Week ending March 4: Ed Griffin and the Cottonwood Trail

Mon 2/27   3 miles  The start of a busy week: I have evening gigs Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, some of my own doing and some work related. This is also the start of an easy week of running. 

Ed Griffin died today. Ed was at least partly responsible for the Cottonwood Trail, now a system of about 5 miles on two sides of the Lawson’s Fork Creek. Ed was a humble, quiet man, whose vision of a more beautiful world resulted in a legacy of an urban trail system that includes several different habitats and hundreds of plant species. I’ll miss Ed’s smile, his joy about the world around him, and his intense stubborn-ness in the face of invasive species. I’ll continue to run most days on the Ed Griffin Preserve. 

One of my sacred places: Cottonwood Trail.
Ed Griffin lives on.

Tue 2/28  2 1/2 miles  Remember that easy week I mentioned? My body must have been listening: today’s was the worst run of the 51 straight. I felt heavy legged, and my calves were like rocks. 

Wed 2/29  4 miles on Cottonwood. Meh. Still not quite right.

February totals: 176.5 miles in 29 runs

Thu 3/1 4 miles, including 2 miles barefoot. I was feeling a little gun-shy about running today, afraid I would still feel so bad. Today was the first day of the week I felt normal. 

Fri 3/2  5 miles on Cottonwood

Sat 3/3  5 1/2 miles on Cottonwood

Sun 3/4  4 miles, including 2 miles barefoot

Total: 27 miles in seven runs

Not a very good week, but one I planned for. Nothing felt easy, my motivation to push out the door was not quite there, I had no spring at all. It’s telling that this is the eighth week of every day running, and the increased mileage seems to require a down week every fourth week. Knowing this will help with a training plan, and I’ll just build in the rest. 

Despite the down week, I feel good about my training. I feel like I’m in good shape to continue building mileage for the Highlands Sky 40 in June, and then another rest period through the heat of the summer. 

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.