chain-link fence on the Winchell Trail. I love the idea of becoming still enough to hear the pulse of this growth, to dwell in a time scale impossible for us restless humans. What is the rate of a tree’s heartbeat? Not in beats per minute, but beats per day or month or year?

This line also reminds me of a favorite poem that I memorized a few years ago, Push the button, hear the sound/ HELEN MORT:

Can you hear the call of the mynah bird?
Can you hear the flamingos in the water?
Can you hear your small heart next to mine
and the house breathing as it holds us?
Can you hear the chainsaw start, the bones
of our neighbor’s eucalyptus breaking?

excerpt from Push the Button/ Helen Mort

sept 6/RUN

10 miles
confluence loop*
57 degrees

*lake street bridge / east river road to confluence / highway 5 bridge / fort snelling / past minnehaha dog park / minnehaha falls / west river road

Ran with Scott on a loop I’ve wanted to do ever since we tried part of it last November. Because there are several isolated stretches, I’ve never wanted to do this run by myself. I’m glad Scott could come with me today. It’s a great loop.

Near the beginning of the run, I recited the poem I just memorized, “To the Light of September” and we talked about blue plums and whether we’ve ever eaten them (no). Scott wondered where Merwin was writing about — the landscape seemed familiar. I know Merwin ended up in Hawaii, but I thought he might have taught at Iowa or on the east coast. Looked it up and he was born in NYC and lived there — and in Spain and France too — in his early adult years. In the 70s, he moved to Hawaii.

10 Things

  1. the fee bee of a black capped chickadee
  2. bright red leaves in the low bushes
  3. all the yellow leaves on a the tree near Marshall last week are gone this week
  4. the shshshsh of the sandy dirt with every foot strike
  5. what a view of the mississippi from high above as it rounds the bend!
  6. crossing the highway 5 bridge, admiring my shadow down below, running over the treetops
  7. the disorienting effect of the sun coming through the railing slats as we ran
  8. a cloud of grasshoppers at fort snelling — jumping out of the way just before we reached them
  9. a man walking above the falls in BRIGHT yellowish-orange shorts
  10. a cloud of dust, which I thought was smoke at first, stirred up by construction work at the site of a new house

During mile 6, we ran up a long hill that wasn’t too steep but was in the sun and faced the wind and seemed to stretch on forever. At the start of it I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep going, but I put one foot in front of the other and didn’t stop, and I made it. At the top there was shade and I called out, Victory!

For the first 8 miles, Scott and I ran for 9 minutes, then walked for 1. Our pace was at least a minute faster than when I’m running on my own. Nice! I’ll have to do more 9/1 on my 18 mile run on Sunday.

added a few hours later: I almost forgot about the gnats! So many gnats swarming us as we ran from Fort Snelling to the falls. Scott was particularly bugged by them. Mostly I didn’t care, but at least one or two flew into my mouth. Thankfully, not down my throat!

I love anagrams and the spell they cast on words, and I love this poem, which was the poem of the day on the poetry foundation site:

Anagrammer/ Peter Pereria

If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives

and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.
If you believe the letters themselves

contain a power within them,
then you understand

what makes outside tedious,
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just rearrange things the right way
you’d find your true life,

the right path, the answer to your questions:
you’d understand how the Titanic

turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

sept 5/WALK

35 minutes
neighborhood, with Delia the dog
68 degrees

Today, I convinced an anxiety-ridden dog to go for a walk. What a beautiful, late summer/early fall morning! Wow. Our pace was slow, with Delia stopping to “read the news” at every tree, but I didn’t mind. I tried to stand straight and felt the calm in my core — a stillness so sweet it almost buzzed or hummed. Speaking of buzz, Delia stopped to smell some pink zinias and right next to her nose a bumble bee hovered. Only for a moment, then it flew off to the next blossom.

