Tag: winter

dec 27/RUN

3.3 miles
under ford bridge and back
18 degrees / feels like 8
95% snow-covered, a few slick spots

And, goal achieved! In the middle of my run, I reached 1000 miles. Probably as I ran over the double bridge on my way back, maybe as I encountered another person who was stopped on the bridge. We did that annoying thing where we both went the same way, then shifted and went the same way again, then finally went in opposite ways.

A good run. It felt hard at the beginning. Difficult to breathe through a stuffed-up nose. I’m not sick, it’s just living inside in the dry air for too much of the day. As I warmed up, it got a little easier. The sidewalks were covered in packed, uneven snow, slick in spots.

I think I saw my shadow. I can’t remember if I saw them today, but a few days ago, driving on the river road, I admired the long, dark, twisted shadows the trees were casting on the completely white, completely snow-covered river road.

I heard some chirping birds, sounding like spring. As I started the run on my block, I heard a howl or a bellow. A dog? A coyote? A dog. Whining at the back door of a neighbor’s house. And I heard my feet striking the packed snow on the path. No pleasing crunch, or delightfully annoying grind. Only muffled thuds. Thought I heard some wind chimes coming from a neighbor’s deck. No headphones heading south, my “swim meet motivation” playlist heading back north.

Smelled the fire at the house on edmund that always seems to have a fire in the winter.

Felt my feet slip a little as I ran over slick spots. Enjoyed feeling the dry pavement — solid, secure — on the very rare and brief spots where the path was dry. Felt my burning, flushed face — was I overdressed? Felt a strong, sharp wind blowing in my face.

At some point in the run, I was interrupted by the sound of the wind rushing through some dead, orange leaves on an oak tree. What was I interrupted from? Maybe thinking too much about my effort or whether or not I would encounter another person or concentrating on the words to the song I was listening to. This interruption reminded me that one key way I use moving outside to pay attention is through passive noticing, answering when the world calls to me. Making myself open and available to the world. Yes! Before I went out for a run, I was working on the schedule for the class I’m teaching in the winter. I was trying to figure out how to tighten it up, rein it in a little, so I didn’t have too much (too many ideas, activities, readings) that might overwhelm students. I think this idea of passive attention and letting the world in, being open, is key to that. Cool.

Speaking of my class, here are some passages from an essay (Thinking Like a Sidewalk) on sidewalks and running in the winter that I might want to use in my class:

gradations of gray

My hometown of Carbondale, Colorado is buried in enough snow each winter to force most of us to become connoisseurs of concrete. Having spent the spring inviting peaking greens, all summer squinting across a singed expanse, and the fall celebrating the leafy explosion, each winter I relearn how to appreciate the gradations between smoke, cool ash, slate, pewter and pearl.

treadmill window

I realized what made me feel part of the wild was not physical proximity, but emotional. The intimate connections I formed with my wintery tableau from the treadmill felt as real and important as any experience on the trail. I became more familiar with that patch of snowy creekbed than many people ever would, and even worried when my nuthatch friend failed to report for pine-branch duty (If you’re reading this, please reach out). 

The treadmill window allowed me to become what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “transparent eyeball” in his essay, “Nature.”

I am nothing, I see all. 

a practice

Similar to a new strength routine, or a pre-race visualization, cultivating the habit of noticing the confident posture of a rook on its telephone pole perch takes focus, intent and repetition.

This demands turning attention toward the rustle of grass that says you aren’t running solo or the shallow pawprint that shows you aren’t the only critter perfecting their strides. Each run offers an opportunity to broaden our understanding of what wildness is, and connect with it in and around ourselves. 

Perhaps the sidewalk doldrums are due less to the monochrome concrete as the decline in our ability to appreciate the wilderness that exists between the cracks, and that exists in us.  It’s one thing to value a majestic vista worthy of posting on Instagram, something more subtle to celebrate the subtlety of snowy sidewalk. 

Thinking Like a Sidewalk

Wow! I’m definitely going to use bits of this essay for my class. Love it. note: the title, Thinking Like a Sidewalk, is a reference to Aldo Leopold and his essay, Thinking Like a Mountain.

