Just checked and this is the first bike ride that I’ve done in over a month! I’m not riding my bike much this summer. Hopefully I can change that for the last weeks of lake swimming. The theme for today’s ride (and swim): WIND! So much wind. According to the weather app: 15 mph. I think the gusts were more. Every direction I rode: wind rushing past my ears, shrieking. It made the bike ride harder, but I didn’t mind that much. The trail was not crowded and I didn’t have to try and pass anyone on the way there. Only 3 people on the way back.
overheard
Just as I was about to hop on my bike and leave the lake I heard the following exchange between a Dad, his two kids, and Sarah (on the phone) as they stood by their bikes:
Dad: This is Sea Salt, right? Kid: No, Sea Salt is at Minnehaha Falls. Dad: Oh no! Kid: Yeah, I was wondering why we were going this way. Dad: What’s this place? Oh shoot! Sarah (he talks into his phone), you told us the wrong place. I heard you say Nokomis.
A few things to note: The distance between the falls and nokomis is probably about 3 miles on bike trails, which isn’t that far but would still suck. Also, I’m impressed that this dad didn’t yell or swear or lose it on Sarah. I’m not sure if this Sarah has an h or not, but I assumed she did because Saras without hs would most likely not make this mistake. It seems like the kids probably knew something was messed up, but I doubt they deliberately didn’t mention it to their Dad. Probably they were doing that thing where you know something’s wrong but you can’t put it into words until much later. What’s that phenomenon called? I bet there’s a name for it.
swim: 1 big loop (4 little, super choppy loops) lake nokomis main beach 75 degrees whitecaps, big swells
Ugh! So much wind. Swimming north wasn’t too bad. The waves were pushing me from behind. The biggest problem: big waves pulling me down lower in the water, making it harder to stroke. In the last loop I realized what to do: kick harder. It worked! I really don’t use my legs that much when I’m swimming. Swimming south was very hard — straight into whitecaps. I could only breathe on my right side. Difficult to sight anything or to swim fast. Now my shoulder is sore. Still glad I got out there. I like swimming in the morning when hardly anyone else is here.
I thought I saw a pink safety buoy in the water. Yes! Another swimmer: an older woman. She called out, this is fun! isn’t this fun? It was, even if I didn’t quite feel it at the time.
Started re-memorizing “Babel” by Kimberly Johnson and was reminded of the first sentence, My God, it’s loud down here, so loud the air/is rattled, as I ran. So loud! The air buzzing, my footsteps amplified. Ran north through the neighborhood, across the lake street bridge, up Marshall hill. I enjoyed passing all the cars waiting for the light to change, wondering if they wished they were me, out in the air, not stuck in a car. Lots of sun, some shade, no shadow. My left hip is a little tight — I think it’s my IT band, which is irritating but not a cause for alarm.
My God, it’s loud: 10 Gorge Things
the electric hiss of cicadas
my footsteps on the asphalt — not a soft strike or a hard thud but something in-between, something loud, almost echoing
deeper breaths
a black-capped chickadee — fee bee fee bee, a blue jay trying to answer back screech screech
water rushing or gushing or just falling at shadow falls
dong dong dong dong dong dong dong dong dong (the bells at St. Thomas)
crunch thwak — an acorn popping then flying out from under a car’s wheel
walk walk walk walk — the crosswalk sign at summit and cretin letting me know that I could walk
we’re almost to the bike trail! — a woman biker to the passenger in her bike trailer
He’s the Wiz and he lives in Oz — the refrain from the first song I listened to when my put my headphones in on the bridge
Since I mentioned my IT band, it’s time for another round of fun with injury terms:
I T stands for iliotibial band, but why couldn’t it stand for…
ink tents
impish tattlers
iffy tables
incomplete tarantulas
illuminated truths
ill turtles
Icarus trend
implied tantrum
itemized tally
Italian treat
implacable tree
idiotic toadstool
3 loops lake nokomis open swim 79 degrees
A somewhat chaotic swim. Choppy water with swells. On the way to the little beach, it felt like the water was both pulling me down and washing over me, making it hard to stroke and to breathe. On the way back to the big beach, the swells were bigger — more punching walls of water — and with the sun, it was almost impossible to see any of my landmarks. Also, several kayaks and one swan boat got pretty close to me. And the first green buoy was placed so far to the right that it wasn’t until the third loop that I figured out the right trajectory for swimming past it without needing to correct my course. Even with all that, I enjoyed the swim. It’s always great to be out in the middle of the lake!
