This is getting to be a trend, but tonight's run was surreal, too. I ran a favorite route in the Lower Arb, one which mostly parallels the Cannon River. Unusually, I didn't see a single animal, and heard only some birds and the omnipresent crickets (who now never stop chirping, morning, noon, or night).
Instead of fauna, the main characteristic of the run was water. After umpteen days of rain, the Cannon was running very fast and high, so much so that there was a definite roar. At one spot on the trail where there is usually a gentle six-foot bank sloping down to the river, I found instead an eight-foot wide (but at most six-inch deep) stream flowing down out of the saturated marshes into the river. There was nothing to do but take a flying leap and run with a wet shoe. Further along the path, as it bent away from the river, the fog was thick enough that on my way home, I couldn't see the trees that I knew were six feet off the path. And though I never like running the long, grinding hill that punctuates this particular run, the incline and declines were especially bad today on account of the many deep channels cut by rain into the gravel path. At this rate, the Arb's going to dissolve.