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Author: Anne Cassidy

A Mast Year

A Mast Year

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Acorns are falling. They hit the roof and the siding. They pile up in the yard and on the driveway. When a stiff wind blows, they sound like a burst of hail. On the ground, they slide under the feet, making for a crunchy or even a treacherous passage. When I’m walking under an oak tree, I consider myself lucky if I’m not beaned in the head.

My yard is not alone. All up and down the street and throughout the area, I’m seeing a bumper crop of acorns. Which leads me to believe it’s a mast year in Fairfax County.

Masting is when a plant produces an abundance of fruits, seeds or nuts. Theories abound for why this happens, but animals are the beneficiary. Squirrels, deer, and even blue jays, which I just learned eat them, too.

The marvel of the mast year is how it affects all the trees in an area. “Not one tree in a grove, but the whole grove; not one grove in the forest, but every grove; all across the country and all across the state,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass. “The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. … All flourishing is mutual.”

Born to Walk

Born to Walk

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You’re born to walk. I’m born to walk. All humans are born to walk. Not a revolutionary statement, right? But it is. Because too many of us sit for most of the day. We sit at work. We sit in our cars as we drive to the office and run errands. We sit during our leisure time, consuming entertainment.

I walk in the suburbs — but I sit in the suburbs too. In fact, I’m sitting right now, writing this post. But at least I’ve already walked this morning. How could I not after reading Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns’ book Born to Walk: The Broken Promises of the Running Boom, and How to Slow Down and Get Healthy–One Step at a Time?

Sisson and Kearns primarily address runners in this pithy and persuasive tome. Walking can give us the cardio hit, can help us burn fat, can do most everything a hard run can do, but it’s much easier on the old bod.

“Walking makes you supple, mobile and flexible—unlike chronic cardio, which makes you creaky, achy, stiff,” Sisson and Kearns write. They urge us to “regard walking as much more than a fitness to-do list item: rather, it is a big part of what makes you a healthy human.”

Walk first thing, the authors say. That used to be my routine. When I lived in Manhattan I’d roll out of bed and walk to work, three blissful miles through Central Park and into midtown. I’ve gotten out of that habit through the years. Not out of the walking habit, but out of the walking-first-thing-in-the-morning habit. I remedied that today, left the house before my first cup of tea, before writing a word. It felt good to be out and about early. And why not? After all, we’re born to walk.

(Central Park was part of my route when I walked to work in Manhattan.)

A Jump on the Day

A Jump on the Day

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During the period of my life when I commuted downtown, I remember enjoying these early hours. Waking before 6, leaving for Metro in the darkness, the winding two-lane roads quiet and still. I’d relish the gloaming, easy on the eyes. Often, the sun would rise as I was driving, a faint light in the east.

Now I watch day break from my upstairs office. Orange-leaved trees emerge from darkness, first the witch hazel, then the crepe myrtle. The time change has given me back this pleasure. My eyes pop open at 5:30 instead of 6:30.

I like getting a jump on the day. I like being a lark. I’m just more of one now.

Yes, Virginia!

Yes, Virginia!

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One thing Virginia voters were sure of was that, once the votes were tallied, they would have a female governor. Both the Republicans and the Democrats nominated women candidates for the top spot. I’m glad we got the woman we did, Abigail Spanberger. But more than that, I’m glad that for the first time ever, the Commonwealth will soon have a woman in charge.

I interviewed the first female governor of Kentucky years ago. (When I looked her up just now, I discovered that she died four days ago. Rest in peace, Martha Layne Collins.)

The Commonwealth of Kentucky was one of the first states to elect a female governor. At this point, only 17 states have never elected a woman to their top spot.

I’m proud to say that my state is no longer one of them. Yes, Virginia, we have a woman! We will see how life is on the other side. I’m looking forward to it.

Election Season

Election Season

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It’s election day in Virginia, but I voted weeks ago. The generous stretch of time now set aside for Virginians to cast their ballots makes autumn not just a season of raking but also of voting. Which means no excuses. You’d have to be stuck in the international space station to miss voting in my state.

In the year since our last election I’ve been trying to understand our deep partisan divide. I’ve read books, newspapers and articles, listened to podcasts, talked with friends and family. I can’t say I have it figured out but it’s worth noting that though our voting hours have expanded, our choices have not.

I don’t mean our choice of candidates, but our choices, period. As Ezra Klein points out in his book Why We’re Polarized, the parties used to be scrambled. There were as many Republicans against the Vietnam War as there were Democrats. This curbed parties’ power as identities “and lowered the partisan stakes of politics,” Klein notes.

But in the last few decades politics and identities have been merging. House Democrats represent 78 percent of Whole Foods locations but only 27 percent of Cracker Barrels. We’ve sorted ourselves into blue states and red states. We shop at blue stores or red stores, socialize with mostly Democrats or mostly Republicans.

“As our many identities merge into single political mega-identities, those visceral, emotional stakes are rising — and with them, our willingness to do anything to make sure our side wins,” Klein writes.

