Week ending March 11

Mon 3/5  8 1/2 miles at Croft. This was a good hard run after my down week, and reminds me why the down week is necessary. Certainly the hilliest 8 1/2 mile run out here, mostly because of the Chapters. There’s a new little alternate trail with a pretty significant side-slope, enough to give my ankles and feet a workout. Add in the constant climbing or descending, and, well, yeah. Bristol loved it, too.

from Dairy Ridge: Palmetto Trail to the Chapters to Hensington to Palmetto

Tue 3/6 4 miles at Cottonwood. Nice and easy.

Wed 3/7  7 miles at Croft. And still made it to Snidely rehearsal, almost on time.

from Dairy Ridge: New Edition to Lake Johnson connector to Hensington to Palmetto

Thu 3/8  3 miles, including one mile barefoot. Squeezed this in early because we had a crazy, packed day of work and play. We celebrated the opening of a great little sliver of a park tucked between the hippest coffee shop/bakery/bookstore/wine shop around. Lots of things were done right, and I have high hopes for its becoming a gathering place. 

This is the kind of amazing scenery you get
on the Blue Ridge Escarpment: Jones Gap State Park.

Later, at SPACE’s annual meeting, Patrick McMillan rocked our world reminding us how important our personal decisions about property, and landscaping, and protection are. Here, he said, we have a greater responsibility because our particular place, generally the Blue Ridge Escarpment, but especially the part that runs through the wet is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world. Pretty amazing stuff. 

Fri 3/9  2 1/2 miles. A very busy day, including work, installing a toilet in our downstairs bathroom because L was bringing home a friend from school, and picking up L and said friend from said school. 

We went to our favorite burger joint for dinner, and I had the usual--a pimento cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato and onion, fries and a couple of PBRs. 

And I still hadn’t run. Rather than let my food digest and continue to test my resolve to get out the door, I just got out the door.

I don’t see how this guy does it. I wobbled my silly ass around the neighborhood, unable to really find any regular pace. My legs, on the other hand, felt pretty good. Got it done: 61 days.

Sat 3/10  4 miles, including 2 miles barefoot

Sun 3/11  22 1/2 miles at Croft. A beautiful day, cold enough in the morning to wear long pants (and try out carrying food without any significant pockets). All of my long runs  so far have been alone (with Bristol), so I was looking forward to running with Seth, Curtis Rowe from North Carolina, and Gordon. We did one loop of 14 miles, with hardly a flat step and a pile of sustained hills. 

Gordon having raced a half-marathon the day before, Curtis having done a killer speed workout of 24 x 400 in about 80 seconds each the day before, and Seth still coming back from injury and the ol’ snip-snip, the first loop was suitably slow. I was by myself for the second loop. I ran back up to the Chapters to add another hilly section and 8 1/2 miles to my run. Though I was tired and slowing, I continued to work the downhills, and ran all but a few steps to eat and drink.

from Dairy Ridge: first loop: Palmetto to TC’s to the little lake trail to the Lake Trail to New Edition; second loop: Palmetto to the Chapters and back out the Palmetto. 

Total: 51 1/2 miles in seven runs

This song has been stuck in my head all week, running or not.

Crossing Over Water

I cross over the wetlands on the Cottonwood Trail almost every time I run there. In this post from the proverbial archives, I try to understand why.

Most everyone knows I love the Cottonwood Trail, a small trail system that winds through the flood plain of the Lawson’s Fork Creek with a trailhead less than a mile from my house. I have often blamed the trail and its owner the Spartanburg Area Conservancy (SPACE) for my moving to Spartanburg because I ran on it during a weekend visit to town to interview for a job.  Now nine years later I have run on the trail hundreds of times in all weather and every season, in deep untracked snow, sloppy mud, and dry dust. Right now wild roses bloom, and the creek flows deep. I have enjoyed seeing the system expand. I also now serve on the SPACE board, in part because of my commitment to the trail.

But one part of the trail system is one of my favorite third places—the wetlands area, now crossed by a boardwalk that allows visitors to rest in the middle of one of the most interesting environments in Spartanburg. I’ve seen owls, deer, songbirds of many sorts, turtles and other amphibious critters on my crossings of the wetlands. Mounds and tufts of green pop up from the water, which rises and lowers according to the season and the particular drought conditions. Those wild roses climb toward the sun, and skeletal trees stripped of bark and limbs are scattered among the living flora. The place has even been the site of scarecrow weddings, courtesy of Hub-Bub artists-in-residence a few years ago.

from SPACE website

But beyond the scenery, I have a thing for crossing over water. All the usual feelings—elemental, cleansing, flow—these all play into my crossings. But there’s a pull, indescribable, I reckon, even for one who tries to describe all things. I don’t always feel that tugging toward water, but a few places around have left me physically and psychically moved.

A few years ago I had a job in Inman, and my route to work crossed over the headwaters of the Lawson’s Fork, just before the various streams coalesce into one, the spot where maps first identify it as the Lawson’s Fork. The road descends into the floodplain, crosses the waters and rises again. There I feel a pull distinct from gravity, one that drew me both into the waters and downstream somehow at the same time. I, like the water, coalesced into stream, and the sensation felt healing.

Another of my favorite Lawson’s Fork crossings is over the abandoned bridge at Glendale. Our SPACE board meetings are held at Wofford’s Goodall Environmental Studies Center, and late for my first meeting, I parked on the south side of the bridge and walked over to save the time of driving the longer way around.

The bridge passes over the calm pond created by the mill dam, over which water spills in cascades, proceeding on its eastward run over the Glendale Shoals that paddlers play in throughout the spring, and where my children have played over the years we’ve visited the Shoals. I have always loved the place where water fall over drops, whether natural or human-made like this one. There’s a solidity that reminds me of the substantial part of water, combined with the constant moving which reminds me of the ephemeral element of water, where you can’t put you foot in the same river twice, the philosopher tells us. The Shoals are a dynamic place, shifting with the rising and lowering of the creek levels.

All these crossings of the Lawson’s Fork keep me feeling a part of the flow of waters of the Earth, even just this small volume a universe itself. Every crossing is new, a ritual re-enactment of every other crossing if I let it, new water and ancient passage, changing course and matter.