4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
62 degrees
Cooler! I’m looking forward to fall running. It’s coming. Today’s mental victory: I didn’t stop at the spot I always stop at, but kept running up the hill and out of the park. Heard the falls gushing and the sewer pipes dripping, but my favorite sound was the rush of wind through the trees. It reminded me of my family’s farm and the glittering leaves of the aspen trees in the front yard. Sometimes, I really miss that farm and the late 90s – early 2000s version of my family. Everyone alive, almost all of us together for my birthday and the fourth of july.
10 Things
- roller skiers — at least 2, one coming up from behind, then turning towards wabun park before they reached me
- shimmering water spied through the trees near the overlook
- a kid kicking rocks in the parking lot, an adult calling out, I just have to pay for the parking. Wait there!
- the summery, sweet and fresh smell of a certain type of tall grass near short wall with “The Song of Hiawatha” etched on top — did it almost smell like cilantro? I used to smell this same grass in front of an apartment building running up the marshall hill
- a few spots of light on the double bridge
- the creek, just before spilling over the limestone ledge, was high
- the faintest spray of the falls as I ran by
- birds singing in stereo — by the gorge, in the neighborhood, across the street
- a cloud-free blue sky — bright blue, not bright blue
- a neighbor’s boulevard garden, filled with tall grasses and flowers and something tall and feathery that looked and smelled like dill — can dill get that tall?
Watching the Olympics — not at night, but during the day, getting to see (well, what I can see, sitting close up to the tv) the events in their entirety, nerding out on the rules and habits specific to each sport. My favorite new-to-me sports: kayak slalom cross and dinghy sailing. Wow.
A year ago, on 8 August 2023, I wrote about Mary Oliver and her swimming poem:
Recited Mary Oliver’s “Swimming, One Day in August” in my head as I swam the last loop and realized something. She writes:
Something had pestered me so much
that I felt like my heart would break.
I mean, the mechanical part.The mechanical part? I realized that her heart breaking is a good thing here and that her mechanical heart is the one that follows the beat of organized, tightly contained time, broken down into hours and minutes and seconds so we can be as efficient and productive as possible. Yes! Swimming in the lake can break me open and out of time’s rigid boxes.
I want to think about this breaking open and stepping or stroking? out of time while I swim.
swim: 5 loops
lake nokomis open swim
68 degrees
Brr! The water was warmer than the air temperature and wasn’t too bad for most of the swim, but that last loop! The cold creeped in. First my hands, then my feet. I was in the water — didn’t stop — for an hour and 25 minutes.
Rough water: starting the loop, swimming towards the little beach, I was almost swimming with the current. Mostly the water pushed me forward, occasionally it pushed me off to the left. Rounding the far orange buoy, I swam into the waves/swells. We (the water, me) didn’t fight, but it was difficult to see or sight, and I often had to breathe to my right. I wasn’t trying to rhyme so much in this last sentence. The final stretch between the last green and the first orange was the calmest — a reprieve before beginning another loop.
I did try to think about Mary Oliver and the mechanical part of my heart breaking. I thought about rhythm and my steady stroking and my (hardly ever) stopping. Then I thought about how I had no idea how much time had passed — 30 minutes? an hour?
I’m writing the swim part of this log entry the next morning. Can I remember 10 things from the swim?
10 Things
- loose vines, briefly clinging to my cap — not slimy or scratchy
- something in the water, out in the middle of the lake — water milfoile?
- seagulls!
- ducks!
- opaque water — I don’t remember the color, except for that it was not yellow
- puffy clouds in the sky, one off in the distance, near the parking lot, looking almost like a plume of smoke
- planes!
- movement out of the corner of my eye — usually a wave, sometimes a swimmer
- a sailboat on the edge of the course with a white sail
- finishing the swim, having a brief conversation with someone: hello. what are you doing? / I’m swimming across the lake. / why? / because I love to and there’s an open swim club. / what’s that yellow thing behind you? / it’s a safety buoy so I can be seen. I carry my phone in it. / oh, thanks for talking to me!