My God, it’s loud: 9 lake things
a woman near the lifeguard stand where swimmers leave their bags, talking VERY loudly about her kid and what they were doing at the playground
3 loops and an hour later, that same women still talking VERY loudly near the lifeguard stand
a flock of seagulls, calling out as they flew above the water
a flock of teenage boys, yelling as they played some game at the edge of the swimming area that involved touching something gross at the bottom of the lake
kids playing in the water near the little beach
water sloshing over my head as a wave hit me
water spraying as my hand entered the water and I hit the wave
the lifeguard to the flock of boys: please do not play on the rope!
a general din on the beach from people talking, eating, playing music, laughing
Continued the Saturday tradition of running the Marshall loop with Scott. This morning we ran up the hill between the river road and cretin without stopping. We talked about hospice and last stages of life and Project Runway and band board meetings. Hospice is amazing, by the way. Passed other runners and walkers, tried unsuccessfully to avoid acorns and mud from yesterday’s storm. We weren’t home when it hit, but according to FWA (and many other people on facebook) we got hail the size of quarters. No major damage, but tons of leaves strewn all over the deck, the sidewalk, the road.
10 Things
so many acorns on the sidewalk and the trail! some crushed, some whole — dangerous. Already I’ve rolled a few times on them
a weird whiny bird near shadow falls. Scott wondered if it was a grouse. It might be. I looked it up and listened and the Ontario, 1963 call sounds similar to what we heard today
bright sun, broad daylight, yet the street lamps on the trail are on and so is the lamp on the bridge steps that neither of us have ever noticed before
avoiding sprinklers on Summit
the warning beep from the crosswalk sign in sync with the beat of a song coming out of a car’s radio
on marshall between cretin and cleveland: more shade than sun
the unpleasant whiff of the sewer as we passed near shadow falls
a shell with a single rower in it — watching the oars gently enter the water and leave a trail
getting dripped on once when the wind shook the tree we were running under
crossing the bridge, looking down at the river, seeing a part of the old meeker locks and dam poking through the water
2.25 loops (2 big + 2 little) lake nokomis open swim 75 degrees
Open swim was delayed this morning by almost 30 minutes. A lifeguard shortage? Not sure. While I waited I, along with several others, swam a few little loops off the main beach. These loops were calmer and more relaxed than the big loops in the middle of the lake. I liked it.
a dead fish
Yuck! Wading near the shore, I saw something stuck in the shallow water: a BIG white fish, belly up. Was it a fish? With my vision, I can’t always tell. I’ve been known to see things wrong, like thinking a furry hat was a dead squirrel. I asked some other swimmers to check. Yep. One of them, named Sara (or maybe Sarah?) too, said it was a northern pike and too big to be in this lake! I looked it up and it might have been a northern pike, but it wasn’t as big as any of images I saw. Whatever it was, I’m glad I don’t ever see this type of fish in the middle of the lake! Maybe it’s one of the silver flashes I often see below me?
The water was warm and buoyant and choppy, especially on the way back. I strained my neck a little lifting it up over the waves to sight the buoys and my other landmarks. Because of my sore neck and needing to go to the bathroom (of course), I decided to stop after 2 loops.
