Tag: morning

dec 18/RUNBIKERUN

run: 1.7 miles
neighborhood / river road trail
29 degrees
50% very slick ice

Not ideal weather for a run. Were there any other runners out there? I can’t remember; I do recall seeing one walker. A lot of the sidewalk, road, trail was fine — not slick at all — until it wasn’t. Every so often, a slippery spot, some I could see, some I couldn’t. I skittered several times, having to take little half-steps. No sense that I was almost about to fall. I think I was lucky today that I didn’t twist or strain or break anything.

My body didn’t tense up in anticipation of sliding or falling, but I also wasn’t relaxed. Constantly trying to see or feel the ice. Did I notice anything else?

10 Things

  1. flitting birds, emerging from trees
  2. rusted orange in the floodplain forest
  3. the loud scraaaape from a neighbor’s shovel
  4. na ice-covered river
  5. a strong wind — not heard or seen but felt, burning my ears and my face
  6. car wheels losing traction on snow/ice, turning around in the middle of the street
  7. puddles on the path
  8. the edges of the road, dry then super slick then wet
  9. puddles on the sidewalk, not in the usual spots — the house on the next block, the house past 46th — but just around the corner
  10. noisy trucks near a school, doing some sort of repair work involving banging and backing up and scraping and pounding — heard, not seen

bats!

Reviewing old entries, as part of my On This Day morning ritual, I encountered a poem with the great line,

Fix your gaze upward and
give bats their due,
holy with quickness and echolocation
(Abecedarian for Dangerous Animals/ Catherine Pierce

Give bats their due. Yes! This line led me to other bat poems — last year or the year before I created a bats tag — and to these wonderful lines which I’ve written about before:

Think of it—to navigate by adjustment, by the beauty
of adjustment. All those shifts and echoes.
(Threshold Gods/ Jenny George)

To navigate by adjustment, shifts, echoes. Can I do something with these lines, add them to my echolocated poem at the end, Ringing Still, or another poem in the final echolocated section? Hmmm….echolocated is about being located/found by others. The (current) title of this collection is echolocate || echolocated. There’s a gap/tension between locating and being located, the one doing the locating and the one being located. In past years, I’ve imagined these two subjects (the locater, the located) as one Sara (the Speaker) trying to located another Sara (the reader), a You and simultaneously an I. No. Too much explanation. There’s is a swirl of something in my implied speaker addressing a You which is not me, and also me, and my consistent reference to the person going to the gorge and running and noticing (which is what I am doing) as the girl or she — which, if I haven’t already mentioned it is an actual girl — me, age 8:

Sara, age 8, in my soccer team uniform.

Instead of spelling this out, I’d like this to haunt this collection. Does it?

bike: 30 minutes
run: 1.3 miles
basement

Scott and I were planning to go to the y, but it started sleeting and snowing, and the wind was blowing, so we didn’t. Instead I went to the basement and biked. I started watching a documentary that I’ve been wanting to watch for more than a month: Come See Me in the Good Light. It’s about the poet, Andrea Gibson. Beautiful.

Then I got on the treadmill and ran while listening to my new “Eye Tunes” playlist on shuffle:

  1. Breakfast in America/ Supertramp
  2. Double Vision/ Foreigner
  3. See You Again/ Miley Cyris
  4. Tell Me What You See/ The Beatles
  5. Eyesight to the Blind / The Who
  6. Eye of the Tiger / Survivor

Open up your eyes now, tell me what you see
It is no surprise now, what you see is me
(Tell Me What You See/ The Beatles)

tell me what you see, I can’t wait to see you again, take a look at my girlfriend, not seeing straight, she’ll give eyesight to the blind, he’s watching us all with the eye of the tiger.

look at/stare/gaze/encounter/watch/stalk

dec 16/RUN

5.25 miles
bottom of franklin hill
37 degrees
60% snow-covered

Above freezing today! Good, and bad. Good, because the snow on the path is melting. Bad, because it will freeze again tonight. I’ll take it, and the sun! and the warmth on my face! and the sound of wet, whooshing wheels. I ran to the bottom of franklin today to check out the surface of the river: completely covered with ice, a light grayish white. Almost all of the time, I felt strong. It was only after taking a break to check out the river, then starting again and running up the hill, that my legs felt strange. It took a minute to get back into a rhythm.

