Blue and gray and green

My favorite colors are the colors of the sea, blue and gray and green, depending on the weather. My brother William is a fisherman, and he tells me that when he is in the middle of a fog-bound sea the water is a color for which there is no name.

—Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan

When I was a child, I read this book – slim and spare, with a pale pink cover – over and over again. I loved the story of Sarah, who comes from Maine to the wide plains of the Midwest, to be a new wife for Jacob and a stepmother for Anna and Caleb. She brings her cat, Seal, and they all learn to live with one another. The children, who have never seen the sea, listen enthralled to Sarah’s stories about Maine.

My beloved Neponset river trail, here in Dorchester, winds along marshes and brush and through several public parks, with views of water and trees (and also bridges and roads). Nearly every time I’m out there, especially when it’s overcast, I think of Sarah’s words, the rhythm of them: blue and gray and green.

 

The water is sometimes blue, of course, though it’s often gray (the same goes for the sky). The grass and trees are greening up, right now, and the broken slabs of granite along the shoreline are always gradations of gray. Sometimes the sky glows pink or orange, streaked with sunset fire or smudged with purple. Sometimes, the light on the water glitters gold.

In the winter, the trail is often edged – occasionally submerged – with fresh white snow, turning the color scheme into blue and white and brown. But in all other seasons, it is blue and gray and green. The combinations shift, depending on the weather. I have run it in all seasons, in bright morning sunlight and pitch winter dark and every time of day in between, and I love noticing the changes, subtle brushstrokes shifting with the light and the time of year.

My favorite color, as most people know, has long been red – and I’ve not lost my love for a bright flash of scarlet or deep crimson. But my favorite landscape, these days, is blue and gray and green.

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Finding the pot of gold

I’m back home after two weeks dog- and house-sitting in East Boston, watching spring emerge in a new neighborhood as Phoenix the pup and I walked the streets and ran the Harborwalk together. Not surprisingly, one of the things I missed most about Dorchester was my river trail. I came home after work midweek, suitcase in tow, and immediately laced up my running shoes and headed out there. It, too, is growing greener (and bluer).

I’ve been for a few runs since coming home, and on Easter Sunday, I finally ran all the way out to Port Norfolk and the second pier where that part of the trail ends. I was tired, but the sun had broken through after days of thick clouds, and I snapped a few photos of the blue water and a few wild patches of daffodils.

I remembered seeing a particular forsythia bush last spring, between the pier and the house that faces it, and so I jogged over to see if it was in bloom. (They’re late again this year – so late that they’re blooming alongside the magnolias and early tulips.)

As you can see above, that bush is in full glorious flower. There was no rainbow that day, but it felt like finding a pot of gold. And I remembered: it’s always worth looking (especially if you know where to look).

If it’s spring where you live, I hope it’s showing up in delightful and unexpected ways.

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August Break 2018: in the distance

Moonrise over my beloved river trail, and the chalk heart I love so much, at my feet.

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August Break 2018: ground

Snapped this morning on the river trail: one of my favorite patches of ground, which helps ground me.

In case you missed it: I’m participating in Susannah Conway’s August Break project this month.

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Anatomy of a morning run

I get up when the alarm goes off, or, if it’s Saturday, when the sunlight glowing through the living-room windows reaches me in our bedroom, across the house. I roll out of bed and start to wake up: opening the window blind to check on the weather, heading to the kitchen for a drink of water.

When I started running last fall, it was almost always evening: after the workday was done, stepping out on the trail toward the edge of the dark. I love the trail at dusk and even when it’s “proper dark,” as my English housemates used to say. And I love it too in the long golden glorious lengthening evenings of spring and summer.

But on some Saturdays, and on a few weekday mornings this summer, I’ve started getting out there early.

No matter what my plans are, it takes me a while to wake up: putting in my contacts, slathering on sunscreen. I change into running clothes: an ancient pair of Old Navy running shorts, a tank top or T-shirt, one of the two black sports bras that are creating funky tan lines on my back. My shoulders are freckling, for the first time in years.

I brew a cup of ginger peach tea, this most essential morning fuel. I grab a handful of cherries, pop a piece of bread in the toaster, or eat a few spoonfuls of Greek yogurt with granola and dried cranberries. If I remember to, I do a few calf raises while I’m drinking my tea, moving around the kitchen. Sometimes I stretch or do a few lunges. I almost always do some jumping jacks and a minute’s worth of push-ups, a habit I’ve picked up from Monday night boot camp.

I grab my phone and headphones and sunglasses, hook a house key onto my sports bra, slip on the stretchy headband that keeps my hair out of my face. I head out the door, down three flights of stairs, down the block and around the corner. I walk until I hit the trail proper, and then I crank up the music and run.

The Neponset is lush with green shade in the early morning, scarlet sumac and spreading trees and climbing nets of wild roses, past their bloom now. There’s a mural and a trolley overpass and then a long stretch edged with tall reeds, which is all sunshine in the early morning. It contains the chalk heart I love, the water to my right, boats bobbing and glinting in the morning sun.

I turn on the music that helps me rev up or wake up: Walk the Moon or the Cranberries, or a few folk songs written and sung by an old professor of mine. It’s an unusual running playlist, but it works for me. I take my time, letting my legs hit their stride, stopping to walk in between stretches of running. I look up and breathe in deep.

My loop is the same, or similar, on most of my runs: down the straightaway near my house, waiting for the traffic signal to change at the busy road nearby. A couple of semicircle loops on the next stretch, past municipally approved daylilies and tall elderflower bushes. Past the first wooden pier, the boxy apartment complex, through the park entrance and over a bridge. The music moves on, through folk and rock, Broadway soundtracks and sometimes hip-hop. (No one is more surprised than I am about my newfound love for a few Macklemore tracks.)

Out there I can let my thoughts unwind, sometimes mulling over a problem, sometimes humming along with the music and letting it all go. There are dog walkers, other runners, some of whom I’m starting to recognize. Sometimes the thick humidity holds the promise of shimmering heat later. Other times it’s crisp and blue, and I luxuriate in the feel of the air against my skin. Always, I am so glad to be out there, to be moving, to be alive.

We’ve lived in this neighborhood almost a year, and the trail has become as much home as the house we inhabit. I return to it at all times of day, watching the seasons change, its contours by now both familiar and a new delight. The particular joy of the morning run is embracing all this beauty early in the day. Sometimes the pace is slower than on my evening runs, but the glory makes me think of an old hymn line I love: new every morning.

By the time I make the turn and come home, I’m sweaty and starving and sometimes a little sore. But I often feel new, too. Along with the muscle fatigue, there’s another thrumming in my bones: a sense of accomplishment, quiet joy. And gratitude.

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