Iowa
Greetings from Iowa. I'm spending a long weekend in Grinnell with my daughter, as she is visiting my alma mater and will likely apply here.
For me it amounts to a strange confluence of past and future. I am making the rounds with her on her visit today. Since I graduated in 1986 much has changed but much is also surprisingly unchanged. Walking into the library, for example, felt much like it did 22 years ago, right down to the same clocks on the wall that seemed to lend an oppressive urgency to whatever work was called for back then. Many of the memories are triggered by the details, either what's stayed the same or what is now conspicuous in its absence. I tell M these little stories as I remember them, so she gets an annotated version of the official campus tour. But I won't do that here.
Running is wonderful out here. I'm staying with an old friend and any direction I want to go I just head out and after a mile or two the roads peter out and I'm in cornfields. Yesterday I went through the neighborhoods around the college, with the old houses that I always imagined all the professors lived in. Then I took my an initial pass through and around the college. Today I headed south on little traveled roads through the cornfields. The corn was high and oncoming drivers in pickup trucks gave me one-fingered waves from hands that never left their steering wheels.
Four miles yesterday and five miles today. I'm not timing these runs as much as setting a time where I have to be back and then filling in the remaining minutes with footstrikes. I'll be back home tomorrow.
For me it amounts to a strange confluence of past and future. I am making the rounds with her on her visit today. Since I graduated in 1986 much has changed but much is also surprisingly unchanged. Walking into the library, for example, felt much like it did 22 years ago, right down to the same clocks on the wall that seemed to lend an oppressive urgency to whatever work was called for back then. Many of the memories are triggered by the details, either what's stayed the same or what is now conspicuous in its absence. I tell M these little stories as I remember them, so she gets an annotated version of the official campus tour. But I won't do that here.
Running is wonderful out here. I'm staying with an old friend and any direction I want to go I just head out and after a mile or two the roads peter out and I'm in cornfields. Yesterday I went through the neighborhoods around the college, with the old houses that I always imagined all the professors lived in. Then I took my an initial pass through and around the college. Today I headed south on little traveled roads through the cornfields. The corn was high and oncoming drivers in pickup trucks gave me one-fingered waves from hands that never left their steering wheels.
Four miles yesterday and five miles today. I'm not timing these runs as much as setting a time where I have to be back and then filling in the remaining minutes with footstrikes. I'll be back home tomorrow.
posted by seebo | 2:38 PM
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