Weeknotes: June 8–13, 2026
I waited too long to start my run. It's 5:30, and the air is stifling as I head up Forest toward campus. On Lowell, a green Subaru beeps acknowledgment. It's Annie. Her birthday was yesterday. A mile later on Hamilton, two musicians, tenor sax and drums, play hard bop through an open window. East down Spring, and over the bridge past Huron Landing, I detour to avoid a family of geese on the sidewalk, their five goslings still in fuzzy adolescence.
The peppy chiptune announcement of an ice cream truck looms behind me. As the driver pulls abreast, he leans out his window and hollers "Whassuuuup!" I'm tempted to flag him down — maybe I could stick my head in his freezer. When I catch up with him at the intersection of Prospect and Cross, his speaker begins playing Beethoven's “Für Elise.”
Home is a relief. I sit at my table with a towel around my neck eating cold watermelon. Out the kitchen window, my 12-year-old neighbor feeds bread crusts to a mallard who has wandered into our driveway.
Midweeknotes: June 10–11, 2025
The wooded sections on either side of the tracks between the end of Railroad Street and the bridge near Forest are the nearest bits of wild, untended land. There is a small homeless encampment down the adjacent riverbank and on the other side a storage facility and neighboring weed shop. Where I grew up in Brighton, I had acres of recreational state forest directly behind my house where I could hike, explore, and forage interesting sticks or logs. Here in town, I have the overgrown railroad tangle with its choking vines and trees of heaven. I walk with my bow saw and backpack, passing an abandoned suitcase, its contents scattered mournfully among the ballast — a shoe, a couple shirts, a large hot pink bra. The usual faded beer cans and food packaging litter the margins. Further along I locate a couple downed branches that fit my needs and carry them the few blocks to my backyard.