10 Things

  1. Looking up: powder blue sky, with streaks of clouds and sun
  2. something half-buried in a snow bank, 1: a lime scooter
  3. something half-buried in a snow bank, 2: a bike — not a rental — where is the owner of this bike, and why was it wedged in the snow and not put somewhere else?
  4. another runner, much faster than me, in a bright yellow jacket
  5. deep foot prints in the snow leading up to the sliding bench — someone must have sat here recently
  6. the view from the sliding bench: open, clear through to the snow-covered river and the white sands beach, which is just snow now
  7. someone at the bottom of the franklin hill, staring at the water
  8. a few honking geese down below
  9. cheeseburger cheeseburger — a calling bird — a chickadee, I think
  10. flowers for June in the makeshift vase of an uncapped railing under the trestle

Earlier today, while drinking coffee, I heard (not for the first time) Lawrence’s song, “Don’t Lose Sight” and I started to think about vision/sight/eye songs. Time for a playlist! I borrowed a title from someone’s spotify playlist that came up in a google search: Eye Tunes (groan). Came up with a long list of songs, then put a fraction of them in the list. I’ll keep fine-tuning it. I listed to the list during the second half of my run.

Eye Tunes

  1. I Saw the Light / Todd Rundgren
  2. Blinded by the Light / Mannford Mann’s Earth Band
  3. Eye in the Sky / The Alan Parson’s Project
  4. Eyes Without a Face / Billy Idol
  5. I Can See Clearly Now / Jimmy Cliff
  6. Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You / Ms. Lauryn Hill
  7. These Eyes / The Guess Who
  8. Eye of the Tiger / Survivor
  9. The Look of Love, Pt. 1 / ABC
  10. The Look of Love / Dusty Springfield
  11. For Your Eyes Only / Sheena Easton
  12. Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker) / The Who
  13. Breakfast in America / Supertramp
  14. Don’t Lose Sight (Accoustic-ish) / Lawrence
  15. Total Eclipse of the Heart / Bonnie Tyler
  16. Double Vision / Foreighner
  17. In Your Eyes / Peter Gabriel
  18. Behind Blue Eyes / The Who
  19. Evil Eyes / Dio
  20. Stranger Eyes / The Cars
  21. Tell Me What You See / The Beatles
  22. My Eyes Have Seen You / The Doors

I listened up until Dusty Springfield’s “The Look of Love.” A few thoughts: I always think, anus curly whirly? when listening to “Blinded By the Light.” There is a LOT of vibraslap in “Eyes Without a Face” and, what does Billy Idol mean here? ABC’s “The Look of Love” is wonderful, and has some hilarious moments, especially the call and response section: Whose got the look? / If I knew the answer to that question I would tell you.

Back to Billy. Looked up the lyrics to “Eyes Without a Face,” and I think they mean that the person lacks humanity, is inhuman. Their look lacks compassion, grace.

Eyes without a face
Got no human grace
You’re eyes without a face
Such a human waste
You’re eyes without a face

And, I’ll end with ABC’s opening lines:

When your world is full of strange arrangements
And gravity won’t pull you through

That sounds like someone with vision problems (me)!

dec 15/RUN

4.2 miles
minnehaha falls and back
20 degrees
75% snow-covered

Much warmer today. Sunny, bright, low wind. My right glute/back/leg didn’t bother me. I felt strong and relaxed and very happy to be back out, beside the gorge. I took a week off from outside running; partly because of the extreme cold, partly the uneven paths, mostly because I was giving my body a break.