Other things I want to read that are mentioned in the essay:

dec 20/RUN

3.6 miles
trestle turn-around
0 / feels like -16
100% snow-covered

Last year I decided that my limit for cold was a feels like temp of -20. Since it was only -16, I went out for a run by the gorge. It was cold, but not too cold. It felt good to be outside, breathing in fresh air, moving in sunlight, being beside frozen water and snow-covered trees.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. checked out the river at the trestle: all frozen, white and gray, solid, stiff
  2. the steady crunch crunch crunch of my yaktrax on the cold powder
  3. solid chunks of ice littering the path, not boulders, but big enough to hurt my foot or twist my ankle if I ran into or over them
  4. a skein of geese! first I heard their honks, then I stopped to watch them fly across the sky
  5. the roar of a plane
  6. the shadow of a big bird
  7. one other runner, one or two walkers, no dogs, no fat tires, no roller skiers
  8. two walkers below me, walking through the tunnel of trees
  9. a snow blower up above, near longfellow grill
  10. the path was slick and slippery with stripes of ice glowing in the sun

layers

2 pairs of black running tights; 2 pairs of socks –1 gray, 1 white; a green long-sleeved shirt; a pink jacket with hood; a running belt for holding my phone; a gray Hot Dash 10 mile 2017 jacket; a gray buff; a black fleece-lined cap; sunglasses; black gloves; reddish pinkish fleece-lined mittens

Enough layers. The mittens were especially warm. Did it help that I had warmed up on the bike in the basement before heading out for my run? Probably. Neither my fingers or toes were too cold. Hooray?

feels like

It felt cold, but not cold enough to give me a brain freeze. I wore a buff over my mouth to warm my breath. My snot froze a little but not too much. After I took my sunglasses off, because they had fogged up, my eyelashes acquired a few bits of ice. The tops of my thighs felt cold and tingly by the end. No itchy legs or feet that felt like blocks of concrete. Dripping with sweat by the end. My braid, which had wicked all the sweat, froze again into a hard, twisted mass–or mess?

It feels like winter is here for good. Maybe the snow on the trail, too?

Listened to a playlist with only one headphone in, so I could hear the crunching snow and the gorge too. Did I hear any other birds beside the geese? I can’t remember.

I’m very glad I made it outside. I love these winter runs!

ongoing projects, dec 2022

Thought it might be interesting and helpful (for present and future Sara) to make a list of what I’m working on right now:

  • Reading through my entries from 2022 and adding to summaries of my runs, ideas and quotes, and a huge list of things I noticed. Right now I’m halfway through April.
  • Thinking about, reading up on color, especially orange. Trying to write a colorblind plate about orange, particularly how shifty and unreliable it is, and my obsession with seeing/not seeing orange buoys at open swim. Checked out Maggie Nelson’s Bluets for inspiration on how to write about color.
  • Planning my winter writing/creative process class for The Loft. Right now, I’m gathering poems and essays and thinking about my weekly lectures. As part of this, I’m reading/listening to Adam Gopnik’s Winter: 5 Windows on the Season.

dec 18/BIKERUN

bike: 15 minutes
stand, basement
run: 1.2 miles
treadmill
outside: 5 / feels like -3

Stayed inside all day because of the cold and feeling sore from my outdoor run yesterday. Didn’t decide to run until the late afternoon. Watched some world championships swimming while I biked, listened to the “swim meet motivation” playlist while I ran. I’m getting closer to my 1000 miles — about 15 miles left!

This morning I read chapter one of Adam Gopnik’s Winter: Five Windows on the Season: Romantic Winter. It was good, but I was thinking it would help if I was listening to it instead of straining my eyes by looking at it. Just now, I found this: The CBC Massy Lectures: Winter, Five Windows on the Season, all 5 parts! Excellent.

Speaking of winter, I’m thinking about a poem I might use parts of it for my class:

Winter Journal: Disseminate Birds Over Water/ Emily Wilson

The reservoir churned and cloud-deformed
The far line of hills, fused, bunched color
bitter wind against this hunch
my folded bones
I can see the rust earth beneath trees, the rough mats
gathering weight in semi-darkness, dim
nesting bases of trees
Graft of dark cloud upon lighter one behind, building up
of something, a thickening, deposit of cold air, dark web
of insistence, built up in me
How long can it be here?
A simmering of trees, a dark moiling
a winter weight
a mid-shimmering of heat-distorted things
The positioning of bolts of deep orange, gold-green and amber
molded, wicked in together
Drops in pressure, now, a field of cold, a shift
between rain and snow
The movement into this remembering
of separate things, train sounding its horn, removing
itself from the scene
Snow thickening the far bars of trees, graying them in
Blotting, dulling, gauzing over this dream
It is snowfalling, it is beauty-filling and cleansing
this burn of words
it is delivering something seeming to uplift and to begin
pressing downward, this ink into frozen droplet
this thing