How to recoup from such entrenchment? I haven’t finished the book yet. I’ll get back to you later.

This New Time

This New Time

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A cloudy day, the sky seems wrapped in cotton wool, blunting the edges of this new time, of the day that would already seem later than it is were there a sun with which to measure it.

Walking home yesterday, our nearest star already prepping for a 5:06 setting, I marveled at how comfortable I feel on the Reston trails. Crushed acorns underfoot. New vistas from leaf fall. A buck chasing a doe. A bird sound I don’t recognize — maybe a visitor on his way south.

As the season turns, I feel a sense of coziness in the woods. Each bent branch a hymn of praise. Each stretch of shining lake water a benediction.

With fewer light-filled hours to be outside, each one is more precious.

Spooky Sounds

Spooky Sounds

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The candy is stockpiled, the pumpkin is ready for carving. All we need are the little ghosts and goblins. They will be knocking on the door in less than 12 hours.

Meanwhile, nature has conjured up an eerie day. A brisk wind bends the bamboo fronds till they tap against the side of the house. My office bears the brunt of this breeze and the screechy, scratchy bamboo. The house creaks and groans in response.

This same wind rattles acorns down on the roof. I jump when they hit the gutters and roll down to the ground.

If this wind continues, the Dulles-bound jets may use an alternate runway, which sends them roaring directly over my house. That brings its own terror.

It promises to be a day of spooky sounds. I’m ready for them.

(Ghostly sounds deserve weird and colorful pumpkins.)

A Walk to Relive

A Walk to Relive

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I walked yesterday through a late-fall forest. The yellows a little more subtle. Still a riot of color, not yet a monochromatic woodland, but enough bare branches to see the direction we are heading. A feel of rain but not yet rain in reality.

I snapped this photo right before the little hill on my route. I was ready for the ascent, not thinking much about how the warmth is ending. I was generating my own heat at that point.

I knew that a deluge was in the forecast, much needed, though not drought-ending. It will take far more than a day’s worth of moisture to do that. But still, I knew I might not walk outside today. So I memorized the passing scenery. The bridge before the rise. The fat fox who scampered across the path. The walker who saw the animal and mouthed the word “fox” to me as she passed.

All these impressions are here today for me to savor. Even if wet weather keeps me home, I have yesterday’s walk to imagine and relive.

The Lost Trees

The Lost Trees

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I’m reading The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street, a book I noted with interest when it was published earlier this year and whose author I’ve booked for a writers conference I help to plan. The subject is climate change, told not just from a global point of view but from a local one, too.

In the last few years, Mike Tidwell reports, the giant oaks in his Takoma Park neighborhood have been buffeted by heat, drought and, in 2018, an atmospheric river of moisture. Stressed by years of extreme weather, the trees developed Phytophthora root rot and were infested by the ambrosia beetle. First, they dropped large branches, then whole trees perished.

Takoma Park is a leafy suburb north of D.C. Trees are so important there that many of its streets are named for them. (Note Willow Avenue.) Generations have flourished under the canopies of its magnificent oaks. But in a two-year period, this small city lost 1,000 trees.

Looking at a plot of these downed giants reveals that they weren’t lost in wind storms or other catastrophic events. “Trees were dying evenly on almost every block, a perfect distribution,” Tidwell writes, a pattern that led Daryl Braithwaite, the city’s director of public works, to say it’s systemic. “That doesn’t look like weather, it looks like climate,” Braithwaite told Tidwell.

Reading about these trees last night, I had my own aha moment. The oaks in my neighborhood have been dying, too, including the oaks in my own yard. We’ve lost several giants, including a spectacular red oak that was the yard’s “signature tree.” I mourn it still.

Climate change is not just about melting glaciers and rising seas. It’s about all the trees we love and lose, including the trees of Willow Avenue.

Two Against Three

Two Against Three

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The Brahms Intermezzo in A Major Opus 118 No. 2 asks questions with no answers. It’s a wistful, nostalgic piece, one I’ve played for years. Several passages feature what I’ve always called “two against three,” but which I’ve learned is also called a polyrhythm.

I’ve been playing this rhythmical pattern so long that I don’t think much about it, but it was difficult at first. It’s a little like rubbing your stomach while patting your head. In the intermezzo, it’s playing four eighth notes with the right hand as the left attempts a ripple of six triplets. “Attempts” is the operative word. My fingers are too short to ripple out notes that range across the keyboard as Brahms’ do.

Still, I try. And as I do, I ponder all the feelings the notes contain, how the right hand holds back as the left hand rushes forward. Some of the highest notes of the piece, the A, the C sharp, are played in this configuration. There is a reaching, a yearning, a sense of never quite attaining one’s heart’s desire. And in fact, Brahms dedicated these pieces to Clara Schumann, the woman he loved but could never marry.

To play these particular eighth notes against these particular triplets is to hold two truths at once: the head, the heart; the will, the reality. It is the story of life, in a handful of notes.