10 Things

  1. a runner in an orange-y, pinky jacket
  2. a walker — or a worker? — in a bright yellow jacket, standing above the overlook at the falls
  3. the falls: silent
  4. the creek, looking: almost completely frozen, only a few streaks of dark, open water
  5. the creek, listening: a soft trickling sound
  6. beep beep beep a park vehicle with a plow on the path, clearing out more snow
  7. scrape scrape the sound of the plow blade as it hit bare pavement
  8. the river surface, all white, burning bright through the trees
  9. a car blasting music that was so distorted I could just barely identify it — I think it was “Kids” by MGMT
  10. the big boulder that looks like an armchair, with a lapful of snow

I, Emily Dickinson

I’m finally getting around to doing my write-ups for my monthly challenges in Sept, Oct, and Nov —I was distracted by my manuscript. I found something helpful from 1 sept that I had forgotten about:

Surely, the finest way to appreciate Niedecker would be to read her well. And then repeated reading, reading aloud, transcribing the vibrant phrases on to paper, oh and even framing them. But how to linger in the presence of this voice, and let it echo within oneself, make her a part of oneself? Perhaps by applying Niedecker to Niedecker, I would arrive at a new condensary. De- and re- constructing her poems, deleting words, conflating words, writing through her writing.  

Mani Rao and Writing “Lorine Niedecker”

How to let it echo within oneself? (it = a poet’s words, ideas, worlds). I’m thinking about doing this, writing around and with and through Emily Dickinson, especially in relation to her references to failed vision. To let it echo, listen for the echoes, create echoes. Two immediate thoughts: 1. memorizing and running with her words and 2. taking her poems to my quarry — which I’ve done with 2 already (see the 13th and 14th of December entries).

dec 8/RUN

5.25 miles
the flats and back
20 degrees / feels like 5 / snow
100% snow-covered

2 days ago, I mentioned that my next run should be to the flats so I could study the river surface. So that’s where I went this late morning and into the early afternoon: the flats. Unfortunately, there was no surface to study, only white. I had a late start to the run because I was trying to put my yaktrax back on. I might need a bigger size. How long did it take me to finally get them on? 10 maybe 15 or 20 minutes. That’s a long time to be sitting inside wrapped up in all my winter running layers!

Almost everything outside was white. White sky, white ground, white rock, white river. There were a few strips of worn down snow on the path, but a lot of it was lumpy and soft. I twisted my foot/ankle at least once on the uneven ground, but not hard enough to cause a problem. The conditions made it harder, but I didn’t mind too much. It was so quiet and calm and beautiful beside the gorge.

10 Things

  1. another running in a bright orange jacket — encountered them twice
  2. the bright headlights from an approaching bike
  3. under the I-94 bridge, 1: a few streaks of open water
  4. under the I-94 bridge, 2: honk honk honk — some gathered geese, gabbing
  5. heading north, no notice of the wind
  6. heading south, wind in my face
  7. approaching a woman — I was heading north, her south, I could see the snow flying up around her feet from the wind
  8. the bells of St. Thomas chiming and chiming and chiming at noon
  9. brightly colored (I can’t quite remember the colors — maybe pink and orange and blue?) graffiti under the bridges
  10. as I approached the franklin bridge from below, the wind picked up and I felt the arctic air, under the arch, a shopping cart

mental victory of the run: Even though I wanted to stop to rest my legs, sore from the uneven terrain, I kept going until I reached the bottom of the hill.

I had some success writing drafts for my m//other and g||host poems this morning before my run. During and just after the run, on my walk home, I had some thoughts about the third poem, t here involving the dotted line on the map that runs through the middle of the Mississippi River on the map indicating the dividing line between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Here’s a draft that I spoke into my phone. It needs some work!

if you look
on the map
between the
here of this
side and the
there of that
side, a dotted
line was drawn to
represent
that moment
mid-river
when one city
becomes the
other. Do
you think, if
you were to
swim across,
you could feel
this shift, could
find this place
where a there
becomes a
here and a
here becomes
a there? I’m
willing to
believe it
exists, this
space where both
here and there
dwell, a place
where both are
possible.

dec 6/RUN

4.1 miles
minnehaha falls and back
20 degrees
85% snow-covered

Yes! More amazing winter running! Not only wonderful physically, but creatively and mentally too. Near the end of the run, I had some great ideas for my manuscript (see below)! And I had some mental victories: I kept running without stopping to walk until I reached the halfway point; I not only kept running past the yellow crosswalk sign at 38th — a spot that always seems to loom too far in the distance — but I kept going past it until I reached the parking lot at 35th.