10 Things

  1. a city pick-up truck with a yellow arrow flashing on the bumper as it drove by
  2. a thick and long root sticking out of some boulevard dirt where the grass had been removed
  3. an shaded balcony on the second floor of a house across from 7 Oaks
  4. a chattering squirrel
  5. the steady, relaxed rhythm of a shirtless runner with a baseball cap on backwards
  6. big, bright pinkish-red blooms, emerging from a bush
  7. soft shadows cast across a big boulder
  8. a shaggy, scruffy tree, needing a shave, leaves covering the trunk and whole branches
  9. a steel planter on a boulevard filled with carrot greens, looking to my untrained eye like they were ready to be picked
  10. a neighbor across the alley dumping some cans in his recycling bin — hello! / hi!

Found this poem the other day, Painblank/ Daniel Borzutsky. So good! Instead of posting the entire poem, here’s the author’s helpful description:

About this Poem

I have said Emily Dickinson’s line ‘Pain has an element of blank’ in my head thousands of times…. I don’t know how many times I have tried to make sense of something only to conclude that the best poetic solution available is to say that it’s blank—the blank in the blank of my blank, the blankest of times, the blankness into which we all digress. Perhaps the thing about Dickinson’s poem is the way in which pain is enveloped so completely by, well, pain itself. But also, the problem of pain’s untranslatability, its blankness, resides in the sounds and symmetry of the words. What I’m suggesting in this translation of Dickinson’s Pain-Blank relationship is a reading and writing practice that believes in two things: that repetition is never repetition and that poetry, like pain and blankness, resides in the body. Perhaps poetry has the ability—definitely for the writer and perhaps for the reader—to assimilate into the body, to become inseparable from it, to become a language that is ingested through sonic relationships that have an effect beyond time, logic, and comprehension.

Daniel Borzutzky

And here’s the Emily Dickinson poem that inspired Borzutsky:

Pain–has an Element of Blank–/Emily Dickinson

Pain—has an Element of Blank— 
It cannot recollect 
When it begun—or if there were 
A time when it was not— 

It has no Future—but itself— 
Its Infinite Contain 
Its Past—enlightened to perceive 
New Periods—of Pain.

sept 2/RUN

16 miles
lake nokomis — 2 loops / minnehaha park / ford bridge
60 degrees

16 miles! My longest run ever, I was slow, it was difficult, I walked a lot, but I did it. Ran over to Lake Nokomis and around it twice, then took minnehaha creek path to the falls park all the way to the fort snelling trail. Turned around, ran over to the Veterans home, through Waibun, over the ford bridge, up to the overlook, then back over ford.

For the first hour, I listened to the gorge, the creek, the lake, and people I encountered. For the rest of it, I listened to an audiobook — Anthony Horowitz’s Close to Death. One of the characters in it is named Andrew Pennington and it took me several miles to pay enough attention to process that and realize that it was a reference to “Uncle Andrew” — Andrew Pennington in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

16 Things

  1. at one spot, the creek was bubbling, burbling, gurgling
  2. at another spot, it was rushing and gushing
  3. and at a third spot, it was glittering in the sunlight
  4. a small yippy dog across the creek — heard, not seen, so I guess it could have been big but it sounded small (and annoying) — losing its shit for a minute — yip yip yip yip yip
  5. a fishy smell at the lake that was surprisingly pleasant — smelled like summer or vacation
  6. the lake water was blue and flat and empty
  7. encountering another runner with her dog on the creek path — she called it, What are you training for? me: the marathon her: good luck!
  8. the pickle ball court was full — thwack! thwack! thwack!
  9. from the cedar bridge the water was smooth with just one bright spot from the sun
  10. one kayak gliding across
  11. a group with fishing poles, kindly waiting for me to pass before crossing the path
  12. crossing the parkway under the mustache bridge, avoiding where the asphalt had erupted — huge, ankle-twisting craters
  13. the flowers at Longfellow Gardens! Orange, pink, yellow, red, soft green! Wow
  14. Waibun park was full of Labor Day visitors — at picnic tables, the splash pad, on the playground
  15. heading down the short hill between ford and the locks and dam no. 1 — the few patches of light were glowing . . . pink — 14 miles into my run, was I hallucinating? No — the light must have been filtering through some reddening leaves
  16. 2 women with dogs, stopping and kindly waiting for me to pass before crossing the narrow duck bridge

It was crowded on the trails, but I only remember how kind people were. Waiting for me to pass, not hogging the path, calling out encouragement.

