Early June always seems to equal humidity in the mid-Atlantic states. I relish it more and more over the years, the lushness, how, out running at twilight, it feels as though skin is less of a boundary than a medium.
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al fresco
There’s a little pavilion halfway through the route I run when I’m at my parents’ house. The light poles in their neighborhooddevelopment are wooden, flat-topped, convenient bird rest-stops. Yesterday a sharp-shinned hawk was by the pavilion. At first the hawk was completely still, but as I did my stretches and caught my breath I saw feathers falling lightly to the street. A lot of feathers—not hawk-colored—and then a small branch. The hawk didn’t immediately notice me, but when it did it looked positively furtive.“You’re going to blog about this, aren’t you?” it said.
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"Running! If there’s any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can’t think of what it might be. In running the mind flees with the body, the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms."
The Guardian’s awesomely-named Ian Sample writes about a Cambridge University study showing that
A few days of running led to the growth of hundreds of thousands of new brain cells that improved the ability to recall memories without confusing them, a skill that is crucial for learning and other cognitive tasks, researchers said.
The new brain cells appeared in a region that is linked to the formation and recollection of memories. The work reveals why jogging and other aerobic exercise can improve memory and learning, and potentially slow down the deterioration of mental ability that happens with old age.
Why are you still reading? Get out there! Link via Laura.
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Run This Town
Of course Princeton, New Jersey is attractive. Its long-standing wealth is immediately apparent in the design and upkeep of buildings private and public. When I was photographing this post I considered titling it ‘The Comforting Proximity of Millionaires’ (from Gatsby, but without Nick Carraway’s sarcasm). But the baronial interests me less, and is usually more derivative, than clever solutions to odd lots, and if you’re architecturally inclined what makes Princeton a joy to run in is the juxtaposition of disparate eras and aesthetics; the houses that have outlived the vogue for their style; a truly urban density and range of people, buildings and intentions.
Gentle hills have allowed the borough to develop along uninterrupted but varied street grids, so numerous running routes are possible, past houses from the early 1700s to the present; along a former canal tow path; and of course across the University campus. Traffic mostly sticks to a few main thoroughfares so you’re largely spared the diesel fumes that can ruin urban runs. The Princeton Running Club lists their favorite routes. Here’s the one I photographed.
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Maple Street -
Four Years Of Foliage
In October 2007 in New York it seemed one couldn’t have a conversation without someone mentioning the warm weather. Not in a smalltalk way—more like the Ancient Mariner, or someone who fears she or he has seen a ghost. The year before I’d been in Central Park shooting video at peak color, and I decided to revisit the same spots. In places, trees that had been leafless by that time in 2006 hadn’t even begun to turn. Peak color came a full two weeks late.
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Notes From The Journey
I returned from Thanksgiving in golden afternoon, bright slabs of it between county-long rafts of cloud. Northbound from New York, I always have a sense of ascending, as though up on maps is literally up. Coming over a rise on I-684 just below Brewster, one of the sections with its original concrete lanes, cacophonous and jouncing, I had a brief, wide prospect of brown, stippled hills purpled with distance, marbled with white pine green.
Northbound, I exhale freely to a degree I always had to do consciously in the city (how deeply I’m breathing! How relaxed I am. So very relaxed). Fifteen years, and I could never entirely shake the sense of having to be ready—for an invitation to a secret party; a mugger; a talent scout with a contract in the back of his Town Car, already made out to my name.
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"You may not feel a magical reduction of stress after your first jog… But the molecular biochemical changes will begin… and [eventually] become ‘profound.’"
Gretchen Reynolds reports on new research showing how exercise decreases anxiety.
Go read, then get outside and run!