I’m glad I wore my yaktrax today. The path conditions were not the greatest — soft, uneven snow, some ice, not too many bare spots. I could tell my legs were having to work harder, which I think is a good thing for building strength.

I’m pretty sure I heard the falls falling, but I was distracted by people. I reached my favorite observation spot alone, but within 15 seconds, a group of 20 somethings were hovering around it, so I left without studying the falls.

The river was white with a few dark streaks. I never got close enough to it to see anything more about it than that. I need to run to the flats so I can study its surface.

overheard: one woman to another as they walked: but what does it mean?

Sometimes the sky was gray, sometimes white, and a few times the palest blue.

After I finished my run, walking past a favorite house (where Matt the Cat lives and whose owner gave me beautiful flowers from her boulevard garden this past summer), something delightful happened: As I walked under a pine tree, the wind picked up and a dust of snow fell on my head. Immediately I thought of Robert Frost’s poem, “A Dust of Snow,” which I memorized a few years ago. Unlike Frost, I was already in a good mood when I felt the snow, so I didn’t need to have it changed, but it was delightful nonetheless. Later at home I realized something else delightful. In Frost’s poem, it is a hemlock tree. I think the tree that gifted me snow is a hemlock, too!

manuscript ideas

  1. change title of poem, “Better here, in the familiar, to fade” to “Vision Lost” — turn better here into a “breathing with: may swenson” poem
  2. turn my, “a gash, a gap, a space of possibility” into 3 poems: m//other (gash) into the story of my mom — her death from cancer her severing of ties from this childhood home / g||host into a poem about my estrangement from my body and the mind/body split — or, my vision loss? / turn t here (possibility) into a poem about the in-between and Nothing space
  3. add in a section in which I offer up, in a list, all of 1, 2, and 3 syllable words in the collection, where 1 syllable = rock, 2 syllable = river, and 3 syllable = air
  4. (before the run I was revising Rush and erosion and JJJJJerome Ellis’ stutter as clearing — see 3 oct 2025 entry for more) do a poem that invokes ED’s elemental rust and is plays with ideas of decay as erosion and bells with rusted tongues — am I remembering that right?

I hope I didn’t forget anything

dec 5/RUN

3.35 miles
trestle turn around
25 degrees / snow showers
100% snow-covered

Another wonderful run! Wore my yaktrax and hardly slipped at all. It was warmer with less wind. And it was quiet. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker by calling out, I love this! I love winter running! He called back, Michigan, right? A year or two ago we had discussed winter running and I had mentioned that I was from the UP in Michigan. Nice memory, Dave!

Everything was white and gray and soft. At least an inch of soft snow on the trail. Encountered at least one fat tire, several walkers, including Dave, and a pair of runners. I remember looking out over the open space of the gorge, but I don’t remember what the river looked like. Was it completely covered?

I stopped at the trestle to breathe in the quiet. It was quiet, and it wasn’t. A woodpecker pecking on a tree, or was it a squirrel trying to crack a nut? The voices of the 2 runners passing by. Someone blasting music out of a car radio. A guy walking a dog and talking on a bluetooth.

I noticed something I’ve never noticed before. Just south of the trestle, there are 2 tall wooden posts sticking out of the ground, about 6 feet apart. Above them are thatched wooden slats. What is/was this?