Snow plinking in the leaves, the left hands of trees
the neat levers and pulls
the odd weeds
The rich fringe of emptying trees
the shifted pins
the breaks into dense pines into period reeds into gutterings
What happens to the opposite shore
is untenable
is unmanageable to me
That stratagem of damage, that unmattering
Believe me it is some abomination of things being killed and
that mattering to me
That exquisite built thing that is obliterated
its tiny white amplitude, its singing crushed into
particles, its must on the undersides of leaves
Now I am sure
the world has not unfolded before me
anymore but has closed into rows
of its foldings
Something in the collections of those trees
bare branches upthrust, the brush of them
bare branches up-brushed
their lip along mesh of shore weeds, the flanged grasses
the scrim of their midst
I am in them again
meddling in darks that are in them
and the white gold that is their outermost
screen that is their leafleting their grief that is in me
thin dredge of pebbles and
strange glandular patternings of trees
against trees against cut-bank against breath

The rubied lung of sumac
tragedian


dec 16/SWIM

1.5 miles
ywca pool

Another swim! Felt good. A little sluggish at the beginning, but strong. Mostly steady splits and only stopped a few times. Didn’t count laps at all and had no idea how long I had been swimming until Scott showed up at the end of my lane. Unintentionally raced the guy swimming on one side of me. Well, more like, he tried to race me. Admired the stroke of the older swimmer on the other side. Could tell he was a good swimmer. After I was done, Scott and I talked with him for a few minutes in the hot tub. He’s in his mid to late 60s and was a distance swimmer 45 years ago. Wow — I bet he was good in college.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the water was a little cloudy
  2. the guy next to me (the one who raced me) started by walking down his lane to the edge of the deep end
  3. this same guy hardly kicked at all, as far as I could see. Was he using a pull buoy?
  4. during my start ritual — pushing off and swimming underwater until I reach the blue line right before the deep end — I swam just above the bottom. I watched the blue tiles, 6 across, as I kicked my legs and tried to squeeze my outstretched arms to my ears
  5. lifting my head out of the water and seeing orange
  6. the red racing suit of a woman in the hot tub — not lifeguard red, darker and deeper than that
  7. my nose squeaking because my nose plug had shifted
  8. the water being churned up by a woman next to me as she did a fast 50
  9. almost every time I raised my eyes out of the water to see if Scott was there, or someone else who wanted to split a lane, I mistook my blue towel for a woman in a blue bathing suit
  10. the flip turn of the woman next to me, especially the phase of it when she was on her back, before the pushed off and twisted around

Earlier this morning, I shoveled the deck and the sidewalk. Heavy, wet snow that stuck to my bright orange plastic shovel. I could hear the whirr and the buzz of several snow blowers. Felt my forearm and elbow ache after I was done. Mostly, I don’t mind shoveling. It’s satisfying and a chance to be outside, breathing in the air, giving attention to the snow.

Looking for poems about shoveling snow and snowblowers (which is difficult), I came across a mention of “The Snowblower Ballet.” Here’s a description from a funding request for a snowblower ballet in the twin cities from 2016. Wow!

The Snowblower Ballet is a project that would involve dancers, wielding snowblowers and shovels, clearing a snow-covered surface in a dance set to music. In addition to performing a dance, they’ll create a pattern, an image in the snow, captured by a drone flying above, transforming the familiar but dreary toil of snow removal into unexpected joyful art. We want to stage a large scale Busby Berkeley version of the project on Harriet Island in St. Paul in January 2018, as well as a smaller scale pas de deux between two snowblowers on White Bear Lake in February 2017 as part of the Art Shanty Project. The Harriet Island version will be funded with a Knight Foundation grant, but only if we get matching funds. Art Shanty will pay us $200 for the White Bear Lake performance, but that’s not enough to hire dancers and a choreographer. That’s where we hope an Awesome grant will come in. We hope that a grant from Awesome will make the Art Shanty dance possible, which we can then turn into a video to generate excitement to raise money to make the expanded Harriet Island version a reality. Won’t you help us turn snow shoveling into art and bring joy to Minnesotans in the depth of winter.

The Snowblower Ballet

It doesn’t look like they ever got the funding they needed for it. Or did they?