Like I mentioned above, my pace was slow — over 12 minutes/mile, but that’s fine with me. The marathon is not about time, but pushing through and proving I can keep going when it seems too tough.

Recently read:

I feel like poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream.

John Ashbery

I’d like to do something with this idea of the underground stream, especially in relation to daylighting — the process of bringing streams buried in concrete and under city infrastructure back into the light.

added, 3 sept 2024: I forgot until today something else I’d like to remember — seeing steam coming off of my face, looking like my breath, the combination of sun, humidity, a warm body, and cool air (I think)

aug 31/RUN

4 miles
marshall-loon loop*
70 degrees

*north through the neighborhood, over to lake street, up the marshall hill, turn right at prior, then right at Summit, down to the river, back over the bridge, stop at Loons for coffee

Ran with Scott this late morning. We talked mostly about our son and how to help him as he tries to figure out what he can do with his music major after he graduates next year. Scott pointed out the signs on the huge and fancy houses on Summit opposing the new hockey arena at St. Thomas. I pointed out the one streetlamp that is still lit on the St. Paul side.

10 Things

  1. pink and orange zinnias in a yard
  2. a shrieking (or hissing?) squirrel in a tree
  3. a blue river, emptied of boats
  4. a bright yellow chair outside of a salon
  5. a dead black-capped chickadee on the sidewalk
  6. a biker slowing then calling out, on your right, before passing us on our left
  7. people sitting outside, laughing and enjoying their coffee at Loons
  8. a friendly barista*
  9. the bathroom for the building, which has always been open now has a keypad on it**
  10. not seen, but described by Scott — being blinded by the sun reflecting off of the flat, metal surface of a stupid cybertruck***

*I’m realizing as I write this that I couldn’t see this barista very clearly and I’m wondering if my vision has gotten worse and I’m so used to it that I hardly notice.

**Customers at Loons and Longfellow Grill now have to punch in a code to use the bathroom. I think the bathrooms should be open. I was wondering if they were having too many people coming up from the river just to use the bathroom. Up until last fall, there has always been a porta potty under the lake street bridge for runners, walkers, rowers, and people living in the gorge. They should bring it back — everyone should have access to a bathroom!

***I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these abominations, but Scott HATES them. They sound terrible.

Mountains/ Alice Oswald

Something is in the line and air along edges,
Which is in woods when the leaf changes
And in the leaf-pattern’s gives and gauges,
The water’s tension upon ledges.
Something is taken up with entrances,
Which turns the issue under bridges.
The moon is between paces.
An outlet fills the space between two horses.
 
Look through a holey stone. Now put it down.
Something is twice as different. Something gone
Accumulates a queerness. Be alone.
Something is side by side with anyone.
 
And certain evenings, something in the balance
Falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense
And then inslides itself between moments
And spills the heart from its circumference;
And this is when the moon matchlessly opens
And you can feel by instinct in the distance
The bigger mountains hidden by the mountains,
Like intentions among suggestions.

I think this poem fits in with my study of the in-between moments. So many great lines in the last stanza: falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense; spills the heart from its circumference — I like this idea of a leaky heart that breaks open/out of its borders; intentions among suggestions.

aug 26/RUN

3.1 miles
river road, south/north
77 degrees / dew point: 75

Heat advisory. Today is one of those days that makes me glad that fall is coming, especially since I can’t swim anymore. I’m looking forward to cooler runs — please come soon. I heard a pro runner say once that humidity is a poor man’s altitude. I wonder, since my body doesn’t tolerate humidity well, would it be the same with altitude? Probably.