Every so often I chanted the first lines of a Mary Oliver poem to myself: It is time now, I said, for the quieting and deepening of the spirit among the flux of happenings. And it worked, at least the quieting. Not sure I’d say I went deeper. The water was buoyant and my buoy had enough air in it, so it was more like my spirit was quieting and lifting. When I’m swimming I don’t want to sink, but float. This reminds me of some lines from a Maxine Kumin poem that I’ve written about on here before, “To Swim, To Believe”:
Matters of dogma spin off in the freestyle earning that mid-pool spurt, like faith. Where have I come from? Where am I going? What do I translate, gliding back and forth erasing my own stitch marks in this lane? Christ on the lake was not thinking where the next heel-toe went. God did him a dangerous favor whereas Peter, the thinker, sank.
Perhaps to think is to sink, to forget to float? But maybe only when you are in the water.
Another late morning run, just before 11. Warm, bright sun. I felt good during my run, not great, but good, especially considering this is my 4th day in a row running. Listened to Taylor Swift’s Lover as I ran south on edmund boulevard and raced a runner on the trail — I’m not sure they knew we were racing, and we weren’t really, it just seemed like it sometimes. When I reached the winchell trail, I took out my headphones and listened to my breathing, my feet striking the debris on the trail — pebbles, acorn shells, mushy mulch, and a few scattered voices from above.
10 Things
the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe at 42nd
a kid calling out above the oak savanna
more trickling near the ravine
thump thump thump — acorns dropping on the pavement
a darting squirrel who noticed me approaching and quickly retreated into the trees
the tree that fell in the ravine in may or june, still there draped across the path
a man peering over the fence on the winchell trail — was he studying the sewer pipe and the water dripping out of it?
a biker speeding down the hill above the tunnel of trees — did he just call out, wheeeee!!
someone in the driveway at the house that posts poems on their front windows
my shadow — I remember that she was dark and sharp, but was she ahead of me or off to the side?
The eye sees only three colors—cardinal in the garden, green bough, blue sky. This morning, a wreck of brightness, not light, but the memory of light. Not red but the memory of flying. Here, a tenderness too bright to look on. White breeze of a blanket settling on a chair. A sequined purse turned disco and shattering the room’s blue air. Someone is moving her lips as someone else speaks opposite. Someone is sleeping in a pickle of light. Above me, outside, the cardinal, walking along the gutter, stops high above my shoulder like a fact that can’t be held. Here, the body undoes itself. The lung, its flutter. The sacrum’s sacred shield. Every red cell. The clouds come and go as themselves. Who says when the body is better? Why should I believe them? Why, this morning, is the eye lidded down, salt-smudged, confusion, watercolor and linen? Can I not be the day’s exception? Do I close my eyes or open them?
I like how she uses color here. Doxorubicin is used in chemo for treating cancers like breast cancer.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis main swim 78 degrees
A beautiful evening for a swim! I felt fast and strong and buoyant today. No buoy tethered to my torso leaking air and weighing me down. As usual, I saw most of the orange and green buoys (and barely) only just before I reached them. The buoy I could see the best was the first orange one as I swam from the green buoy towards it. Ran into one person — I think it was their fault, but it could have been mine. I don’t remember seeing any minnows or silver flashes or ducks or seagulls or planes. Saw one very menacing sailboat, 2 swans, and a canoe. I mostly breathed every 5 strokes. My nose plug only needed to be adjusted once. My goggle didn’t leak. Hooray!
The water was opaque — light brown? — and not too cold. Not too many swells, no waves washing over me as I tried to breathe.
Remember hearing the sloshing and slapping of water from other swimmers’ hands entering the water when I stopped mid-lake to adjust my nose plug.
Colors: dark green trees, light green buoys and swim caps, pink and yellow safety buoys, orange buoys, red kayaks, white swans, white sails, a white boat’s bottom, a silver roof top, blue sky, brown water, black wetsuits
No reciting poems or interesting thoughts or moments of wonder. Just non-stop effort and a chance to lose track of time.
