National Mall, Washington, D.C.

I think this may be the best run in America: from the Lincoln Memorial along the Reflecting Pool, past the Washington Monument, through the Smithsonian and around the Capitol. It’s about a four mile loop. It’s full of people, like it was this afternoon, when I took this picture.

It’s also got history at practically every turn, like the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial and one of my favorites: an engraving on the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

It also seems seems like every time I’m here there’s some kind of construction project to look at on the Mall. These days they’re repairing the Washington Monument after a 2011 earthquake.

But the best part: Minnesota was bracing for more than a foot of snow and on the National Mall, the sun was shining, it was 56 degrees and I could run outside in shorts and a T-shirt. It’s my first miles away from a treadmill since Dec. 1.  It’s just the third week of February, but I could feel spring coming today.

The Sound of Spring

My alarm went off at 4:15 this morning. Erika whispered to me: “What is that?” I thought it was my alarm. I closed my eyes. Then I heard it: a distant, screeching scrape. Like a train being pulled without wheels. Or an empty barge tipping over a dam.

I got up, put on my boots and coat dug my field deck (above) out of my equipment bag and headed out the back door. The sound was much clearer, much louder, outside. Here’s a sample:

It got clearer still as I walked the three long blocks down to the river. The Mississippi laid there, all white in the dark, frozen over by the recent cold snap. No sign of anything going on.

I walked back to my house and called Ramsey County dispatch. Yes, they were getting tons of calls about it, and no, they didn’t know what it was. Might have been a concrete grinding operation in Highland Park, but that wasn’t permitted to start before 7 a.m.

I decided to investigate. I got in my car and drove down the river. Past the Ford plant: nothing going on there. Around the demolition of the former U.S. Bank offices near the Crosby Farm entrance. Nothing going on there.

I called again. A dispatcher told me they’d sent officers down to check it out. They think it was ice breaking up on the river as the weather warmed up.

At long last. Spring is announcing its arrival, for everybody in St. Paul to hear.