Today is RJP’s first day of college classes. It has worked out for her to regroup and not stay in the dorms until she’s ready because her dorm doesn’t have air conditioning. Even if she was enjoying the dorm, she probably would have come home until the heat breaks anyway.

10 Things

  1. exposed roots everywhere on the dirt trail, difficult to navigate
  2. one short stretch of the trail had loose, sandy dirt that my feet sunk into
  3. forecast predicted partly cloudy, but the sky was cloudless and burned a bright blue
  4. car after car after car on the river road — this is often the case at 8, which is when I started my run
  5. loud waves of cicada buzz
  6. noisy bullfrogs and crickets in the marshy meadow just past the ford bridge
  7. more bikes than walkers or runners
  8. the dirt path into the small wood by the ford bridge: a deep, cool green
  9. a flushed, sweaty face
  10. a woman in a big straw hat and a pink something — I can’t remember if it was her shoes or pants or a shirt; I just remember pink — sitting on a bench, her back to the gorge

today’s view from my window

On august 26, 2023, I wrote about a big spider outside of my window. She’s back. She’s huge. And she’s just hanging there in mid-air. I know there’s a web, but I can’t see it, so I like imaging she’s levitating. I was going to write that she’s not moving, but then the wind stirred her, and then I noticed a small fly caught in her web. Soon, she crawled to it and now she’s doing whatever spiders do to their prey. If it didn’t hurt my head to stare and try to see what is happening, I could watch her for hours.

I looked for a Mary Oliver poem about spiders, but instead found a blog post talking about spiders and their patience and referencing a poem by MO that I haven’t read before:

The Messenger/ Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
     equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. 

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
     keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work, 

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
     astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here, 

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
     and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
     to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
     that we live forever.

aug 24/RUN

14 miles
franklin – ford- hidden falls – confluence
66 degrees / humidity: 82%

Whew, that was hard, and I was slow, but I did it! Those last couple miles, I had to dig deep. During mile 13, my calf kept almost cramping up when I ran for more than a minute or too, so I mostly walked. But by the last mile, I could mostly run. Sitting on my deck to write this, the cicadas are so LOUD! I wonder what the decibel level of their vibrating thoraxes is? I’m proud of my run — that I kept going, that I don’t care how slow I am, that I could be outside and moving for almost 3 hours.

14 Things

  1. cool, green shade on the west side of the river
  2. a male coxswain to his rowers, 1 minute and 26
  3. music blasting from a bike speaker: “Mr. Blue Sky”
  4. a group of runners joking around — male runner 1: so what’s next for you? male runner 2: umm. . . mr1: Are you doing the city of lakes? mr2: oh, of course — you don’t want to know about my personal life, just my running
  5. a lean, fast runner, running barefoot (I saw him last week too, but forget to write about it)
  6. passing a woman in pink shoes, she called out, good work. I called back, you too!
  7. Mr. Morning! — morning! / good morning!
  8. the interior of a porta potty — so much colorful (and well-done) graffiti — very cool
  9. east river view, on the way to the confluence — beautiful blue water, open, gently curving way below me
  10. too many leaves to get a view of the mississippi and the minnesota at the confluence
  11. music blasting from another bike speaker: Katy Perry’s “Firework”
  12. view from the ford bridge: a white boat, alongside a rowing shell
  13. someone running with a dog, her shirt tucked into the straps on the back of her running bra
  14. 2 runners ahead of me, both in trail running vests, one wearing bright orange shorts

For years, I’ve wanted to run the stretch of trail between Hidden Falls and the Confluence. Today I did, and it was longer and hillier than I expected. Also, beautiful.

water fountains where I refilled my bottle: 3
porta potties stopped at: 1
bridges crossed: 3
cliff blocks consumed: 6
shirtless runners encountered: at least 4
coxswain’s overheard: 2
roller skiers passed: 1

I almost forgot: near the monument, I was thinking of stopping at the porta potty in the parking lot, but just as I reached it, I heard a shirtless runner call out to his group of runners — hey, I gotta poop. He stopped and heading towards the bright blue porta potty. Guess I won’t be stopping — bummer.

