Month: August 2017

I ran today

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Where did August go? What have I done all month? I don’t even really know, aside from work. I did get to catch up with some friends I hadn’t seen in a while. Planned a trip with a friend for about a year from now to Iceland, which I’m excited about. Planned a trip to California with another friend for early next month–our big birthday celebration in encore to our other big birthday trip to Tuscany a decade ago.

I’m focused, too, on my health this month. I was a skinny, but unfit, teen and young adult. I started running in my 20s and it kept me sane and fit through my 30s, when life was wild with work and raising kids. But I stopped in my mid-40s when a multi-year bout of vertigo knocked the wind out of my sails. And the weight that I’d managed to keep off with running started creeping on, making it harder to get back to running once the vertigo loosened its grip.

So, I’ve been working on that. Me, that is. And today, after years of thinking I’d never be able to trail run again because of the residual vertigo and an ankle damaged from too many sprains, I ran (with walk breaks) a five mile loop on one of my favorite trails. And, it was pure magic. I was the only human out there. I startled three deer. I heard cicadas, birds, my footfall, my labored breathing, the occasional crack of stick under my foot, my heartbeat. I had to stay focused so I wouldn’t misstep, turn an ankle, lose my balance. I had to be fully present in my mind and in my body.

My heartbeat, in every step.

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This is a section of the trail that was clear-cut maybe 10 years ago. I remember that just after cutting, it was a depressing swath of sandy, open earth where forest had been. The change in it today is so inspiring; the light through the young trees was beautiful.

When the tall ships come in

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neighborhood church at sunrise, Kodak Gold 200

I’m not on the beach. I piss and moan about this a bit, and when I’m not on the beach and I’m in the city, I think about all the things I’m missing on the beach. The fact that cherry season is well over, for instance. And that the corn grew tall in my absence. Have the peaches come in yet? And, how many sunsets on the lake have I missed? Have I missed the best one of the season?

Sigh. Shame on me.

Yesterday evening I walked my city for miles. I walked on blocks and streets I either haven’t been on in a few years or simply haven’t appreciated. I like this city, with its modest older houses and orderly city blocks, lovingly tended gardens and lawns. There are sidewalks here. I said hello to people sitting on porches (and they said hello back). I watched a squall come in and the sky turn into a fireball in the west where the sun prepared to set. Granted, there were houses and trees and power lines in the way of an open-sky view, but it was still shockingly beautiful. And, when the sky dropped tremendous raindrops and I took cover under a corner tree for a few minutes, but still got soaked anyway, I had an attitude adjustment. I’m so lucky I can spend time on Michigan’s west side gazing at the lake. I’m so, so lucky. And I’m lucky to have a roof over my head here on the east side of the state, in a living, breathing, working neighborhood just outside of Detroit.

But anyway, the ships.

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There is an organization, the Columbus Foundation, that sails two ships, replicas of Columbus’s Niña and Pinta, floating museums as homage not so much to Columbus’s voyage but to the type of ship he sailed. They sail most of the year and make stops around the U.S. and through the Great Lakes system, and one such stop happens to be right down the street from me in a neighborhood park on the Detroit River. While freighters regularly go by here, and they are beautiful to watch, there is something different about seeing these two beauties docked here for several days.

I got up early one morning to catch the ships in the sunrise with some friends and brought my trusty Minolta SRT 102, which had some shots left on a roll of Kodak Gold, a cheap 200 speed film that I’ve decided I like quite a bit.

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I shot a roll of black and white 120 film that morning on a camera I’m testing and may buy (ahem, don’t judge), but I’d like to hand develop that and I haven’t gotten to it yet. And, the first roll of expired color film I ran through it has me scratching my head a bit as the results are, well, weird. But that’s for another post.