Category: spring

Blood in the Woods

I’d planned on a long outing on my bike today, but found that Mother’s Day wasn’t working like that, so instead I rode over to the hardest trails in town. I planned to focus on my weakness, which is maintaining speed on technical sections, and definitely got some good practice. I wound up doing ten laps of a short loop that demands a lot from me if I want to go fast (or at least fast-ish)  – a stretch that has one rock garden, some sharp ups and downs, a few hairpin corners, numerous tight passages between trees, and several narrow bench-cut ledges with loose dirt and stones.

Overall I did well, riding more smoothly than I did last year and feeling like I’m on a training path that will pay off with better results at the Cheq 100 in June and the Marji Gesick in September. I did push it a little too far a few times, grazing some trees and even once riding off the trail into the thicket. I scraped up my forearm, but it’s just a flesh wound, a bloody little reminder that if you’re not crashing, you’re not trying. 

Just as I turned for home, I noticed that my bike computer wasn’t on my handlebars anymore. 15 minutes of slow walking around the loop paid off when I spotted the device in the weeds. See the yellow nicks in the tree from my handlebars?


Sweat and blood are familiar aspects of mountain biking to me, the off-season equivalents of ice beards and chapped lips. The oddest part of the ride had come earlier, as I rode into the heart of the trails. Just after one tough switchback, I had to stop sharply because a massive old tree had fallen across the trail.  


I had ridden through this same trail late on Saturday afternoon, so I knew this monster had fallen in the 18 hours since then. I wonder if it made a sound?


I broke off enough smaller branches to allow riders to pass along the trail, but cutting the main trunk back will require a chainsaw. A little human intervention will hasten the tree’s return to the dirt it shadowed for decades. 

College Spring

This picture, man. It captures so many aspects Carleton. First, the greens and blues of the trees, grasses, water, and sky! It’s easy to forget the unusual gorgeousness of campus – true in all seasons but especially pronounced in the spring.

Second, there’s the island in the middle of the scene: Mai Fête Island, site of dance parties and general merriment in the 1920s and 1930s. Now it’s a quiet picnic spot, occupied in this shot by two of the geese that take over the Lyman Lakes (really just a wide spot in Spring Creek as it flows toward the Cannon River) and some gorgeously mature trees. Plus naturally one of the college’s three-bin trash/recycling/compost containers. 

In the distance, the Recreation Center and, beyond it, the highest spot on campus, the college’s shiny water tower, with its bright blue C on each side. The trees of the Arboretum run north and east from those two landmarks. More green, and onmy maybe a third of the  way to the plush verdance they’ll display in a few months. 

In the foreground, the east-reaching branches of the gnarled old oak that clings to the hillside above the lakes, a newish paved path intended to keep students from using the shoulder of the highway to walk from campus proper to the Rec, and a disc golf goal. I don’t think I’ve seen more than ten people playing disc golf there in my ten years of waking the route. 

Just out of the left side of the frame is a functional tin-can telephone. Some student installed it a couple weeks ago, bolting one terminal to a fence along the sidewalk running next to the oak. You can just baaaaaaarely see the yellow line running over the water just above the lowest oak branch down to a post on Mai Fête. So bizarre and so Carleton. I have to find the time and a partner to try it out.