Yesterday Scott and I move RJP into her college dorm. She was overwhelmed — too overwhelmed. It’s exhausting and heartbreaking, but I think we’ve come up with a plan for her that will keep her on track (I hope). She will start her classes and gradually get used to stuff, and then start living at the dorm in a week or so.

aug 22/RUNSWIM

3.7 miles
marshall loop
61 degrees / humidity: 80%

Cooler, but thicker air. Did the Marshall loop for the first time in months. Running up the Marshall hill wasn’t too bad. I don’t remember what I thought about, except briefly hearing my steady foot strikes and imagining them to be a stillness in contrast with the traffic and the wind and the noises everywhere around me.

10 Things

  1. running up the hill, I felt the presence of orange — pinkish orange light. Was it from a wildfire sun? an orange sign?
  2. zinnias! more orange and pink
  3. running past Black coffee, noticing a man sitting at the counter, facing the window — I think he was reading the paper
  4. running past a walker on the hill, breathing as hard walking as I was running
  5. messed up slats on blinds in the window of the garage that is up against the sidewalk — blinds in a garage?
  6. steady traffic on the east river road
  7. overheard, a runner talking to 2 other runners: and when you got injured, and you got covid, I realized, ok they’re human too
  8. the river, running towards the marshall bridge — slate blue, empty
  9. yellow leaves on one of the earliest trees to change color
  10. an unusual stone stacking! 3 different stacks precariously placed on the slanted part of the boulder

Running on Cretin, I saw (but didn’t stop to read it) another poem from the St. Paul poetry project. I checked the map and maybe it was this one?

Untitled/ Pat Owens (2010)

A dog on a walk,
is like a person in love – You can’t tell them
it’s the same old world.

Saw this quote from Louise Glück and wanted to remember it:

I tell my students who believe passionately in explaining the work they’re sharing, “You know, when you’re dead, you can’t go around explaining this thing–it has to be right there on the page.”

Interview with Paris Review/ Louise Glück

Continuing to think about still and its many meanings.

still (def.)

  1. a static photograph, movie still
  2. an apparatus used for the distillation of liquids
  3. inactive, motionless, static
  4. silent, soundless
  5. placed, quiet, unruffled, tranquil, smooth
  6. noneffervescent, not sparkling
  7. free from noticable current
  8. calm down, quiet, lull, tranquilize
  9. hush, silence, shut up
  10. allay, relieve, ease
  11. without change, interruption, or cessation
  12. howver, nonethelss, yet, all the same, even so, nonetheless

swim: 5 nokomis loops
cedar lake open swim
74 degrees

Since Lake Nokomis is closed due to the sewer break, the final open swim was at Cedar Lake. It was windy and felt much cooler, both in and out of the water, than mid 70s. Brrr! Even before I got in the water, I had goosebumps. The water was very choppy — lots of breathing on my right side, some breathing every 2 strokes. I’m glad I didn’t really need to sight because it was difficult to see anything in the choppy water.

10+ Things

  1. sailboat with a white sail — have I ever seen a sailboat at cedar?
  2. a tall person, upright, on a paddle board with a dog
  3. scratchy vine, stuck on my googles
  4. scratchy vine, wrapped around my shoulders
  5. scratching vine, feeling almost like a full body scan as I crossed over it
  6. vine, reaching up from the bottom, clinging to my foot
  7. faint feelings of red and orange in the trees
  8. following behind a swimmer with a pink buoy, always just ahead, sometimes getting lost in the waves
  9. the soft, fading light as the sun dipped lower
  10. pale blue sky with feathery clouds
  11. a seagull span soaring above the water, looking for fish?

