Tag: echolocation

july 28/RUNSWIM

6 miles
hidden falls and back
69 degrees
AQI: 67

A little cooler this morning. The AQI wasn’t that high, but there must have been some smoke in the air because the spots of light on the path looked pinkish-orange. A steady run. Felt strong, sweat a lot.

10 Things

  1. rowers’ voices, down below
  2. click clack click clack — a roller skier’s poles hitting the sidewalk
  3. running parallel with another runner — I was on the paved path, they were on the dirt trail near folwell
  4. 2 women sitting on the curb at the top of the locks and dam hill — taking a break after doing a hill workout? waiting for someone? just sitting and talking?
  5. running under the east river road at hidden falls, listening to the creek water rushing down then over hidden falls — what creek is this again? looked it up: Hidden Falls Creek — but, actually, it’s not a creek but a stream of storm water*
  6. minneapolis park workers, mowing the grass beside the trail, stopping and waiting for me to pass
  7. the smell of freshly cut grass
  8. the river, below me on the ford bridge: flat and still and empty
  9. spots of sunlight on the trail, stained orangish-pink
  10. dust or smoke, stirred up by work they were doing at the old power plant near the locks and dam

*When I looked up the name of the creek at Hidden Falls, I found a Hidden Falls Resource Management Plan from 2004 and this description:

Today, Hidden Falls Regional Park encompasses 130 acres andn1.6 miles of shoreline and is an important natural area within the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. It is an oasis of floodplain forest along the Mississippi River visited by local residents and visitors using the park’s trails throughout the year. Visitors utilizethe park for hiking, fishing, running, bicycling, dog walking, birdwatching, wildflower watching, picnics, and boating. The park is a significant stopover place for migrating songbirds and waterfowl traversing the Mississippi Flyway. The park also serves as an outflow for storm water from adjacent neighborhoods north and west of the park via storm sewers that end in the bluffs along the park’s eastern edge.

Hidden Falls Resource Management Plan, 2004

And here’s a description of where I ran as I followed the creek to an overlook of the falls:

For decades, Hidden Falls has been a nearly inaccessible trickle dripping out of a culvert behind the Ford Plant in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood. Bounded by a tight curve in the Mississippi River Boulevard (MRB), the falls offered visitors two options: a steep climb down crumbling limestone stairs or a rocky hike up from the Hidden Falls Park picnic pavilion.

This month, with the opening of a new tunnel and walkway under MRB, a new viewing platform and the partial daylighting of Hidden Falls Creek, the falls are ready to be discovered by many more visitors.

Originally, Hidden Falls Creek was fed by a natural spring located near Cleveland Avenue and Ford Parkway. The creek above the falls was buried into a culvert sometime in the past century during the development of Highland Park. Now, the falls are connected to a whole new source of water via the Highland Bridge development’s massive stormwater management system, creating a consistent flow of water over the falls.

Hidden Falls, Hidden No More

A creek, daylighted! Reading a little further in the article, I found a video from Dr. Greg Brick (I’ve read and enjoyed his great book, Subterranean Twin Cities) at the site as they were working on it a few years ago:

the video ends with a useful note: the only parts of the site that originated with the WPA are the fire pits. The steps came later.

It was cool to watch this video and think about it the history of where I ran this morning. It’s easy to not notice or reflect on the spaces you’re moving through. Now, five years later, the evidence of the planning and the labor done to create the path under the road, the overlook on the edge, and the daylighted creek are hidden to those not giving attention.

echoes

Thinking about the daylighted creek and the work done to restore/open up the area around Hidden Falls, I’m wondering about echoes beyond the definition of sound bouncing off an object and returning to a listener. Echo as trace, vestige, evidence of what came before. My collection of poems is filled with traces/evidence of what was/is there before me: countless other living things, human and non-human. I am not alone.

Echolocation is a practical tool for navigation; using echoes/changes in sound to gain a sense of the terrain — hearing where a tree or a car or a drop-off is. I use sound in this way to supplement (enhance?) my weak central vision. But echolocation, as in, locating the echoes-as-traces-as-evidence-as-proof that others are there or have been there, is also important to me.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
87 degrees
AQI: 70

3 loops! No pain in my shoulder! No panicking in the middle of the lake! Only a near foot cramp at the end of loop 3 and misjudging where buoy 4 was on the first loop. A good swim. I felt strong and steady and mostly breathed every 5. There were a few patches of cold water but also patches of very warm, almost hot, water. It was 100 degrees yesterday, so that must have hotted up the lake. It was crowded — on the course, all around the beach, at Painted Turtle. I saw my sparkle friends, noticed that the water was a pale green, felt something touch my toe (a fish, I think). Heard sloshing water and other swimmers chatting near the final buoy; I was treading water to assess my cramped foot.

Overheard: one swimmer to another near the 5th buoy — I feel like I was all over that course!

Overhear: one swimmer to another, on the beach — what do you do if you can’t quite do another loop? I wish there was a half loop option!

The sky was a pale blue with a few clouds. There were kayaks and paddle boarders and a few menacing swans on the edge. No sail boat — probably because there was hardly any wind.