5 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 78 degrees dew point: 60
Overcast. Cool for the first few minutes, until my body warmed up, then lots of sweat and a flushed face. Running through the tunnel of trees, stillness. The only sounds, my soft feet, my deep breaths. It lasted only for a moment, then the whirr of bike wheels from behind. Everything a deep green, thick. Calm.
Nearing Lake Street, I heard a song coming out of a bike radio that I recognized but couldn’t quite identify. I kept singing (in my head) a familiar line, hoping the song title would come to me. It didn’t. Now I can’t remember the line. Will it pop into my head later today? I hope so. All I can remember from the line is “time.”
Ran all the way to the bottom of the hill listening to soft stillness, the birds, and my body moving above the gorge. Walked back up the hill, put in The Wiz, and started running again.
Noticed the river in the flats: still, brown, stagnant. No rowers or waves or shimmering surface.
As I started to write this entry, I began a Crosby, Stills & Nash playlist. Maybe for the first time, I actually gave attention to the opening lyrics of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”:
It’s getting to the point Where I’m no longer fun anymore I am sorry
Wow. Getting older, I feel these lines. I like how blunt and bare they are and how they contrast with the music, which seems softer, less sad.
another definition of poetry
A poem is something that can’t otherwise be said addressed to someone that can’t otherwise hear it. By this definition, poetry is deeply impractical and deeply necessary.
“Ars Poetica: Origin Stories” / Craig Morgan Teicher
Warm, but low humidity. Ran later, at 11:30. Some shade, mostly sun. Ran south on the dirt trail between edmund and the river road. Yesterday it was mostly wet and muddy, today dry and dusty. Crossed over to the river road trail, then down to Winchell just before 44th. I don’t remember much about the river except that it was white and very bright. The trees were green and thick. No leaning trunks today. Also no sleeping bodies passed out on the path.
Listened to more acorns dropping — clink clunk thump — and kids yelling as they biked or played at the playground for most of the run. After ascending the 38th street steps, I put in Taylor Swift’s 1989 and she welcomed me to New York.
10 Things
right before starting to run: a dark brown, almost black, squirrel sitting up on its hind legs — did it have an acorn? I couldn’t tell
pale, dusty dirt on the boulevard path
the squeaky groan of the bed of a big truck tilting down to drop off some type of giant machine on the road
passing by a walker on the narrow winchell trail — right behind you! — as water dripped dripped dripped out of the sewer pipe below
running on the tips of my toes as I traveled up the short, very steep grade near folwell
3 or 4 small stones stacked on the ancient boulder by the sprawling oak tree
passing by the old stone steps that lead to the river, the flash of an idea: why not take these steps down to the river? another flash: bugs, heat, no time to stop. So I didn’t
another groups of kids in yellow vests biking on the trail, the leader/adult calling out, stay on your side of the lane!
doing quick steps to avoid the tree roots just barely sticking out of the dirt on the trail at the top of edmund
listening to the line in Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood”: Did you have to do this? I was thinking that you could be trusted Did you have to ruin what was shiny? Now it’s all rusted and thinking about shiny vs. rusted, and rust in the fall, then I noticed some rust on one of the big metal tubes all around the neighborhood that the city is using for their sewer work — Scott says these tubes get placed vertically in the ground and the workers stand in them as they do their work
I couldn’t tell one song from another, which bird said what or to whom or for what reason. The oak tree seemed to be writing something using very few words.
I couldn’t decide which door to open—they looked the same, or what would happen when I did reach out and turn a knob. I thought I was safe, standing there, but my death remembered
its date: only so many summer nights still stood before me, full moon, waning moon, October mornings: what to make of them? which door?
I couldn’t tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was, or which were still burning or not—their light moving through space like a long late train,
and I’ve lived on this earth so long, 50 winters, 50 springs and summers, and all this time stars have stood in the sky—in daylight when I couldn’t see them, and
at night, when most nights I didn’t look.
