6.7 miles
franklin loop+*
37 degrees
*The + is because when I reached the lake street bridge, instead of taking the steps up to it, I kept running up the summit hill until I reached the top, then turned around.
When I started my run, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. I wondered how a winter storm could move in by this afternoon. But, by the time I was done running, it was overcast. We could get up to 4 inches. Finally, I’ll get some snow. That’s what Dave, the Daily Walker said when I saw him on the trail. My response: I know!
10 Things
- woodpecker, 1: loud drumming
- woodpecker, 2: a downy woodpecker call, sounding like a loon to me
- the lake street bridge, its arch reflecting a smile in the river
- the light reflecting off of the stream in the ravine near shadow falls — a bright white
- shadows — mine, of lamps, trees, railings
- a sandbar in the river the trestle
- the sun illuminating all of the patched-up cracks on the path just under the lake street bridge on the east side
- paw prints in mud
- the river, pale blue with one shiny circle in the middle
- smells: fried and savory (from longfellow grill?), weed
I took several pictures, but I’ll save them for posting after I experiment with them.
more experiments with alt-text
initial description of image from 12 oct: A close-up image of tree bark that is rough and brownish gray (or grayish brown). There are streaks of greenish-yellow lichen on the bark. While taking this picture, with my face close to trunk, I could see the lichen, and if I put my face close to the screen I can still see it. But at a normal (1 foot) distance, it almost blends in, not looking yellow or green but light brown.
5+ nouns / 5 adjectives / verbs of first image of the trunk:
nouns: tree, bark, cracks, depressions, ridges, textures
adjectives: dark, rough, light, weathered, gray, bumpy, old
verbs: hiding, aging, enduring, exposed, weathered, entangled
one sentence about the most important thing in image: Close up, with my face almost on the bark (or the screen), I can see the green lichen near the bottom of the image, but from a foot back, the bark is only brownish-gray or light with dark depressions or rough.
a second sentence about the second most important thing: The rough texture on this bark, made visible by the constrasts between light and dark, offers an interesting pattern.
a third sentence about the third most important thing: Just off center (by less than an inch?) there’s a light spot with a dark hole in its middle that is where the bark has worn off but that looks almost like a belly button, making it impossible for me to see anything else but it, and hear only belly-button in my head instead of tree or bark.
Oh, I’m enjoying this experiment! Each of my sentences speaks to a different thing about my vision. Sentence one is about how I rarely see color beyond gray or brown. The yellowish-green, which I imagine is very obvious to people with all of their cone cells, is invisible until I look very close or to the side, through my peripheral vision.
Sentence two is about how I have replaced ROYGBIV colors (like green or yellow) with contrast; the 2 primary colors for me are light and dark. They are how meaning is made for me.
Sentence three is about how when I’m focused on one thing, like the light spot near the center, (most) others things are invisible. I only see the spot and not the rest of the tree, or even that it is a tree. I’m sure this is true to some extent for other people with working cone cells, but it is more extreme for me. An example: when I’m running on the trail and my attention is focused on a biker approaching from a distance, the runner much closer to me is completely invisible. I don’t see them at all until we’re fairly close. It’s happened several times over my years of running with low vision. I’ve never run into anyone because I always see them with enough time to adjust. But it’s unsettling and doesn’t feel normal, or at least like how I used to see before so many of my cone cells died.