2 wooden posts near the railroad trestle, a woodpecker, a goose, snow / 5 dec 2025

I read a few more of Jana Prikryl’s poems from MIDWOOD. Here’s one that uses a favorite word of mine, still, and uses time to describe one’s location in space:

TEN O’CLOCK/ Jana Prikryl

Holding perfectly still at this party
a clutch of talkers, he’s at my four o’clock
you are at ten and you’ve cupped the fingers
of my left hand with the fingers of your left hand
as though no one will notice the little link
my whole occupation is holding still
so this may continue
all my feeling refuses
to toss the pebble in the current

dec 3/RUNSWIM

3.65 miles
trestle turn around
17 degrees / feels like 2
100% snow and ice covered

It snowed again last night. A dusting. I think we might get a lot of snow this winter. Hooray! I’m ready for winter running! Today, I didn’t like running straight into the wind at the beginning, but it wasn’t too bad and it was at my back on the way home. I liked running with the yaktrax. At first, my feet were sore, but that didn’t last long. There were a few runners, some walkers. No skiers or bikers.

Geese! A small vee in the sky, a cacophony of honks under the trestle. When I looked up to watch the geese, I admired the BLUE! sky, with only a few clouds.

Running back, I heard the tornado siren. No worries — it’s the first Wednesday of the month and that’s when they test it. One problem: it’s supposed to be tested at 1, and it was noon. Mentioned it to Scott and his suggestion: someone forgot to adjust the timer for daylight savings time.

Anything else? Near the end of my run, I enjoyed listening to the quick, sharp sound of my spiked feet piercing the snow. The sliding bench was empty. Oh — the streets looked bright silver — caused by the sun hitting the ice and snow on the road. The river was streaked with white, and not completely covered. I noticed traces of dirt on the trail where the park workers had come through to make the path less slippery — they don’t use salt because it would do damage to the river. A small thing, but evidence: of someone else here before me, the daily labor of maintaining safe (and fun) winter trails, and care for others.

Richard Siken!

I think I posted a Richard Siken! heading a few months ago, but his new book is so amazing, it’s worthy of another heading with an exclamation point. Last night, during Scott’s jazz rehearsal, I read more of I Know Some Things, including Sidewalk:

excerpt from Sidewalk/ Richard Siken

It was clear that something had happened that wasn’t going to unhappen. In the emergency room, the woman at the desk kept asking me questions. All my answers were stroke, dizzy, numb. I kept saying the words in different ways so she would understand. She didn’t. She didn’t believe me. They put me in the waiting room, which I knew was wrong, and I realized that I had messed it up because I didn’t call for an ambulance. I kept falling asleep in the waiting room. I looked much worse, slack and crooked, the two sides of my face moving at different speeds. I went back to the desk and said help. They put me in a room. No one believes that I know what I know because sometimes I miss a part or tell it sideways.

Tell it sideways. I love this idea of telling something sideways — and, as someone who does/tells things sideways a lot, I get how it can alienate you from others.

What does it mean to tell something sideways? Of course I’m thinking immediately of Emily Dickinson and tell all the truth but tell it slant, but I’m also thinking about a book I used to teach when I taught queer theory — The Queer Child, or Growing Up Sideways by Kathryn Bond Stockton. And I’m thinking about my peripheral vision and how see/think/imagine in its edges and not in the center.

swim: 1.25 miles
88 laps
ywca pool

It is always a wonderful day when I can swim! I felt strong and relaxed. The pool was not crowded. Everyone got their own lane — all 4 of us. There was a lifeguard on duty, which is rare. I overheard her saying to someone in the hot tub: I love going in the hot tub after a long day of giving swimming lessons! My pool friends today were the shadows. The shadow of the lane line. I liked watching what happened as the pool got deeper: at first it was straight and parallel, but soon it angled. Lots of angled shadows on the pool wall. The floor was shimmying from shadows. The blue-tiled t on the wall at the end of the lane letting you know there’s a wall, looked distorted to me. Almost like the lines at the center of an Amsler grid when I look at it.

locker room encounter

Two older women talking near my locker. Or, one woman talking at the other, speculating on the state of things, talking about bifurcated society and the haves hoarding it over the have-nots and then believing that if it compresses enough, people will fight back. The other woman, not buying it. As she left, the first woman called out, I’ll see you up there. We can sweat it out! After she left, the second woman mumbled, YOU can sweat. When I laughed she explained that she didn’t sweat easily and it was hard for her and she feels uncomfortable when she can’t and she wishes she could just sweat.

