I tap the Halloween tree as I pass and must put a foot on a root of the Elephant tree in order to brush fingers against its smooth trunk. I can no longer run the trails of Westwood without doing these things. Wearing a pair of Adidas adiZero XTs, I’m in new shoes on familiar [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Westwood Park’
Gatorades
Posted in Running, tagged Indiana, running, Trail running, Westwood Park on August 22, 2010 |
Trail conditions
Posted in Running, tagged Indiana, running, Trail running, Westwood Park on August 15, 2010 |
Clouds overhead. Mute. Marching toward Ohio, thunderous voices now hoarse. Clouds underfoot. Gruff. Roused angrily by my passing, footfalls like party crashers. Voices outside. Brash. Wildly shouting intoxicated vows, conversations in an organic bar. Voices within. Still. Speaking of days lost, summer’s epitaph on the forest floor. Run: 4 miles, trails — Westwood Park
Come August
Posted in Mountain Bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana, Mountain Bike, Westwood Park on August 2, 2010 |
The date bothers me. It’s early August. Sitting on a log in an arena of sound, the falling of an occasional leaf the only movement, I try to still my mind, but it’s as active as the voices of ten thousand anthropods beneath this canopy of green and blue, each seeking to be heard. Those [...]
Colors
Posted in Running, tagged Trail running, Westwood Park on July 19, 2010 |
Somewhere were berries. Dark-of-night-black. Somewhere was a skink. Electric-blue. Mostly there were trees. Towering up or reaching in. Maple and tulip. Oak. Buckeye. Ash. Heat and sun bringing them to life. Pulsating-green. Run: 10 miles, trails — Westwood Park
Running on Empty
Posted in road bike, Running, tagged bicycle, Cycling, road bike, running, Trail running, Westwood Park on June 18, 2010 |
Carrie is sitting on a rock along the trail. She’s not used to this. The heat. The terrain. The roots and nubbins. It seemed easy at the start. The pace. The downhill stretches where legs strode effortlessly. But uphills and trickier footing followed. By the time we arrived at Grand View, a clearing I helped [...]
March Madness
Posted in Mountain Bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Indiana, Mountain Bike, Westwood Park on March 20, 2010 |
I shouldn’t be here. Not that I don’t enjoy it. I’m on the trails of Westwood, a ravine to my left, surrounded by the earth tones of late winter, last autumn’s leaves laid flat by a season of snow and melt. There are patches of green, the first signs of spring, most noticeably in clumps [...]
Conspiracy theories
Posted in Mountain Bike, tagged bicycle, Cycling, Mountain Bike, Westwood Park on February 14, 2010 |
I’m waiting for the smile. The laugh. They don’t come. Instead, the man scowls, standing next to an inverted plastic bucket where a minute earlier he had been hunched over a hole in the ice. He points a finger at John and me, then at a line of trees to the east. “You aren’t supposed [...]
Of beech trees and Canada geese
Posted in Mountain Bike, tagged Indiana, Mountain Bike, mtb, Westwood Park on January 1, 2010 |
The beech stands out. Unique. Defiant. A stone’s throw from Lights Out Bridge, beside the snow-covered single track, it spreads arms still laden with leaves, months ago turned the color of brown sugar. Stop and you’ll hear them rustle in the wind, a dry chatter, muffled, like hens cooped up for the night. But no [...]
Enough
Posted in Mountain Bike, tagged bicycle, bike, Cycling, Indiana, Mountain Bike, mtb, Westwood Park on October 7, 2009 |
In the end, I’m sitting on the trail, waiting for the adrenaline to drain from my system. Dave’s holding my mountain bike. I’m holding my ribs. The curve rode well. My line wasn’t bad. But on the back side of that sharp turn I drifted too far left, where the trail gives way to a ravine. [...]
Extracts
Posted in Mountain Bike, tagged bicycle, bike, Cycling, Indiana, Mountain Bike, mtb, Westwood Park on August 1, 2009 |
As if summer skipped past, a flat rock on a smooth lake, Indiana the place between points of contact. The forest floor begins to flush its color — June’s dark-green leaves now dress in sickly yellow. Pressed by the humidity. Dusted by the stir of the singletrack beneath my wheels. As I round a bend above [...]