The last open swim of the season. As I swam my final loop, tired out from the waves and cold, I tried to take the moment in. Such a wonderful season. I leveled up — swimming much longer and for more loops. I felt strong and confident and not afraid when I couldn’t see anything but water and sky and Tree. Part of me wishes open swim would never end, but the rest of me knows that 10 weeks of swimming this much, especially outside in a lake, is enough. In January and February, I’ll remember the first orange buoy looking like the moon in an afternoon sky or the glow of orange when the light hits the buoy just right or the gentle rocking of the waves or that satisfied feeling after 90 minutes in the water.

aug 19/RUNSWIM

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
68 degrees

A late start (9:45 am). Warm, but lots of shade. Ran all 4 miles without stopping. Progress! I think I’ve figured out, after 8 years of trying, how to run slower. On my warm-up walk before I started a woman with a dog called out to me, I love your hat! It’s so bright and cheery! A wonderful start to the run. I was wearing a pinky-purply-swirly cap that I found in Scott’s mom’s drawer — with the tag still on — after she died. As I walked, I thought about color and how I see it and caring, kind gestures, and then a really BRIGHT hat that I’ve considered wearing before: a twins baseball cap, girls (because my had is that small!), with neon pink and orange and yellow that we bought for RJP and that she never wore. Maybe that will be my next hat when this one is worn out?!

10 Things

  1. acorn shells covering a neighbor’s driveway
  2. 2 runners ahead of me, one dressed just like me with black shorts and a teal tank top, illuminated by the light, glowing like ghosts
  3. a dirt trail near the ford bridge leading into a cool, mysterious wood
  4. a sidewalk above the creek half-covered in dirt, washed up from so many rains this summer
  5. no bike surreys lined up by the kiosk today
  6. the sweet smell of tall grass — a hint of cilantro
  7. trickling sewer pipe
  8. a slash of blue water through the trees — not sparkling or inviting but hot and harsh
  9. an animated conversation between 2 women walkers with laughter and hand gestures
  10. a for sale sign on a house near edmund — the house that had new owners a few years ago who moved a drain pipe so that it spills onto the sidewalk, creating puddles in the summer, ice in the winter. Will new owners move the drain?!

Before the run, reading old posts from 19 august, I re-discovered a wonderful poem about the wild girl the narrator used to be, Girl in the Woods / Alice Wright. I tried to think about the last lines as I ran:

Whever I think I’ve got hold of her, 
she kicks my shin and wriggles from my grasp, 
runs for the trees, calls back, Try and catch me —

I wanted to imagine that my wild girl, Sara age 8, was my shadow ahead of me, but it was difficult because I didn’t see my shadow that often. Maybe she was there, but hiding from me, daring me to try and find her?

uh oh

Just received an email from Open Swim:

Due to a sanitary sewer backup near Lake Nokomis this morning, August 19, all beaches at the lake are closed until further notice. The overflow has been stopped and cleanup has occurred. The MPRB will sample lake water at the beach locations and provide further updates when they are available.

We have to cancel Tuesday August 20th’s swim at Lake Nokomis. Thursday’s swim is TBD. Communication will be sent as soon as updated test results are known.

Cedar Lake is still happening on Monday and Wednesday, but open swim at Lake Nokomis might be over. It’s sad, but I’m okay. I have had a great season, swimming more loops than I ever have before! I should be able to get in some solo swims around the white buoys before the beach is completely closed.

Sanitary sewer backup? Yuck!

