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1 January. The rituals of this time of year reassure us that life continues in a familiar pattern, but perhaps they also show us what has changed. A longtime Christmastime staple for its scene of Kolkata's Howra Station set to "Silent Night" is 36 Chowringhee Lane, produced by the late Shashi Kapoor: a melancholy Indian movie about people out of place & time. Its earlier cousin, Shakespeare Wallah, also evokes the sadness of holdovers from the Raj and the dubious attractions of modernity. Watching it now, I feel out of step with a contemporary world that every day echoes Rimbaud's Démocratie: "ours will be a ferocious philosophy, ignorant as to science, rabid for comfort, and let the rest of the world croak."
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| SUNY Plaza Tower |
4 January. East of the Greyhound terminal in downtown Albany, a tall Gothic structure glowers over a row of businesses that look like Ireland 50 years ago. What is now SUNY Plaza was newly-built just when its model, the Cloth Hall at Ypres, was destroyed in 1914. With snow falling hard, this was a good day to walk a few times up and down the 12-story tower. One climb more than I had done previously amounted to the height of the Empire State Building observation deck. Having over a few years gradually increased the number of repetitions, perhaps I am fit at last for this to be a weekly training workout.
9 January. The tunnels at UAlbany form a kilometer-long rectangle of concrete and ductwork. During winter break, largely empty of students moving between academic buildings, they see an occasional subterranean interval session. Some runners—me for one—turned up as much from curiosity as to be out of the winter weather. I discovered that it's easy to lose count of right-angle corners in a tunnel, unless running hard and gasping for a brief rest.
11 February. The Pine Hollow Arboretum was farmland returned to pine forest in the 1960s, when its pediatrician founder started to build ponds and plant trees. It grew from backyard landscaping to a lifelong calling, with several thousand specimens—some rare, and many beyond their native range—and a tangled couple of miles of trails. So far I have visited this local treasure mostly in winter, and am yet to see the magnolias and azaleas in bloom. On this day, running in wet snow, I visited my favourites so far: the Japanese specimens, the knees surrounding a bald cypress, and the "Glacier Ridge" trail along what to this untutored eye appears to be a short esker (Eiscir in Robert MacFarlane's word-hoard).
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| Cypress Knees |
18 February. Since 1973, the low-key and by now old-style Winter Marathon has started at UAlbany and followed a succession of inner and outer loops round the New York State office campus. More than once, I have called it a training run and quit several miles short of finishing. Today it was breezy, and too warm for ice to form on cups of water at the rudimentary aid stations. Qualifying for Boston was never a concern 30 years ago, but I haven't been close now for a long while. On a pace at half way within that limbo between a qualifier and a time fast enough to actually enter, I didn't fade much and ran faster than in several years: so no Boston qualifier, but the task of recovering and continuing to train.
4 March. Two months after its appearance in the London Review of Books, I read Alan Bennett's diary for 2017. Humbled by the pale imitation that this journal is of the great man's work, I also feel gratified to learn that he and I were reading the same Borges story at around the same time last November.
8 March. A snowmobile passed by on the rail trail this morning while I was walking the dog. I took the opportunity to trace its tracks—similar to those I saw a year ago when snowshoeing home from work—over local streets and neighbors' yards to their source. A while later, our town's competent police department called to inform me that Plod and the enthusiast in question had had a quiet chat.
10 March. Scotland has its Munros and Corbetts, summits above 3,000 and 2,500 feet respectively, and the Catskills have the 3500s. Joe had set out to climb all 35 in the winter months, and West Kill Mountain would be the last. His retinue—a few more and we'd have needed a permit—strapped on snowshoes for the 1,800-foot ascent by way of Diamond Notch Falls and an excellent ridgetop viewpoint. We celebrated at the top, more demurely than Scott Jurek's notorious debauch after narrowly breaking the Appalachian Trail record, and Mike recalled that he is now exactly half way through a second Catskill Grid: each 3500 foot summit climbed in each month of the year. It takes focus to bag 420 summits, and yet more to keep an exact tally in mind at all times. The vicar who genially characterized me as obsessive at my father's funeral had no idea what people are capable of.
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| The view south from West Kill |
11 March. I have been watching the BBC documentary on Eddie Izzard's run around Britain of a few years ago: extraordinary because shortly before those weeks of back-to-back marathon distances he claimed no history of running. There's something very un-Church of England about such audacity.
24 March. Where the Susquehanna River flows into Chesapeake Bay, Steppingstone Farm Museum preserves a glimpse of rural life in its stone house, carriage barn, and old cannery. The 50K HAT Run starts and finishes here, also passing through after four and 17 miles. The course through "The Land of Promise" and Susquehanna State Park was partly covered with snow. I splashed through the knee-deep Rock Run creek and passed the late 18th century grist mill for the second time, still feeling strong with four miles left to run; as the day warmed and several hundred pairs of feet passed by, the trail had by now turned to a treacherous mud. For some reason I love these conditions, and in a dozen races here have finished faster only once.