Last night I threw open the windows to let the cool air in. No fans needed. I love the whir of a fan on a hot summer night, but without the fan I could hear the insect noise, the crescendoing song of katydids, crickets and other creatures of the night.
The room cooled naturally, a simple transference, cool air instead of warm, night air instead of day.
Was that why I slept so well? Probably not. But it must have helped.
Yesterday I watched an old movie that’s haunted me since I was a child. “The Final Voyage” chronicles the last days of an aging ocean liner. When the boiler explodes it traps a woman (played by actress Dorothy Malone) under tons of steel and maroons her child in the corner of a room that no longer has a floor.
The little girl’s father (Robert Stack) must rescue her. He tries several methods before hitting on the only one that he thinks will work. The young girl must crawl across a flimsy board with a makeshift harness around her chest. If she falls it means certain death. The minute I saw this scene I knew it was the one I’d remembered. Apparently, a real ship was sunk to make the movie, which accounts for the immediacy of the drama.
I’m not sure how I ended up watching this film, nightmare material for sure. But viewing it again as an adult — the search for an acetylene torch to free Malone, the bravery exhibited by some of the characters, the cowardice of others — well, it wasn’t “Titanic” but it held my interest.
(Photo courtesy IMBd)
I first read Lynn Darling’s Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding shortly after it was published in 2014, and I wrote about it here. It was a Kindle book, one I can no longer access easily, so I put it on my birthday wish list, and just finished reading it again, this time in hard copy.
Re-reading a book that struck a chord is always risky. Will it still put the world to rights? Will it still make my heart sing?
I’m happy to say that this book did. Whether it means I’m still finding my own way (I am) or that the writing holds up (it does), I can’t say exactly. Probably a little of both.
I pulled out my pen often to scrawl notes on an index card. “So much of direction, of having a sense of direction, is bound up in a sense of place, of knowing where home lies even when you don’t know exactly where you are,” Darling writes.
She makes an argument here for long acquaintance with a locale, for knowing it so well that you’ve named the trees. But at the end of her memoir she leaves her home in the Vermont woods and moves back to Manhattan, a place that was “both present and past.”
What I took from this book upon second reading is the importance of remaining flexible as we age. Yes, we might move to the Vermont woods in search of solitude. But what’s to stop us from moving back to a bustling city four years later, if we can afford it and that’s what we want? Finding our way means staying open to all the possibilities of life, to changing our minds and accepting the detours, no matter when or how often they come.
The bamboo that hugs the house has grown like gangbusters this summer. It has thrived in the semi-tropical conditions. It has grown so much that it obscures my view, bending over as if to shake its head.
This morning I think it’s saying, what’s happened to the summer? Already two-thirds gone. Didn’t it just begin yesterday? Has it vanished in the glare of 90-plus-degree days, of heat warnings and thunderstorms? Or has it just skedaddled out of here with the increasing velocity of all my days?
No way to know.
What is certain, though, is that it’s blocking my light. So down to the deck I will go to shake the plant out of its lethargy, to bend it enough that it springs out from under the eaves, to put it in its place again. It won’t behave for long — bamboo never does — but at least for a few minutes I’ll have my view again.
There should be a word to describe the emotion one feels leaving a place when the most beautiful day of your stay is the day of your departure. Exitalgia, perhaps?
Exitalgic was the way I felt yesterday leaving the house we rented. I stayed a few minutes after the others to make sure the place was ship-shape and found a small green beach rake toy in the gravel driveway. It looked so forlorn sitting there. I was already missing the chubby little hands that held it.
But soon there was nothing to do but leave, so I drove past the red barn, skirted the bright lake and took a left on Sand Flat Road, its new-mown fields rolling up to forested hills. I thought again about my affinity for this part of the world, largely unexplored on this kid-oriented visit, but still present, there to enjoy in the future, I hope.
An hour or so later, I was traversing a more dramatic landscape: Route 48 through the West Virginia highlands. My phone location service tells me that I snapped the top photo near Keyser. When I turned the other way I had a closer look at the behemoths you see below. Hilltop wind turbines have become a beacon on the drive to Garrett County. When I see them, I know I’m almost there.
It’s one of the most famous houses in the country, and I saw it yesterday, visiting on a day befitting a home perched on top of a waterfall. It poured as we drove to the house, sprinkled while we were inside, and rained again on the way back.
Apparently, Fallingwater has also been called Leakingwater, so often does the bedrock sweat and the moisture pool. Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed Fallingwater, told its owners that drips and drops are what you get with organic architecture. “Use buckets,” he told the Kaufmann family.
I suppose when you consort with a genius, you learn to be tolerant. The Kaufmann family donated the house to a conservancy in 1963, making it possible for millions of people to experience this national treasure.
What I noticed most was the sound of the place, the peaceful patter of water slipping over stone. Or maybe it was just the rain.
I’m interrupting my regularly scheduled vacation programming with a thought spurred by the earthquake in Russia. As I write, it’s being measured as 8.8 on the Richter scale, but from what I’ve read it could be upgraded in the days to come.
The tsunami it triggered sent 10-foot waves rolling across the Pacific, and warnings for as far away as California.
No need to comment on nature’s magnitude; it’s apparent. But what the earthquake and tsunami make me think about is how connected we are — whether we want to be or not.
We’re connected by our shores and coastlines, our storms and heat waves. When volcanoes erupt, the ash clouds they spew scuttle across the skies, heeding no boundaries.
It’s so easy to forget that we’re all in this together … but we are.
On a multigenerational family vacation, it’s not just about seeing the sights, but keeping the kids occupied. Enter beach trips, pool time, coloring sessions and, of course, blanket forts (or this case, sheet forts).
I’m harkening back to my own past a bit here, to what I remember as the banner blanket forts of my early childhood. My brother and I slept in attic bedrooms with sloped ceilings not hospitable to folks over four-foot-eight. This created a kiddie kingdom that spawned elaborate blanket forts.
I remember one in particular, built over a series of dreary winter days. By the time it collapsed it had grown to encompass multiple “rooms,” some of which required commando crawling to navigate.
It was a warren, a series of hidey-holes that gave us kids a place of our own. It cost nothing to create, but the memory of it is with me still.
In years past, Garrett County has been an oasis of mountain coolness, even when the weather is hot back home. This year, the humidity is here, too. No problem, though, because there are all sorts of water bodies to help you deal with it.
In addition to Deep Creek Lake, the big kahuna, there are smaller ponds, including the one at Herrington Manor State Park, the most kid-friendly we’ve found. We headed there yesterday.
While it wasn’t the spun-sugar sand of Siesta Key, there was still a beach for digging and making sand castles, and the kiddos spent hours in the lake. Meanwhile, the adults (or at least this adult) tucked herself away in the shade and watched the scene unfold.
There was plenty of people-watching, mostly keeping my eyes on the grandchildren, who paddled and dove and got rides on a float from their oldest cousin. Their glee was more than worth the price of admission.
(These weren’t my grandkids — I’m relieved to say — but they express the possibilities of this place)
I understand why the landscapes of our birth and upbringing feel comfortable and right. What I don’t understand is how places we find much later in life feel just the same way. Garrett County, Maryland is one of those places for me.
I felt it yesterday when I drove here from Virginia, in and out of torrential rain. I felt it when I finally got close and saw the mountains rising from the mist.
I feel it now, when I’m itching to take my usual walk that skirts a cove of Deep Creek Lake. It’s more than affinity. It’s as if I’ve known this place from another lifetime. Maybe this week I’ll understand it better. I’ll certainly try.