Make Way for Walkers

Make Way for Walkers

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The snow bricks are shrinking, the berm crud is thinning, and the road is widening. But not enough. Motorists still hesitate to cross the yellow line. Sometimes they can’t, because there’s a car on the other side. Other times, they just don’t.

Walking in the suburbs has never been more fraught. The trails I frequent are a slick, icy mess. Which means I’m forced to do all my walking in the neighborhood, along the side of the road. Some drivers seem reluctant to move over to give me a safe-enough berth.

I think it’s just rule-following, of which I’ve been guilty, too. But as a walker in the suburbs, I’m hoping cars cut us more slack these winter days. The gravelly stuff along the road is like quicksand, and walkers can’t exactly hop out of the way when they’re striding alongside a five-foot-tall mountain of snowcrete.

The cars that do cross the line have my fervent thanks and appreciation. As for the rest of them, I’ll paraphrase Robert McCloskey and say … make way for walkers.

(The cover of Make Way for Ducklings, from which I borrowed the title of this post.)

My Paper, My City

My Paper, My City

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I’ve lived in the Washington, D.C. area for decades. I live in the suburbs, true, but since suburbs orbit their star like dutiful planets, I’ve had quite a bit to do with the Capital City through the years. I have commuted there, edited a magazine from there, pounded its streets and marveled at its cultural riches.

And now, I’m watching my city disappear. The White House partially demolished. The Kennedy Center closing this summer. The Washington Post vanishing before my eyes.

I heard the news of yesterday’s Post firings from the blog of a former Post reporter. “Democracy dies in darkness. Indeed!” was the headline. This morning, I think, I’ll process this further after I read the paper. Then I catch myself. My paper is the Post. How will they cover the news of their decimation? How will they cover sports without sports reporters, local news without Metro reporters, international news without foreign bureaus? Easy answers: they won’t.

When we moved here one of the things I was most excited about was reading the Washington Post every day. It would be my hometown paper — and it has been all these years. I’m still a subscriber, the last of a vanishing breed. I had hoped the paper would outlive me. Now I’m not so sure.

The barbarians are not just at the gates. They’re inside the castle, taking it apart.

Back Before 6

Back Before 6

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No time to walk yesterday until almost nightfall., but it’s light enough now that I could leave my house at 5:30, stroll through the gloaming, and be back before 6 without walking in the dark. A good reminder that spring is on its way, even though the groundhog saw his shadow.

At this point in the season 6 p.m. is still a hard stop. With no shoulders due to snow boulders, and no sidewalks or street lights, it’s better to be safely inside by this hour. But that I could amble abroad at all after 5 was a surprise and a delight.

It’s such a pleasant time to wander, yellow porch lights beacons of warmth in a frozen landscape. I saw a single doe jump from the snowy woods over the road, her white tail flashing.

False Dawn

False Dawn

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It’s early still, but when I woke it seemed light enough to be morning. Now that I’m upright and at my desk, I see that darkness prevails. The snow pack must be fooling me, must be brightening the landscape, creating a false dawn.

I think of how hard insomniacs look for some semblance of morning, how they analyze blinds and shades for shifts in hue. They have waited hours for just a glimmer of the day to come.

Luckily, that was not my case, at least not last night. It’s more that the light woke me, revved me, jump-started my day. It may have been a false dawn I glimpsed, but the real one will be here soon.

Snowcrete

Snowcrete

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Snowmageddon, Snowzilla and now … snowcrete. The differences in capitalization are intentional. Snowmageddon and Snowzilla were snowstorms, but snowcrete is the oh-so-clever name given to the stuff we’ve been shoveling for more than a week.

It’s a new word, as far as I know, and it perfectly expresses the combination of snow and concrete that last week’s storm left behind. Ask anyone who’s been shoveling it. Their arms, shoulders and back testify to the fact that this is no ordinary substance. It is, or ought to be, an entirely new element.

In the last few days I’ve gotten out more and seen first-hand the devastation this stuff has wrought. A parking lot piled high with snow boulders. Two-lane roads turned into one-lane roads. Bobcats brought in to “shovel” a driveway.

Is it snow? Ice? Sleet? None of the above. It’s snowcrete.

Mom’s Day

Mom’s Day

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I usually cede the blog to Mom on this day, search among her papers and writings, find the words, type them here. But today is a milestone birthday: Mom would have been 100 today.

She always deplored February 1 — the cold, the snow. At least once in my lifetime she spent the day entirely alone because she was snowed in. We were grown and out of the house, and Dad was away.

Today I wake to severe weather advisories, single-digit wind chills, a February 1 that proves everything Mom ever said about it.

But to me, February 1 was always special. No snow, ice or gloom could erase the fact that this is the day my mother came into this world. And no polar vortex will spoil it today.

Young Fox

Young Fox

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The young fox skitters across the yard, angling along the diagonal path that his family has followed for years. He slips between pickets as if they weren’t there. Proof that our yard is a passageway, a corridor between woods and meadow.

How do I know he’s a juvenile? His long, coltish legs give him away. That and his antic energy.

Two weeks ago, I saw two kits in the yard, leaping and playing. Two days ago one of them was limping. These are harsh days for injured animals.

I tell myself he had a clump of ice embedded in his paw, that it melted and he is fine. That he is the very fox I just saw galloping atop the ice-crusted snow.

(Wrong season, wrong fox. This is one of the few fox photos I have on hand. I haven’t snapped a shot of the little guy)

Big Business

Big Business

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Emerging into the world beyond home and street this morning, I caught an exercise class, bought some groceries and browsed in a bookstore. I spent most of my time in the blank book section, which seemed inordinately large. I’ve been depleting my stockpile of blank books lately and was amused to see how many choices await modern-day diarists.

There were hardbacks and soft covers, lined and unlined (precious few of the latter, I’m sorry to say, because I like them best). There were journals made in Britain, France, Japan, Germany, the U.S. and Italy. Books bound in leather, jute, canvas or vegan suede.

I saw diaries for readers, travelers and cat-lovers. Plenty for cat lovers, as a matter of fact, while I saw not a single blank book with dogs on the cover.

Not sure what to deduce from that oversight, but in general I’d say that journals are a big business. All of which bodes well for the ink-on-paper trade, which I proudly support.

Shoveling Plates

Shoveling Plates

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I’m just in from a shoveling session. Having spent Sunday and Monday in a snow-induced, soup-making fog, I woke up Tuesday to a weather report that showed single-digit lows the rest of the week. This frozen world won’t be thawing anytime soon. It was time to join the shoveling crew.

I started with the snow shovel and quickly realized that using it alone was like raking leaves with a fork. A regular shovel was required, a tool with a sharp edge that could chip away at the several inches of frozen stuff on top of the fluffier white precipitation underneath.

The funny thing about this top layer, though, is how I finally removed it. I used my shovel as a fulcrum and pried it up. Chunks loosened and cracked, like tectonic plates. I tried to use my best form as I crouched low to pick up each ice floe and toss it into the yard.

In this way, ever-so-slowly, the dark macadam began to emerge. Expose enough of it and there’s traction.

(From a long-ago, fluffier snow. The car’s the same, though.)

Winter Shade

Winter Shade

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Just because we don’t look for it on these frigid days doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I noticed winter shade on my last walk around Lake Anne. A filigree of darkness in the light. A refuge from glare.

The deciduous trees don’t produce it. They cast a sharp shadow but offer no place to hide. But the hollies and magnolias still make it, the pines and arborvitae, too.

In wintertime, my eye is trained to look for shadows, long and lean, but there is shade, too, a place of safety, even in the cold.