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Author: Anne Cassidy

The Severn on Fire

The Severn on Fire

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I’ll admit. These words are just an excuse to display this photo of the sun setting over the Severn. I spent a few days beside this river recently and am thinking how my life would be different if I had such regular contact with natural beauty.

Would I become ho-hum about it? Would they cease to amaze me, these fiery skies, this merging of river and cloud?

Or would I routinely fill my camera as I did night before last, snapping shot after shot after shot — and finding, after I reviewed them, that many of them were exactly the same?

Grandeur is like that. It turns our heads.

Decompression

Decompression

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The walk home on a no-car commute day: Leaving the park-and-ride lot on foot — on foot! — as everyone else starts up their cars. The jolt of uneasiness at first. Did I forget something? Did I forget to drive?

No. I arrived here on shank’s mare and will return that way, too. I have everything I need: sturdy sandals on my feet, a body that’s been sitting all day and needs to move, a carry bag where I stash my purse and book.  My two legs will carry me wherever I need to go.

Down the trail I glide, insects humming, bikers blasting past. The trail is much busier at 6 p.m. than it was at 5:30 a.m., so I stay to the right, pick up my pace. The thoughts of the day swirl in my head. The longer I walk, the more they make sense. How many souls through the ages have used their walks home (from the hunt, from the well, from the village) as a way to sort things out?

Walking home: The original way of decompression.

Moderation in Motion

Moderation in Motion

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I begin the morning on foot. Down the suburban street, across a tiny wooden bridge over a culvert and through a parting in the trees. It’s where we walked last night, a short and winding path that leads to the wider rail-to-trail that runs between Baltimore and Annapolis. The spiders have been busy overnight and I brush the sticky webs off my arms.

Once on the main trail I hit my stride. I haven’t walked to work since I lived in New York more than two decades ago. And I’m not really walking to work now. Only making my way to the commuter bus. But there is no car involved, and that means I start the day in a calm and ancient way. With movement and foot fall and time for thinking as I stroll.

The downed trees I see make me think of our recent storm, our erratic weather, of global warming and what we’re losing with it, which is moderation. I ponder moderation for a minute, the peace it brings and the difficulty of achieving it these days. Walking is itself a moderating activity, isn’t it? It’s not the stop and go of vehicular locomotion but something that — because it’s limited by blood and bone and muscle — keeps us true to ourselves. Walking, then, is moderation in motion. It’s the temperate response to these extreme times.

What I used to see when I started the day on foot: the East Side glimpsed from the reservoir path.

A Matter of Direction

A Matter of Direction

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This morning I enter the city from the east, the sun an orange disc behind me. Across a broad river and along a flat plain, the bus takes a route I don’t understand and scarcely notice.

For me, a car/Metro Orange Line/Metro Red Line commuter who enters and exits at least three vehicles before I walk into the office, this seems easy. Board a bus in one place, exit in another.

I think about approach and perspective, how the angle of light, the placement of shadows, can make such a difference.

I have arrived at the same destination from a different direction. And this has made an old place seem new again.

Whistle and Wheels

Whistle and Wheels

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Early morning, twenty degrees cooler, I’m out early before a long drive.

The day is moist and full of bird song. In the distance, the sound of a train whistle, long and low. I can even hear the clatter of wheels on rail.

It’s the sound of leaving.

Walking to Bedtime

Walking to Bedtime

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It stays light until almost 10 here on the western edge of the eastern time zone. Which means that if you take a stroll after a late dinner, you are walking until (almost) bedtime.  Cicadas give way to katydids and bats dart from tree shadows into a still bright patch of sky.

It’s cooler now, only 95 (!) with a hint of a breeze.  The hum of air conditioners is punctuated by the shoosh-shoosh of sprinklers. Roosting birds chirp as they dip into the short-lived puddles.

The evening is so calm and inviting that I stay out longer than I’d planned. Longer than my shoes are meant to go. But I’m drawn farther by the sight of orange-lit houses opening their windows to the street and by tree trunks darkening into nightfall.

I walked from day into evening; I walked to bedtime.

Sweet Charity

Sweet Charity

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Her name is Lois. She works at the McDonald’s where Dad’s coffee group convenes. Always cheerful and friendly, Lois didn’t like to smile. She would hold her hand in front of her mouth to cover up  her missing front teeth.

A few weeks ago, the guys (and the few gals) who meet to solve the world’s problems over a cup of senior coffee (the same as regular coffee but it costs only 59 cents) took up a collection to buy Lois a new set of teeth. Lois accepted the gift, got the teeth — and a new life to go with them.

I didn’t meet her, but I did read the thank-you note she wrote to her customers and friends. She said she can’t express the happiness she feels now, being able to smile without embarrassment, without wondering what everyone is thinking when they see her “ugly teeth.” “You gave me back my life, my joy, my confidence,” Lois wrote.

The note was photocopied so that everyone could read it. But they have already received all the thanks they need — it’s right there every time they buy their coffee. It’s right there in Lois’s smile.

The Brown Grass

The Brown Grass

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Lawns are parched here in Kentucky, the grass crunches underfoot. I get thirsty just looking at the scorched fields, as if in hydrating myself I can somehow freshen the air. “We’re not the Bluegrass anymore,” Dad jokes. “We’re the Brown Grass.”

While the Independence Day fireworks display wasn’t canceled, the Lexington mayor banned everything else.  No firecrackers, sparklers or Roman candles. It’s a hot, mean summer here, 99 degrees in the shade.

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but the storm that’s been teasing us for hours seems more likely now.  The sky has darkened, and, at their higher elevations, the oaks and maples bend with the wind. Will we soon be drenched in sheets of rain, will rivulets run down the driveway and into the streets?

Or is it like those tarmac puddles that shimmer on the summer highway and disappear as soon as you draw close to them?

First Race

First Race

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This morning, Claire competes in her first road race. She’s been running for a couple of months now, and she’s ready to compete. And I’m excited she’s doing it. Running meant a lot to me when I was her age; it gave me confidence that I, a klutz, could actually do something athletic.

Claire has never had that problem. She is naturally coordinated; she makes ice skating and rollerblading look easy. But this is still a big deal because it is such a disciplined and regulated activity. It is the sort of thing one does to push one’s self. And as such, is a good illustration of the kind of person Claire is becoming.

So this morning when the race begins, and Claire feels that little flutter in her stomach that’s reserved for the new things we do in life, I’ll be feeling it with her.

Long Afternoon

Long Afternoon

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Midday walk, less hot than the day before.  White clouds emerge in the sky, meaning there is less haze. I take a familiar route in the opposite direction, which is strangely disorienting. The pond is on my left, the woods on my right. I have to remind myself where I am.

I have to remind myself, also, who I am. I pass kids on their way to the pool. A pair of boys, eleven or twelve, pad by in flip flops with towels around their necks. All I hear of their conversation are the words “post traumatic stress.” A strange utterance; they look like they should be talking about the cannonballs they’ll do at the pool.

Still, they remind me of the great long afternoons of childhood,  the slow-moving stillness of the hour after lunch. I remember the smell of that hour, the hot sun on the swing, the grape candy stick, plans for later in the day, a trip to the park, wading in its cool creek.

I feel like a kid again for a few minutes, though it’s only because I was walking on my lunch hour, pretending for a few minutes that I have no responsibilities, only miles to walk and books to read.