Walk With Me Before The Thaw - 8 Miles of Icy Adventure!

After yesterday's successful (and thankfully non-fatal) run through the ice, I decided to set out earlier today, and make photography more of a priority.

(Feel free to copy, re-use, and re-mix these photos according to a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. You can see them at high resolution by right-clicking and selecting, "Open image in new tab.")

Phragmites near the shore. Doesn't look so cold yet, does it?

I rarely take pictures during my runs, because the exercise puts me in a flow state, and I don't want to interrupt it by fussing with an old cell phone. It's that old conundrum about living in the moment versus recording the moment.

Another view of the same body of water I shared yesterday. The river into town is completely non-navigable.

Today, though, I knew I wasn't going to be setting any speed records, so I thought, why not get some shots of all this ice and consequence? If we're lucky, it'll all be melted tomorrow, just a blasted memory.

Summer homes with a water slide.

Lucky for me, it was just a hair warmer today. Still well below freezing, of course, but warm enough so that I didn't need to wear gloves as long as I kept the pulse rate up. This gave me the opportunity to take a lot of photos, and I quickly got into the rhythm of it.

More phragmites - these in a marsh tucked away in the woods.

I wound up taking 214 pictures. Most of them pretty good (if I'm allowed to say that). This three year old burner cell phone is barely up to the task of running my GPS tracker and taking pictures at the same time, but it pulled through. While the pictures aren't necessarily sharp, they do give a soft impressionistic feeling when you zoom in which has a painterly charm of its own.

A working farm here in town. Take note of that water tower in the distance.

I should definitely do this more often. The frequent breaks slowed me down, sure, but they left my endurance much higher than normal. I wound up running 8.25 miles in a couple of hours! And I got to capture some of the extraordinary beauty we take for granted - as well as the dangers of these icy roads.

Wheee! At least it's been plowed!

My stepfather (my sister's father) always referred to this part of the world - this particular neighborhood in this particular town - as "God's Country." We were reminded of this the other day when some delivery men came. One of them stepped out of the moving van and walked to the bluff and said, in a thick Eastern European accent, "God is in this place."

Another frozen river at the other side of town.

My route took me through woods, through a couple suburban neighborhoods, across a cemetery, along one stretch of "main road," over a hill, back through the woods, around two farms, and along the shore. If this were a game of Minecraft I'd say that I visited all the biomes.

The stretch of regular road. Traffic avoidance is key - but there was only one car.

This was the longest run I've been able to complete in nearly two years. (I tore a whole bunch of the muscles that attached my leg to my hip bone in March 2016.) I'll be resting for the next day or so to let my tendons rest and recover. I'm so grateful for a body that can carry me this far under my own power.

Hey, it's the water tower again - with some dramatic shadows!

Again, I'm amazed by the power of exercise to impact mood. People say to the depressed: you should express gratitude. You should get out with friends. You should meditate. Consider all the wonderful things you have! But it's hard to feel gratitude when the chemicals in your brain are out of balance. It's a little scary how much of our outlook is determined by those pounds of grey matter. But I am grateful that I've figured out how to keep mine happy.

Wild Turkeys! One of several flocks around here. Safe until next Thanksgiving.

The graveyard seemed especially restful. Most of it was clear of footprints, even three days after the storm. I realized there's a sort of temporary record we can consult between a snowfall and a melt. Detectives must love the snow, even if the icicle is the perfect weapon. Historians love it too, I guess, but they only get to study those ancient glaciers.

Plowed, then disregarded. I was the first visitor.

I took a series of photos in the graveyard that would be too much for this lengthening post. I'll save them for a post of their own. As I passed through, I couldn't help thinking of Emily in World of Tommorrow, explaining to her ancestor, back in time: "Now is the envy of all of the dead."

In a blizzard, all stones are white.

This was a fabulous run. Top five, easy, no question. I guess I could call it a "peak experience," so long as that doesn't put a limit on peak experiences. I mean, who's counting? It's not like we have to make a contest out of them.

God's Country is full of transitions like this one.

Thanks for coming along with me, and thanks for being a part of my life here on Steemit, and otherwise.