In music, the phrase “a tempo” means to return to the original pace. In the last few weeks (touch wood) I have been returning to my original walking speed.
I had slowed down through the winter and spring due to a hamstring thing. I won’t dignify it by calling it an injury but I will say that it turned my allegro into an adagio.
But now, if I’m careful, my stride is little more my own. The trick is knowing when I’ve overdone and backing off. I’m not as good at that as I hope to become.
It’s a good lesson not just in walking, but in life.
I had to look closely because its hue wasn’t as pink as I thought it would be. But I definitely saw a flamingo on the beach yesterday. It was hanging out with ten egrets (I counted them), feeding in a tidal lake that appeared last year and has grown bigger since then. The birds seemed on good terms with each other.
The egrets raised their elegant heads, struck a perfect profile shot, as the flamingo tried to blend in. I’m not really pink, he seemed to be saying. I’m just one of the gang.
As I mentioned in another beachposting, mockingbirds are actually the state birds of Florida, though flamingos are more closely identified with the state.
I wish I’d been able to snap a shot of the flamingo itself, but I often walk the beach without a phone or camera. I’ll have to content myself with this lone egret I spied later in the day. He’s obviously a bird on a mission. Perhaps he’s looking for another flamingo.
The natural world is never far away when I’m at the beach. I stroll beside the ocean, inhale the scent of seaweed, hear the cry of gulls, tremble at the power of waves that rise and fall and rise again.
In A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver notes that “these days many poets live in cities, or at least in suburbs, and the natural world grows ever more distant from our everyday lives. Most people, in fact, live in cities, and therefore most readers are not necessarily very familiar with the natural world. And yet the natural world has always been the great warehouse of symbolic imagery. Poetry is one of these ancient arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.”
Being here, amidst this wildness, is not only relaxing for the body, it is recharging for the soul. It puts me back in touch with the “great warehouse of symbolic imagery” that I too often neglect to tap at home.
I’m in Florida on my annual getaway. I’m savoring once again that unique combination of sea air, palm trees and sugar-white sand that makes this part of the Gulf Coast both relaxing and energizing.
Before leaving I looked up the weather. Would I need to pack a sweater? Yes, but only for inside. An umbrella? Not really, because I don’t mind getting wet at the beach.
Of course, I didn’t need to check the forecast to know what the weather would be. Sunny, hot and humid with warm mornings, sultry afternoons, and a thunderstorm to clear the air before nightfall.
It’s a forecast as familiar to me as this special stretch of Florida landscape.
Reading essayist Joseph Epstein’s autobiography recently, this sentence made me smile:
As to what phrase my children might have heard most frequently from me when they were growing up, my guess is that it might be, “I’ll be there as soon as I finish this paragraph.”
I had the good fortune of being Epstein’s student. It was in his class that I first produced an assemblage of paragraphs that deserved to be called an essay. Now I know that when he was teaching me, he was also raising four sons as a single parent … and penning beautiful essays at the same time.
Like Epstein, I had the opportunity to freelance while raising our children. I didn’t become an editor in an office again until the youngest was in third grade. As a result the girls grew up with a mother who was available for the big things (cuts and bruises of body or spirit) but who made them wait for the little ones (a snack, a story, a trip to the pool on a hot summer day).
Most mothers and fathers now don’t have this opportunity. For me it was made possible by a burgeoning magazine market and a willing and good-natured partner.
I’m forever grateful that I had the opportunity to conduct interviews while nursing an infant, to wrestle words on the page while listening to giggles and shrieks from the next room, and the opportunity to say, over and over again: “I’ll be there as soon as I finish this paragraph.”
The other day an old airline ticket showed up in the basement. This is not entirely remarkable; many things show up in the basement. But the ticket sparked thoughts and memories.
I noted, first of all, that this was one of those old-fashioned billets, thin, partially carbonized sheets of paper — so official. There was no QR code, no digital file in a digital wallet. This was a ticket stamped on September 30, 198_, printed on someone else’s paper. On the left side you can see those little cut-out circles that indicate it was brought to life on a tractor-feed mechanism. The top and bottom are perforated. Did I buy this at a travel agency? By calling the airline? I don’t remember.