My reaction: At first — come on ladies, this is the locker room. We come here to escape and have fun and to not think about the state of things. Then, when I heard that they hadn’t worked out yet, I got it. Oh, you just haven’t worked out yet! Also: I wondered if the second woman (the woman who couldn’t sweat) enjoyed working out with the first woman (who used bifurcated and talked at her and told her they would sweat),

dec 2/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
16 degrees
75% snow-covered

Running in the snow! I love it, especially with my new Yaktrax. Bought 2 pairs at Costco yesterday. The technology of them has improved since I bought my last pair a few years ago. My old pair has coils, almost like the spiral in a spiral notebook — and unfortunately like the spiral in a spiral notebook, they can get twisted and uncoil and poke you with their sharp ends. The new version has plastic knobs with metal, so no un-spiraling. Future Sara can discover the limits of this technology after we’ve run a hundred or so miles in them.

The river was completely covered with snow and ice. Closer to the falls, it was all white, closer to home, it was more gray. The falls and the creek were still flowing.

I wore more winter layers than I probably needed. I had on my below 0 layers: 2 pairs of black running tights, 2 long-sleeved shirts — one black, one green, a purple jacket, a gray buff, a black fleece-lined cap with ear flaps, 2 pairs of gloves — black, pink and white striped, hand warmers — they’re called “Little Hotties”. I probably wouldn’t have worn the hand warmers if FWA hadn’t opened a pair for his Delia walk, but it was nice to have them.

The view of the river, the gorge, the bare trees, the other side was beautiful. The air was a satisfying and sharp cold. Even better than that though were the birds. My favorite part of the run. Tiny birds, black blurs springing up from below as I stood above the waterfall and the creek below. Movement everywhere, flitting up and down and over and out. One time, a leaf imitating a bird. Running on the path, something landed just in front of me. I thought it was a bird, but it was a dead leaf that had been lifted then dropped by the wind. Another time, a tiny bird trying to outrun me on the ground, then leap-flying, then giving up and flying away.

Standing behind the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, I witnessed another bird land on a tree branch. I only saw it by its movement, and then when it stopped, I believed it was still there. I think I could still see it there for a moment, but I’m not sure.

echolocation, again

One more manuscript to submit — the big one — by the end of this month. Trying to add a little bit more that’s explicitly about echolocation to reinforce it as the thread that stitches it all together. Decided to look up echolocation in the OED (online through my local library, which is awesome):

1944– The location of objects by means of the echo reflected from them by a sound-signal

Coined in an article from 1944 for Science, “Echolocation by Blind Men, Bats, and Radar” by Donald R. Griffin. Was able to get a pdf of it, thanks to RJP’s access to it through school. Maybe I’ll take a phrase from it, or I’ll make an erasure out of it, or? A few minutes later: I read it; it’s short, so I’m not sure about using it. I’ll read it again while I wait for Scott to be done with jazz band rehearsal tonight.

I’m also thinking of offering definitions at the beginning of echolocation, or maybe offering them at the end. Echolocation: locating objects by their echoes / echo location: locations where echoes dwell / echolocate: the act of using echoes / echolocated: the object/subject/something that has been located by echoes

dec 1/RUN

3 miles
ywca track

The first run at the track in over 2 years. I looked it up and the last run at this track was 4 dec 2023. Not much has changed, which was good. It felt like time traveling. Lots of memories at the y with kids on swim team and inside winter running. I wore my bright yellow shoes, and between them and the bouncy track surface, I felt like I was flying. Fun! and also strange and awkward at first. Running at this track — 6 laps is a mile — is easier than the treadmill, but it’s still hard to run for a long time. I ran without stopping for 20 minutes, then walked a lap, then ran a lap, walked a lap, ran 2.

Aside from the dry and warm and not slippery conditions, one of the best things about running on the track is the chance to encounter the same people over and over, loop after loop.