Swimming one day in August is coming and I think I’m ready for it!

july 27/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.7 miles
lake nokomis and back
84/88 degrees

As the European grand tour cycling announcers say, it’s hotting up out there. Scott said that the dew point was 81 at the airport this morning. The record (for all recorded weather here) is 82. Yikes. Instead of running, I decided to bike to the lake and swim. I haven’t biked over to the lake when it wasn’t an open swim this summer for several reasons: 1. the milfoil around the buoys made it too annoying (and dangerous) to swim; 2. I was swimming a lot already at open swims; 3. and because I was already swimming too much, I injured my shoulder. But, the milfoil has been removed, or at least thinned out (hooray!): I can’t do open swim at cedar tonight; and my shoulder is feeling better. Another reason to come over here on my bike besides the facts that it’s too hot to run and I haven’t driven a car in 5 years: my Apple watch activity challenge for July is 5 bike rides of 5 minutes or more. Even though that’s not a challenging challenge, I haven’t achieved it yet this month because it’s been too hot, too smoky, and I’ve been too sick.

The bike ride was easy. I didn’t have to try and pass anyone and I could see well enough to navigate. The paths were not crowded. No big groups of kids or silver riders. No packs of runners. Part of the trail was closed, but I could see and follow the detour signs.

10 Bike Things

  1. the parking lot at the falls was almost empty, one 1 or 2 cars
  2. a bird near the lake — cheer up cheer up — a robin
  3. thwack thwack — the pickleballers are at it again, playing on the court at the rec center, no shade anywhere
  4. a handful of single runners sprinkled throughout my ride
  5. the creek under the echo bridge was low and bright and still
  6. an adult with a kid in a seat sped past on an e-bike
  7. orange paint around the cracks on the trail near my favorite part of the path
  8. just past that: trail closed for road (or sewer?) work on nokomis
  9. biking over some bumps on the part of the path sandwiched between the light rail and the creek, my chain was jammed — I slowed down, preparing to stop and fix it, but it unjammed itself
  10. minneapolis park workers out doing some work — mowing? cutting down limbs? I’m no sure

swim: 1.5 loops
lake nokomis, main beach
86 degrees
AQI: 57

A wonderful swim! The water was calm and not too warm. Only one other person was swimming loops, and they were doing it much closer in. No boats or paddle boards to watch out for. Hardly any milfoil, or the usual (from past years) and manageable amount of ghost vines reaching up from the bottom. A few more vines floating free near the surface. I swam at a relaxed pace, stopping to notice the quiet lake at the end of every loop. I listened to a dad talking his little kid — kid: am I going to grow taller? Dad: yes, you just need to keep eating your growing up food. I exchanged something (not words, but a feeling, mutual acknowledgment/recognition?) with a seagull that was perched on the far white buoy for the entire time I swam. Hello friend — are you waiting to catch a fish? A brief thought: how many fish are beneath me right now?

As I stroked beside the white buoys, I thought about how swimming in this deep-ish water off the big beach is a different experience than swimming across the lake. Here, with the shorter loop and the buoys beside me, I hardly have to sight. I can just swim until I reach a far buoy, then loop around it, and swim until I reach the other far buoy. Here, I barely need vision. For that reason, and because I’m not swimming far out into the middle of the lake, you might think that swimming here would be less scary. But, I’m always a little more on edge during these swims than the ones from shore to shore. Will I get too tangled in the vines? Are there fish lurking under the buoys?

At the end of my loops, I swam in between the faded red buoys and floated, my head resting on my yellow buoy. Then I sunk under the water and swam with my face just above the lake floor, studying the brown, sandy bottom. Ah! What a way to start the day!

Today’s color palette: white cylindrical buoys, faded pinkish-reddish spherical buoys, pale green water, bright blue sky, the clear bubbles and underside of water’s surface, a light brown sandy bottom.

(l to r) blue sky, brown sand, white buoys, faded pink buoys, clear bubbles, green water

a return to echolocation

Even as I’m trying to think about water and swimming, I’ve also returned to my manuscript from last year, which has gone through a number of names: Haunts, then Girl Ghost Gorge then Echolocate || Echolocated and now Echolocation. I was compelled to return to this project 2 months early (usually I work on it in the fall) because I noticed a call for manuscripts at one of my favorite presses. And I’m writing about it here because I realized, as I searched for past thoughts and words about this project, that even as I remember thinking about some poem or essay or fact that I’ve come across, I can’t find it on this log1. Did I write about it in a pages document or in Plague Notebook entry? If I don’t post it here, it’s more likely to get lost. So, more posting here.

As I fine-tune my manuscript, I want to weave in more direct references to echolocation and what I mean by making it the title of my collection. It’s literal and figurative. I’m writing about the location of echoes (the gorge and the trail above it), where echoes = the bouncing back of sound in wide open spaces and traces of the past/ghosts. I’m also writing about the act of echolocation, which is used by blind and low vision people to navigate the world. I’ve read about passive echolocation (hearing sounds/echoes that already exist to navigate) and active (creating sound with tongue or cane clicks or footsteps to bounce off of objects. I’m also interested in a third version of this, which is both (or neither?) active and passive: being the object or the solid thing in the world that can be located by others’ sounds. Does that make sense? Here’s a video that I just found that I’d like to archive and use to think more about echolocation:

passive and active echolocation
  1. Not being able to find past essays/histories that I know I was reading and thought I was writing about has also come up with my “this isn’t the sea” project. I was almost positive I wrote about Dr. Christian Lambertsen and his SCUBA testing at Lake Nokomis but, after a long search, I couldn’t find anything. ↩︎