5.6 miles
fairview loop
42 degrees
A little warmer today so I wore the late fall, early winter layers: black tights, black sorts, long-sleeved green shirt, orange sweatshirt, black and white polka dot baseball cap. Sunny, quiet. Almost all of the trail and sidewalks were completely clear. Only a few spots of ice on the Marshall hill just before reaching Cretin. Managed to get greens at all of the stoplights climbing the marshall hill– no quick breaks for me. Had to stop at the two on Summit.
10 Things I Noticed
- heard the bells at St. Thomas at both 10 and 10:15
- was dazzled by the light burning bright off the river
- felt the wind pushing me from the side as I crossed the bridge
- the strong smell of bacon or ham as I neared longfellow grill
- a few stretches of ice on marshall, some patches of wet sidewalk that looked like ice but was only a trick of the light
- a bus stopped, a few passengers getting out
- statues at the end of the walk of fancy houses on Summit: pineapples, lions
- a kid’s voice somewhere below in the ravine leading to shadow falls
- a runner stopped on the bridge to take a picture of the river as it shimmered with a wide swath of bright light
- a woman and a dog carefully making their way under the chain closing off the old stone steps
Climbing the short hill that starts at the Monument and ends at an entrance to Shadow Falls, I suddenly had a thought about yellow that made me stop and pull out my phone to record it:
Thinking about colors and yellow and then I was thinking about how sometimes it used to be this warning, this shout, like watch out, be careful and now it’s become more of a whisper or a soft cry or more hushed and it’s increasingly getting that way so colors are more muted and muffled… [the other voices in the recording are 2 bikers and 2 then 2 runners].
Not sure what happened with the recording here, but I remember saying more about how distant yellow seems now. I never see it as bright, but faded, from the past, or through the gauzy veil of my damaged cones. Sometimes only the association with objects. I might not see that something is yellow but I know that it is because I know safety vests or crosswalk signs or the middle light on a stoplight are yellow. Orange works differently for me. It’s not faded, but it often only appears as a blip or flash or slash or flare in my peripheral vision. Again, yellow offers a soft, constant glow. I was also thinking about Van Gogh and his idea that every color is ultimately a variation of gray.
excerpt from Yellow Lullaby/ Leontia Flynn
A spill of sunlight and a yellow dress.
A yolk.
A yellow flower.
A candle flame.
A moth-light, moon-like,
in the nursery’s darkness . . .