sept 25/RUN

3.35 miles
trestle turn around + extra
63 degrees

Cooler this morning. Sunny. Less humid. Beautiful. Greeted the Daily Walker. Saw a roller skier. Looked at the river sparkling in the sun and some green leaves shimmering in the wind. Admired more of the purple flowers on the bluff. Thought about the different fences lining the path: wrought iron near the rowing club and in the tunnel of trees, split rail near the trestle, chain link half buried near the 35th street parking lot. Made note of the WPA sign on the big boulder just before lake street. Tried to stay relaxed and even in my breathing and arm swinging. Wished I would have counted the number of times the running and biking paths separate on this route. Maybe next time.

the trestle

Earlier this morning, before my run, I started to think about the Railroad trestle and its history so I looked it up. It’s called the Short Line Bridge and it was built in 1880. It carried passengers from Minneapolis to St. Paul until 1971. Now it has a single track and is owned by Canadian Pacific (CP). In the time I have been running by/near this trestle (5 years on a regular basis), I can only remember seeing 2 trains. One crossing right over my head as I ran under it and one traveling on the tracks as I biked on the Midtown Greenway trail which starts at the end of the bridge and follows the trail across Minneapolis. For the past decade, ever since the greenway was built, bikers have been interested in extending the greenway over this bridge and to St. Paul and the bike trails there. I haven’t had time to read it closely yet, but here’s an article on the most recent efforts. It would be awesome if they could do this!

To the Light of September
BY W. S. MERWIN

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

“But they all know/that you have come” Yes. I love how this poem captures my thoughts this fall about September and how it is fall but still feels almost like summer but not quite. It’s summer until you see the leaves changing color, or the light shifting earlier, or the geese wildly calling out in the evening as they head south.