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Author: Anne Cassidy

One-Day Getaway

One-Day Getaway

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A drive west today, out to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the great ridge that runs down the eastern spine of this country, out to where the sky meets the land.

It’s been a while since I’ve been more than 20 miles away from home. Half a year, I think. And while it is true that one can travel widely without ever leaving home, at least for this wanderer, an occasional glimpse of the world beyond helps maintain sanity.

So a drive west it will be, out to the ridge I took pains to see yesterday on my walk. The Shenandoah — the shaggy old hills that mark the beginning of the rest of the country.

Melody

Melody

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What a day —  family gathering, bright skies, air that feels like no air so lightly does it lie upon the skin, and,  this morning, the picture-perfect docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station.

As I conclude another trip around the sun, I think about what lessons, if any, the past year has held. One big one is this — that we choose what to focus on, what to believe. So today I concentrate on the miracle happening above us rather than mess down here below.

As I write these words a breeze stirs the wind chimes. It’s the happy key of D Major. A melody of one year ending and another just begun.

Lift Off!

Lift Off!

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Surely we needed this, needed the collective holding of breath, the general release when the rocket rose from the launching pad, up into the Florida sky, away from this earth with its virus and lockdowns and riots. Surely we needed something to make us raise our eyes from the here and now, into the heavens.

The Falcon Rocket, along with its two human passengers, lifted off an hour ago, at 3:22 p.m. — the first launch in almost a decade and the first ever from a rocket built by a private company.  It plans to rendezvous with the International Space Station at 10:30 tomorrow, meaning that these astronauts, both veterans of other space flights, will not be hitching a ride on a Russian craft.

As I write these earthbound words I hear the roar of jets making their final approach to Dulles. The dreams of flight that were realized more than a hundred years ago are propelling us still — and, as today’s milestone makes clear — they will continue to do so.

The Roses, Again

The Roses, Again

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The climbing roses have burst into bloom. Pale buds are blossoming into creamy pink flowers, are shading the deck table, are hanging overhead even as I write these words.


Does nature produce any flower as lovely as the New Dawn climbing rose? The shiny green foliage, the shy petals, the subtle color, like the barest of blushes.

I trained the roses to shade the deck, to cover the pergola, and now they almost do. As a result, the best view is from a second-floor window — odd, but a feature of this plant, which grows up and out.

And how can you not love a plant like that? One with such high aspirations, with such beauty and patience (because the buds were ready to burst open for weeks it seemed)? One with such poise and determination?

I write about the roses this time every year. I know I’m being repetitive … but I just can’t help myself.

100,000

100,000

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Yesterday, the number of deaths in this country from the novel coronavirus hit 100,000, so I spent some time this morning reading obituaries.

There were teachers and writers and veterans. Nurses and doctors, pharmacists and paramedics. A Broadway costume designer, a jazz trumpeter, a detective and a World War II veteran. There were husbands and wives who died within days of each other.

Each life precious, just as every life is. Each life giving us a glimpse of the faces behind these numbers. Each life representing a web, a cascade, of losses.

The reading of obituaries could become an obsession in the age of coronavirus. I’ve tried to keep it to a minimum. But today, of all days, seemed an appropriate one to honor the dead in this way. To know their stories, to celebrate their lives.

Technological Wonders

Technological Wonders

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Like many people using one of the oldest templates that Blogspot has (are there any of us left?!), I often feel that I’m skating on thin ice, technology-wise. Some days, everything works perfectly. I log on quickly, answer emails, write this post, get into my work emails and early to-dos and scarcely a half-hour has passed.

Today was not that day. Today I could barely get online, seeing that dreaded buffering wheel go round and round and round. I needed to turn off my machine and reboot the internet booster, but I was waiting on a code that I needed to log on to a site where I build my company’s e-newsletter.

The code would only be available if I could log onto the Office 365 site and get into an alternative mailbox. So I waited … and waited. Eventually I realized that even if I could get online, the code time would have long since expired.

So I turned off the machine, rebooted the booster and — finally — success!

Yes, it’s a world of technological wonders. Until it isn’t.

Treading Lightly

Treading Lightly

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To be a walker in the suburbs means, at times, to be a trespasser. There simply is no other way to get around out here than to (occasionally, and with great care) tiptoe through someone else’s yard. It’s the British right-of-way, the right to pass and repass, that I invoke here, if only to myself.

I’ll admit, I don’t have the best track record in this area. But on the whole I’m a respectful interloper, staying to the edge of property lines when the woodland trail I’m on suddenly leads me right into an alien backyard.

One of my solutions is to determine if a house looks currently habited. If owners are out of town, they won’t mind if I walk up their long driveway instead of staying longer on the busy thoroughfare.  Now, of course, no one is out of town.

On yesterday’s walk I suddenly found myself in a ferned forest with muddy paths and the only way out (rather than back) being along the side yard of a yellow split-foyer.  I just squeaked by on that one, seeing the owner out with a mower only 10 minutes after I’d skirted his lawn.

It was a close call for this trespasser.

On Memorial Day

On Memorial Day

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On this Memorial Day, I’ll find time to be grateful for all who gave their lives so we might be free. I’ll listen to a patriotic song or two, and hang my little American flag out by the mailbox.

I’ll think, too, about the almost 100,000 Americans who’ve lost their lives to Covid-19, the 245,000 who’ve succumbed to the disease in other countries, and all those who grieve for them.

But mostly my thoughts will flow to the hillside in Kentucky where my parents lie. It’s a sunny peaceful spot.

Rest in peace, Mom and Dad.

Mapping My Walk

Mapping My Walk

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Inspired by The Writer’s Map, which I mentioned here a couple weeks ago, I embarked on a map-making project of my own. The result is “May 16th Long Walk,” an amateurish work if ever there was one, but the first in a series, I hope, as I record the walks I take not only in words but also in cartography.

It was an interesting experience, chiefly because I haven’t done anything like this since, oh, about seventh grade (I can’t recall drawing any maps since high school other than ones scrawled on the back of envelopes in the old pre-GPS days) and also because, as is quite evident, I can’t draw.

Creating this map called on that other side of my brain, the one that involves spatial relations (a perennial worst score on the SATs) and whimsy (which, though not tested, is far too often neglected).

But once I began creating this little map, I realized I could put anything on it —even silly things like the chain-link fence I had to climb and the large drainage pipes I call Snake Eyes. I realized I could be creative in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. Mapping, like writing, is a way to make a place your own.

Brilliant Air

Brilliant Air

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Up early for a walk in a luminous fog that seemed to be glowing from the inside out. It was as if the pinpointed radiance of a rising sun was smashed and diffused throughout the air.

Air we now see differently than we did a few months ago. A miasma, virus drops in an aerosol of danger.

But this morning the air was an invisibility cloak, a brilliant one that hid me (or at least I pretended it did) in a mantle of unknowing, so I could stride beneath the dripping oaks and into another day.