walk: 60 minutes
winchell trail
57 degrees
A slow walk with Delia the dog. Stopping and sniffing and pooping and peeing and listening nervously to rumbling trucks and roofers. On the Winchell Trail, a black capped chickadee just overhead feebeed and chickadeedeedeed at us. Only a few remnants of the snow remain. A mix of dry path with puddles and mud.
Near the end of the walk I decided that what I really needed to do with my back was loosen it up by walking faster. Maybe I’m tensing up too much? Also decided that I’d try a short run.
run: 2 miles
just north of lake street
59 degrees
Ran past the ancient boulder and down through the tunnel of trees. The floodplain forest looks barren — no snow or leaves on the trees, only brittle and brown on the ground. Felt pretty relaxed and a little awkward — not quite a hitch in my step, but not smooth either. That got better as I warmed up. Listened to the breeze passing through the trees, and voices running north. I put in my “Doin’ Time” playlist for my run south. Heard: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is; A Summer Wasting; Suspended in Time. All three offering visions of life outside the clock/capitalist time.
I almost forgot: I wore shorts today!
10 Things from my Walk and Run
- park workers in orange vests getting ready to do some work — trim trees? clear out brush? (walk)
- after weeks, they’re finally doing something about the gushing water on the corner of 46th! the barricades were gone, and so was the sound of water gone wild (run)
- chick a dee dee dee — a black capped chickadee in a tree just above my head — what I saw: a small dark flurry of movement on a branch (walk)
- the soft, energetic din of kids on the playground at Dowling Elementary (walk)
- a line of snow — a lump, not big enough to be a wall — stretched across the walking path (run)
- the river: open, shimmering, blue (walk)
- the tree line on the other side, a golden glow (run)
- a slight slip in mud on the boulevard between edmund and the river road (walk)
- the soft shadows of gnarled oak tree branches on the grass (run)
- 4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder (run)
circumambulation
Returning to circumambulation and the ceremony/ritual of looping around the gorge. A thought: when I swim at the lake I do multiple loops, but beside the gorge, I only do one loop. What’s the difference (mentally, spiritually, physically) between a loop vs. multiple loops. Also, where do my there and back runs — trestle turn around or the franklin hill and back or the falls and back — fit in? What sort of ritual are they?
Loosely, the structure of Gary Snyder’s “The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais” is:
- a brief description of place
- a sacred chant/mantra
- a further description — more details, directions, feelings/reflections/encounters
I’ll try this structure. I think I want to do the 8 loop that combines the ford and franklin loops. But, I’m taking it easy with the running right now, so maybe I should wait to do this until next month?
but now we really hear chanting
we can’t decode–Don’t
be so rational–a congregate speech
from the redtrembling sprigs, a
vascular language prior to our
breathed language, corporeal, chemical,
drawing our sound into its harmonic, tuning
us to what we’ve yet seen, the surround
calling us, theory-less, toward an inference
of horizontal connections there at
ground level
(Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais/Forrest Gander)
Some chants I might include:
I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble but I am invisible
All trees are just trees
In every part of every living thing/is stuff that once was rock
Listen, I don’t think we’re going to rise/in gauze and halos./Maybe as grass, and slowly. Maybe as the long-leaved, beautiful grass (added the next day: these lines don’t fit with the others, not enough rhythm?)
Life is but Life, and Death is but Death. Joy is but Joy, and Breath is but Breath.
In the name of the Bee-–
And of the Butterfly-–
And of the Breeze–Amen!