This past Sunday, after I could stand being indoors no longer, I took my bad left foot out for an afternoon ramble. The sun was out and the temperature was pleasant. I had on a pair of running shorts and a lime green Seattle Seahawks t-shirt. On the iPod Toots and the Maytals' "Pressure Drop" followed along with me on the sidewalk as I ascended the hill in search of an unoccupied playfield.
Miller Playfield had a women's soccer match about to begin. So I broke due north and headed for the Interlaken greenbelt. I took a trail through the greenbelt I hadn't traveled before, encountering a number of couples out for a walk.
From the greenbelt trail I headed downhill and over to Montlake Playfield, where I know there to be a new artificial turf football field surrounded by a frequently flooded dirt track. A girl's lacrosse camp was in progress on the football field. So I settled for at first running back and forth on the natural grass outfield of the adjoining baseball diamond before deciding that the dirt track might actually be softer on my ailing foot.
Sure enough, the track was just what the doctor ordered. I did a leisurely six laps while the girls ran back and forth on the football field with their lacrosse sticks. Then I made my way home.
There is something about a sunny Sunday afternoon in the city, the parks and playfields filled with athletes and husbands and wives and fathers and daughters, that for me at least is one of the highest manifestations of civilization. I am fortunate to live near an Olmsted Brothers park
After leaving Volunteer Park, in the last few block before my apartment building, I was cascaded with several ambrosial songs: Beirut's "A Sunday Smile"; Will Oldham's "Drinking Woman"; and Lykke Li's cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Silver Springs":