Sadly, many people are afraid of Minneapolis lakes and think they’re dirty and dangerous. While the lakes can have elevated E-coli levels and occasional sewer back-up issues, mostly they are fine to swim in. I’ve been swimming in Lake Nokomis for over 10 years, 3-4 times a week, and I’ve never gotten sick. Anecdotal, I know, but there’s also data to support my experience and management plans and daily/weekly work to ensure the water is safe to be in. Here’s a great resource I just found that I’d like to dig into — to learn more and get some poetry inspiration. It’s a white paper from 2019 called Lake Nokomis Area Groundwater and Surface Water Evaluation.
Another resource: Minneapolis Parks Lake Resources

swim: 4 nokomis loops
open swim cedar lake
80 degrees

Wonderful conditions! Buoyant, calm water. Hardly any wind. Strong legs and shoulders and lungs.

10 Things

  1. the light on the trees, giving off a hint of red, almost as if the leaves were whispering, fall is coming
  2. the light, lower in the sky, making everyone/everything give off a soft glow
  3. the surface of the water — smooth, sometimes blue, something army green, sometimes reflecting the fading light
  4. a paddle boarder moving through the course, standing straight on his board, looking very tall and upright — I think it was a lifeguard
  5. 2 swimmers treading water in the middle of the lake, chatting and catching each other up on their lives
  6. scratchy, insistent vines, wrapping around me each time I rounded the far buoy near hidden beach
  7. bubbles! barely seen in the opaque water
  8. mostly warm water with brief pockets of COLD
  9. talking with another swimmer after finishing, lamenting the nokomis closure and the end of another season — I said, we didn’t even get to say good-bye
  10. the lifeguards on kayaks were way out on the sides of the course, making the course much wider. I kept trying to go out farther to reach them but the lake kept wanting me to swim closer in — is it a current?

aug 18/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
70 degrees

Wow! Almost perfect conditions for a swim. Warm air, cool but not cold water, calm. Bright. Nearly impossible to sight the orange buoys, which no longer bothers me. From shore, I was never able to sight the third buoy and it took me until the fourth loop to swim to it without having to sharply adjust my course. I was determined to “crack the code” of this course and I did that last loop.

The course was long, which I like. Part of the reason I couldn’t sight the third orange buoy was because it was so much closer to shore and the little beach than it has been all summer. The green buoys were far out and closer to the boats and the cedar bridge. A fun challenge, trying to see them.

10 Things

  1. bubbles below the surface from my hands
  2. bubbles on the surface from other swimmers’ hands? bugs? fish?
  3. a plane flying high and parallel to the water
  4. nets of vines floating, getting stuck on my shoulders, trailing down my leg
  5. pale greenish yellow water
  6. some shiny thing, distant, near the little beach — a new lifeguard boat? a car?
  7. a seagull’s white wingspan high above
  8. the bright sun illuminating the orange buoy, unseen until I was almost next to it
  9. a paddle boarder crossing my path
  10. stopping mid-lake, hearing the rhythm of other swimmers’ stroke

bodies and zombies: Right now, I’m reading the third book in a horror trilogy by the awesome writer, Stephen Graham Jones: The Angel on Indian Lake. The badass main character is a final girl, Jade, and the story takes place on Indian Lake. Yesterday I was reading a section that involves zombies surfacing in the lake, then marching out of it. As I swam in lake nokomis I thought about dead bodies and who/what could be down beneath me in this opaque water. My thoughts were mostly abstract and disconnected from anything real, but I did occasionally think about the high school football player who drowned near the little beach almost a decade ago, and the young girl who drowned near the white buoys off of the big beach 2 or 3 years ago.

bubbles and bugs: During the first loop, swimming into the sun, I noticed bubbles on the otherwise smooth surface of the water. Were they bugs? I suddenly was reminded of Lorine Niedecker’s line in “Paean to Place”:

He could not
–like water bugs–
stride surface tension

The final Sunday open swim. What a wonderful season! I’ve averaged 80 minutes for my swims. 80 minutes in the middle of lake, never stopping to touch shore. So much time pretending to be a fish or trying to be a boat!