A closer look revealed that a round-trip from Newark to Cincinnati cost only $121.00 in 1982. I had to do some sleuthing to determine that this was a ticket from 1982 because although both day and month are noted, the year was only stamped faintly along the side and the second digit was hidden.
To determine the year, I flipped through my journals until I found one that solved the mystery. I visited my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky (flying through Cincy) from October 8 – 12, 1982. On October 9, I explained why in my journal:
This morning I woke up to the sound of birds’ wings flapping. Not to bird song but to the soft fluttering of bird feathers. You can hear an occasional chirp if you live in New York City, if you’re in Central Park and can find a place far enough away from the screeching brakes or the low rumble of the A train. But you can never find a place silent enough to hear the delicate flutter of birds’ wings. I came home, among other reasons, to hear the flap of birds’ wings, to pause long enough to listen to the soft sounds of nature, to the faint cries of my imagination. It can’t always sing out over the distractions of the big city. It needs silence and open sky.
All of this from finding a few old pieces of paper in the basement.
My first clear memory is of holding a nickel. The coin was a bribe, no doubt about it. In fact, it may have been the first bribe I was offered, coinciding neatly with my first memory.
I was three years old and had just acquired a baby brother. I wasn’t allowed into the hospital, but the nurse held him up to window so I could see his little bald head. He looked vaguely interesting — but nowhere near as fascinating as the nickel. Suddenly I had come into a fortune. I could buy a whole candy bar, or five pieces of penny candy.
As it turned out, the candy was only a fleeting pleasure. But my brother Phillip, who I tried to smother with baby powder, who I implored my parents to remove immediately — “take that baby back to St. Joseph’s [Hospital],” I said — he stuck around much longer.
Today, he celebrates a birthday. I hope he celebrates many, many more.
In yesterday’s post I mention hearing a wood thrush. I mentioned it as if it were part of an ordinary day. But in truth, it wasn’t ordinary at all.
I’ve heard this song a few times before, but only deep in the woods. I’ve never known what bird was singing, but figured it was a shy creature that didn’t like to show itself. Its trilling song has a touch of the fairy tale about it. It makes me imagine I’ll soon happen upon a cottage made of gingerbread.
When I heard the song again on Sunday I tried to find its source. A rustling in the leaf litter drew my eyes to a brown bird with a white breast darting along the length of a decaying tree trunk.
I have no idea why I thought then that it was a wood thrush. I couldn’t get close enough to see the spots on its breast, and I have no app on my phone that identifies its call. Maybe I’d read somewhere of its sweet song and reticent ways.
Whatever the case, when I had time Sunday evening I searched “wood thrush song” on my computer and heard this. It was the same melody that had caught my attention hours earlier. It sounded like the very soul of the forest. And now, through a lucky guess, I could identify it.
The song of a wood thrush deep in the forest. Soft air with gently building humidity. A path moist enough to hold footsteps but not sloppy enough to leave me with muddy shoes. It was a peach of a walk … until I noticed the detour signs.
Roadways aren’t the only thoroughfares to be closed for repairs in the summer. One of my most trusty circular trails is down for the count.
Most of the paths I walk are out-and-backs, which makes this loop all the more attractive. But yesterday, it became an out-and-back too.
A walker in the suburbs must have some obstacles to surmount. Yesterday, this was mine.
I thought I had written my Fourth of July post yesterday. Then I started listening to a program of American music on the radio and thought about all the ways to measure national pride, national spirit.
Think of the vastness of our country. It takes four days to drive across it, and that’s if you push it.
I traversed it as a kid, riding in the backseat of a “woody” station wagon. I’ve done it again several times since then, as a young adult and with my own family, and never lost the wonder of seeing the trees grow scrubby and the plains grow vast, of seeing the first smudge of blue on the horizon: the Rocky Mountains!
I refuse to believe that we will always be this divided. Two hundred and fifty years is not a long run, when measured against some other nations, but it’s respectable. On this special day, I pray for 250 more.