This idea that stars are there all the time, even in the day when we can’t see them, seems to be (at least in my limited experience) a favorite of poets. Also: the moon!, the fact that stars are dead by the time we see them, so we’re looking at ghosts, and the realization that ponies are not baby horses (I encountered this revelation, sometimes with the annoying phrase, I was today years old when I realized that ponies aren’t baby horses, from poetry people). All of these, sources of wonder and delight. I suppose they are for me, well maybe not the horses/ponies thing.
Currently I’m reading Andrew Leland’s The Country of the Blind and it’s amazing. His descriptions of becoming blind, or being in this state of living while losing sight, not living with lost sight, resonate a lot for me, especially the idea of doubting your own vision loss and his experiences with eye doctors:
(note: I didn’t have time to transcribe this page, but I will come back to do it and put in alt text for others who already can’t see the image, and for me who will soon not be able to.
swim: 3 swell loops lake nokomis open swim 82 degrees
So many swells in the water today. For most of it, I felt like I was being pulled down into the water. Not very buoyant. I wondered if I would able to do 3 loops. But as I got deeper into the swim, I felt stronger and more able to keep going.
10 Things
little minnows near the shore — hello friends!
being rocked — not roughly or gently but in a way that made it difficult to push through the water
getting stuck behind a woman swimming backstroke and getting way off course — is she swimming backstroke? is that the green buoy, way over there?
racing a wetsuit on the back end of the first loop. Did he realize we were racing, or was it just me? I won
the far orange buoy was much closer to the little beach than it has been all season
spotted one swan, no sail boat or wandering canoes
sighting other swimmers by the bubbles their feet made under the water
the orange buoys looked like they had white patches as I got closer to them — the sun was shining extra bright on them, I guess
no birds or planes that I remember but one zooming dragonfly
felt like I was on a people mover for the last stretch between the last green buoy and first orange one — swimming so fast, pushed along by the swells behind me
Recited Mary Oliver’s “Swimming, One Day in August” in my head as I swam the last loop and realized something. She writes:
Something had pestered me so much that I felt like my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part.
The mechanical part? I realized that her heart breaking is a good thing here and that her mechanical heart is the one that follows the beat of organized, tightly contained time, broken down into hours and minutes and seconds so we can be as efficient and productive as possible. Yes! Swimming in the lake can break me open and out of time’s rigid boxes.
The temperature isn’t that high, but the humidity and dew point are. Now, having finished my run, sitting on my deck, I’m dripping sweat while the trees drip rain from yesterday’s showers. Reminds me of a poem I just memorized, “The Social Life of Water” — All water is a part of other water and All water understands and Puddle has a long conversation with lake about fjord. A line to add? Sweat sings a duet with tree while deck listens.
oh no! Still sitting under the tree, the wind suddenly picked up and it began to rain drips all over my keyboard.
A good run. My left hip felt a little sore or tight. Listened to dropping acorns for most of the run, then put in a playlist for the last mile.
10 Things
Mr. Morning! called out good morning! from across the road — he was on the river road trail, I was running on Edmund. Good morning! I called back
the bright headlights of a truck parked on the wrong side of the street
most of the dirt path was wet, a few parts were muddy, but one stretch was loose, dry sand — how had it avoided the rain? was it sheltered by a big tree?
the river was white through the trees. It waved to me in the wind
the coxswains’ voices — first, a deep one, then a higher-pitched one — drifted up from the river. I tried to find the boats, but I couldn’t — less about my bad vision, more about all the green blocking my view
brushing my elbow against some leaves on the side of the trail — wet, cold, refreshing
a chattering of sparrow lifted from a lawn as I ran by
another regular — the woman with shoulder-length hair who walks and always wears a short sporty skirt with sandals. This might be the first time I’ve seen her this summer
a minneapolis parks riding lawnmower hauling ass on the bike path — wow, those vehicles can go fast!
almost forgot — acorns! thumping the ground every few seconds, littering the trail, some intact others already ravaged by squirrels, crunching under car wheels
The early signs of late summer / coming fall are here: dropping acorns and the dull din of non-stop cricket chirps.