10 People

  1. the fast runner in blue shorts — a great runner, graceful, making it look effortless — he passed me at least 3 or 4 times
  2. a short-ish woman in black pants and a white jacket walking slowly (and obliviously) in the middle lane, often veering slightly to the outside running lane
  3. 2 tall guys, one in a red shirt, walking and chatting
  4. later, one of the guys, starting to run
  5. an older woman, tall, in black pants, with short hair, her head cocked slightly to the right as she walked
  6. a woman in bright yellow shorts, running, her gait was strange: bouncy, but striking on the wrong part of her foot — too much vertical movement?
  7. 2 people chatting near the window — one of them complaining about how, because of insurance and property tax increases, her mortgage was jumping from $800 a month to $1300
  8. a guy in the far right corner, punching a bag in a steady and strong rhythm
  9. a woman walking with purpose, her locker key jangling in her pocket with each step
  10. someone entering the track and stopping in the middle of the lane to adjust their shoe — they saw me in plenty of time and moved out of the way — thanks!

Earlier today, or yesterday?, I came up with a ywca goal for December: swim a 5k. Now I’m thinking that I should have a running/track goal too. Run a 10k? Run an all out mile? I’ll think about it some more.

locker room encounter

Sandwiched between 2 other people changing, it was awkward. I overheard one say to the other, do you smell hot chocolate? I didn’t, and then suddenly I did. It smelled good. Without thinking, which is something I do more often because of my vision, I blurted out, excuse me, did one of you just say it smells like hot chocolate? One of them said, it’s my cocoa butter. I responded, it smells so good!

nov 28/HIKERUN

hike: 40 minutes
Minnehaha Dog Park
21 degrees

Since July or August, FWA and I have been taking Delia-the-dog to the dog park every Friday morning. We’ve only missed one Friday, when we were in Chicago. We took her a few days later, instead. I wasn’t sure if we’d go this morning because it was much colder, but we did. Wow! What a great walk! The dog park is like a winter wonderland. The trail was hard dirt, but no snow, and there was barely any wind. Lots of sun, calm, quiet air, and a river, still and sparkling. I was bundled up in long underwear and my new winter hat and gloves. Had a great talk with FWA about a new project he’s working on.

There was a moment — hard dirt path, bright sun, snow, tree trunks all around of various thicknesses, birds or Bird chirping above, crisp cold air, listening to FWA talk about something he was passionate about, being outside and moving through beautiful land. I told FWA that this moment was making my top ten images of Winter.

run: 4.25 miles
locks and dam / wabun / ford bridge and back
22 degrees
10% snow and ice-covered

With the warm sun, low wind, crisp refreshing air, and the clear path, I knew I needed to go out for a run. I was planning to run to the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1 to admire the river, then walk up the hill and run back, but I got to the bottom and someone was doing a video — they had their camera on a tripod and were standing with their back to the bridge, talking to the camera in Russian — I think it was Russian. I didn’t really stop, just turned around. I decided to run up the Wabun hill and over the ford bridge on the south side, then back on the north side.

Beautiful and wonderful and moments that were effortless, others that were difficult. A small mental victory: I wanted to stop and walk again, but I saw the bright yellow crosswalk sign at 38th street far in the distance. I told myself that I could keep running until I got to it if I just put one foot in front of the other and did it. I did!

10 Things

  1. the river surface was scaled and gun metal gray except for where it was burning silver
  2. a man with a dog, walking fast — I ran to the far side of the path to avoid them. even so, the dog lunged as I ran past and almost reached me
  3. cars driving fast! over the bridge — zoom zoom
  4. stopping at the bench above the edge of the world to admire the view — the bluff wall on the other shore was speckled white
  5. the grass near the bench was covered with crunchy snow — I listened to the 2 distinct sounds, crunch creak, as I slowly walked over it
  6. running on a bare sidewalk under the ford bridge on the st. paul side, hearing a slight echo from my footsteps and the rumble or whoosh? of car passing me
  7. the cold air rushing through my teal hat and making tassels hanging from the ear flaps bob
  8. the wabun hill was covered in leaves and a little slippery
  9. on parts of the path covered with snow, faint traces of reddish-brown dirt that someone from minneapolis parks had spread earlier
  10. the quick, graceful lift — up down up down up down — of a taller, faster runner behind then ahead of me then gone