Naturally

Have you ever considered running around Ghent University? Probably not, I would venture - and I can't say I disagree. Jogging around the Cornell campus, however (actually, around about half of it) is an intense 40-minute masochistic experience. Intense because of the way the plateau on which Cornell is located is everything but flat, and masochistic because the gorges about which the faithful reader of this blog has by now heard so much are so steep they come with stairs to enable one to get in and out of them. My favourite part is the bit where, after crossing a suspension bridge which is itself already high above the water (see picture taken from bridge), you run up stairs to climb about 50 m - after that one, I pause to give myself time to remember who and where and am, but not enough to start wondering why exactly I'm doing this. On the plus side, my run takes me along quite a few beautiful or at least agreeable spots (Cascadilla Creek, Beebe Lake, Falls Creek, and down along the center of the campus with all its mock-gothic architecture).

Speaking of agreeable spots, I went on a somewhat elaborate hike, yesterday, to a place with the wonderful name "Buttermilk Falls". I have not found out what the connection with buttermilk is, but the Falls part at least is obvious (again, see pic). Walking along this particular gorge (you can only see a small part of the actual Falls in the picture, but it's the grandest possible view of the thing) is a long and tiring climb, but well worth it. Not that I'm becoming a nature freak or an outdoor person, but, hey - if there's nothing else to do, you might as well take a walk, right? I see it entirely as a transcendentalist and therefore theoretically challenging experience, of course.

As you may have gathered from the photographs, the weather here is generally superb, with temperatures around 85°F (that's roughly 30°C) today, and probably into the nineties later this week. O, and they do rather vehement thunderstorms out here, as well... Everything is bigger in America - even the weather.